Just sit on the line

Last week, I set myself the usual weekly reading target with the best of intentions in getting through the readings and then some, hoping that by this time it got around to this Monday I would not only have blitzed the set readings but also managed to get through some of my other backlog on the side. Despite having a tab with Les Mis open on my pc browser, Plato on my kindle and Dickens ready for me on my phone, I was able to bring myself to complete almost exactly zero reading over the week.

At least one step too far into this series.

The one thing that I have attempted to spend the most time reading, The Long Utopia, the fourth book in Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter Long Earth series, continues at a snail's pace, a source of great frustration to me because I really ought to throw it on the life is too short to care pile, but I just want to like it a tiny bit too much to bring myself to do it. The series is based on a Pratchett short story that I enjoyed, but as it has gone on it has become more and more like every Stephen Baxter book I've ever read, which is to say  ponderous, touching on interesting concepts in the least interesting ways imaginable and either leaving a number of plot points dangling for the inevitable sequel or tying making them irrelevant along the way. The fact that I've spent the time since Christmas when I checked it out of the library trying to get through it when I'd normally demolish a book this size in a week maximum is a good indication of just how well it's going.

As frustrating as I've found this novel, the fact is that it's not the novel's fault that I'm not getting any reading done. It's not the novel's fault that I've struggled to engage with my writing or to produce a crossword this week either. For someone who has been feeling generally like all this being cooped up indoors isn't having that great an affect on his life, I sure am wandering about the house listlessly staring at walls a lot, so maybe I'm just not as unaffected by everything that's going on as I'd like to think I am.

So I've decided to be gentle with myself and just let things happen. Reading is supposed to be fun, so is the blog and so are videogames after all. If that means there's not a weekly Great Conversation piece, somehow I feel like both I and the readership will survive.

In lieu of that, then, let me leave you with this delightful little poem from Jeffrey McDaniel that a  friend linked me just when I needed a good sob earlier in the week.

Let's talk some other time.

Zero Week

Well, this week has been pretty much a write-off, and not just with respect to the series of unfinished and unwritten drafts blog posts. After being sick at the end of last week, followed by putting a brave face on it on the weekend, I have crashed hard and barely managed my minimum working obligations, and have instead been stuck in a seemingly endless lethargic cycle of napping all day, logging in and out of various video games and streaming services, staring at walls and boiling kettles and then forgetting about them.

Thankfully, this isn't a very common experience for me, I haven't had a week like this since the depths of last winter, and more thankfully, this has been a week in which I've been able to wallow rather than having to force myself out of this feeling, something that inevitably leads to me crashing again soon. I'm also relatively sure that I'm on the up, which is just as well, as my flexible free time is about to run out and catapult me back into the land of the living whether I like it or not.

While I've been in my own little world, I have been well looked-after, though. Mrs. Owl has been very understanding and I've been feeling very supported by a number of generous and loving friends, who've provided hugs, brownies, wine, encouraging words and prompts to get out of bed when I've needed them.

When I'm in moods like this I'm not able to engage with new things, so I've been taking refuge in some old favourites.

XCOM: Long War
X-COM, along with Civ II, Cannon Fodder, Pipe Dream, Theme Hospital, Worms and Command and Conquer, was one of the games that I played over and over again on the old family 386.  Its sound effects of distant screams, footsteps on metal and alien voices are as much the soundtrack of my childhood as the greatest hits of Creedence Clearwater Revival or the songs of the Sound of Music. I've spent many a happy afternoon with the remake as well, and back when my laptop Nero was new and able to do things like record graphics I used to have a regular video series playing through it. I've been firing this one up and playing through a mission between naptimes a LOT during the last week. With my recent development of Laser Weapons I'm currently experiencing a short period of easier missions before the aliens ramp up their development to catch me up again, which is a welcome relief, as even on the lower difficulties, this game is kinda hard.

Hot Fuzz
I introduced Mrs. Owl to this one the other night, as she'd somehow managed to never have seen it before. I think she had a lot of fun, but it was mostly due to her laughing at my failed attempts to supress my maniacal giggling than from her own amusement at the film. Still, it passed high enough muster that she's willing to risk another of the Cornetto Trilogy, and since World's End is on Netflix here in the UK and neither of us have seen that, I guess I have that to look forward to sometime soon.

Lupin III
When it comes to brainlessness it's hard to go past the animation, and since I started watching anime after being roped into running one too many conventions, Lupin has been one of those shows that I have some to count on for reliably mindless shenanigans. The current series featuring the philandering master thief and his buddies is on Crunchyroll at the moment and it's a surprisingly good time, so I've also been hitting it pretty hard, though I have a bad habit of falling asleep in the middle of episodes and needing to rewatch them to work out what's going on.

The Intern
I do like me a warm fuzzy when I'm feeling a little down, though I'm not sure what to call this type of film. It's not exactly a Rom-Com since the protagonists aren't romantically linked, and the terms Mom-Com and chick flick have some seriously dubious leanings. Anyways, this is a cute little film mostly because Robert de Niro and Anne Hathaway are good times. I'm pretty sure it's best not to think to hard about any of the things that happen on the themes that it's hamfistedly throwing around, but since I'm not up for thinking right now this is exactly the kind of comfort food that I could do with, and I enjoyed sharing this one with Mrs. Owl too. Sometimes that fact that she never had a television as a child so almost everything is new to her is a great joy to be a part of.

