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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote, published in 1604

Posted on 2007-11-07 at 21:07

Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless."

Sometimes I worry that I identify too greatly with the Ingenious Knight of La Mancha. It's not that I think the world doesn't need people willing to tilt at giants, real and imagined, but rather that things didn't end well for the Don.

In the end, Quixote is left disillusioned with humanity---his fleeting bliss fading in favor of a solemn sanity while he turns his back on the very civility that once gave his life meaning. He dies melancholy, hopeless, and broken.

I'm not down with that part.

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A Quote by James D. Nicoll

Posted on 2007-08-28 at 20:20

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

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George Bernard Shaw (Writer, 1856-1950)

Posted on 2007-05-16 at 07:49

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."

Read it and work through its implications.

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The Land Ironclads

Posted on 2007-03-21 at 20:15

I recently read an old science fiction work by H.G. Wells called "The Land Ironclads". While it suffers from a dated perspective (being published in 1903 does that to science fiction), it is a remarkable work nonetheless.

Rather than waste your time with my extended opinion of the work, it suffices to say I think that those who enjoy science fiction will enjoy this work. Moreover, you can read "The Land Ironclad" for free.

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"Make Up" or "Make Believe"

Posted on 2007-01-21 at 15:07

Like the field in the quote above from Homer's Illiad, these women are made into an image of beauty. It is not the dirt in the field we find beautiful nor the woman under the makeup, but rather it is the beauty, even the dignity, that our culture bestows on them that makes them pleasing to us. Aesthetic beauty and moral beauty are not easily distinguished. Like the education of our children, we move purposefully from a natural to a cultural state. It's what we do. We transform nature. We make it in our self-image as we perceive it, and when it gets too hard to do on our own, we ask for help---from ploughmen, makeup artists, painters...and each other.

I was leaving the building for the day. A co-worker was leaving at the same time. When we saw each other standing up, we gave our daily good bye's, put on our coats and left our cubes. Hollywood would have the decency to fade to black at this point, but real life is not so interested in transforming nature. No, we'd said all that needed saying. We both got up and left. Problem is, we both went the same way. So now, we are walking to the parking lot together in an awkward silence. No script was prepared. No protocol readied us for the silent walk out. I said, "So it's not so easy to get rid of me, is it?" We laughed. The moment was rescued from reality and given a cultural context---hence a beauty. As a species, we don't like ugly.

So, what does it mean to say someone is a human? I suppose it depends on who you ask, but I would argue that we are not merely complex bipedal mammal. Being human is more than that. It's about stopping to enjoy a warm fire in a winter chill, it's about having a dream, seeking out the things that are pleasing. Being human is about enjoying the beauty that we, each of us, adds to the world in which we live. I could be crass about the Hollywood makeovers in the video above, but I think I'll just be grateful to the directors, the artists, designers, scriptwriters, and air-brushers who are trying to give us a little bit more beautiful world than the one in which we find ourselves. I don't see anything wrong with that.

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A story in 6 words

Posted on 2006-11-16 at 09:00

Why me? Because someone had to.

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A reminder to myself

Posted on 2006-11-14 at 21:40

Beaten back. Beaten down.
Busted body scraped the ground.
Cut and crushed, wounded cries,
A bloody face with daring eyes.
I'll rise again on trembling knee.
You can't beat the Will from me.

Sometimes, the reason needn't be deeper than spite.

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Another story in seven words

Posted on 2006-10-28 at 14:39

If he hadn't smiled, she'd have known.

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Brevity

Posted on 2006-10-28 at 14:38

I'm practicing.

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A story in seven words

Posted on 2006-10-27 at 08:24

Except for those eyes, he looked alive.

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Avoid cliches like the plague...

Posted on 2006-10-07 at 13:48

...they're a dime a dozen.

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The Gospels and Canonical Inclusion

Posted on 2006-09-14 at 07:48

Abstract
Concerning the decisions which led to the inclusion of the four gospels currently found in the New Testament.

Paper
In their attempt to canonize the new covenant of Christ, it is profoundly important that Christians utilize those works extant that will most closely intimate the teachings and life of Jesus, the Messiah, and as there are no known written works whose authorship can be directly attributed to Jesus, Christianity must search elsewhere for source information concerning his word and deed; thus for this reason Christianity looks to the various Gospels. Sources other than the Gospels exist and are viable as references to the Christian doctrine in their own various ways; however, since each classification of source would merit its own separate essay, this essay will concentrate on the Gospel genre by discussing the concept of the Gospel, arguing for a Gospel inclusion into the New Testament, and positing a rationale for determining which Gospels should become canonical.

Gospels are as diverse and varied as the people who write them---each having its own unique emphases and style; nevertheless, there are certain universal qualities which characterize and classify them as Gospels. Scholarly opinion is divided on several fine points as to what specifically defines a Gospel. Some see the Gospels primarily as forms of biographies of Jesus Christ while others regard them as having much more to do with the statement of the good news of salvation through Christ, however, a middle ground is more likely to be the case. The Gospel genre of writing steps beyond simple storytelling and the manifesto of religious aphorisms and coalesces into an admixture of the two---the combination of a biographical narrative and a religious ethos. Having established what a Gospel essentially is, one must next consider what reasoning is there to include this genre of writing in a religious text at all.

Christianity is a religion based on both the Old Testament canon and the teachings of Jesus Christ and as such it becomes eminently important to gather detailed information concerning the life and teachings of Jesus. Since Jesus was not an author, the only sources of knowledge on these matters are found in the writings of others closely associated with the man himself and most of these writings were not meant be to used as religious text, such as those official Roman documents and other non-Jewish/Christian texts that reference Jesus and the Christian movement. The Gospels, much like Paul's letters, were set forth as true and proper accounts of what it was to know Jesus and his way. Several documents in the New Testament can give the careful reader an understanding of the Christian doctrine, yet none but the Gospels discuss the man, through his words and deeds, who pioneered these principles. If a person wished to learn about Plato, he would ask Socrates or another close associate (that is, of course, only if Plato, himself, were not available to respond), he would, rightfully, not assume that the random Grecian citizen would be capable of holding a meaningful conversation on the subject unless he were in some manner familiar with Plato. So it is with Jesus as well that one cannot expect to learn about Christianity without drawing knowledge from those persons familiar with Christ. Any other method would produce misinformation, misunderstanding, and possibly a biased or skewed view of the subject of the investigation. Therefore, it can be concluded that to best understand Jesus Christ in his role as founder of the Christian religion a careful study of his life and teachings must be undertaking and the Gospels, which as a rule lay claim to an "inside track" on these events, are the obvious best choice. The Christian community is now left with the decision as to which Gospel or Gospels are to be accepted and which are to be denied canonical status.

