Faith is a wonderful thing, isn't it? It's also a weird thing. My previous post (technically today, but I wrote it before I went to sleep for the night) talks about physics and whatnots, theories on the nature of the creation of the universe or something. I don't look for proof of God. I look for explanations of God, or at least possibilities. The scientific mind is characterized by the desire to know. It is also characterized by the blessing/curse of looking for that which does not fit. It is the same as the investigative mind; when it sees something, it wants to make sure that everything fits properly. Scientific formulas nowadays are so complicated that it can take years of work for several people to test a theory against everything else that we know. If it is rejected, it does not disappear, but it remains in the bank of knowledge, so that if something changes in our schema of belief and proof, we can go back and test that theory to see whether or not it now fits. That is why so many people stopped believing in God. He no longer seems to fit into the schema of the universe. Where is there a place for God? Where can heaven possibly be? What is the nature of God? These all seem to be questions asked not by the inquisitive mind but the desperate mind, desiring to have a structure of belief in which everything makes sense. But God does not make sense if we must prove him. The Bible says, "Thou Shalt Not Put The Lord To The Test." (paraphrased). This is traditionally intended to apply to asking God for miracles or guidance. But can it not also mean that we must have faith even when it does not seem to make sense, when it seems to be impossible? The truth is we may never know. Mankind on earth is far from being able to discern the edges of the universe, and as many theories as we throw around, there are always little things that make little sense. All theories break down at the beginning, and we must have different theories about the nature of the universe at the instant of creation. By the laws of nature as we percieve them, the Big Bang is impossible. Where did the universe come from? What is it's nature? Will we ever know? I don't know. But I believe in God, and so I look at these questions not looking for God, but knowing he is there and trying to understand him. It's weird. anyway, late for church, gotta go.

It has been theorized (real or sci fi, I don't know) that all of the universal constants such as pi, the planck length, the speed of light, etc. were all determined in the first fraction of a second of the universe. Before this, either in the infinite time before the "real" universe in which we live was created, or in the first fraction of that fragmented second in which the universe was created, these numbers could have potentially been anything. But all of these numbers have relationships to each other. Matter is tied to energy, momentum and friction affect each other, space was defined with a particular warp and weave such that pi is a particular ratio, which defines all three-dimensional figures, etc. Ultimately, all equations can be tied into each other. But is there some constant that must have been decided first? Was there some ratio or natural law that, when it became real and imposed itself upon all the other laws of the universe, it forced them to conform to its particular system? Or were there several numbers that defined themselves completely independently and at the exact same time? If there was only one number that started the chain reaction of changing "possibility" into "actuality and definite-ness", then whatever number we started with, the universe could only be the way that it is, for we would have the same perspective on the universe, and the universe would act in the exact same way. If there were several numbers that defined themselves independently, could the universe be entirely different? I mean, obviously there are other "dimensions" or "frames" in which hitler could have won world war 2, or some other rubbish, but I mean different structures of physical law. Where the force that binds energy together would be stronger or weaker, or light would move in a different patterns, or there would be a different ratio of matter and anti-matter in the universe, of light matter and dark matter. Could it have been different and still worked? Or is this the only way it could work, and all those other possible universes tried and fizzled in the first second or failed to produce forces that yielded life? Or is there a God that knew that this was the only way that it would work and so determined this set of rules the first time through? Could God then be called the rule that determined all other rules, the function that determined everything in the universe? I made sense at first, I'm not sure I do here at the end, so I'll stop talking.

I was reading old blogs, and you know what? It's my run-on sentences! I have decent choice of words. I have good structure and grammar. I just...keep talking without taking a breath. You don't want that many adjectives without a break. You don't want extra clauses, even if they're technically "correct" that way. I always hated "short" sentences. They often feel choppy to me. But it's all the good writers that use them. I guess it's just my perspective that's screwed up. Shorter sentences take longer to read. You rush through the long ones. That, or you get fed up with them, about having to take a second to understand them. So you skip through them. I need sleep, since I'm driving to A&M to visit friends tomorrow. Do you know why I like you, blog? Because you're a good listener. You give me all the attention that I could want from an electronic device. You're not distracted by anything in the real world. I mean, you never respond to me, but you don't need to. I can talk to you, but it's just talking to myself, with you listening. And it somehow feels more worthwhile. Like, because my words are now part of the public world, they have power. In my head, they are powerless, ethereal, spirits without bodies. Unfinished stories are abortions, using that metaphor. I need to get back to writing more. No offense, blog, but you wait patiently, and my other stories do not. First, to sleep, then, to writing and reading and such.

ok, you're not that colorful. What? What do you want from me? Brights? Rainbow colors? No, too much for one step. Perhaps next time. Perhaps next time.

blog, you have changed. Your menu-head is a different shape. Your bodies are a little wider (and more readable). Yes, it is time for the last step. I'm going to change your picture. Before your next post is published, you will be...colorful.