Job
I haven't been doing a lot of reading this week (hence the lack of a weekly literature review and pun-vehicle today), but I have been leaning on the Book of Job quite a bit, as whenever I'm feeling miserable I generally find that if nothing else, Job has a lot better reasons to be miserable than me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling persecuted or tested, because of my sinfulness of lack thereof, just really tired and weepy all the time, but the back and forth in Job usually helps me ground and get perspective on those feelings in the context of my life as a believer, and this time around is no different. Note to self: Jemimah and Keziah may feel somewhat dated, but Keren-Happuch is a terrible name for a daughter.

This is all to say, dear reader, that hopefully normal Blaugust service will be beginning again around here some time soon. I hope you'll forgive me for falling off the bandwagon a little this week and hang about until then.

Blaugust: One Week Retrospective

Post 7 of ? for Blaugust 2018.
So we're a week into this daily posting thing yet again, about as far as we managed before completely giving up the ghost last year, so I thought it might be worthwhile checking in on our plans for the month and doing a quick health check.

Have a settled routine
This one took a big hit over the weekend with the mahjong tournament pretty much completely nixing any kind of routine, not just over the weekend but also into the start of this one. I'm yet to find my flow yet (as demonstrated by the fact that I'm writing my Tuesday blog post at 2am on Wednesday morning), so overall, this goal is a complete disaster and I'm going to have to be wiser in finding effective writing time without it getting in the way of my other obligations in the coming weeks, especially as I also have to fit in moving house somehow.

Take Mrs. Owl along for the ride
The boss has been reading the blog and says that she's enjoyed it, so this one gets a pass mark for now. I do hope to be able to lift that mark by sharing some adventures with her to make some posts later in the month, but at the moment the full extent of planning them is contained in this sentence.

Let projects die when I get sick of them
The month hasn't really been going long enough to have abandoned any projects yet, but yesterday's gaming post was brought toward to replace the homily that proved to be too difficult to write. The whole point of programming in a weekly homily was supposed to practice both writing homilies and openly sharing my faith here, so the fact that I failed at the first hurdle is a little discouraging, but I knew that would likely be the most difficult part of my weekly programme, so I'll keep it for now and try a little harder to apply myself next Monday.

Don't bite off too much
In one way, I've failed miserably at this, as despite there being no need or pressure to post every day, I've been pushing myself to do so. That said, I've been more willing to compromise and put up half-baked posts (like this one) instead of my planned content when it's become clear that I didn't have the time or motivation for bigger projects. Maybe I'm learning after all.

Have a varied calendar of regular features
Having an irregular week has not helped with the regular features, but there's the bones of something workable at the moment. The Wednesday quiz got a little audience participation and has a clear plan for me to work towards. The Thursday Conversation is a big time commitment each week, but provided that I can get the reading done is always a lot of fun. The Friday crossword was a bit of an accidental addition but was a surprise hit, so at the moment I'm thinking of making it a regular feature too. The rest of the calendar definitely needs fleshing out, though.

Interact with a community of other bloggers
I've gotten a little behind on the blogroll this week, but I've tried to keep participation in the discord channel going and have had time for commenting on a few blogs over the week. I hope to dedicate a little more time to this too, but I'm going to need to develop a system and maybe cull which blogs I actually plan to read or I'm going to drown in Blaugustinian ink.

Include more pictures!
There's no picture for this post, so there's still work to be done for this one. Maybe I need to source more ties...

Blaugust 22/31: Siege of Silvium - Part 2

This is my 22nd post for Blaugust 2015.

Where did today go? How can that possibly be the time? I had so much more that I needed to get done today, but here I am writing a blog post! What happens to my priorities during Blaugust every year?

There's a video uploading at the moment. It's not going to be ready by the time I leave for the engagement party that our Trello page says is of emergency importance. It seems Trello is running my life now. Since I'm probably not going to be home before midnight, I'm going to stick this one up now and just hope that everything works, or at least that if it doesn't that you guys will forgive me for my recalcitrance.

Things didn't go completely to plan with the recording of the video, but at least this way the feature film is only 25 minutes instead of the hour that the original one was going to be. I also had to crush a bunch of commentary into about half the time, so I hope that everything makes sense and that I didn't miss anything important. 

I gotta go, but when the video uploads, I hope that you enjoy it.

Blaugust 11/31: Wednesday-ish Quiz - Prime Considerations

This post is part of Blaugust, the blogging festival might be getting its own convention.

We hope you'll forgive the change in plans, but since it's 11:30 PM and I've just got home, and content doesn't grow on trees, we're going to switch up the schedule a little and run the Leaflocker's first Wednesday Quiz in Exile on Tuesday, and with any luck we'll catch up on the reading project tomorrow.

There was a general feeling amongst the downtrodden masses that are the quiz-takers here at the Leaflocker that last week's quiz on Italian powers throughout history was a little like a hobnail boot stomping on a face forever, so with that in mind, this week should be a little kinder and require a slightly less...focused...approach.