There are two logical and opposite paths which can be taken at this point. In this paper, they shall be referred to as the Marcionian and the Tatian perspectives. The Marcionian perspective involves the acceptance of one Gospel as the binding truth and denies all other Gospels this standing. More specifically Marcion, himself, was partial to the Gospel of Luke. His position on the subject of Gospel inclusion was that with only one Gospel as official scripture the critics who cite Gospel confliction as a sign of religious falsity could be more easily combated. His hypothesis is correct in that with only one official story of the life and words of Jesus, there would be no internal conflict, and it should be noted that for this purpose, the Gospel of Luke makes an excellent choice since it is Luke who seems to be not only an excellent writer of Greek text but who also lends a historical perspective to the life of Jesus and, unlike other Gospel authors, has written a sequel which is called the book of Acts. Choosing this Gospel allows the Christian church to portray Jesus as something other than a mythic and non-existent leader; it puts Jesus into a setting which can be identified and is familiar to the average reader. It further allows the church to show, through the continuity of the Gospel and Acts literature, a link between Jesus Christ and the development of the early church. All these things together bring Jesus into focus as a real person who lived and influenced the lives of his many Christian followers which has the effect of staving off the critics who would use inconsistency and source reliability as an attack against the early Christian church. It is also possible that Marcion was simply following Paul's lead by proclaiming the righteousness of only one gospel. Paul consistently refers to the Gospel of Christ in the singular and has stated his belief in Galatians 1:7 that there is only one Gospel. Paul's system of thought has been quite influential in the current theology of the Christian church and if Marcion wanted to follow Paul's example, he would have to conform appropriately. It cannot be denied that Marcion had many good reasons for choosing the position he did.

The Tatian perspective falls on the opposing end of the Gospel inclusion spectrum with a belief in using many different Gospels as canonical sources for information about Jesus. According to this perspective, these source Gospels would be reviewed, evaluated and, after gaining a clearer idea of the truth of Jesus' life, synthesized into a single cohesive Gospel. Tatian has done this in his work, the Diatessaron, by using the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; some would also claim that he was influenced by other Gospels as well. His theory involved the belief that multiple portraits of the same thing must, by the simple law of common sense, be intrinsically better than relying on a single portrait. The multiple portraits would give the examiner a more thorough picture of the object portrayed. However, he, like Marcion, was concerned about the apparent inconsistencies in the various Gospels and how that may look to the critic---or worse, to the prospective Christian---thus for clarity's sake, Tatian chose to compose a new Gospel, the aforementioned Diatessaron, based strictly on the extant Gospels and thus merge the various portraits into a fused whole which would be as internally consistent as the canon proposed by Marcion.

There is yet another popular opinion on the subject which has been set forth most eloquently by a Bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus, who said that there is only one legitimate Gospel of Christ, but four worthy literary shapes which the Gospel has taken. He was referring to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John which, by his day, had come into common use. This new perspective seems to be more pragmatic, in that it accepts Paul's notion that Jesus' true Gospel can only be singular, for he did not live multiple lives, but also recognizes that different people will recall and interpret the events in different ways. This notion seems the most sensible of the three options mentioned thus far for several reasons. Firstly, in the Marcionian perspective, the reader is expected to gain a clear and comprehensive understanding of the life and teachings of Jesus with only one witness to rely upon. Though Luke may have been a devoted Christian, his Gospel, just as with the other Gospels, emphasizes those aspects of the Word that he wanted emphasized; thorough as it may be, his Gospel is not all-inclusive and never claims to be. Secondly, the Tatian perspective requires that a person should, after careful study, pick-and-choose which parts should stay, which should go, which are right, and which are not. This might be acceptable if that editor were someone who had lived with and followed Jesus, but it is wholly impossible at this late date to find a candidate with the ability to meet this criterion. Anyone editing the Gospels at this point could not do so with any degree of assurity and the finished product could no more be counted upon for accuracy than the sources from which it was derived. It seems that, to Irenaeus, obtaining the truth about Jesus was deemed more important than the defensibility of the canonical Gospels. Ireneaus' perspective, it seems, welcomes the inconsistencies that the two previous perspectives denounced by accepting them as natural variations that arise when different artists paint the same scene. Ireneaus expects and accepts this, and furthermore, he seems to prefer this. One portrait may show something about the scene that the other portrait does not. This is the beauty of difference---to make the scene complete. So, while no single perspective can be said to be absolutely correct in all ways, it seems that Ireneaus provides Christianity with the most sensible solution to the dilemma---canonize several different versions of the Gospel of Jesus and thus gain the benefit of many different views on his life and teachings.

The enormous task which now lies ahead is the determination of which Gospels to canonize. While there have been over 30 Gospels discovered to date, not all Gospels are suitable for canonization and for this reason Christians must be selective in choosing which ones to accept as "official" reference to the life of Christ and the doctrine he taught. A set of criteria must be developed to filter what enters into the New Testament. Based on earlier discussions in this paper, one can deduce that the first piece of criterion should be some form of association with Jesus or his direct disciples since any further distancing from the subject of the Gospel will be reflected in the Gospel writing itself. This first piece of criterion narrows the list dramatically to the following Gospels; Matthew, John, Mark, Luke, Thomas, James, Peter, and Philip. Of these remaining Gospels, several stand out as not having one or more of the familiar elements of traditional Gospel-genre writings. The Gospel of Thomas, which claims to contain the "secret words" given to Didymos Judas Thomas by Jesus, is a collection of sayings, typically beginning with "Jesus said...", does not discuss, in more than an inadvertent manner through sayings associated with events, the life of Jesus making this a less than satisfactory source for learn about the life of Jesus. The Gospel of James also proves not to be up to the task of retelling the story of Christ's life due to its engrossment in the discussion of Mary's birth and the subsequent virgin birth of Jesus. Further, James does not substantially delve into the teachings of the Messiah nor his death on the cross---a major theme of other Gospels as shall soon be discussed. The Gospel of Peter, which we possess only in part, seems closer to the traditional Gospel style; however, the text we have is short and contains only the account of Jesus' persecution on the cross while omitting, due to lost manuscript, the majority of his life and teachings. One point of note here is the unusual resurrection scene presented by Peter. He describes a heavenly host descending from heaven to spirit away the raised Jesus and all this is done within plain sight of the guards of his tomb. This account differs so substantially from the other discussions of the resurrection that, had we the full text of the Gospel of Peter, it still might not be included in the canon. The Gospel of Philip, discovered in the same collection as the Gospel of Thomas, is written in proper Gnostic fashion. The Gnostics tended to believe that true knowledge could not come from the written word, but only through the "living speech" according to Ireneaus in his work Against Heresies (3:1-3) and thus the Gospel of Philip is written not as a biography or a discussion of doctrine, but as a text on meditative ideas and symbolic gesturing which can best be explained through example as follows:

This type of mystic interpretive language is not typical of the Gospel genre and, in addition to this, the Gospel of Philip does not discuss the life of Jesus. Some might argue that it does not even correctly reflect the teachings of the man.

Having disqualified all but the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, a discussion of their relative merits must be entered into. Of the remaining Gospels, it is now generally believed that the Gospels of Matthew and John were not written by apostles, as once believed, and Luke and Mark, contrary to the original idea, may not have been associated with the apostles either. So why then should they still be considered for canonical acceptance? Because they are the earliest known accounts of the life of Jesus and therefore are more reliable than other later Gospels. Still, it seems logical that if indeed these four Gospels are not as closely related as one might have otherwise thought, a closer look at the quality of their reliability and their use to the average Christian reader should be obtained. Certain questions must be answered before including them into the New Testament. Do they serve a purpose? What purpose do they serve? Are they reasonably true to the word of Jesus? And finally, taken together, is this group of Gospels going to provide the Christian church with a well-rounded view of the wisdom which Jesus preached and lived by as well as the message which Jesus brought with him and intended for his followers to spread? To answer these questions, an in-depth examination of these Gospels will be undertaken.

