The McCathern Family

Three Things, Four Things

2010-03-09T16:56:00.001-05:00

"this is the way the morning creeps into your room
this is the sunshine on your orange juice
this is the sky streaked bright with the early light
and this is my way of telling you that you are beautiful"
-Annie Quick "Beautiful"

Three things fill me hope. Indeed four things portend joy:

the smile of a five month old at his dancing brother
snow retreating, defeated
bright sun on sodden earth
dreaming of April from one month away

Conspiratorial Thoughts

2009-12-01T14:52:00.007-05:00

"the wise men came
three made their way
to shower him with love while he lay in the hay"
-Dave Matthews, "Christmas Song"

Our Sunday School class is doing (studying?) Advent Conspiracy this year. Here is the video they've been showing in our church service to promote it, which is actually a good introduction to it.

Sharon and I were talking about this, and I mentioned that I want to support this, but I'm afraid people will get the wrong message. For the record, I think the video above and the website get the message exactly right. But it's hard to explain their message without the potential to have it misunderstood.

The right message is that Christmas isn't about consumerism.

The wrong message is that Christmas isn't about gifts.

Let me explain, because if you've read this blog before you know Christmas is not only my favorite holiday but that I think the Incarnation is both the most amazing and most misunderstood idea in all of Christendom.

The Incarnation is God in the flesh. The idea is so outrageous that our closest religious cousins (Islam and Judaism) consider it blasphemy and more recent variations (like Baha'i and Mormonism) dilute it or shift it. But it's not just a side issue: it is bedrock to our faith. Without incarnation God is distant forever. In it, He not only voluntarily becomes like us, but He brings us to Him by His actions once incarnate. How does He do this? He gives himself.

Christmas is all about giving, and celebrating being given. I think it is a great idea to give of yourself at Christmas: recklessly, extravagantly. We have been given a huge gift - it's time to party.

I can see people hearing about this and thinking "oh yeah, I shouldn't spend so much money and give it to the poor instead." Your answer is in John 12:3, but I'll interpret here: we all know "that person" who donated money to the whales instead of buying you a present. This isn't like that. If they did it because they know you want to save the whales, then they've shown you love but otherwise they're still missing the point. Christmas isn't about helping the poor.

The problem also isn't that we're consumers (or rather, that's not the main problem). The problem is we don't understand gifts. We use our gifts to build up ourselves in some way. We worry about what to get the person who already has much more than we do. We worry about the asymmetry of giving something to someone who has much less than we do but is otherwise our peer. We feel pressured to value our relationships monetarily - to have our gift somehow reflect the value of the person in our eyes - so that if we don't spend enough we haven't shown enough love.

The point here is to give gifts and give the best ones. Give of yourself and your time to those who you have relationship with, give of your money to those who need it most, give of your service to those you can help. Give. Give. Give.

Some of you are exhausted. You give all the time. You have nothing left. Some of you are broke or out of a job or sick. This is not for you. God didn't give what he didn't have.

But, what Jesus did have, He gave. And what He couldn't give (His equality with God) He set aside in order to better give. He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant. That's humanity: the form of a servant.

Yes, don't buy the sweater she won't like - do something else. Say something else. Even buy something else. But don't be afraid to buy the sweater she will like if you're doing it to show love. Show her/him/them love. Love. Love. Love.

Shower them with love while He lays in the hay.

Voyage

2009-11-25T14:28:00.000-05:00

"oh Mover of me, may I always submit unto Thee
oh Mover of me, may I always depend on Thee
You don't move men like stones but endue them with life
that they may be free to be moved by Thee."
-Christine Dente, Voyage, "The Mover"

That's right, everybody. There's a new Christine Dente album. Go to their website right now. Plunk down your hard earned $15. Yes, it's a preorder. Yes, I've heard exactly one snippet of one song (you can hear it on her webpage). Yes, Sharon and I are going a little crazy. Go there now! Buy the album!

Abandon

2009-11-10T14:14:00.001-05:00

"I'm like Thomas doubting
fingers routing the scars in Your wrists and side
touching flesh will make my mind believe
I want to be like David
throwing clothes to the wind
to dance a jig in my skin
and be remade by Your cleansing again
I give you myself
it's all that I have
broken and frail
I'm clay in Your hands
and I'm spinning unconcealed
dizzy on this wheel
for You, my love" -Sixpence None the Richer, Dizzy

My mom and dad have been here visiting - I just took dad back to the airport this morning, but mom is with us until next Tuesday. This is both blessing and curse; I love having them here, but Asher gets lots of attention from his grandparents. When they leave we have to go through a detox where he gets used to reasonable amounts of attention again, instead of 24/7 all the time happy fun whatever you want.