Unfortunately, I'm racing against the clock here, so the quiz answers from last week will be available tomorrow as usual, which means that you still ahve 24 hours to enter and stop John's gloating in his moment of triumph! :)

Onto this week's quiz, then. The rules remain the same as always and our theme for today is:

PRIME!

(1) An Abecedary is a form of primer, or introductory course to a topic, that prior to the invention of the printing press was regularly found in churches and monastaries and are generally regarded to have been used as a teaching tool. Disregarding the religious use for now, what did an Abecedary teach?

(2) The last few years, we've heard a lot about sub-prime lending, the practice of lending to borrowers with a high chance of defaulting on their loans. This is all linked to the somewhat outdated idea of the Prime Rate, which is what, exactly?

(3) In the Star Trek universe, the Prime Directive is the guiding principle of the Federation. What is the Prime Directive?

PRIME!

(4) The 2005 romantic comedy Prime, featuring Merryl Streep, Uma Thurman and some other person who I guess is kind of pretty, is generally considered by critics to have been a bit of a stinker (and reading the plot synopsis I can see why), but it has considerably better Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes ratings (though much lower box-office takings) than the Antonio Banderas film released the same week. Which swashbuckling sequel are we talking about here?

(5) Prior to the Second Vatican Council, when it was mercilessly scrubbed from the books, Prime was one of the canonical hours, but inexplicably, not the first one. It fell before Terce but after which major liturgical hour?

PRIME!

(6) The prime symbol is an important element of the notation used to describe the movements involved in the manipulation of the eternal fad puzzle, the Rubik's cube. In this context, what does the ' mean?

(7) Despite a name that would appear to indicate that it was the first in the series, how many Metroid games were released in Australia prior to Metroid Prime, the best-selling Gamecube title generally considered one of the finest games of all time?

(8) Prime TV is also the name of one of the television networks that services rural and regional Australia. From which of the major national broadcasters does Prime TV source the majority of their content? [For Americans and other aliens, the answer to this question is a number between 7 and 10].

PRIME!

(9) In many countries with Parliamentary systems including our native Australia, the head of government is known as the Prime Minister. Though the term is thought to have originated in France, which Briton is generally considered to have been the first 'Prime Minister', though he always denied holding such a position?

(10) A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. But that's too easy for a Leaflocker Quiz question. Instead, can you tell me what the first pair of co-primes are?

 

PRIME

(11) It's a generally agreed convention that the Prime Meridian of the world more or less passes through the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and that the anti-meridian of this line approximates the International Date Line. However, the IDL is a bit wonky. Which island nation, independent from Britain since 1979 and whose inhabitants speak a language known as Gilbertese, is the cause of that odd Soviet-style hammer shape in the IDL on the map?

(12) Primary Beams, the super-powered lasers that burn out their beam projectors in just a single use, were one of the first steps in the absurd line of military developments that characterises the trope-naming intergalactic arms race that features in which classic science fiction series?

PRIME!

(13. Because we couldn't stop on a non-prime.) Great Primer is the antiquated name for the 18-point font size, also known as Bible Text, as it was most prominently used in the printing of bibles and other large-print books, or Double Bourgeois, because the Germans (yes, the Germans) have to be different. Which prominent printer was the first to use Great Primer?

Please leave your answers in the comments. They will be graded this time next week. WE reserve the right to award a bonus for any particularly fine prime questions asked in the comments to which we do not know the answer.

Phew....11:56... Blaugust lives!

Last week's answers:

Ok, this was stupid hard. Sorry. Thanks for trying.

As is right and proper, no-one really knows where the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies fits in. I wanted to include them, but since they're only around in generally unstable areas, I skipped them.

(1) is Italy during WWII, B is Allied territory, A is occupied by the Fascist Germany, and the surprising section in red is the territory held by the Italian monarchy. John gets a point.

(2) is Italy during the 400's AD. A is the Lombards and B is the Byzantines. 

(3) is Italy following the Garibaldi era in the 1860s. The last bulwarks against unification are Venice and the Papal States. 1 each to Mark and John, and 2 to Michael.

(4) is Italy in the 1450's prior to the French and Spaniards moving in. The various areas approximate the reach of he powers of the various city-based states. A is Genoa and B is the kingdom of Naples, at this point controlled by the Aragonese, for some strange reason. One each to John and Michael.

(5) is Italy in the Napoleonic era. A is French controlled, B is Naples (but I'd have paid KotTS here, as it's close), and the section in Blue is the Kingdom of Italy. Two points to John.

Correct order: 2,4,5,3,1 (1 to Mark and John, 3 to Michael).

Bonus: To quote Michael: First into Eritrea! Last outta Libya! Two points, sir. The other players got the right answers to the wrong questions.

And the results:
On 8 points, this week's champion. Michael5000!
With 6 points in second place, just pipped on the bonus question, John!
With 2 points having only guessed "A Venice", but still infinitely ahead of everyone else. Mark!

Blaugust 2015

Well, it's not long at all until it will once again be Blaugust, the time of year that the Leaflocker editorial team leaps into action and actually tries to produce some interesting content each day, despite all historical evidence pointing to the distinct likelihood that this is impossible.

