A page from the apocalypse

A soft incandescent slowly illuminates the recorder. A man's hand reaches in, and engages the pickup.

"My name is Damien Corl. No one died under my watch today. Would that I needed not to count this as an achievement. Instead, I would rather that I could return to the life I used to live. Would that that life were not closed off to me now. It happened slowly, like a cancer metastisizing out into the body. Still, I live somewhat in the old world. I drive home on the freeway beside them, in their shining cars, their sterile beauty. Am I a gaurdian of a world that left me behind, or a warrior tainted by the corruption he sought to banish? I don't know anymore. Jenny called today. Said she had two more samples. What happened that we started referring to these people as samples? Mark didn't come in again. Jim found him passed out on his floor, his breath intoxicating the three cats that probably hadn't been fed in a week. Jim checked him into detox. I'm not sure that was a kind thing to do. At least he found a way to stop the eyes from whispering in his head. No one died on my watch today."

Soon be through the floor

From xkcd.com, boy I like his comics.

Anticipation. So, what went wrong? Yeah. I'm tired and sore from helping folks move, and frustrated and disappointed that not as many people as I hoped came to help. But some people did come, and that was cool. The Faulknerian Antipope came, and even brought his girlfriend! I was impressed at that.

The rest of life... Well, let's leave that alone. It's always better left to the imagination. Wanting things doesn't make them real.

Find the door

I don't even know why I'm writing this. Even though I'm lost, maybe I'm not as great a failure as it may seem to me.

I led Sunday School for my 5th and 6th graders today, wherein we talked about words, gossip, and the destructive effect that our words can have. We re-enacted the story of Abimelech from Judges 9. I think maybe some of the kids got it. I don't know. I led College and Career, and we talked about Hebrews 7, and the Priestly order of Melchizedek, and Jesus' High Priesthood as being of that line and order.

Then, later after church, be still earlier today, I got a call saying that the mom of one of my friends from high school was getting evicted, and could I come help move. This lady is looking after a couple of her family members, none of them are in the best of health, and my buddy from high school is a couple thousand miles away with no real ability to get here. So they're in a bind, right now they don't even have a place to live once they get evicted. We moved some of their stuff into a storage unit today, and are going back tomorrow and Tuesday (e-mail me if anyone who reads this wants to/has the ability to help.)

How are these two connected?

Hebrews 7 says that Christ always lives to intercede for us. Hebrews says that only Christ was the perfect sacrifice and sacrificer for our sins, and that Christ has authority forever, that He is the way we draw near to the Father. As I was helping move, I thought about my own inadequacy. My own failure and my own poor communication with Christ. And though all of this misstep of our own, we can still be used by God, by Christ. But yet, I can't truly help the folks that we were moving. Christ is the one who truly helps. All of us humans are still corrupted, still defeated by our own fallen flesh. Christ alone is perfection, is completeness.

So as this woman is crying while she describes her problems to me, I search for words to comfort, to heal. I don't find any. None that come out of my human state are sufficient. Only He has the words. I don't listen well enough to find what He would have me say, and I have nothing to offer. No words to wipe tears from eyes. No words to ease the struggle. For that, I can't even apologize. How do you apologize for this? How do I? I do the only thing I can, and that's promise to come back. To try to solve the temporary because I lack the faith and trust in the Father's guidance to offer any help for the future.

We are sons and heirs of grace. That must mean more to me than it does now, it has to. Not just for my own sake, but the sake of those who seem to think I can help, the sake of those who have been entrusted in some way to me, the sake of the wife and children I hope to share myself with one day, and the sake of the One who died to be my Savior.

Harbingers and MonkeyLords

My new spectator sport is watching replays of good Supreme Commander players playing. Is that sad or what?

The main intent of this post is to point out that I'm not dead, just not blogging. I know you were worried. So I don't lose readers, here's a piece of exclusive news : I'm shaving tomorrow.

Woohoo.

Declining Intervals and Suppression

Disturbingly, I just got told by someone fairly well placed in the company to know better that it was impressive that the IT programmer guy had hardware troubleshooting skills. I can't tell if this person was being sarcastic or not. Because of this and other issues, it seems I can't communicate with anyone, nor can anyone communicate with me. I crashed the server yesterday, and I can't get this stupid report I've been working on to come out right.

Additionally, I did something to my arm last night that is related to the seperated should, I think, and so the arm doesn't really want to work right and hurts. And Jonathan made me sick. And arranged a call from his girlfriend last night to get out of losing in Supreme Commander again.

On the plus side, I had fun at Kidmo last night. And hey, I get to teach Sunday School this week!

On the negative side, I have lots of stuff that I should do that I have been putting off, like getting gas, or my oil changed, or checks so I can pay my bills.

Back to work. Done is the blog entry for now. Does anyone like the new story? Comment on the previous post!

Adjudication

I took down What He Had as the sidebar story, and added a new story, one I wrote a while ago, entitled Black. It's actually the introductory chapters to a longer novel that I never finished, and is my only real stab at writing fantasy. The novel is entitled Plateaus, and would have been an attempt to move from Fantasy into Steampunk into adventure SF. And yes, I had ways to make it almost work. Tell me if you're interested, maybe I'll write more. This post would, of course, be the place for comments on the story.

In other news, I'm not shaving for a while to see if chicks dig the new look. Don't worry, they won't, and I'll start shaving again soon.

Sun setting through pine trees.