Dad and I talked a lot on the way to PIT (his flight was at 7:10 AM) so I've been extra introspective today. I'm hoping to get some time this week to process some of the stuff we talked about, and maybe I'll have something fun to say later on.

Go buy Divine Discontent if you don't own it already. Also, if anybody wants to make some music suggestions, I'm all ears. I'm noticing that most of the music I quote on this blog is 7-15 years old, so pony up, people!

Want Not

2009-11-04T07:47:00.002-05:00

"digging deep I guess I say
is more pridefulness of that day
in truth I know that it is clear
I was distant, God is near"
-Poor Old Lu, Digging Deep

I've heard other people say it dozens of times, but you really can learn so much from children. Asher (most of the time) is still just honest and open, even when he's disobeying or in trouble.

Consider the following exchange:

(Asher is at the bottom of the stairs holding a Pringles can. I'm in one of the upstairs bedrooms talking to Sharon.)

Asher: Daddy, can I have a chip?
me: Sure, Asher. But I only want you eat one. We have supper soon.
Asher: Okay.

(A few minutes pass, and then I come out and start downstairs. Asher has a chip in each hand, so many in his mouth he can't swallow, and chip pieces all around him on the stairs.)

me: Asher, how many chips did you eat?
Asher: I don't know daddy. I wasn't counting.
me: Asher, daddy told you that you could have one.
Asher: Oooooh. I ate MANY more than one!

Recently I was a chaperone for Asher's preschool trip to a local orchard. We didn't get to go apple picking like we used to over near Chicago: Asher got to pick exactly one apple and he didn't even get to eat it. But it was fun to watch him interact with the other kids, and get to spy on him learning about becoming friends.

Some pictures:

Here are the other pictures, since I know most of you are really here for little bit (the first one is self labeled in the picture, in case you didn't know what you were looking at):

More pictures are available (as always, I don't post every one here) at our PicasaWeb page.

I know the original meaning of the song I quoted at the start is about sharing the Gospel, but I'm mostly reflecting on the goodness of my life and my happiness with my family - wife and sons. Being redeemed makes everything else so very sweet, and it seemed nice to be happy with all I've been given. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out why these two blog posts go together.

But, I confess a slight retraction from the idea: one reason we haven't posted pictures for a while is I haven't taken very many - because my 5 year old Nikon D70 (I bought one of the first) is broken. The card reader is giving me the dreaded CHA error (pronounce it "sha", picture yourself in the 80s, and have fun with my camera dissing me.) Since I don't have a place close by to have it looked at (and some Nikon repairs shops can't seem to fix it) I'm gonna try to follow Stephan Mantler's directions to try to fix it. So, technically, although I feel content, I do still want - a least a little.

UPDATE: I just finished reassembling the D70, and it works great. None of the pins were bent or damaged, so I think the ribbon cable on the bottom of the camera must have come loose, and I fixed that while reassembling. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land!

Waste Not

2009-10-25T15:15:00.001-04:00

"For who repents not cannot be absolved,
Nor can one both repent and will at once,
Because of the contradiction which consents not." -Dante

Sharon's at a baby shower with Micah (for Micah) and Asher is watching Dora (also known as the abomination that causes desolation) so I just wanted to let people know that we are still here and okay. Sharon and I are both sick. Sharon, in particular, is on two different antibiotics, so poor Micah's digestion is just all off, so he's having trouble getting to sleep.

Also, I just wanted to encourage every one. Some of you reading this blog talk to us more than others, so I know what is weighing you down. But even for those who don't, be at ease today. You are loved and special and imago Deo, and for those who have been part of our lives, we love and miss you. I was reminded this week (especially this morning) that as beings of flesh our attitude is shaped more by the immediate than the eternal, more by the urgent than the important, more by presence than transcendence. Stop for a few minutes and thank God for those who are knitted together with you in life, and let them know you have.

Saying Goodbye

2009-10-17T23:12:00.002-04:00

"starting over ain't no big deal
they rebuilt Rome
and life goes on." -Pray for Rain

Many of you know I've been playing World of Warcraft this year. I started in February to have an online game to play with Levi and Noah. This post is sorta about that, so if you don't care (and there's no particular reason you should) feel free to skip this one. I'm not gonna explain much, so just hang on for the ride if you read it anyway.