The idea of Blaugust (as imagined here in the A-town, anyway) is to set a goal of regular content for a month (the month of August, in case you're wondering) and see how close you can get to meeting that goal. It doesn't have to be every day, or even every week, just aim for what you're comfortable with doing (and let us know in the comments what you're up to, so that we can watch). We've been doing this here for a few years now, and it's consistently been a lot of good clean fun. We'd love you to join us on your own blog, too.

As you may be aware, the Leaflocker is in the process of relocating to the Green and Pleasant, and this Blaugust will be our last month in the Wide Bown. We're yet to decide if this is a boon to the blauging project in that it is providing content and a certain amount of sleeplessness that can be turned into productive writing time, or a bane that will mean we explode from the mounting stress, but we'll find out by the end of the month, so at least tune in now and then to find the answer.

At the moment, an approximate plan for the month here at the Leaflocker will follow a weekly schedule that looks like this:

Weekend Wesnoth

Inexplicably our most popular feature from Blaugust 2014, the Wesnoth videos (an item I expected to be the Leaflocker equivalent College Football post) will be returning each Saturday in Blaugust. I'll be reprising my role as the incapable gamer in the world of Orbivm, and we may even touch on a few other games if the fancy takes us.

Sunday Sermon

In the wake of the release of this video, Leaflocker Associate PsephologyKid has been hard at work on a little project he calls the Up Goer God Book. Since it's riotously funny and isn't really appropriate content for his own blog, he's graciously allowed us to host his ongoing progress here. As hardworking but kind of lazy editors, we hope this is the first of many instances of readers donating us content here at the Leaflocker.

Monday Cartoons

Since the original hosting has died a quiet death, we'll be re-posting and annotating our first webcomic and some of the rest of the collection of cartoons that have been collecting dust at Leaflocker HQ, and trying to excuse whatever apparently passed for humour in our adolescent years. If nothing else, it will be a reminder of how far we've come in the last decade or so.

The Great Conversation

Tuesdays will see the return of our plan to read the Great Books of the Western World. Prepare to be astounded and amazed by the lack of progress since we last visited the worlds of Lolita, Les Miserables and Hard Times in September...

Wednesday Quiz

If the Leaflocker can be said to be about anything, then it's about trivia, so of course we'll see the return of the Wednesday Quiz, our weekly exercise routine for the depths of our readers brains. The topics, as always, are secret for now, but we're pretty confident that Art History and Classical Music won't be coming up.

Thursday Braindump

We'll be leaving this one for whatever nonsense falls out of the air when we're groping around madly for content on Wednesday night. The state of International Cricket, whetever is currently outraging Twitter, partly-baked ideas for political reform...we'll wait and see, but the plan will be to practice putting together an informed and reasonable argument on whatever topic springs to mind.

Friday Ties and Stuff

The tie project has had a good run and will be quietly replaced, but in its place we'll be providing a running commentary on the process of packing a whole house into two suitcases and travelling across the world. Given our somewhat esoteric approach to packing, ties are still expected to feature heavily.

There you have it, dear reader. Time will tell if the plan survives contact with the enemy. If you'd care to join us in the Blaugust madness, (and how could you not?), do let us know in the comments so that we can read along.

If you can't wait until Blaugust to get a dose of Blaug or two, let me share a few of the things that I've been reading on the internet of late:

Pichy and Pals

Maybe the best thing to come out of Blaugust last year was the return of young Pichy to the world of blogging, something he's been able to keep up on a regular basis since. I'm not into fighting games that aren't exclusively about Mexican Wrestling Chefs, but Pichy is engaging and accessible, and his enthusiasm for beating people up digitally is catching. Well worth a read if you've got any interest in the mechanics of video-game design at all.

Infinite Art Tournament

Spiritual Blogmother of the Leaflocker, Michael5000 produces good stuff on a regular basis, and he's been doing it for years. I come and go from the readership of the Infinite Art Tournament, as art isn't really my thing, but now that the weekly Monday History Quiz is back on, I have been back visiting more regularly. I'm on a good run at the moment, so maybe we could do with some more competitors?

Luvapuzzle

The Other Mother is currently tripping around Europe, and when she gets a chance, she's dropping a thought or two to her blog (which she began last Blaugust) as well. I don't think she's quite got the hang on spellcheck on her tablet, but hey, I'm amazed she can find the time to post at all. Most of the photos appear to be of orienteering maps or terrain, for some reason, but I'll take what I can get.

Mountain Beautiful

The Mumderful uses her blog for somewhat more serious purposes, serving as it does as the launching pad for her long-awaited career as a "real" author. It's always good to drop by now and then and see what's on her mind, what she's been working on and what's been happening in the garden, something I'm sure that I'm going to appreciate even more when I'm on the other side of the world and the plants and seasons are all topsy-turvy.

There you go. That should keep you busy. Talk to you in Blaugust.

Thursday Night Games

The freedom of not having Blaugust to do! Here's the gaming results for tonight, but I'm not up to doing diplomacy right now.

Veritas: Peter (110) defeated Daniel (90), Thom (42) and Stephen (2).

Mah-Jong: Thom (+22300) defeated Peter (+2000), Stephen (-12000) and Daniel (-12300).

I also cooked tonight and wanted to share with you all, but I'm in a bit of a hurry, so I'll tell you later.

Fools! There Will Be A Pope!