So I realized that I need to, at some point, create a list of my favorite movie score composers. This is not totally complete, nor in order of favoritism, but it is something. Oh, and the movies I list are what I noticed them for, not necessarily all I like by them.

Alan Silvestri - Forrest Gump
James Horner - Krull, Willow, Braveheart, Titanic, Apollo 13
Howard Shore - LOTR, Philadelphia
Hans Zimmer - Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, The Lion King
John Williams - Jurassic Park, A.I., Jaws, Indiana Jones trilogy
Marco D'Ambrosio - Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust
Michael Nyman - Gattaca
Marco Beltrami - I, Robot; Blade 2
Danny Elfman - Fable (video game), Spiderman, Army of Darkness, Batman

This is what I have so far. More to follow when, you know, I find out names.

I was looking at a picture of my brother on his blog site (actually a xanga site, whatever). I realized that I've had him all wrong. He's not cold-hearted. I mean, the friction from his mechanical inhuman heart generates lots of heat! [laughs] no, seriously, he thinks I'm cold-hearted sometimes because I'm evil. But that doesn't deny that all that evilness (and all that goodness that it's blended with like oil in water) pumps through real hot-blooded veins. my brother is a machine, and like all machines, he complains now and then when something isn't lubricated properly and friction buildup from being overworked is causing damage to the parts. But unless something is totally broken, he gets the job done. I don't think anyone could ever call me a machine. ever. [laughs] Unless they were comparing me to a particular machine of theirs that worked intermittantly and had odd functions that it did well and nothing that it was perfect at. A machine can have a heart, bro, and it can function like a real heart, and electrical signals can pulse through neural nets and interact like neurons and emulate real emotions. But it has particular functions, no matter how complex they may be, that have not yet come to a level of similarity to real human emotions. You might shoot back, if this were your blog and not mine, that at least you have a function that you are carrying out. Or better a producer than a consumer. Or perhaps just, "you don't understand me," like some teenager with raging hormones. Whatever. I just wanted to let you know that I know you're not cold hearted. Even if it sometimes seems that way.

Ever have one of those days when the clouds are beautiful but you'd really like to see the stars? yah, it was one of those days. It was also one of those days when, upon seeing the stars, they weren't quite as bright as I remember them. And I couldn't make out any constellations. Again. I can't even find the big dipper here in Texas, which is really sad. But, I am not quite sky-savvy. I'm more of a sky connaisseur than a sky expert. I sample it at times, swish it around to get a taste, sometimes even drink a glass of sheer refracted-light delight, but I couldn't tell you much about it except that it's beautiful. No vintage stats or fluent use of proper descriptive terms. whatever. I ramble. I'm trying to use a metaphor and doing it badly. and not the subject you think. I feel like an onion sometimes not because I have so many layers, but because all it takes is peeling back one and I can't help getting all teary-eyed. "You couldn't be a vegetable...even artichokes have hearts." Amelie, good movie. At work today I got to make the spinach dip. bag of spinach and can of artichokes, then squeeze the shit out of them to break up the pieces of artichoke and to get out as much water as you can (you don't want the cheese dip to freeze like water but freeze like cheese). Then a ton of jack cheese, 24 oz of mayo, 24 oz of sour cream, an ounce of granulated garlic, and then mix with fingers. turning grated cheese, even mixed with other stuff, into a solid paste, simply by squeezing it between the fingers of your glove-covered hands is very soothing. sort of like kneading bread, I guess, though I've never actually done that (to my recollection). Charles drilled into my head, "it doesn't have to be perfect" before I started. he claims he can do it in 10 minutes, and didn't want me doing it for 45 when we had other things to do. [laughs] he knows me well. he always tries to think of nothing while he works. Or think of nothing except the job at hand. I can sometimes, but I couldn't most of today. My brain was somewhere else. I often feel like I haven't completely woken up. I mainly feel that way because I never feel like I've been completely asleep. Somewhere else that I go at night, and it isn't to my subconscious. [shrugs and shakes his head] I don't know. But the stars are a metaphor for lots of things. It's a good thing they shine, because I'd have a hell of a time if I couldn't see a damn thing when I looked up into the night sky. I think if there were an abyss, and I were there, I'd look into it because I wanted it to look back at me. I guess that pretty much sums me up. Keep shining, stars. I'm looking back. If it means nothing to you, it still means a hell of a lot to me.

so, I've been creating stuff in microsoft paintbrush. It's really easy, actually. You create a file called "palette" that has the nice and neat 16x16 square of 128 colors possible in a regular bitmap. Then, you can just use the "sample" tool to get the colors you want, get your own little "dipstick" and copy it into a new file. then create whatever you want. very fun. anyway, since I've made several recently, I figured I'd put them up. these are not my best, though I did veto one I just did today that sucked enough that I gave up on it (after making it as presentable as possible...you know, like putting an ugly child in nice clothes). Anyway, I apologize for their size. I had to save them as jpg or gif to upload them. so they lost a little quality, and the size doesn't help. Anyway, here they are (if this works)

seaweed

greencross-circles

green and blue tile

blue snowflake tile

blue snowflake tile variations

Not my favs, but I like them.