Congratulations to Judy, and her husband, SSgt. Jonathan Matlack! Judy gave birth to Jonathan Daniel Matlack on Monday around 9:10 PM. He weighs something over 8 pounds, is rather long, but Judy didn't have to have a C-Section. The kid's fingers are, I kid you not, at least an inch long. They're huge. He's got lots of hair, and is darkening so Judy does get her brown baby. We went to the hospital last night to visit them. Some apparently minor issues with bands in his white blood cells means that he had to have an IV in his head, and he was just starting to nurse before we went in to visit. Cute kid, his eyes were pretty wide open, and did I mention that he's got long fingers? I think we were some of the first visitors outside of family, which is cool. It's weird to think my friends are having kids. Weird.

The Millitant Capacitor and I went up, as did his family. There's a semi-humorous story there, but as I'm not sure if The Millitant Capacitor's erstwhile girlfriend reads this or not, I really can't share it. It's that funny. Maybe some time pretty soon, though.

Back to work! Just figured I'd share the good news.

Kurtosis and Serendipity

xkcd is awesome.

Anyway, I guess I haven't posted in a while. Sorry for all of you waiting for the Defenstration fix.

Thanks to all who answered last week's name that person question. Special thanks to Brandon for entirely getting the point of the exercise, and mocking me. I always know I can count on you! Still, no one could come up with that definitive word. Does this mean that I'm non-standard, or does this mean that I have no coherent personality?

Last week was the tournament. We did ok to pretty well. My Jr. High B team lost both of their games, but I half expected that after seeing the other teams' rosters. But, the kids really played well, and I think they really enjoyed it. So it was a win-win all around, even though we didn't get on the W side of either game. My A team won 5th, we lost the first game 55-7 (yeah, I was a little miffed at the opposing coach.), but then won the next two, South Central and then Manhattan. So, overall, the Jr. High was a success. High School won their first game, then lost by 10, in a game where we shot 25% and our opponents shot 45%. So I really didn't think we had much to hang our heads about, some times you just can't get shots to fall. The last game, we won by about 20, and finished in third! Like I said, pretty successful tournament. The Jr. High girls made 5th, and the H.S. girls got third, I think we finished 7-7 for the week. Additionally, the tournament went well, I would say there were no major problems. Well, except for our concession stand blowing the breaker that also ran overhead lights in one of the gyms so that they played the game from 3 clean-up fluorescents.

As far as the rest of life... I don't have to get up ridiculously early anymore! Although I am thinking about doing it to go work out in the mornings. We'll see how long this lasts. I am enjoying not having to get up until 6:30ish, though. I mean, I really like coaching basketball, but it does start to wear me down. I think I am about through with sound at church, I think they've finally started to get some other people interested in doing it, which means that I am not going to have to be there for everything anymore. This is a positive event, in my mind, as it means that I won't have to deal with it all the time, and I can have more patience to spread everywhere else. In distraction news, Supreme Commander is highly enjoyable. I have finished two of the three campaigns, and have had a good time with it. Once I do finish the third, it's off to some skirmish for a while, and also beat Dungeon Siege II.

Leading to other comments. Now that basketball is done, I've suddenly got a lot more free time. I also don't have an easy source of ego boost, or emotional gratification. What I'm trying to say is that maybe in some ways, I'm too wrapped up in basketball. Or maybe that I have been ignoring other things, and so I used basketball to justify my apathy, or replace the needs. Just like how I eat too much junk food instead of real food. After a while, even though the junk food tastes good, you can't sustain yourself on it. I'm not growing, I'm slipping. Maybe now I'll be able to re-focus. Maybe. Maybe too, if I get this sound stuff straightened out, and I can teach Sunday School or go back to Sunday School, it will get better. Maybe if I can get up just ten minutes early, and spend time reading the Bible each day, I'll be able to snap out of the funk that I feel I'm in.

Unfortunately, even though I know actually working on a relationship with Christ is the best thing for me, I can't get having another kind of relationship out of my head. I also get frustrated by my shallowness. Maybe that girl. Well, she's good looking enough, but is she smart enough? That other girl is smart, but she's not physically attractive to me. Maybe her. Well, no, I don't like this part of her personality. Maybe her? No, she's way, way, way out of my league. Maybe her? I don't know her well enough. Frustrating, as these are paraphrased mental dialogues that I have within my head. Self centered narcisism is all I bring to the table. Therefore, I don't think any women are attracted to me, so it feels like I would be forcing it. Forcing them to go out with me. I mean, so maybe there's this girl that I might be interested in. But I don't really know where to go from there. Take your advice and leave me alone, it's not that I don't know what to do. I don't know why to do it.

Hey, I've got a great solution! Are there any women out there (who are not related to me) who read my blog and think I'm an interesting person who you might consider going out with? Send me an e-mail! Or if you can't figure out my e-mail address, comment on my blog with your email address. This simple act on your part will throw me into a further emotionally unstable state, and I'll have to ignore you for a not inconsiderable period of time while I attempt to normalize my reaction to your action. Meanwhile, you'll get frustrated at my lack of response, and realize that really, I'm a jerk. Therefore, when I do get around to talking to you, in an inarticulate, stuttering manner, you're be disinclined to have any kind of relationship with me. So it's a win-win! You have no functional commitment, and I'll have another opportunity to misunderstand how to proceed in life. What could possibly go wrong?

Wow, this was wide-ranging and schizophrenic. I'll leave you with one question :

Why is a raven like a writing desk?