Pretty happy with this Paul VI and JP I

When real things arise, it's hard to justify the time to draw pictures of popes, and I'm sure that Pope Francis wouldn't approve of me drawing him instead of getting my hands dirty, so I'm going to go ahead and do that instead of blogging tonight. My heart's not in it anyway.

Benedict XVI would undoubtedly quote someone unapproachable, and end up coming up with a justification that makes perfect sense but is utterly impractical for the real situation at hand. Sorry, Benny, tonight you get it, I guess.

John Paul II recognised the need to take time away from the serious business of governing worldly affairs to be approachable and relational. Someone else can always do the governing stuff later.

John Paul I would probably suggest that talking to an imaginary audience about problems instead of dealing with them is a very cathartic experience. Man I love John Paul I.

Paul VI would undoubtedly lay down the law and get me off my ass to do things. I might not like him for it, but I gotta respect him for his stance.

Pope John XXIII would just make a wisecrack and move on, but I know he'd keep a place for me in his prayers later.

(And just for you, Michael, Pope Telesphorus would probably tell me that I'm going about this all wrong, but he'd be nice enough to be friendly about it anyways.)

Super pleased with this Francis and JP II

Lazy Days (Are Sundays)

I guess the home-straight-of-blaugust blues are really getting to me, but I can't bring myself to talk about Doctor Who or religion tonight. Not for want of trying, it's just that some days are games for video-games and ignoring both the real world and the timey-wimey world (I am excite) and just playing games. Escapism is something I need sometimes, and tonight, when the weight of the world is really getting me down, is one of those times.

I have a long and rambling post on a topic that I've been working through this week, but I'm not really ready to show the world just yet (you know it's half baked, if even I, self-proclaimed king of cop-outs, won't share). So I'm afraid that yet again, my friends, you get a Wesnoth video.

In this attempt, I try and fail to show people how easy it is to win a level of my Orbivm campaign by getting all my guys slaughtered, an important life lesson, but not really conducive to showing off my video-game prowess. So, this is how not to do it, and I'll be back later in the week to show you how it's really supposed to be done.

The Panzer Papa

Yep, that confirms it. Somewhere in the last six months I really have forgotten how to draw popes.

If I could draw at all tonight, I'm sure you'd agree that anything that looks even remotely like Benedict XVI just looks like a villain. He's got the Palpatine look down, those sunken eyes and smirk, and he's a German coming straight after a Pole...It's just too easy really, isn't it? But if you're writing a comic that spans 2000 years of the papacy, there's plenty of other excellent candidates for bad guys: warmongers, philanderers and all round meanies, without picking the easy target.

Besides, I want to use Benedict as the anti-hero, the anti-Francis, his uptight discipline against Francis' laid-back popularity, his ostentation against Francis' humility. Yes, I think I'll be assassinating his character plenty by a death of a thousand small cuts without making him a baddie. It's unfair to a man who tried hard in a poor spot, I know, but there you are, and at least I'm going to give him a fair share of the limelight. I suspect that when the book is written on the modern papacy, B16 is always going to be the guy that came between JPII and Francis, the throwback that we had to have to satisfy the traditionalists, and I hope to treat him well enough to do my part to redeem him of that. Part of that comes from drawing him halfway decently, so we'll not massacre him further tonight.

Thankfully, a friend of mine that I saw today has a badass zombie Benedict on his arm, so it's not all bad, I guess. I'm pretty sure that I would never get a tattoo, let alone a sleeve, but if I did, I'm not convinced I'd have the guts to go with a zombie pope. Kudos, Matthew, kudos.

You Have To Work At It

As has become long-held habit when posting something of a religious nature, let me encourage those of you that have turned up today wanting something other than an introspective on whatever matters spiritual have sprung into my diseased mind this weekend to either watch this video of me playing video games or go check out what some of my fellow Blaugustinians have been up to. Notably, Mark has been busily planning gardens, Laura has been breaking games, and Shaun has been reminding me of everything that was glorious about my childhood. Anyway, Wesnoth time, it's a short one today.

 

So, now that there's no-one here but us chickens... Last time, we talked about idolatry, and I played the rationalist card, attempting to justify my beliefs and some of my many inadequacies in terms more palatable to my non-religious friends than simply saying "A voice in the sky said it" or "A dead jew said it". This went over pretty well with many of my religious readers, though I haven't dared to bring the topic up with some of the, ah, less-than-religious readers for fear of the result (yes, I jest, let me take a moment right now to declare that I do not in any way see the non-religious as somehow 'lesser' that those upright religious folks, it's a turn of phrase).

 

This week, though, I'm pretty confident that I'm going to need to change my approach a little bit, as the topic that'd been on the forefront of my mind this week is the nature of prayer, and more specifically, intercessory prayer. That's not to say that there isn't a rationalist approach to prayer, as I'm sure that there is. I'm sure that there's an argument to be made that the act of prayer, taking the time and attempting to focus on what's falling short of our standards, what could be improved, and how that change might come about (whether or not there's some divine secretary taking notes) helps us to understand and begin to change things, as well as improve our general state of mind.