What is fiction, really? Is it imagination? Is it lies? I've been reading Changeling: the Dreaming books (by White Wolf), specifically the players guide and, more recently (it came in the mail yesterday), The Autumn People. You see, the fae folk (aka changelings) live and breath Glamour, which is fed by imagination and joy. The antithesis of Glamour is Banality (aka mundanity), which is fed by conformity and compromise of dreams to harsh reality.

I mention that simply as a preview to my main point today, such that I know that Changeling was created as a fictional game in which people can roleplay characters with which they feel some similarity with their own identity (or totally opposite their identity, as is sometimes the case with other games, less often this one). And yet it feels real to me. How do I reconcile this with my belief in God, in a world created by a single being, a world created for men and entrusted to men, who were given free will and allowed to do as they please (with concequences, of course, for every path of action)?

First, fae spirits were born out of the dreams of men, and in fact, they are not separate from us. We all have souls, but could not those souls, created by God and inhabiting us by His will, have a significant and permanent pull toward dreams? In fact, why did God give us free will in the first place? What, before Satan, was there for us to choose between? Worship God or don't worship God? No, the choice was belief or disbelief, not merely in God, but in everything. Nihilists have taken this choice to the extreme: disbelief in everything, while Religious Fanatics choose belief in a particular thing to the disbelief of anything that does not conform to that idea. What ever happened to the God for whom anything, meaning everything, is possible? Can God not make impossibilities real? Can God not choose to set different rules for different people to follow when they worship Him? Can God not choose to allow us the possibility of making ALL of our dreams come true, however implausible and difficult the path may be to make them come true? If I want to be a dragon, can I not begin to act like a dragon, and call myself a dragon, and eventually be treated as a dragon (though it would be the police, and not a knight in shining armor, that would slay me in the end)?

What I am realizing is that God gave us free will for us to be happy. No one is forced into unhappiness. Many are forced by people or circumstances into situations in which they are unhappy, but that does not mean they are trapped in unhappiness, nor does it mean that there are not still many possibilities before us. Every person has the choice to live or die, to try or to slip quietly into despair and failure, to strive for more or settle for what one has already, risk all daily or never risk anything at all.

As Arthur "Fishlips" says in The Autumn People, "That's not my life. I fight and I lose. I hope, and hope dies. But I never give up." The story of the garden of Eden is not a story of man failing to conform to God's rules, and getting punished for stepping out of his specified place. No, the story of the garden of Eden is that man's nature is not to be satisfied even with paradise, for we must have something to strive for. In the movie, The Matrix, Neo is told that the world inside the matrix was originally created perfect, but no one would believe in it, and it failed miserably. What joy is possible if we need not strive for it, succeed against all odds and earn it, whether it is an easy victory or a victory against impossible odds. Eddie Izzard says, "[Our national anthem should be] 'God attack the Queen, send big dogs after her, that bite her bum,' so that she can fight them off with her handbag...and have self respect for the first time in her life."

God made us free right from the start, in the garden, he made us free, even knowing that we would not be as happy having been given paradise than if we were forced to earn it, and risk failure. Do you know why I think that anyone who desires to be near God in their dying moments will be with him in the afterlife? Because they still strive for it, they still have hope, and from hope comes the will to move forward, to take another step, to rise above the muck and crud of life that holds us down. Or at the end, there is nothing left but hope and powerlessness that one's life was good enough. And it was! It was because there is still hope at the end.

This hope and freedom of choice that God gave us does not merely apply to happiness in the next life, but to happiness in this one as well. The world tells us to conform, but we must conform neither to unhappy states of life, nor to identities that are not us, nor to defeat. There is no such thing as defeat when there is still possibility ahead of us. And there is always possibility ahead of us because there is always freedom of choice in our present. We can be free to try again. We can be free to make up for our mistakes. We can be free to love. We are not defined by what others think of us, but what we think of others. We are not defined by those who love us, but by those we love. We are not defined by those things we have succeeded in, but by those things we have striven for.

Martyrs have risked not money or happiness but their very lives striving for something they believed in, and we forget that sometimes martyrs exist who did not die, who went on to live their lives having succeeded against the odds. Is even our image of martyrs being those who die an ideal that we have conformed to? Can we not risk as much and hope to succeed, rather than believing something must be sacrificed for something else? The only thing we sacrifice is that which is meaningless without that which we sacrifice it for. I am in love, and all other things are meaningless without that. What then may I not choose to sacrifice for it, when I believe that sacrifice is worth it? Who has the right to tell me what is valuable to me? This is the truth of freedom of choice. This is the truth of life.