The inclusion of the Gospel of Matthew would serve a multitude of purposes. Beyond being a reasonably accurate portrayal of the life of Jesus, inasmuch as can be determined by modern scholarly exegesis, Matthew paints a picture of Jesus' deeds and words which grounds them firmly in the known Judaic history with a strong emphasis on Old Testament law which he is careful to explain that Jesus proclaims it to be correct and binding as exemplified in Matthew 5:17. It is noteworthy that there are instances when Jesus does side against the Old Testament law. He is shown to do so three times in Matthew 5:31-43; however, this is the exception and not the rule as adduced by the many times in which the Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus defends the Judaic laws. Moreover, Jesus is seen as a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy in Matthew 2:15 and 8:17. Matthew seems to distill his image of Christ and his teaching through Old Testament prophecy and doctrine which has the effect of giving Christianity a history or perhaps arguing that it already had one in conjunction with the Jews---something which many Christians and most Jews did not acknowledge. The popular layman opinion was that Christianity was a new religion and this rationale was used as a basis for attack and prejudice on the newly formed Christian community. Matthew shows that Christianity has a religious history and it is the Jews which have diverged from the faith, not the other way around.

The Gospel of Mark is perhaps less factually accurate, though not unacceptably so, than the four other Gospels being discussed and this is where its weakness lies. This is evidenced by the severe redaction seen in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke4 which are widely believed to be derivative works of the Gospel of Mark which was written years before any other Gospel. Mark's Gospel seems to have an emphasis on the pre-resurrection teachings of Jesus which stands in contrast to Paul's letters which demonstrate a profound interest in the theology of Jesus' death at the cross and his subsequent resurrection. Again a quandry is presented and the reader, who is most likely going to be familiar with Paul and his importance to the theology of the Christian church, might be inclined to find the common message or central theme present in both. Nevertheless, in doing so, the reader detracts from the richness of diversity in the portraits of Jesus. Mark may not be in total agreement with Paul or other prominent theologians as to the particular emphasis of Jesus' teachings but he certainly does not deny the significance of the theology of the cross. Here also lies its hidden strength. While Mark does not entirely accurately depict the events of Jesus' life it is only due to his emphasis on the works of Jesus and not geographical or chronological accuracy. As examples of this emphasis, one can turn to the many references to Jesus' miracles (Mark 1:25, 1:41, 2:11, 3:5, 4:39, 6:41-42, and over 10 other direct references to miracle acts.) and suffering (Mark 8:31, 9:30-31, 10:33-34 as well as the entire account of the crucifixion and torturous death of Jesus.) and the lessons to be learned therefrom. Mark, unlike some apocryphic Gospel authors, does not discuss miracles for their own sake but instead discusses them as they pertain to what Jesus taught. In this Gospel, the reader gains a clear idea of Jesus as a human, without denying his divine significance, whose example is shown as an inspiration to all.

Luke's expertly crafted Gospel brings history into the Christian picture, albeit in a far different manner than Matthew. Rather than concentrating on the history of Christianity, Luke concentrates on the Christianity in history. He uses real-world events and places to create a "stage" which will be recognizable to the Christian and non-Christian reader and thereby places Christianity in the firm position of fact, showing these depicted stories as having actually occurred, and pulls it out of the realm of fantasy and imagined mythology. By referencing other events and associating them chronologically to Gospel events, he gives Christianity its reality. Take, as an example, the following passage from the Gospel of Luke:

Here Luke depicts the story of John receiving the word of God, yet before discussing the story itself, he paints an explicit picture of when and where this took place and goes further to discuss John's lineage so as to place him wholly in a setting which the typical reader will identify and accept, thus making it far easier for that reader to accept the story itself.

At this point, one might conclude that the Christian community could gain a reasonably clear understanding of Jesus' life and teachings with just the above three mentioned Gospels and they would be correct. The Gospel of John deviates from the standard Gospel genre ever so slightly---but meaningfully. It is feasible to postulate that, since John is believed to have been written last of the four main Gospels discussed herein, he recognized that the events of Jesus' life had been satisfactorily retold and therefore chose a fresh approach to the discussion of Jesus. He does tell the story of Jesus' life, for if he did not we might have some difficulty calling his work a Gospel, and yet his story takes on an entirely different significance. Some philologists have speculated that the Gospel of John is as different from the other Gospels as the Gospel of Mark was from previous Christian writings about Jesus. True or otherwise, John's work seems to have built upon the Gospel genre, improving it, rather than breaking away from it as Mark did from the earlier Christian documents and so John can still stand as a form of Gospel. Having established this, the discussion must turn to its proposed merits as a canonical Gospel. Many have said that John wrote a sort of "fill-in-the-blank" Gospel in that he speaks about those aspects of Jesus' life which are not discussed in the other Gospels. Found in the Gospel of John are many events that cannot be found in other Gospels but still possess a significance. Examples include Jesus' meeting with Nicodemus in John 3:1-21, the scene described in John 11:35 of Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus before resurrecting him, and the discourse with the Samaritan at the well in Sychar in John 4:7-26. This Gospel seems to contain an interesting synthesis of the Hebraeistic and the Hellenistic philosophies of the time. John's use of the Logos idea was distinctly a Greek-influenced thought and he often referred to the enemies of Jesus as the "Jews." At the same time, however, though his use of the Logos was Greek-influenced, it was originated in the Old Testament book of Genesis as were many ideas he put forth. His Hebraeistic belief in God was naturally modified by his Grecian worldview and background giving him a distinctly unique perspective on the teachings of Christ which the other Gospel authors did not possess. John's Gospel helps to define what Jesus' relationship was with respect to the Jewish-Christian faith. He alone discusses Jesus as "the way" and "the light" and shows Christ to be the path to salvation.

The four Gospels discussed above give the reader an excellently well-rounded portrayal of Jesus, the man, the teacher, the Christ, and the way. They show the Christian community, with Matthew, that through Jesus, it is grounded firmly in the Judaic past and is not an upstart cult with no true meaningfulness. They show the Christian community, with Mark, that Jesus' teachings are to be used as an example for community. Mark also shows us Jesus' divinity and his humanity through the stories of his miracles and suffering. The Gospels further show the Christian community, with Luke, that it has a reality and concreteness which serves to fortify a faith in the stories to the reader. And finally, the Gospels show the Christian community, with John, the theological importance of the Christ figure as represented by Jesus. These Gospels do have their differences, but also they have their similarities. All of them concentrate on the teachings and life of Jesus and how that relates the Christian community to God and not just sayings or dissertations on theology. All of them accept the importance of Jesus' death at the cross for mankind's sins. All of them accept Jesus as the true messiah as expected in Old Testament prophecy. So it is seen that four portraits from differing angles do in fact give the observer a fuller and more complete rendering on the scene. These Gospels should be canonical due to the merits of what each one, individually, can teach the reader about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

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My time as a porn peddler

Posted on 2006-09-05 at 07:38

I've had a lot of jobs in my life. I've worked in kitchens, loaded trucks, sat in the secretarial pool. I've been in plays, burgled homes and cars, done door-to-door encyclopedia sales. But one of my favorite jobs was as a porn peddler.