They were way ahead of me in levels, so I spent a fair amount of time playing it trying to level up quickly and in a few months I caught up. They needed a healer, and back when I worked a UofC a guy named Dave on the support line played (way back in original WOW... tier 2 was released while I was working there) and he healed with a priest, so I decided to roll a priest. It was an okay game - not the best I've ever played but pretty well executed, and with my slightly addictive personality, I kept spending time on it even after I caught them. Then I got to the level cap, and suddenly the game got fun. I'm certainly no master, but the great part of WOW is when you play in a group and all work together, and playing a healer you really get a sense of the interaction between all the components in a good group.

After another month or two (sometime this summer) I had gotten enough gear and stuff to run heroics, and the game just got more fun! I had been in a "guild" with Levi and Noah, mostly so we could trade stuff and I could keep track of them when they were offline, but it occured to me that I could join a casual guild and get more social interaction and play 10/25-man content. If Levi or Noah logged on I could still see them, but they seemed to have left the game for a while. So one day I was playing in a pick-up group, and I decided to quit Noah's guild and see what happened. Before I got to the end of the run another guy in the group asked me to join his. It was exactly the kind of group I'd hoped to find..

I didn't realize this at the time, but the game became a reasonably important social outlet for me, especially after I got a headset and started talking to people in game. I never really became crazy addicted or anything, but it was nice having some friends who gamed, even if that's all I mostly knew about them.

The part I really enjoyed about this interaction was that they needed me to be good, and I got reasonably good. I never got to play much of the 10/25-man content, because the guild wasn't really organized that way, but it didn't matter: I enjoyed healing a lot. I enjoyed getting to see the personalities of these people come out in their play, and I liked enabling them (and others) to achieve things they really needed a good healer to do. And frankly I liked being that guy.

There are many things about being a father no one prepares you for. One of those happened today. Some of us were in 25-man Onyxia, and I was probably healer 2 or 3 out of 6 or 7. It was a good group: all but 2 or 3 really knew what they were doing. Those 2 or 3 were making it hard, and we weren't that coordinated, but we'd had two good attempts, and it seemed likely to me we'd down her on the third. Asher was watching over my shoulder (he likes seeing daddy help fight dragons) and I was pumped. Then, in phase 3, with all the other healers dead but with Onyxia down to 10% Micah started screaming. He'd been asleep, but I was on duty with both of the boys, and thankfully I did (without thinking about it) what I hope any good father would do; I stopped spamming heals and walked over and took Micah out of his papasan. I then turned around and watched as the main tank, who was doing a great job, got absolutely eviscerated without any healing. And it hurt.

It was then I realized I have to stop playing. It's not because it's making me a bad husband or father. It's because I can't stand letting people down who depend on me. I am able to let them down - I think I mostly have my priorities in the right place - but it's no fun putting yourself in a place for people to depend on you only to walk away.

Now, in real life, they'd know Micah. If this was, say, a band, they'd eat with me and watch TV with me occasionally or something, so they'd have a different perspective. Maybe they'd even be helping with Micah. But they don't, and even if they did it's not really fair to them to stick them with "the guy who sometimes walks out in the middle of a fight." More telling about myself is the realization that I don't want to be that guy, even if I enjoy the rest of the game.

So, I'm quitting for now. I'm sure another video game will come along and suck up my time. :-)

UPDATE: To share a related image:

My Two Sons

2009-10-10T18:06:00.001-04:00

"his sky's an empty bottle and when he's drunk the ocean dry
well he sails off three sheets to some reckless wind
and his friends say, 'Ain't it awful'
and he says 'No, I think it's fine'" - Rich Mullins

Two pictures say all I'm thinking right now.

A Few Pictures More

2009-10-04T20:25:00.001-04:00

"O’er all those wide extended plains shines one eternal day,
where God the Son forever reigns and scatters night away." -Samuel Stennett

Hopefully we'll be going home tomorrow, which means returning to work very soon for me. Probably not too many more pictures for a while. Thank you all for your love and support of us. Things are going very well.

Some of you have probably already noticed all these pictures come from the same album on our PicasaWeb page. It's likely that pictures will appear there before here, so if you're craving more Micah (grandparents, uncles, and aunts, I'm looking at you) you should probably check there even if we don't update here for a while.

