On the one hand…

I’m sitting here, staring at our freedoms being eroded, and I find myself wondering why I’m celebrating today. Increasingly, we are a nation that wishes harsh rule from above, so long as it preserves our “way of life”. Oh yeah, and then we point the fist of the State at our neighbors to make sure that they stay in line with our way of thinking.

On the other hand…

I can still type up a message like this without being arrested.

So, anyways, Happy [This statement was censored by Homeland Security due to content potentially supporting homegrown terrorism; further investigations are pending.]

Apparently, when Crystal and I got married, her classmates had a pool, betting on how long we would stay married. The longest time was five years.

Today, Crystal and I celebrate our eleventh anniversary. So, in case any of Crystal’s old classmates are reading this, I have something to say:

Pwned!

(As an aside, when I heard about this pool, I really should have been offended. Instead, I was regretting that I couldn’t have bet on it myself. That cash would have been handy at certain times in our marriage.)

Last night, I made a decision. I was taking the night off. I wasn’t going to worry about the urban poor, or the war in Iraq, or people destroying their lives with drugs. I wasn’t going to think about political corruption or abuse of power or tyranny. It was Sunday, and I was going to take a Sabbath from it all.

So, we broke out Caylus, which we haven’t played in nearly a year. We also mixed up rum and cokes and played music without any social commentary. We eventually put on Crystal’s fun music playlist, which let us do the head-banging part from “Bohemian Rhapsody”, because that’s high culture right there. We also discussed the humor value implicit in this verse; indeed, I laughed so hard that I was crying.

Yeah, it was a good night, even though Gabrielle totally schooled us at Caylus. (Next time! Next time!) I’m finding that there’s a certain discipline in learning to set down issues and walk away from them for a bit. They’ll be there when you get back.

But if we have faith in a good God, we can also believe that He will take care of them, even when we’re not.

Recently, I read the book Our America by LeAlan Jones and Lloyd Newman. This book drew from the two recording projects that these two boys were involved with:

Ghetto Life 101

Remorse

You have to register on the site to listen to these pieces, but it’s free! (They are also available here and here.)

Ghetto Life 101 was just a trip around the projects, which was harsh enough, but Remorse was about the murder of Eric Morse, a five-year old boy who was dropped from a 14-story building in the projects by two older boys because he tattled on them. Now, when I say “older”, I mean “ages 10 and 11″.

And the book had pictures, too, taken by a friend of these two boys. So they roamed their neighborhood with camera and recorders, asking people about their lives and about how the murder affected them.

Troubling material.

It was all the more troubling because of the constant presence of the false gospel of success. “You’ll get out of here,” people said. “You’re smart and good-looking. You’ll go to college and be better than this.” Your knowledge will save you. Your intelligence will save you. I would think that, in a place as bleak as these tenements, this false gospel would have expired. I guess not.

But, as I read between the lines of this book, seeing what was said and what was assumed, I discovered something profound.

LeAlan Jones never met his father.

Lloyd Newman’s father is a drunkard.

The father of one of the murderers was locked up at the time, imprisoned for domestic abuse.

The theme that knit together these heartbreaking stories of pain was a deep father-hunger.

In his book Ten Things You Can’t Say In America, Larry Elder makes the case that what is destroying the black community in America is illegitimacy. I remember my mother citing some study that showed that things began to go wrong when the illegitimacy rate hit 25% in the black community. She would then go on to point out that the illegitimacy rate among whites had hit 25%. And that was 15 years ago.

As Isaiah said:

Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for what his hands have dealt out shall be done to him. My people–infants are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, your guides mislead you and they have swallowed up the course of your paths.

(Isaiah 3:11-12)

And yet…

The Spirit of God is at work in our nation. Over the last several years, I’ve seen a growing emphasis by Christians on masculinity and fatherhood. It’s a messy process, to be sure. There’s a lot of work to do and, let’s face it, men aren’t always civil and polite. And yet, that is exactly what we need: men who are willing to be men, acting with courage, forcefulness, and fortitude in order to take up their place as servant-leaders in the home.

It doesn’t look like much. Mostly changing diapers, insisting (once again!) that your son get to bed on time and not talk back to his mother, and trying to teach your children to listen to what God has to say about life while they mostly ignore you.

Yeah, it doesn’t look like much.

But it is changing the world. Because, if you look around, it is this very thing that so many lack.

Happy Father’s Day, eveyone.