Don't judge me, dude. You've done things you weren't proud of either. Besides, it was only for two weekends. My time there was horrible and the pay would have sucked if I hadn't been skimming off the register. Why was it one of my favorite jobs, then? Easy. Two short weekends. Many, many, many stories.

I could tell you about the swinger couple that came in looking for the local swinger mag and wanted to break off a piece of the Tom. I could tell you about the gay dude that wanted to rape me (lesson: always bring a weapon to work in your porn shop career!). I could tell you about Conspiracy Dave and the rampant Man-Scent episode. I could tell you about the booth token guy who was dissatisfied with the quality of porn currently running in our private booth-theaters. But I'm gonna tell you about something a little more sedate for now. I'm gonna tell you about the man who didn't know where he was.

So I'm sitting there watching my black-n-white TV. The reception was a bit fuzzy, but when you are stuck sitting behind a counter trying to ignore the patrons for a straight 15 hour shift, you don't care about such things. It was getting late in the day. The tourists were leaving the beach, which meant I got to watch them passing by the front of the "book store" as walked back to their cars and hotels.

Now, I don't know what the guy was thinking. Maybe he thought "hey, I need a good book". Maybe his wife pushed him into it. I dunno. What I do know is that the store was otherwise empty when a husband, a wife, and their two little girls came waltzing into the porn shop. They didn't approach the counter, but rather went right to browsing the books in the front of the store.

I should explain. The store, because Virginia Beach was a bit uptight about such things, had an area in the front with cards and regular books for sale. The area was small and ended abruptly in a wall with a single door and a sign: "$3.00 for admittance past this point". Beyond the pay-for-play portal lie a cornucopia of pornography, from obscene to banal, awaiting the lascivious consumer. The front of the store---that veneer of normalcy slapped haphazard over the naked rear---was filled with musty paperbacks and rusting card racks.

So this guy and his family are walking around the tiny front end of the store perusing damp books and dusty cards. Without being obvious I'm trying to get the guy's attention---no point in letting his kids find out the hard way what sort of store their dad brought them into---when the mother calls out to me.

"These cards have cobwebs on them. You must not sell a lot of them!"

"Sure don't, Ma'am. It's not really our main product" Nudge nudge wink wink. Come on dude! You gotta get the hint now, right?

"Say honey", the guy says, "I found a copy of Dicken's 'Copperfield'. It's a bit worn looking, but I think I'll get it." Dude it's not worn. It's just been sitting there for like 15 years without human contact. Wake up and smell the scented oils, idiot!

So, I drop a few hints like this and they just keep shopping. I should add, I'm sitting behind a counter and the wall behind me advertises, for all to see, the more sedate of our "toy" collection---Oils and back massagers and such. Now, at the time I was a different person. Other's welfare wasn't high on my list of concerns, but even I saw the value in keeping kids from noticing the items behind me. Finally, the family comes waddling up to me, moldering books in hand. The guy starts the small talk.

"Pretty small store you have here."

"Yeah, well there's a lot more in the other section." My eyes try to lead him to the $3 admittance sign he's managed to miss as he walked past it 8 or so times so far. "The stuff up front is not our bread and butter here. Do you understand me?" Nothing. Blank stare. The kids are all scanning the wall behind me. Any second now they are gonna get what dad doesn't.

"Oh, what is your bread and butter then?" Blind and dumb. I swear, it's a wonder this guy managed to breed.

Finally his wife notices the sign. "You have to pay to see the rest of the store?" I nod ominously and give the knowing look to the guy, who for the first time realizes where he is.

"Honey, ya know what? We should go get dinner. I'm hungry. Let's leave now."

"But we're not done paying for the books?"

I interject, "It's cool. Take em. You look hungry. Consider it a gift. Go eat." I see curiosity dawning on the oldest girl. She is obviously waiting for a break in the conversation to ask her mom a question about the items behind me. Something like "Mommy, what does 'aphrodisiac' mean?" or "Daddy, that's a strange shape for a back massager. How does it work?"

The husband, with a quick thanks, grabs the bag of old books and his wife's arm and drags them both out the door as if the building were about to collapse. I can hear the wife all the way to the street "That sure was nice of him to give us these books."

Yes. I'm sure the store owner will miss them. I'll have to tell him to order another copy of 'Copperfield'. I know he'd hate to think his store was open for business without some good Dickens for sale.

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Writing Tip of the Day: See only the birds eye

Posted on 2006-08-21 at 12:27

First read this story of Arjuna and the bird's eye, then apply that to your writing.

When you approach a writing task, always know ahead of time what one thing you want conveyed. Start there. Be there. End there.

Start your writing task by jotting down a one sentence summary of your point or reason for writing. Some examples include "I want to meet you about the open position I saw in the newspaper", "There are motherf*cking snakes on a motherf*cking plane", or "I will need more resources to accomplish the task I've been assigned".

As you write, refer back to your synopsis periodically to refocus yourself on the task at hand. When you are done, edit your work culling everything you can that doesn't matter to your summary point.

Thus endeth the writing lesson for today. More will come.

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Word of the Day: Pollicitation

Posted on 2006-08-21 at 11:09

(puh-lis-i-TAY-shuhn) noun

A promise or an offer made but not yet accepted.

Pollicitation comes from the Latin word of the same name, which itself comes from the Latin word polliceri---meaning "to promise".

"With what broad gestures of invitation, and also with what subtle almost imperceptible hints and suggestions and pollicitations, she lays herself out to cajole us, to notify her eagerness." - Christopher Morley; Inward Ho!; Doubleday; 1923.

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Cars, Snakes and The Art of Lying

Posted on 2006-06-06 at 07:57

Unlike the schoolyard squirrel, I was not the worst thing that had ever happened to that snake. You see, the snake was already dead when I found it. I think it must've been a peaceful death. The body, roughly 3 feet in length, was intact and unmangled. This was a primo find for a boy that age! A whole snake to do with as I pleased? This day was off to a great start.

We all sat around looking at the snake. Such an opportunity could not be wasted. It's not everyday the Lord hands a person such a high quality, snake carcass. It was like manna from heaven, and we would not waste the gift. We talked about all the various great things we could do with this snake, but in the end we were stuck. There was Frozen Snake Jousting and Frozen Snake Sword Fighting. There was Wearing It As A Belt and Wearing It As A Headband. There were girls to be frightened and parents to be disgusted, teachers to be upset and strangers to be startled. We had plans. Many of them. And that was the problem. How does a young boy choose between so many equally good paths?

For a while we played with the snake---smacking each other with it, acting like it was alive and attacking us, poking at it, staring at it. All this to delay the inevitable. We needed to do something grand with it. In the end, it was poor impulse control that made our decision for us.

I had the snake by the tail, standing in front of the rusty white 21st street side of the Circa Del Mar at the Oceanfront. I watched the cars going by, some speeding past, hurrying to get to the beach, some slowly down to make a right hand turn. The other boys sat on the sidewalk equally despondent---our ophiophilia quickly souring as the weight of our decision bore on us, as our sacred duty led us to preemptively regret each future path before we took it and a vague malaise set over us. Even poking a dead snake with sticks seemed a hollow fun eventually. Something had to be done.