 

It often seems to me when I'm in periods of spiritual slump like the one I've been going through in recent months that this is all prayer IS doing, that I'm talking to myself and not to any kind of divine force. It still does some measure of good, even if that measure is nothing more than a placebo, and that's one the reasons that I keep doing it; but it falls so far short of the sense of communing with God that I'm used to feeling, let alone the spiritual ecstasy that I've experienced in various times over the years, that I can't help myself wanting something a little bit more substantial.

 

The thing is, most of the time when I'm praying I'm not praying for me and my outlook on life. I'm well aware of many of my deficiencies, and I often pray to be released from them, or for discernment, but much more often I'm undertaking intercessory prayer, both for situations that I have some involvement in and ability to change, and also for the God that I believe has an active part in lives to act in certain ways. Of course, this is where this rationalist approach breaks down. If I'm not praying for my own benefit or improvement in me or my attitudes, why do I bother doing it at all?

Is my God ignorant of my needs? Does my God need prayer in order to work? Does he not have enough power and wisdom to make this decisions and act on them himself? I know none of these things can possibly be true, if there's any reason for me to believe in this God at all. So why do I pray? Once I think I knew a bit better, but at the moment it pretty much boils down to "A dead Jew said it". In 1 John, I'm told that God will do what I ask for, if it's of his will, and I guess I should just trust that he's got a better plan than I do. I just I have to trust that he would have done it anyway, but that somehow my having prayed is significant. That's the part I miss understanding of at the moment, but for now I'll trust me some dead jews and wait to be enlightened.

Seems like a cop out again, doesn't it? It feels like one to me tonight, too. But it doesn't always. As I get into rhythms of prayer and study, and see what appear to me to obvious Godly interactions into those situations I've ben praying for, I cannot help but be heartened that somehow, beyond my understanding, something is happening. You can choose to believe it's a random universe if you want, but I've seen too many of my hopeless prayers answered to believe that.

I guess I'll just keep plugging away.

Dr Mario Cures Everything

I've been starting work on a project that I hope will be coming to a saturday blog post near you at some time during the next few weeks. But since that's not ready, instead you can have the results of a Saturday night side-project, in which I blitz some Doctor Mario and only blasphemed once. It's been a bitsy kind of day. I've been out to a lovely Persian dinner, seen a choir, been shopping, done some woodwork, read some books, done some overdue AVCon work, drunk some tea, and I still don't feel like I've accomplished anything. So, video game recordings it is. I was pretty chuffed when I managed to pull it off, after all.

Doctor Mario is a funny game. It's a multiplayer game in an age when true multiplayer games were extremely rare. It's one of the very simplest of puzzle games, and I love to use it to relax. It has a memorable soundtrack (Chill for life). Basically, the game is the boss. That's really all there is to say.

Leaflocker Goes 'New Media'

I got into blogging about 10 years after the cool kids stopped doing it, so YouTube has been going long enough and well enough now that it's about time I joined up for something else than re-runs of British quiz shows.

I'd planned to post a bit about the experience of maintaining a mod for Battle for Wesnoth, something I've been privileged to do for the last five years or so. Sadly, writer's block has set in early this August, and I couldn't write something today to save my life, so I made a gameplay video instead. Another cop out, but if I get a bit better at this YouTube thing, I can foresee some further use for it down the track.

The quality is terrible, I know, so if you have ideas on a way to do this better, I'd be very willing to take suggestions.

If low-quality videos of turn-based strategy games aren't your thing, you could head over to Michael's blog and watch his higher-resolution efforts to play Dark Souls. If games in general aren't your thing, why there's lots of other fare out there. Notably, Ale made some pretty drawings, and Mason wrote about Batman fanart.

Blaugust 2014

According to my desktop calendar, it's somehow time for the annual ego trip that is Blaugust yet again. The last two Blaugusts have been somewhat lacklustre in terms of actual content, but this year there are some compelling reasons why we won't be having a repeat of those fiascoes:

I am not in Green Day

There are a bunch of people out there on the internet doing just this, blogging August away instead of getting on with their lives. I'm sure none of them will be producing the same eclectic mix of papery/gamery/didactery/asphyxery/doggelery/amateurwordsmithery as myself, but it's nice to know that there are people out there doing interesting things as well as people in here inflating their egos.

Some of those people will be familiar to longtime readers of the Leaflocker. Ale has promised an offering of art and John will be wowing us all with his sci-fi writing. Both of them consistently impress me with their expertise in their chosen fields, and I'm sure they won't disappoint.

We've also drawn some fresh blood, mostly from EVAC, my local video gaming club. Check out these guys and give them some love. Paul will be actually making progress, or at least talking about doing so, on his much anticipated Advance Wars mod. Mark will be taking the Thomly route, and making it up as he goes along. Shaun will probably be talking anime or games or something, but you never know. Mason will be doing media reviews and analysis, which sounds serious. Michael is going to steal some souls and discuss the experience on the internet. Rosie is going to make beautiful things and look good doing it... And I'm sure more will be joining us as the month wears on.

That should be something for everyone, but it's not too late for you to join in, dear reader. Many of these guys will be posting daily, because they're more committed/manly/time-efficient that me, but there's no need to push yourself beyond your limits. Set a pace that you're comfortable and stick to it if you can, pick up your keyboard and type, and remember send me a link so that I can feed on your creativity.