From CNN.com:

A college student who branded a date’s body with a scalding piece of metal as payback for never calling her after they had sex was sentenced to five years in prison Friday.

Kristina Caban, 23, had no comment as state Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus sentenced her for what he called a crime that was “not remotely justifiable.”

Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg told Obus that Caban was the “mastermind behind the plan” to sear the torso of Samir “Sammy” Sara, then 23, for having sex with her once in 2004 and never calling her again.

Caban enlisted new boyfriend Robert Testagrossa to help brand a four-inch-high “R” on Samir’s abdomen in October 2006, the prosecutor said. She said Caban lured the former lover to a hotel room, where Testagrossa and another man grabbed him.

Blumberg said the men used a Taser to immobilize Sara in a room at the Chelsea Inn while Caban laughed at his distress and kicked him while he was down.

Yeah, that’s really bizarre.

But you know what’s really bizarre? The headline. I quoth:

“Woman brands thoughtless date with hot iron”

Having sex with a woman that isn’t your wife and then not calling back is a bit beyond just “thoughtless”. Actually, it’s sinful.

I’m just sayin’….

So, there I am, working on my computer, when I get an instant message from Bryan. “Your blood pressure seems a bit low,” he says. “Maybe this will help.”

Great. Now I’ll have to blog about it. So here goes….

A Chicago suburb has just banned visible window-mounted air conditioners.

From the Chicago Tribune:

In an effort to improve Addison’s aesthetics, the Village Board in March passed an ordinance that prohibits window-mounted air conditioners on walls that face the street or on side windows within 12 feet of a street-facing wall.

My bedroom faces the street. Since we don’t have air conditioning upstairs, I’ve placed a window unit in my window to cool down my bedroom. If I lived in Addison, that would make me a criminal.

And for what reason did the village of Addison make this ordinance? Were they pulling a Berkeley and trying to save the environment from leaking coolant? Were they trying to impose some sort of energy efficiency on the citizenry? Not that I’d be pleased with these sorts of reasons.

Oh no. The answer is far worse.

Village officials said the ordinance is geared toward window-mounted units that tend to look shabby, especially when spaces around the units are jammed with cardboard or boards. Also unsightly, they said, are the slap-dash braces made of two-by-fours that support some units on outside walls.

(emphasis mine)

Yep. The government of Addison said that the window units were ugly. Therefore, “ugly” is now illegal. And, tell me, why is “ugly” now illegal in Addison?

[John Berly, assistant village manager said,] “The front yard is what the public sees. The condition of the front is a major factor in determining property values, and it reflects the community norms of acceptable maintenance.”

There it is. Property values. That constant bugaboo.

So, what’s the expected outcome?

[C]ontractors have advised the village that the cost of cutting a hole in a wall and installing a rectangular sleeve and an air conditioner would range from about $600 to about $1,000 depending on the type of wall construction and the complexity of the job.

[A local landlord Vito] Mossa said profit margins in apartment buildings have been trimmed to the bone in recent years because of stable rents but rising costs for heat, taxes, insurance, water and garbage removal. Retrofitting for legal air conditioners would cost too much, he said.

“I would probably just tell [tenants] they can’t put an air conditioner in the window. . . . I’m going to lose tenants,” Mossa said.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s parse this out, shall we?

Who is most likely to be using window-mounted air conditioners? People who can’t afford central air conditioning or aren’t in a position to have it installed. In other words, renters and home-owners who are poor. Also, who is most likely to have “unsightly” improvised home repairs? That’s right; poor people. So, who is this ordinance going to affect the most? (All together now.) Poor people.

But, it’s okay if they leave, right? I mean, do we really want those sorts of people in our neighborhoods? Look what they do to the property values. It’s better for everyone, or at least, it’s better for property owners. And then, our neighborhood will be a better, happier, more prosperous place, right?

But will it?

Vito Mossa doesn’t think so. He thinks that he is going to lose tenants because he can’t afford to install air conditioning the way that the Village Council has demanded. So then what happens? In order to attract tenants, he will have to lower his rent. Assuming he can afford to do this, what quality of tenant do you think he will get? Most folk will want the air conditioning, so he will only get tenants who are too poor to afford the nicer apartments. Of course, the lower rent will mean that Mossa will have even less money to put into maintenance of the apartment building. Plus, the lower quality of tenant will probably attract its own trouble.