The couple were probably just in town for a little RnR---some mellow fun-in-the-sun---and maybe just to get away from the hectic agitation of the daily grind. Their car was modest, a small four door older model, not so old as to scream "welfare" but no so new as to whisper "worship my car" either. It began slowing down to make the same right hand turn that others had been making unmolested all day. Theirs was not to be the same fate as the Lincoln before them or even the Buick after them. Their's was a different lot entirely.

WHAM! The snake came down hard across the hood and windshield of the car as it moved past me. I wish I could say I had a look of excitement and joy, but in truth, all I felt was relief. The decision had been made. The Gift had been spent. I watched, detached and emotionless, as the car screeched and turned and wagged and bobbled. After a few seconds---which seems like a minute and a half to me, but probably a great deal longer to those riding in the vehicle---the car came to a stop, turned the opposite direction on the far side of the road. I watched with disinterest as the man and his wife (or girlfriend or mistress or whatever) stepped shakily out of the car and looked around to see what had been hit. Surely, they thought, the child must be dead. Look at the blood all over the car! Tragedy and mayhem!

Now as I recall, it was then that the angels spake unto me, saying "Your work here is finished, my child, RUN!!!!" As I've said before, I do not make it a habit of being disobedient to the Voices, so I did indeed make ample use of my sneakers. This was my 'hood, and I knew these tourists had no chance to catch me. I was fast, smart, and preternaturally patient...like a snake. The local fire station has a great little area nestled in the middle of it's nearly O-shaped building. This would serve as my hideout until the tourists had gone back to Beauty, Kentucky or Sod, West Virginia or Sweet Lips, Tennessee or whereever it is that our mayor busses these people in from. I was silent, like the ninja. I could not be caught.

It had to be two hours later (in child-hours, at least!) when I crawled from my snake hole to rejoin my friends who were surely setting up a party in my honor as I waited in hiding. Clowns and balloons and 72 ponies (OMG PONIES!!1!!1!) awaited me, and all I had to do was make my way back to get my kudos. The Angels told me to go home and collect my reward another day, but against all reason, I ignored the Voices and trod onward toward my ponies and clowns and backslaps and high fives. It was as I crossed an alley about half a block from the snake incident when I heard it. "Hey, did you see a kid around here playing with a snake?" Innocent, but shocked, denial. "Bullshit! It's you! I know it was!" Deny Deny Deny. "Don't give me that! I know it was you, kid! We could've been seriously hurt, blah blah blah! Caused an accident, yappity slappity! Dangerous to be in traffic, wibbildy bibbildy stuff and junk!" Pretend to Cry. Act scared of the strangers and their bizarre accusations. "Well, maybe it wasn't you." Walk away smiling.

In the end, there were no ponies or clowns or balloon animals. No clouds parted. The Angels were strangely silent. All that was left was a duty discharged and a story worth retelling. As I've grown older, I have come to realize that's really enough.

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We'll call him John Doe

Posted on 2006-05-18 at 19:55

He was a large man, with jowls and bowls, fleshy and sweaty and just a little uncomfortable to look at. When he spoke it was like he was eating the air that wandered too closely to his loose mouth---each consonant a chomp and each vowel a gulp of meat sliding from a greasy bone. He seemed nice enough, but to look into his eyes you had the feeling that he was sizing you up, asking himself just how long it would take to roast you whole and how much time he'd save by doing one limb at a time. Yet, even when you looked into his eyes, he wouldn't look into yours. His eyes seemed to hit just shy of their bull's eye, as in a drunken game of pub darts. He spoke imprecisely, as if each word were grabbed haphazard from a bag blindfolded. He would say "supposably" and "if I half to". His cadence was slow and ponderous like the brontosaurus of old, each sentence a lumbering roll with a pause for breath at the end, and each word seemed to plop out and lay at the listener's feet, still hissing air and seeping ichor like a gravy sponge.

Yes, I'm describing someone I met in the last couple of days. No, I'm not giving names. That would be mean. I just had to write this to get it out of my skull. I feel better now.

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Robert E. Howard has enviably lyrical prose

Posted on 2006-04-23 at 21:40

In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle ... Let me live deep where I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay and am content.

Spoken by Conan in Queen of the Black Coast

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For 10 seconds of uncomfortable bliss

Posted on 2006-04-19 at 08:03

It wasn't like the squirrel had it coming. He was long since tamed by human contact. Living in the middle of the schoolyard will do that for an animal. Some of the students would feed him; heck even the mean kids were pretty nice to him. Well, everyone but me, I guess.

I had no history of being mean to animals. When it came down to it, I had a soft spot for them. I guess that makes the squirrel incident all the more peculiar.

I don't know what stray neuron misfired in my skull, but when I saw the squirrel, I just knew that its destiny lie elsewhere that day. I decided that I would be its agent of fate. Borrowing April's bookbag and taking care to remove each item from it one-by-one---I often wonder what those gathered to watch the Tommy Show were thinking as they circled around for this week's episode---I stalked the friendly squirrel. He probably thought I was going to feed him: Did I mention how bad I felt about the squirrel's role in all this? Once close enough, I launched upon the squirrel with the opened and empty bookbag, capturing him underneath in one swift, cruel, and comical motion. For a few seconds he scurried, or so the frantic bookbag canvas suggested, but eventually he accepted his swallowed fate. Nature is good about such things.

Gathering the sides slowly, so as to avoid his accidental freedom, I managed to get the mouth of the bag closed and the bag turned rightside up again, squirrel still inside. Half way to my goal, I was still not entirely clear on what it is the voices wanted me to do, but I obeyed, a dutiful soldier to my Id. The Voices of Id were rarely wrong. How could I doubt them this far into the mission?

Excusing myself from the culpable crowd of peers, I made my way into the school administrative office, squirrely bookbag tightly pressed to my chest. "Can I speak with principal Clootie?" No questions were asked. The office staff probably thought I'd been sent down in trouble again.

Now, I should pause here to tell you that for all the guilt I have over the squirrel's unwitting involvement, I had none over Clootie's role. What he got, he deserved. I reserve for him the sort of blind hatred that I can really only muster when talking about the people that tormented me as a child. He and one wild-haired aunt share that space together for eternity, though neither knows the other. Really, they should get married and have impish little malformed children together. The world is overdue to a good anti-Christ and I've little doubt that their offspring would fill the role nicely.

Anyway, the principal was at his desk---most likely planning this week's plots against me---when I entered. He was mad. Not because I hadn't knocked, but because it was me. I was greeted with a snarled "What?" I should have thanked him, for I was just starting to feel guilty about the squirrel and might've left without fullfilling my duty to the Voices of Id, but his opening volley push concerns for personal and squirrelish safety aside and left nothing between he and I but crackling hatred.

"I need to show you something, Clootie." I called him Clootie instead of principal Clootie, mostly because it irked him that I talked to him as would his gym teacher. He often told me it betrayed a lack of respect. To this day, I'm confused by his use of the word "betrayed".

"Hurry up, then. What is it?" I leaned forward, bookbag slowly extending out toward his face. If my life had a sound track, it would've been playing something from Mozart's Requiem at that moment...or maybe Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall.