A Fistful of Pictures

2009-10-04T08:56:00.000-04:00

"How far did I travel til you let my life unravel back home to you?
How much did you give until I finally got a glimpse of what love can do?
How far, how much and just how long did you wait for me?" - Christine Dente

Here are a few more pictures of Micah and me. If it's a scary close up where I look a little like a frightening Conan O'Brian, those are me holding the camera at arm's length. If they look normal, Sharon took them from across the room.

Not too many pictures of Sharon with Micah yet. As those of you with children will know, hospital gowns don't always make for modest pictures. :-)

Micah Micah James James

2009-10-03T05:09:00.007-04:00

"Help
He offers me that help,
did it all for free" - Lost and Found

Thank you for your congratulations, prayers, and concerns. Micah was out from under oxygen sometime between noon and 1:00 PM. I would be more specific, but time is a very nebulous concept to a newborn. Instead of hours, the world is divided into somewhat arbitrarily timed segments of:

sleep
nursing
burping
changing diapers

There was a nice break when Sharon's folks brought Asher up to meet Micah around 6:00ish. Asher kept commenting on how tiny the baby was and wanted to give him a kiss, which was very sweet.

No new pictures. They'd look the same as the other ones. But, I was amusing myself earlier looking at his baby pictures compared to Asher's.

Micah James McCathern

2009-10-02T09:13:00.006-04:00

Micah was born at 7:53 EDT by c-section as scheduled. He weighed 8 lb. 1 oz., and he didn't pink up right away so they have him in the nursery still on oxygen, though they don't expect any continuing problems. Because of this his Apgar was lower than Asher's was at birth, so I'm sure that Asher will lord it over him until they take some other standardized test.

I would be posting pictures right now, but my techie sense was failing me, and while I brought the camera and the laptop to post pictures immediately, I forgot both card reader and cable. So you'll just have to wait.

Mom is doing well. Prayers are appreciated, especially of thanks.

UPDATE: Pictures and a Movie

Asher's Stuffed Journal Article

2009-09-23T20:40:00.006-04:00

Abstract

It is commonly understood in the literature that birthdays occur once a year. Yet there is an intriguing observation [Kurtis, et al.] that the plush crocodylus acutus (a native of Illinois but recently observed in a certain Western Pennsylvanian habitat) has a birthday that is observable on two distinct days of the calendar year. A quick survey of the literature failed to yield a similar observed phenomenon, and thus little is known about this birthday. We present evidence that, in fact, said birthday is a superevent (like a superposition, but in time) in fact simultaneously occupying a large number of days. We also present several possible directions for future research.

Hypothesis

Directly observing said birthday is impossible given the linear nature with which we must (at least currently) observe the passing of time. Thankfully, one logical definition of said birthday exists - within the mind of Asher Silas McCathern. Dr. Sharon McCathern suggested that perhaps the definition of said event might be tied to the entire season [Sharon, et al. - unpublished discussion.]

Take the set of all days W that belong to the season winter. (Such a definition is obviously problematic, as we will discuss in our closing remarks.) We decided to pick an element f from this set and ask the subject whether or not f was also a day on which said birthday might be observed.

Results

We decided on February 5th.

The subject responded affirmatively: Crockies birthday is on February 5th. When asking the subject about the previous two days from [Kurtis, et al.] he responded that they, each, were also Crockies birthday. When asked if Crockies had two or more birthdays, the response was negative.

The conclusion remaining is that Crockies has a single birthday that is observable on any day during winter, existing simultaneously in all those days, collapsing to an affirmative upon examination of any individual day.

Remarks and Future Directions

Many question are unanswered by our research: are there other such events? What, exactly, is the definition of the set W? Is it only days belonging to the legally recognized season of winter, or does it include any day that might have certain winter-like qualities (i.e. snow)? Would Crockies prefer to live in a climate with more such days or a southern clime where an observation of his birthday would be easier to schedule?

Additionally, many other answers to our questions lead to troubling inaccuracies. Is it possible that by trying to measure Crockies's birthday we are actually changing it? Asher mentioned that Crockies doesn't have "one birthday" but "one whole birthday" during our investigation. Does this mean other birthdays are not whole, missing some critical structure that prevents their superevent behavior?

Many of these questions may be answerable by direct observation of said birthday, which intend to undertake in a future paper.