2) I've been channelling Helen Shapiro

The last couple of months I've been putting a lot of stuff in my life off in order to complete my work as AVCon thrall. Now that that's behind me for another year, it's time to get to actually doing things that I want to do. Creative projects, housework, proper hygiene, all of this stuff has been on the back-burner, but it's time to change the batteries in the stove, get that front burner on and get to using my brain again. How exactly rambling about popes is going to do that is beyond me, but let's find out.

3) There are worse things than death

So that I have a stick for myself as well as the tasty carrot of a job well done, I have set up the 'first' and hopefully 'only' chapter of a Hikaru No Go / Naruto crossover story that I began writing earlier in the year on a dead man switch. This will mean that if I fail to post for two days, or forget to change the publish date, then the internet will suddenly know my dark and terrible secret and I will have to be ashamed into never again leaving my house as a response to taking that last terminal leap into the dark pit of internet depravity that is fanfiction. Hopefully I have too much self-respect to let that happen.

I think we all know me well enough to admit that any schedule we try to keep will be absolutely blown to pieces by day three, but for now let's just pretend that I have even the slightest capacity to meet a rigorous and disciplined schedule.

Mondays at the Vatican.

Monday content will probably be cartoons. It just seems the right day for it, blame Garfield. Since for years I've been unable to draw cartoons without popes in them this will almost certainly degenerate into jokes about obscure religious figures that have been dead for centuries.You have been warned. 

Tuesday Book Club

Along with my regular hopeless quest to read more books than I somehow acquire, I also plan on embarking on a very special and phenomenally ridiculous reading project. So yeah, that's gonna work. I can assure you all right now that I won't try to read Neuromancer again for a while.

Wednesday Quiz

In order to irritate long-time reader, Joanna, I intend to start yet another season of Wednesday quizzes, then discontinue it just before I proclaim her the winner. There are some traditions that are just too fun to stop. I'd appreciate ideas, so if you have a quiz you'd like to see, let me know.

Thursday Night Games

Games. So many games. Games have been such a big part of my life for the last few months that I can't imagine doing a blog without them featuring heavily. Might be board games, might be computer games, and if I get really desperate, it might just end up being poems about Diplomacy.

Friday Ties

The whole tie thing has really gone downhill and off the rails before crashing in an all-consuming inferno, but it's time to bring it back, since it's not like my tie collection is doing anything else except slowly rotting upstairs. Starting next week, I'll be picking a weekly tie and wearing it, just like the good old days. Apparently that's counts as content, so tick another day off.

Secret Squirrel Saturday

Saturday is my day for talking about all the other things that I do that don't justify a weekly post to themselves. It's also a day for sleeping well into the afternoon, though, so we'll see how that goes. Unless I can think of something better, it will start with before and after pictures of my long-overdue bedroom cleanup, so hopefully we'll come up with something better and thus put off that Sisephyean task for another week.

Sunday Inquisition

Since I'm the token religious guy around here (you know, on the internet), I may well devote the sabbath to actual serious religious content. This should be considered a warning to you all that if I'm posting on a Sunday it will be overtly religious in nature, so if you have issues with people banging on about Christianity, or just with the shallow insights and poor writing style of this eternally amateurish and particularly rusty apologist, maybe stay away on Sundays.

As always, I reserve the right to skip/swap/defrenestrate as many of those as I see fit, but the aim will be for a post at least every two days, or the self-respect gets it. It promises to be a good month, guys, so best of luck to you all, readers and fellow 'writers' both.

Wednesday Quiz (iii.iii): The Olympics

Let us continue with our long delayed quiz season with this everybody's favourite topic, the Olympics! Like a good shotgun, each of the following five questions is double-barreled, so watch out for that second blast that you just weren't expecting or you may just lose your head. 

1. At the time of writing, the team from Kazakhstan have six gold medals in the London 2012 games. Which metal are olympic gold medals predominately made of and which of Kazahkstan's neighbours has won the most this year?

2. Someone from Cyprus (of hideous map-related flag fame) has won a medal in the sailing. What would you call someone from Cyprus, and what other countries represent their geography on their flag?

3. This dashing figure on the left is Bacchus, youngest and most irresponsible of the original Olympians, by which name was he known to the Greeks, and who is the sculptor?

4. My home nation of Australia held great hopes of securing our first ever medal in the gymnastics overnight. Gymnastics medals at the olympics are awarded for rhythmic, trampoline, rings, vault, floor, parallel bars, horizontal bars, uneven bars, beam and which other event? What does the greek word gymnos, from which gymnastics originates, mean?

5. And finally, which other years has London held the Olympic games? (Hint: It's more than once)

Thinking Out Loud

So, once again my papal project has stalled, but each time I get back into it I get a little bit further, and gain I little more confidence in the idea. I still think that Habemus Papas is something that I want to do sometime in the future, but for now there are a few things that need ironing out. It's a strange way to come at telling a story, because I don't really have a story that I want to tell. I've started with a concept, a plot device, I guess, designed to get a lot of popes in one room, but I have no idea what should happen next.

I started off thinking that this would provide lots of gag-a-day strips, little jokes that I find amusing but would be utterly inaccesible to most people, but where do you go with such an idea once you've run out of terrible puns to come out of the mouth of Gregory I or funny situations to put JP II in? And how many long and facetious notes can you write before you either get bored or people notice that you actually don't know very much about popes at all and just spend too much time on wikipedia?