When I was close enough to his face that he could smell dust and canvas---the smell of a well made, little used Junior High bookbag: I pulled the bag open with a pop, taking care to thrust it forward at the same time. As if sprung from some MacGyver'd trampoline, the Squirrel flew out of the bookbag with a screech and a sort of gargling hiss towards the face and chest of Clootie. Clootie screamed. The squirrel screeched. I cackled. Fun was had by everyone except Clootie...and the squirrel. Coming to a momentary stop on top of the papers on Clootie's desk, the squirrel took a moment to appreciate that he'd been given a second chance at life. He saw me, a flash of "imgonnagetyousucka" in his eyes. He saw Clootie, by now pressed against the back wall sputtering word fragments. Assessing his situation, the squirrel did the smart thing---I'm just glad someone in this story did a smart thing---and darted behind a cabinet, the papers on which he stood flung every which way as he scurried frantically to dark safety.

Over the next 10 seconds, as Clootie tried to regain composure and pretended to regain dignity and as the kudos of the Voices of Id dimmed, all the rest of the world faded away and eventually all that existed was me, Clootie, and a silence pregnant with a palpable feeling of "whatthefuck?!?".

I'm not going to say I'm proud of that moment, but neither will I feign shame. The squirrel was taken away by animal control. Clootie took the next day off. Another suspension loomed in my immediate future. Overall, it was a good day.

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Yet still the written word is my enemy

Posted on 2006-03-30 at 09:08

For some reason, everything I've written in the last month has been a dissappointment to me. I think my head is just elsewhere. The seed ideas are good enough (though they have come with less frequency in this past month), but the actual entries are hardly my best, in my opinion.

Maybe the problem is related to those government mind-control experiments the CIA did on my in the 60's.

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Have you heard the story of the bird's eye?

Posted on 2006-03-27 at 07:09

Many years ago in India, there lived a man named Druna. He ran a school in the middle of the forest where he taught archery. Students traveled from all over asia to learn archery from the master, Druna. Arjuna wanted to be the best archer in the world. So he chose Druna's academy at which to learn his craft. He lived in the cottages with the other students.

Druna showed his pupils how to hold the bow and arrow. He taught them to focus, "Look at where you want your arrow to be. Let the rest dissolve away." He taught them to concentrate, "Think only of what you want your arrow to do. No more."

Arjuna listened attentively. He practiced from morning til evening. One night while Arjuna was eating his dinner, a gust of wind blew out the oil lamp. Arjuna continued eating.

"I can eat in the dark because I know where my mouth is," he thought to himself, "I don't need to look at anything else."

He decided to practice archery in the dark. He relighted the lamp and used it as a target. He thought, "I know where my target is and I don't need to look at anything else."

He picked up his bow and arrows and began shooting. TWANG! TWANG! The sound of bow strings filled the air. When Druna heard the sound, he came out of his cottage. The sight of Arjuna practicing archery delighted him. He blessed Arjuna, saying "May your arrows never miss their targets."

Soon other students grew jealous of the attention Arjuna was getting. "Why do you think Arjuna is the best among us all?" they asked the teacher. That evening Druna made an announcement.

"Tomorrow, there will be an archery competition to determine the best archer among you," Druna said. "When the sun peeps from the moutaintops, be ready with your bows and arrows."

The students polished their bows and sharpened their arrows. Next morning, they gathered in the yard. Glossy bows and pointed arrows gleamed in the sun. The wind was still but the students' hearts fluttered with excitement.

Druna placed a wooden bird on the branch of a distant tree. It was partly hidden by the foliage. A prominent artificial eye was painted on the wooden bird. The teacher called all his disciples and said, "Look my children, a bird is sitting on that far off tree. You have to hit the arrow exactly in its eye. Are you ready?"

Everyone nodded. First the eldest Yudhisthira was invited to try his skill. He stretched his bow-string and was about to release the arrow when Drunacharya asked him a question, "O eldest son of Kunti, may I know what is visible to you at this point of time?"

Yudhisthira replied innocently, "Why, O Gurudev, I am seeing you, the tree, people around me, and the bird!"

When his arrow flew out, it missed the target wide

Similar questions were put to Duryodhana, Bhima, Nakul, Sahadeva and others, and Druna got the similar answers as those given by Yudhisthira.

"What do you see ahead of you?" Druna asked.

"I see the tree, the branches, the leaves," the student replied as he released the string. The arrow shot forward and landed near the roots of the tree.

The next student came forward, plucked an arrow from his quiver, placed it on the bow, and pulled the string.

"What do you see ahead of you?" Druna asked.

"I see the bird, its legs, its wings," the student replied as he let the string go. The arrow shot forward and grazed the wings of the bird.

Finally it was Arjuna's turn. He plucked an arrow from his quiver, placed it on the bow, and pulled the string.

"What do you see ahead of you?" Druna asked.

"I see the eye of the bird," Arjuna replied.

"What else do you see, Arjuna?" Druna asked.

"Nothing. I only see the round black eye of the bird," Arjuna replied as he released the string. The arrow shot forward with a swoosh. It pierced the center of the eye of the wooden bird.

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Writers' block

Posted on 2006-03-07 at 17:16

My creative juices are all dry and dusty.

I have things I want to write about. I have ideas and rants and insights that I'd love to share. But ever since getting full-headed into this project, I just find myself staring at the same blank screen.

I want to tell you about my latest problem with language standardization (In short, there is nothing wrong with the phrase "I was a-fixin' to do that.") and the failures of fundamentalism (If you preach biblical inerrancy as your foundation, you've built a house of cards that will fall eventually, and then you have a bitter ex-Christian with no interest in returning to the fold.).

I want to say so much, but I can't seem to find the right words to express myself lately. And it isn't just writing. I can barely speak. I'm going through a linguistic valley and the sun is already down over the mountain's mantle. I'm left stumbling through the underbrush of broken english and the dust of incoherent thought.

See?!? Even my metaphors are broke and tilting wrong.

My brain needs an enema.

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Word of the Day: Dharma

Posted on 2006-02-06 at 07:06

(DHAR-muh) noun

1. Duty; correct behavior.
2. Law, especially the universal law of all things.
3. Proper expression of religion.

Dharma comes to us from the Sanskrit word of the same name and in that language also carries with it the connotation of "duty" in addition to the above definitions. Ultimately, it comes from the Indo-European root dher- (meaning to hold firmly or support). Dher- is the root source of words like "firm", "affirm", "confirm", "farm", "fermata", and "firmament".

"The most important pedagogic dharma that should guide the teacher in such a situation is that he should not hastily jump to the conclusion that his learners are unfit, dull, stupid, lacking in motivation, can never be made to learn and so on."
Dr. Aruna Chalam Angappan; The Teacher's Handicap, the Learners' Advantage; Yemen Times; Jan 9, 2006.

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Tell me about...

Posted on 2006-01-20 at 11:50

I had an idea for a series of children's books called "Tell me about...".

It doesn't seem terribly original, but I haven't seen it done elsewhere yet. The idea struck me when I was at the bookstore---a favorite haunt of anyone who fancies themselves a member of the posh literati---looking through a book in the "...For Dummies" series about religion. I was struck by how useful such a series would be for children if it were properly geared to their level and needs.