Asher's Stuffed Friend

2009-09-23T15:16:00.004-04:00

Asher has named his stuffed crocodile. His name is Crockies. Yes. There is only one, but his name is a plural.

The following conversation takes place on the way home from preschool, 3:03 PM:

Asher: Daddy, Crockies birthday is December 3rd.
me: Okay.
Asher: It's always in winter. So it's December 3rd.
me: Okay, but...
Asher: Then his birthday is January 12th!
me: Because January 12th is in winter?
Asher: Yes.
me: So it's not December 3rd?
Asher: Yes, it's December 3rd.
me: But I thought you said it was January 12th. Most people only have one birthday.
Asher: He has one birthday.
me: On January 12th?
Asher: On December 3rd. Then January 12th.
me: But that's two birthdays.
Asher (rolling his eyes): Maybe I didn't explain it to you very well.
me: Is it one birthday split over two days?
Asher (sighing): No. Let me explain it to you again.
(note: I'm not making this up. This is how he talks now.)
Asher (slowly):His birthday is December 3rd. Then, a little later, in the winter, on January 12th, he has his birthday.
me: Oh I see. (Though, obviously, I don't.)
me: Does he have his birthday one day, but celebrate it later?
Asher (clearly annoyed): NO. His birthday is December 3rd.
me: Then what happens on January 12th?
Asher: That's his birthday!
me: Then what happens on December 3rd?
Asher: Crockies has his birthday.
me: I only have one birthday - March 24th.
Asher: So does Crockies. It's December 3rd.
me: Not January 12th?
Asher (sighing again): I guess I'm not explaining it very well.
me: I think you're doing fine... I'm just not understanding it very well.
Asher: It's easy daddy. His birthday is on December 3rd. Then... later... because his birthday is in the winter... January 12th is his birthday.
me: Oh. (I'm still pretty lost.)
Asher: Do you get it now?
me: His birthday is December 3rd. His birthday is January 12th.
Asher (excitedly): YES!

I never knew post-modern relativism was taught at his day care.

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

2009-09-18T21:42:00.002-04:00

I am Sharon, king of kings.... okay, this reference is clearly not working. But anyway, I feel like a giant statue, and if I fall over, ain't no way I'm getting back up. So, there is that.

As per my mother's request, here is a recent picture (as in, 30 minutes ago) of my very pregnant self. Pretty impressive, no? What you can't see is the insane moving hyper baby inside me... 2 weeks to go! And just in case you can't fully appreciate the extent of the giant abdomen, have another look:

Baby Ultrasound

2009-09-12T23:05:00.004-04:00

So, while I was in Chicago Sharon had another ultrasound. I was sad because I wasn't gonna get to go, but they put it on DVD for us. My loss is your gain.

It's amusing, because they kept trying to get a 3D view, and baby kept putting her (his?) hands up in front of his (her?) face. Also, cool heart shot if you watch at least half way through.

For the record:

2009-08-11T16:51:00.002-04:00

At his 4 year checkup (which was, fine, a month late, but close enough), Asher was 39 inches tall (2oth percentile) and weighed 34 pounds (34th percentile, strangely enough).

He was also quite impressively brave about his shots, and quite insistent that the one thing in the known universe that would make him feel better about shots was the day's fourth (!) reading of Chapter 4 of The House at Pooh Corner, also known as

"read me InWhichItIsShownThatTiggers DON'T ...CLIMB.... TREES!!!!"

Yeah. He likes that one.

Little brother or sister is still doing well, too, at least as far as I can tell. Which is pretty far, given that I'm having non-stress tests (30 minutes of fetal monitoring) twice a week these days. As of Thursday, July 30, the baby was estimated to be 3 lb 12 oz -- the same as I weighed when I was born!

Hm... other updates: we have lots of tomatoes ripening these days, which I am ALL ABOUT. Yum. Sometime this week, our house will become a construction zone for new windows and siding. Yuck. And, I somehow have to get ready for classes, plus mostly finish getting ready for baby, in the next 3 weeks. Yikes!

Asher's Song

2009-05-25T17:13:00.002-04:00

As promised:

(to the tune of "The Foolish Man Built His House Upon the Sand")

The rich man built his house out of bricks
The rich man built his house out of bricks
The rich man built his house out of bricks
And the wolf came and ate it up

The good man built his house out of cactuses
The good man built his house out of cactuses
The good man built his house out of cactuses
And there was no wolf there

And then there was actually a wolf
And it chomped the brick house up
And it said "Ow ow ow ow!"
[ed note: Asher confirms the ow's are because the wolf tried to eat the cactus house]

----
I like this song because it manages to combine Asher's obsession with animals chomping things, his fondness for big bad wolf stories (3 little pigs and red riding hood), and his penchant for combining and changing various stories and songs.