But what if Mossa can’t afford to lower his rent? Well then, eventually he will have to go out of business as a landlord. So then, what happens to the apartment building? Mossa will have to sell it, but how will he accomplish that? Eventually he will either have to sell at a loss, or he will have to sell to someone with enough money to pay for all the additional air conditioning updates. Do you think that this buyer will be a nice local landlord? I rather think that it will be a real estate holding company of some kind, who will probably be just another “absentee landlord” that the Village Council is already complaining about.

And what if he can’t sell? Do you think that he will be able to rent apartments in a building that is on the market? Again, only the really desperate would rent in that sort of situation. Or perhaps the building merely stands vacant. But, as I know from personal experience, a vacant building is a drag on a neighborhood, attracting all sorts of trouble.

And what about Mossa? His business is destroyed, and probably his personal finances, too. Where does this leave him?

But, hey, in the end, the village of Addison drives away all those nasty poor people and preserves their property values for good, decent people! Hooray! Another win for the middle class!

Another win against those awful poor folk.

Of course, the really sad thing is that this won’t work. In the end, Addison will probably be left with a worse situation than they started with.

So, I don’t live in Addison, right? I live in Peoria. Why am I so exercised about this?

It’s because I see the same pattern playing out right here in my neighborhood.

Last week, Code Enforcement came through the neighborhood, doing a “clean sweep”. The agent was fairly lenient on us, since she admitted that the purpose was mostly to focus on tenants, not on home owners. That didn’t save my neighbor, who managed to pick up a substantive fine for having front stairs in need of repair. Do the stairs need repair? Yes they do, and my neighbor (who I will call D) knew this. In fact, she had been saving money all year so that she could get them repaired over the summer. They are concrete, so you need to wait until the summer heat for best effect. But now, she has to pay a fine. Where is she going to get that money? That’s right: from the money that she saved to repair her steps.

D is a home owner. In fact, she’s lived in the University East neighborhood for a number of years. On top of that, she is raising her five grandchildren by herself, while working a job in the public school system. She’s not exactly made out of money. And yet, she was being responsible, trying to take care of her property as best as she could. She has covered her stairs, trying to decorate them to make the best of a bad situation. But it did not save her.

And then I hear people in the neighborhood who are happy about this. Indeed, they call Code Enforcement to inform on their neighbors. Then they vigorously defend the right of Code Enforcement to trespass onto other people’s property in violation of the Fourth Amendment. They want the city to keep putting pressure on renters. They want to enforce a certain standard of living on this neighborhood, using the power of the government to accomplish it. And their goal? The preservation of their property values. They want to force this neighborhood to be a nice, upscale neighborhood, without any of those “unsightly” rental properties.

Yay! Another victory for the middle class! Another win against those awful poor folk.

But what have we won, really?

Is this how to accomplish our goal of living together peacefully as neighbors? That is our goal, isn’t it? A neighborhood? But how can we form a loving community if we found it on the suffering of the poor? How can we form a trusting community if we enforce it with anonymous calls to government agencies? How can we form an open community if we are constantly watching each other for infractions?

Are we looking to form a neighborhood? Or are we just looking for a nice place to live, regardless of who pays the price?

I was at Presbytery this last week, and, like good Presbyterians, they were using Robert’s Rules of Order to conduct business. This isn’t really anything new, and I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen it done before. But, for the first time, it occurred to me that Robert’s Rules are just another form of game design. Roleplaying design, even. Consider this: you have stake-setting (by moving and seconding a main motion) and conflict resolution (through subsidiary motions and finally voting). You have a GM (the moderator). You have folks responsible to know the rules and check things in the rulebooks (the parliamentarians). You even have someone whose is responsible to write the Actual Play report (the secretary).

That’s right. Robert’s Rules are just another way of roleplaying.

Being serious, I wonder how much insight we game designers could gather from the procedural structures of Robert’s Rules. Their existence to structure a formal social situation is anecdotal evidence that System Does Matter, yet their design is such that the group can hack them on the fly, by moving to suspend certain rules and the like. They also acknowledge that human judgment is necessary as part of the System, and also provide a way for the GM/moderator to be overruled by the rest of the assembly. There’s a lot that we could glean from this resource.

I’m going to combine two posts into one. Fear my blogging power!

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. I’m doing okay, actually. Had a bit of a moment when I read this, but otherwise I was on an even keel for the day. That’s good, actually. Looking back at previous years, this day has been better or worse, depending on stuff.