I began thinking about a book on religion called "Tell me about religion." Then I considered how useful it would be to my current situation if there were one called "Tell me about China" or "Tell me about adoption."

That's when I considered the general usefulness of a children's series of educational books. In my mind, I tentatively named the series "Tell me about...", since that tends to be how a pedagogical learner, like a child, would start the inquiry process.

What I need to do is make such a thing a reality and submit a manuscript and series proposal to the right people. Sadly, in my internal debate between doing important things and sitting around, sitting around kicks the crap outta doing important things just about every time.

Still, I really need to get on it. This is a legitimately good idea. Kids need to learn and there are a distinct paucity of books geared toward children of this type. Am I crazy? (Yes, that was a call for feedback)

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Lessons my blog taught me about my writing

Posted on 2006-01-18 at 13:07

Unless you are writing concrete poetry (poetry whose visual layout is part of the art of the work itself) the words should be layout-neutral. Seems obvious, I know, but it's a lesson made clear to me in my recent reorganization of this blog. I have entries that reference the entries above and below them. I have entries that are not discreet (that is they rely on another entry being next to them). These entries are among my weakest in content now that they can be read on their own and even when grouped with other entries, they draw the readers attention from the words to the form when they reference an entry that should be directly above them but no longer are.

Content is king. Those entries of mine that offer new opinions or information are my most popular. By. A. Very. Large. Margin. Regulars occasionally appreciate the entries in which I link to interesting things elsewhere, but most readers, including regulars (yes, both of you!) prefer original content. It is my college papers, my how-to guides, and my religious commentary that get the most attention from visitors. OK. I get the hint. I'm not gonna stop linking to cool things I find, but I'll try to put more original content online.

I don't have a voice. It takes a while for a writer's voice to coalese, and from my writings on here, it appears mine has not yet done so. What is a writer's voice? A writer's voice is that distinctive tone and language that let's a reader identify a writer by the words alone. Poe has a clear voice. Read some Poe, and I garuantee that you will be able to pick out his work from a crowd without benefit of byline. I seem to change voice depending on topic and mood. I'll need to spend some time pondering that.

Less is more. By nature, I ramble. I'm learning to rein that in a bit. Brevity is not my strong suit, but my most recent posts show that I'm learning to be more dense in my writing. I consider this a good thing.

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Word of the Day: Mesothelioma

Posted on 2006-01-17 at 08:15

Mesothelioma is an uncommon form of cancer, usually associated with previous exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant (cancerous) cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and chest cavity), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity) or the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart).

Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or have been exposed to asbestos dust and fibre in other ways, such as by washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos, or by home renovation using asbestos cement products.

Symptoms of mesothelioma may not appear until 30 to 50 years after exposure to asbestos. Shortness of breath and pain in the chest due to an accumulation of fluid in the pleural space are often symptoms of pleural mesothelioma.

Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma include weight loss and cachexia, abdominal swelling and pain due to ascites (a buildup of fluid in the abdominal cavity). Other symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma may include bowel obstruction, blood clotting abnormalities, anemia, and fever. If the cancer has spread beyond the mesothelium to other parts of the body, symptoms may include pain, trouble swallowing, or swelling of the neck or face.

These symptoms may be caused by mesothelioma or by other, less serious conditions.

In the United States, the average mesothelioma-related settlement was $1 million; for cases that go to trial awards averaged $6 million, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. Only a small fraction of the thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits in the United States every year are related to mesothelioma. In 2004, a bill in the United States Senate aimed a asbestos litigation reform failed to reach a floor vote. In January of 2005, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter announced he would again try to pass an asbestos litigation reform bill.

A separate bill introduced on March 17, 2005, the Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution Act of 2005 (FAIR act of 2005), seeks to ensure a set amount of compensation dependent on the symptoms of the victim. The range is from Medical Monitoring for victims with Asbestosis or Pleural Disease to $35,000 for victims with Mixed Disease With Impairment all the way to over $1,000,000 for Mesothelioma victims and nonsmoking Lung Cancer victims.

The above data regarding Mesothelioma was gleaned mostly from the wikipedia. Learn to love the LazyWeb. And before the rumors begin a-flying, the answer is "no". I do not have or know anyone who has this afflication. I really did just write about it as a "Word of the Day".

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My untitled happy snippet

Posted on 2006-01-16 at 10:15

Now peep the wild things from their dark places.
The light of the sun shines bright on their faces.

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Milton's Mythological Restructuring Of The Fall

Posted on 2006-01-09 at 15:33

Abstract
Concerning Milton's poetic license in his recasting of the myth of Genesis and the Fall of Man.

Paper
Milton's work, Paradise Lost, retells the story of the Garden of Eden as found in Genesis, the first book in the canon of Hebrew Scriptures known as the Torah or Bible. This story relates the tale of the fall from grace which anthropos, the original man, supposedly had early on in human history. Due to the popularity of the story, it is not surprising that Milton, an educated man and poet, chose it as the subject for one of his works. What is worthy of note, however, is the multitude of ways in which he deviated from the original story. For example, while it is true that many are under the misunderstanding that Satan plays an important role in the Genesis story of the Fall, he does not. He is, in fact, not mentioned even once in the Book of Genesis and yet Milton confers on him a large role. Milton was a man educated in the Hebrew Bible and language from a young age by a tutor his father had hired, Thomas Young (c.f., Hutchinson 8ff.) and so it was unlikely that Milton was unaware of his discrepancies. It seems that for the reader to fully understand Milton's theology of the Fall, one must understand first what was changed in the story from the original and second what theological significance the change has.

The original story of the fall of man is presented in Genesis 3:1-7 and is abbreviated below:

In this story, as presented in Genesis, the two are tempted by the forbidden fruit at the prompting of a serpent who is later punished for his role in the affair. Thus they fall from grace and are cast from Eden to "toil" (Genesis 3:17) for all their days until death, which after the fall is now an eminent reality in their lives (Genesis 3:19). Before any detailed exegesis is begun, one must consider the work being dealt with. Genesis is not an historical work designed to describe accurately the early world and its origins. Genesis is a mythological work which is designed to describe accurately the relationship of God to his earthly creation and more precisely the relationship of God to his chosen people---the Jews. The exegesis of genesis, then, should account for a mythological framework and allow for the historical inaccuracies typically found in mythological works.