We're having...

2009-05-20T21:43:00.001-04:00

an alien! See?

That was at the 13-week ultrasound at the end of March, when they were measuring the nuchal translucency to screen for several genetic defects. Definitely alien-like, but apparently a normal alien, since the screening was fine.

At the same scan, we also got to see what appeared to be some attempt at thumb-sucking (or waving, or, most likely, random hand movement):

Then, this past Monday, we had the usual mid-pregnancy ultrasound. We saw cool tiny feet, and baby practicing sucking (tongue movement and so forth), and the heart beating, and the bladder and stomach and the grand tour of major organs, but the only pictures that were printed out were lots of shots of the head in profile. Here ya go:

In the next two you can see the heart and stomach -- the dark spots, since they're full of liquid:

And another nondescript profile:

And finally, in this one you can see part of the hand in front of the face -- baby was waving his or her hands around a lot.

And... there you go. It really was amazing watching my baby move around inside me; the pictures don't do it justice. They also had a 3-D thing that stitched together lots of cross-sections to make a somewhat-recognizable 3-D picture, but they didn't print any of those out.

Everything looked normal; baby was measuring the size for a due date of 10/12, which is definitely within normal since my estimated due date is 10/10. So... yay! Stay tuned in the next little bit for an absolutely AWESOME song that Asher sang for us the other night.

Big D**m Rebirth

2009-04-27T12:40:00.004-04:00

"Mal: You wanna run this ship?!
Jayne: Yes!
Mal: Well... you can't!"
-Serenity (the Big D**m Movie), Joss Whedon

Sharon and I were talking about the demise of our TV watching a couple of nights ago. All the shows we care about are probably cancelled: Chuck, Terminator: TSCC, Dollhouse. We were thinking (as does everybody who likes the kind of TV we seem to) why do our shows always get picked up to try out then cancelled after a season or two? Why is it that nobody watches the shows we like?

Then, of course, it occurs to me: with Chuck and T:TSCC being cancelled, we have two Firefly alums coming free. With the likely cancellation of Castle, we have a third. With the cancellation of Dollhouse, we have the creator coming free.

Obviously the following will never happen. It doesn't make sense from a number of perspectives, but from my one limited perspective, it's brilliant.

Here's why I think FOX should announce a second season for Firefly at the upfronts: DVD sales.

* Return: Firefly is consistently in the top 100 sales of TV DVDs years after its cancellation. It was frequently in the top of lists of "shows that should be on Blu-Ray" for months before it's recent release on Blu-Ray. The cult following of the show was considered sufficient to consider risking money on a movie venture not that long ago. FOX, I think, still owns the TV rights, and could easily bring Firefly or a Firefly-based spin-off to market fairly quickly.

* Cost: The cast is actually available. Nobody's become such a big star they couldn't come back and work for cheap. Whedon has worked for FOX on shoestring budgets before. Firefly isn't really that expensive a show, and while recreating some of the sets (particularly Serenity) would take some doing, the potential to recoup that in fan auctions at the end of the run is enormous.

Don't misunderstand me: I don't think a second season of Firefly is commercially viable for FOX as a long-running network show. But it seems to me a no-brainer to put money into production of what seems to be a guaranteed DVD hit with a possibility of taking off again rather than throwing money after a new show that has the same uncertainty but without the loyal fanbase of Firefly to pick it up in DVD land.

If FOX is worried about fan reaction (which, obviously they aren't) if the series is cancelled again, they could announce up front a limited run or mini-series (like BSG did on SciFi). Even if that's a total bust in ratings, which I would doubt, the DVD sales would be tremendous, and on the tiny chance that it catches, signing the cast to a season or half-season would be an easy pickup.

Joss loves Firefly. I really think he'd rather do a Firefly mini-series than another 6 episodes of Dollhouse (which, if FOX picks up, will be cancelled quickly next year.)

Obviously none of this can or will happen. But it just makes so much sense!