The idea of a big interlocking storyline with many of history's popes being trapped in the modern-day vatican being unwilling or unable to return to their own times seemed to be the way to go, but how to make it happen, or why? I still like this idea, and I think I've engineered a moderately plausible way to pull it all together (ok, I'm not that happy with it, but it's a start), but my primitive cartoonish style is not at all suited to telling that kind of story, since I can't express settings and backgrounds, let alone the subtle facial and body expressions needed for the diverse range of characters.

The characters themselves are probably the biggest issue. With 265 of the guys to choose from (and a few anti-popes and other hangers-on too), how do I choose who I want to have the starring roles, and how to I ensure that they're different enough from each other. I want to give them life and put them in strange situations, but I want them to retain enough of both their place in history and their actual character (as little as we know about it), and that's hard for me. I've never been good at characterisation. The other issue with the characters is that they were all, and some of the are, real people. I want to convey a sympathetic and generous outlook, try and get at them as real people in a tough job, but still be funny and still convey a little of what I am a protestant have to think is the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

Some are easy, the current Pope, Benedict XVI, is a shoe-in, he has to play the role of the tie to the real world, the everyman protagonist through whose eyes we get to see this strange other world populated entirely by pontiffs that I want to introduce. He comes with a serious theological bent, a German efficiency and wry sense of humour, and also with a fun little byplay with side-kick and offsider in the ever-handsome Mnsgr. Ganswein. I'm still not happy with how I draw him, but he's gotta be the man.

JPII, the ludicrously popular and talented at everything Pole whose shadow BXVI is always trying to pull out of, is also a shoe-in. I imagine him as a bit of a jock-pope, matey and super-competent, and expect that he grates on the more rigid Benedict. Sure, they agree on a lot of things, and they are friendly, too, but they don't quite see eye to eye, he's the Lancer to Benedict's Mario. Why cast JPII like this? Because he's way too popular with my generation not to try to mess with, it's a kind of reverse Jar-Jar Binks situation.

JPI has got to be in there too, I see him as the peacemaker, both between the power partnership of BXVI and JPII, and the strait-laced moderate Paul VI and my favourite larrikin pope John XXIII. The world saw so little of him that you can do a lot with his character, and besides, he wrote letters to Pinocchio, he's just too cool to leave out. Of these, Paul wasn't a particularly exciting man, but he served the church and the world faithfully and humbly in the aftermath of Vatican II in an increasingly difficult time, and probably makes a good counter to the dominant personalities of the other four modern popes. So I can't leave any of them out.

Going further back, Pius XII, who served during World War II, Pius XI, the pope of the depression and Benedict XV, of World War I, who together represent the strength of the church and its position in the Europe and the world in difficult times, are all interesting men to me (and Benedict particuarly is fun to draw). Leo XIII, the intellectual reformer and oldest pope in history, is photogenic too, and Pius IX, the pope whose reign saw the end of the Papal States and the beginning of the modern Vatican as we know it today, is surely worth adding to the list of regulars.

So here I have a cast of ten major characters spanning 100 years of fashion and history, and I am reluctant to stop there with such fun options like the old monk Gregory XVI next in the list, and from there it's only a short jump back to the popes of the industrial revolution and renaissance, not to mention all the medieval and ancient guys that I already have such a fondness for...

In other words, this is just the start, and there's plenty more where this one came from, setting, mechanics, dialogue... It's a big job, one I'm utterly unequipped for, and yet for years this idea idea has floated around in head and kept me up at nights. It's time I got this show on the road, preferably before I have yet another pope to add into the mix. That means picking a target to work towards storywise, otherwise I'll get stuck in the soap-opera zone of character interplay and never get anywhere, if indeed I even get there. I'll keep you all posted on how that goes.

Tie of the Week

So the good news for the tie project is that I have been faithfully wearing a new tie each and every week of the five months since our last post in September, some twenty ties. The sad news is that the pile of worn ties is a somewhat overwhelming item to blog about, so I've made an executive decision that the ties that have not yet featured in a post will get sorted back into the fresh ties pile and I can start afresh without a big accusative pile of ties in the corner of the room. Thus, I am glad to present this little number:

This week's decidedly dated neck-decoration is a recent acquisition, coming in a very exciting pile of ties that I look forward to sharing with you in the coming year or so, and which increased my collection from a respectable 53 to a rather impressive 68, meaning that even making the large assumptions that I can keep it going and am somehow prevented from gaining any further ties this project will still be running come Easter 2013.

Tie Number:006
Designation: The Crimson Peacock
Provenance: Ian's Stash, February 2012
Manufacture: Unknown
No. of Comments: 8 (High)
Most Favourable Comment: "Nice! Very retro..."
Least Favourable Comment: "You're not actually wearing that, are you?"
Observations: Oddly enough, the green semi-ovals in a bright orange tie (it doesn't look that bright in the photo, but it's pretty out there) actually work pretty well, in the unlikely circumstance of owning a "Woolworths" green shirt of almost exactly the same shade.

Tune in next week for more Half-Windsor goodness.