Elder James McDonald grabbed me after worship and said that he had been praying for us. He lost his mother a few years ago, too, and he said that he’d been thinking about us. On the one hand, it’s a positive indication that it took me a moment to figure out what he meant. On the other hand, I was deeply moved and appreciative that he had remembered. Made me feel loved.

The day before that, I watched Baby Mamma with Crystal. She wanted to see it, and it was for her birthday, so I said yes.

Now, before I launch into my cultural critique, I need to say that I enjoyed the movie. As my father would say, “It was diverting.” It followed the romantic comedy formula without the central relationship actually being a romance. In other words, it was about a relationship founded initially on a lie that needed to be transformed to a relationship founded on truth. Maybe it was a buddy movie…or maybe buddy movies are related to romantic comedies.

Anways, the bits about pregnancy and childbirth were pretty funny, and I laughed at the right places. At least, I’m pretty sure that they were the right places.

Then I left the theater with Crystal, opining that our civilization is doomed.

Providentially, as we wandered the Shoppes after the movie, we stumbled upon the display of the Dirty Laundry Project, which essentially reinforced my concern.

We have disconnected love, sex, marriage, and childbearing. In the movie, one of the characters says to another one, “What does being married have to do with having a baby?” One of the T-shirt said, “Love does not equal sex. Sex does not equal love.” While it’s certainly true that sex doesn’t always equal love, isn’t it supposed to? Several of the T-shirts talked about waiting to have sex. Wait for what? Marriage was never mentioned. Apparently, you’re supposed to wait for “the right one”. But, in the heat of the moment, the one in front of you is “the right one”.

And, ultimately, we take love, sex, marriage, and childbearing, and turn them into ways to satisfy our own lusts and desires. Yes, even childbearing. It’s the new way to self-actualize, to find meaning in your existence. Having children has become about being fulfilled as a person, not about giving to the next generation.

The more I wander the world, the more that I realize that the simple act of establishing a household, centered on the marriage of a God-fearing man to a God-fearing woman, raising God-fearing children, is a revolutionary act of epic proportions. The kind that makes the foundations of this corruption system tremble.

Here’s one from the quote file:

“Surely avant-garde enemy rebels of the system never had to change diapers.”–Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net

I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

• Sitting on the patio, listening to the pond. #
• Juggling stuff at work. #
• Back from another couple rounds of Twlight Struggle. US and USSR running neck and neck. Now to find an SDK that I need. #
• Hungry and ready to go home. #

• Been living my calling. #
• I’m about to refinish the dining room floor with Crystal. #

• To work! Troubleshooting a database sync issue. Um. Not quite as excited now. LOL. Actually, I’m looking forward to having it FIXED! #
• Played the start of Twilight Struggle over lunch. Yay! #

• Going to bed to watch The Wire. Then, tomorrow, work! #
• Did I mention that I finished my first draft of A Flower for Mara? I didn’t? Huh… #
• It’s Thursday already? Then it’s almost time for BLOOD RED SANDS! #

• Staying home to be sure that I’m not spreading pinkeye love. I’m probably better, but I’m guessing my coworkers would like me to be *sure*. #

This is how I’m starting the Designer’s Notes. I liked it so much that I figured I’d share it here.

On July 19, 2003, at 11:30 p.m. EDT, my mother passed away. It was a shock to all of us. She was not ill; she had shown no indication of any problem. She was working outside that afternoon and, around 2:00 p.m., was stung by a bee. She wasn’t feeling well and called my sister Elizabeth. While on the phone, she collapsed. My sister hurried over and found her unconscious. The paramedics could not revive her and, after several hours spent in intensive care, she died. She was only 51 years old.

That wasn’t the first time that death had entered my life. In the first six months of 1997, five people who were close to me suddenly passed away. Among them was my Grandpa Anderson and my Grandma Ben-Ezra. Cancer took them both.

Nor was it the last. In 2006, I helped bury Hannah, the three-year old daughter of a co-worker, dead from a congenital disease. A week later, I stood at the grave of William, a sixteen-year old boy from my church, dead from brain cancer.

These are just some of the griefs that I bear, the flowers that I carry for Mara. Writing this game is part of how I am putting them down.

• Pinkeye is a difficult disease. I feel mostly okay, except something is in my eye. Bleh. #
• I think that I might be recovering. That would be good. #