Covers

2009-03-24T10:00:00.003-04:00

"no reason to get excited
the thief he kindly spoke
there are many here among us
who feel that life is but a joke
but you and I, we've been through that
and this is not our fate
so let us not talk falsely now
the hour is getting late"
-Bob Dylan, "All Along the Watchtower"

(Before you go reading the rest of the post, follow the above link to a live concert performance of the "All Along the Watchtower" cover by Bt4 and Bear McCreary - it is one of the best pieces of music I've ever heard.)

It's my birthday today; I've now been in mortal flesh for 33 years (well, somewhere between that and 33 years and 9 months, depending on whether you believe life begins at conception.) I'm thinking today about music and collaboration. I've always been so scared of what people will think of my talent (or, more often, lack thereof) that I haven't been willing to engage in a lot of musical collaboration. It's sad, because the older I get the more I realize that the most fun I have playing music is playing music with others, and frankly that you get so much better when you're willing to push yourself and play with others.

This extends to songwriting and composing, too. I'm not a great composer (I'll leave that moniker to those who actually have the chops, like my friend Michael LaCroix) but I know enough about music to realize that most great works involve taking something somebody else started with, but for some reason, they didn't see something in it you see. That's certainly true of the song "All Along the Watchtower", one of the most covered songs in commercial music, with not only iconic versions like Hendrix and the one I linked above from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack, but even U2 and the Dave Matthews Band, and I think I like every version. Many of my favorite songs are covers, and I'm not alone. A great cover manages to inspire even the original artist. From the Wikipedia entry of "All Along the Watchtower":

Dylan has described his reaction to hearing Hendrix's version: "It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn't think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day."

So, why mention all this today, on my birthday? I've been thinking a lot this year about my life: for a long time I've wanted to create - most of my hobbies are attempts to create things in one form or another. Not everybody is that way, but many are - I don't claim this as unique - and for a long time I've known that this creative instinct in us is one of the ways we are made imago Dei.

Where I have been frustrated is that it seems even my very very best creations are really rip-offs of others: I can't claim anything very original. What is starting to bring me peace about this is the realization that this is one of the ways in which we must be different from God, and, I think, one of the reasons He is excited about us as a creation. He doesn't have to borrow or copy - He is (to abuse an old philosophical concept) First Songwriter. The rest of us are just covers.

At the same time, what a wonderful opportunity. Rather than being merely carbon copies of the original Adam and Eve, God makes us different people by the pressure of perspective. This causes us to create the same things over and over, but differently each time, in beautiful and powerful ways.

One image that is powerful in my Christian walk is the image of re-creation, and while it's not etymologically accurate, the relation of that image to the word recreation isn't lost on me. What is new to me is how that doesn't just speak to God's regeneration of me, but my own regeneration of other things, doing the kind (though not the scope) of the work He takes such pleasure in.

How beautiful to be imago Dei.

Reading Assignment

2009-02-11T12:47:00.005-05:00

Paul Wilmott's Op-Ed in yesterday's New York Times should be required reading for everyone who believes that complete self-interest always produces the best expected value.

Not All Government is Bad

2009-01-05T12:16:00.005-05:00

"there's a man going around taking names
and he decides who to free and who to blame
everybody won't be treated all the same...
whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still
whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still
whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still
listen to the words long written down when the man comes around"
-Johnny Cash, "The Man Comes Around"

There's an interesting piece in the New York Times from over the weekend written by Michael Lewis (author of Liar's Poker which I'm told is an excellent book by some people at Jump) and David Einhorn about the financial situation we find ourselves in here at the beginning of 2009. Go ahead and go read it; it's seven pages, so I'll wait.

(time passes...)

I'm not certain exactly how to fit this information into my world view. The point of the first half of the piece is basically that greed, while obviously necessary to the calamity we find ourselves in, isn't really the problem; we have set up a system where all of the incentives (even for the non-greedy) back short-term gains at the expense of long-term self-interest. It gives reasoned argument that Madoff's Ponzi scheme shouldn't have been a surprise, and in fact parallels the incentives that led to the creation of that scheme to the complete lunacy of the ratings issued by the credit agencies.

It's actually the second half of the article that makes for interesting reading, however, and illuminates the problem I have with the binding of the Evangelical Christian community to the Republican party. Let me explain.

The solutions outlined in the article are:

Stop making big regulatory decisions with long-term consequences based on their short-term effect on stock prices.
End the official status of the rating agencies.
Regulate credit-default swaps.
Impose new capital requirements on banks.
Close the revolving door between the S.E.C. and Wall Street.
But keep the door open the other way.

I'm not going to take the space and bore you with an analysis of each of the above, but 3 and 4 require either restructuring current government regulation or adding new government regulation. Just a few paragraphs before these solutions, the authors talk about how Sweden handled a similar crisis a few years ago that involved actually demanding the government take something in return for the money it flooded the market with. The notion that many markets connect regulate themselves well because they do not correctly evaluate long-term self-interest flies in the face of small government philosophy.

(As an aside: it is easy to set up straw men on either side of this, and I'm sure many will argue against this using Japan as their example given their extreme interest in the long-term and the subsequent marriage of government to business present in that country. Some of you probably already think that I'm arguing against straw men. "No one is saying all government is bad, Kurtis. You're just talking to hear yourself talk." Really? How many times did I hear Reagan's "Government is not the solution; government is the problem" quote during the election? And it's not new. Phil Graham said "Both the economic crisis and the moral crisis have their roots in the explosion of government" back in 1995!)

The problem I see is that small government conservatives aren't anarchists, but they seem to play that role because they don't seem to know (or care) what that role ought to be. The leadership vacuum left by the Bush administration means that no one is articulating one, and the lack of desire (or ability) to try to fill that vacuum means we don't even have a discussion.

I'm not saying it's stupid to be a Christian and a Republican. I'm saying it's stupid to believe a party is the right party to govern simply because of its stance on a handful of social issues. You are free to pick an auto mechanic who only believes in Quaker State oil so long as he actually knows how to fix your car. Right now I think the Republican party seems completely ill-equipped to actually govern, and nobody is stepping up to prove me wrong.

Lots of good conservative friends of mine (who know I still have conservative roots deep down inside) want to know why I voted for Obama. This, more than anything else is the reason. I want somebody who knows how to govern and believes government has a role. Will I agree with the role he assigns? Probably not completely, but at least I think he understands he has one. You shouldn't hire somebody to do a job they don't believe is necessary or that they disdain because they don't see its purpose.

I think the article's commentary on the Bush Treasury and Fed response to the crisis summarizes this well:

When you shout at people “be confident,” you shouldn’t expect them to be anything but terrified.

Peace on Earth

2008-12-24T22:15:00.004-05:00

"it covers us like rain
it washes and it stains"
-Andrew Peterson, "Love Enough"

A Merry Christmas to everyone. Hopefully you won't have a chance to read this until afterwards because you're with family.

As it turns out, I wrote the above on Christmas Eve then never got back to finish it until now. Levi and Noah drove up to Amarillo on Saturday and drove back today (Sunday) so we did get to see them, which was nice.

Also, dad's church let me play drums and piano today for their worship service, which is nice. It shouldn't surprise me, but I really do love playing music. I really do.

I go back to work on Wednesday, but I get Thursday off again, then the long dark tea time of the soul (sorry, Douglas Adams) also known as winter. But for now I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and got to see family.

Joy to the world; the Lord has come.

3 stories

2008-12-16T20:52:00.002-05:00

Last night as we were putting Asher to bed, he told us a story about a man whose curtains would not stay up in his window. Somehow, this morphed into his whole house falling down, "and do you know why? Because the Israelites needed to go in." He's been into the Jericho story lately (specifically the VeggieTales version), so this wasn't all that surprising. So then he talked about how God made the house fall down, so the Israelites could go in... and then, the best part. "And do you know what? God is a really big guy, so he makes REALLY BIG MESSES." I guess Jericho was a big mess, especially after they finished burning all the spoils of the city (not that Asher knows that part), but I'd never thought of it that way before...

Tonight at bedtime, Kurtis told him a story about some giraffes in a circus. And then when it was time for a lullaby, Asher told us, "I have a lullaby to sing tonight. It's from the Bible. It's called, "I will stay in the circus for a few days." And he reiterated that it's a lullaby from the Bible. (I think it might be in the Apocrypha, though.)

And finally, an example of how very socially aware Asher is becoming: At dinner, Asher announced he was done with dessert, and got down. A few minutes later, he came in and asked for a bite of Kurtis's cookie. Kurtis said "I thought you were done with dessert, Asher." Asher pondered this for a minute, and then said, "Um... well... I... um... but... um... I love you very very much!" His voice was the essence of innocence and sweetness. Incredible. Don't know where he learned it. :) (He got the bite of cookie.)

Anyway, my whole family is here (yay!), so I'll go rejoin them.