As any mythology, the book of Genesis makes heavy use of a complex symbol system which the early Jews would have invested with particular meaning. The fact that this symbol system is not immediately at hand for the average modern reader has caused some problems. Many of these problems arise as a result of the unusual nature of the characters in the story. The characters associated with The Fall are Adam, Eve, and the serpent. Some investigation reveals that the Hebrew word Adam---which means man---is intentionally similar to the Hebrew word Adamah---which means earth, dust, or ground. Also, the character of Adam was used early in the work to refer to all men. It was not until later editors of the story began adding new parts that Adam became an individual rather than collective man. The original concept of the character of Adam, then, was meant to represent the race of men as a whole and their relation to the ground which is God's other creation. Genesis, for these reasons, is notoriously ambiguous about Adam's status. Eve, on the other hand, seems less entangled by conflicting portrayals. Her name, which is similar the Hebrew word for life, shows that she is quite literally "the mother of all living" (Genesis 3:20), but moreover, she is also blamed and punished by God harsher than Adam for her apparently more significant role in The Fall. Though Adam was there with her with she was tempted, and though he did nothing to stop it, he is still punished less severely than her. The third character, the serpent, has been the primary point of confusion and misunderstanding in the story. Nowhere does it say that this serpent is Satan. Satan does not appear in the Torah (The first 5 books of the Bible also known as the Law) at all. It is not until the Kethuvim (The collection of Hebrew books known also as the Writings---as distinct from the Torah [law] and the Nebi'im [prophets]), in 1 Chronicles 21:1, that his name is uttered. Yet, for all this, most modern readers see the serpent as Satan in serpent form. The cause of this is likely the much later references to Satan as being analogous to a serpent or dragon. Though later Jews made this symbolic connection, the writers and editors of Genesis did not. The serpent's mythological meaning must be found elsewhere. Many scholars now believe that rather than a symbol of whole evil, the serpent may have been a symbol of life. It is known that many, if not most, primitive peoples associate the serpent or snake with life and rebirth because of its ability to shed its own skin seasonally and begin anew. If the ancient writers of Genesis were also working under this mythological symbology, then the story of The Fall takes on new meaning. Rather than the serpent representing that which is purely evil, it begins to represent that which is a synthesis of good and evil. Genesis becomes a story of man's inevitable entrance into life which has its temptations and its shortcomings, but also its joys and its invaluable experiences. Through it all, the Fall tells us that though we may stray in life, God is ever-present and ever-protective when needed (c.f. Genesis 3:21 & 4:15). Thus the myth of the Fall establishes an understanding of the nature of God's relationship to us from the beginning as one of unconditional concern for His creations.

Milton, as he attempts to recast the myth for a later audience, brings with him certain assumptions---primarily from his Puritanical background---which color his interpretation of the story. It is apparent from reading Paradise Lost that Milton was trying to convey the same truths that were presented there. He recognized that these truths were not present in the objects of the story but rather in the meaning and symbology of the story:

It was not apparent accuracy in objects he strove for, but symbolic accuracy in meaning. Milton foreshadows the dynamics of The Fall as early as the creation story when Adam and Eve are first shown to be distinct in their inclinations. Eve, upon her creation, is transfixed by her own mirror image (c.f. Paradise Lost IV:443 ff) in a pool of water nearby---reminiscent of the story of Narcissus--- while Adam, in Book VIII:277ff, begins his life mindful of God's role in this event. Interestingly, this prelapsarian relationship between Adam, Eve, and God is not a mirror image of the one presented in Genesis. Instead of an equal and non-hierarchical relationship between Adam and Eve, Milton begins with Adam as the dominant partner as established by Eve's remark concerning Adam:

This can be contrasted with Genesis' understanding of their relationship as equal until after the Fall when God pronounced that man "shall rule over" woman (Genesis 3:16) as punishment for her sin whereas in the prelapsarian state, they were equal (c.f. Genesis 1:27-28 & 3:18-23).

To his defense, Milton had the difficult task of presenting an Adam and Eve who seemed believable, poetic, and yet not superficial or lofty. They are the archetypal civilized savages---an oxymoron which can only sustain existence in theory. Portraying their roles and relationships as presented in the book of Genesis is flatly impossible. They are ripe with contradiction partly as a result of their own ambiguity and partly as a result of the brevity of their roles in that earlier story. Genesis gave no substantial dialogue and thus avoided Milton's pitfall. Still, it seems that Milton was aware of this problem. Only in a few places does the dialogue become too philosophical for a savage or too savage for a philosopher. And yet this tension does exist. Whereas in the prelapsarian state of Genesis they are sinless and full of God's glory, the prelapsarian state of Paradise Lost shows them to be inescapably drawn toward the Fall. As Waldock put it in his work Paradise Lost And Its Critics, "[t]here was no way for Milton of making [sic] the transition from sinlessness to sin perfectly intelligible" (Waldock 61). As mentioned earlier, Eve spends her opening scene transfixed by her vanity, but it cannot be ignored that Adam is no saint either. Shortly after his creation Adam, not content with what he has been given, asks for more:

Later, in talking with Raphael, the Angel, he begins to slander even the helpmate which he'd asked for by first telling of his weakness for Eve's "Transported touch" and rather than accepting blame for his weakness he blames either the Maker (God) or Eve herself as a temptress:

"[C]arnal desire is not a surprising sequel to Adam's uxoriousness" according to Kelley in her work, This Great Argument (Kelley 149). Adam and Eve, in Milton's work, already possess those errant tendencies with contribute to the occurrence of the Fall. If fact, Adam and Eve have, by the very nature of possessing these tendencies, already fallen. They were created fallen. Here Milton's theology becomes evident. The Genesis story does not parallel this sentiment. In Genesis, Adam makes no such statements about Eve, nor does he ask for more from God than he is given. God's wisdom is sufficient to account for all of their needs (c.f. Genesis 2:18). Furthermore, Adam's understanding of his own urges is moralized in Milton's work in a way that does not mimic Genesis:

In the above passage man and woman specifically do not consider this a cause of a strange "[c]ommotion." Milton's Puritanical and moralistic upbringing has crept into his work.

Satan's presence in the story thrusts into it a particularly interesting dynamic. He is shown as a fallen angel full of contempt and false pride. It is he, in Paradise Lost, who tempts Eve when she wanders away from Adam. By appealing to her vanity he seduced her into partaking of the forbidden fruit. Thus some would say she was felled rather than fallen by the serpent-disguised Satan. Having left a state of grace, she appealed to Adam to join her and he, not willing to give her up, did just that by eating the fruit as well. The Fall is complete. Madsen, in his work From Shadowy Types To Truth, describes Adam's fall as follows:

The question must then turn to who or what these figures (Adam, Eve, and Satan as the serpent) are meant to represent in Milton's mythological restructuring. One theory which seems supported by the text is the idea that while Adam and Eve may be symbolic of men and women universally, the other beings---angels, demons, and specifically Satan---are physical representations of God's hand in action. Thus the Fall, which in Milton's work is inevitable and expected, becomes God's will. Satan, Raphael and others in the story act as tangible markers of God's intangible work. Through Satan, God frees man to live and learn. Through Raphael, the reader sees God's ever-present protection and help when man needs it most. As if to make this point himself, Milton includes the following passage:

Here God is saying that not only is it through His will that they exist, but moreover, that they exist specifically to do His bidding. As James Sims explained it in his work, The Bible In Milton's Epics, "even these horrible monsters, unknown to themselves, fulfill His purposes" (Sims 157).

Paradise Lost is a story which tells of the relationship between God and His creations. It talks of God as ever-present in the lives of men, ever-caring for them, and even in punishment giving them the gift of life. Is this so different from the story told in Genesis? Though the characters, the crimes, and the plot are utterly different, the story remains substantially unchanged. The myth and its message are brought to a new audience using images that will convey to them the symbolic meaning which the Genesis images conveyed to the early Jewish readers. Milton seems to have succeeded in his endeavor. The Genesis story is retold and his changes, upon analysis, do betray his motives. The myth is recast.

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The Origin of Duulan

Posted on 2006-01-04 at 10:48

Spit into this world near the base of the Ageless Mountains, I have never felt a part of the greater scheme---in fact, I never even understood this greater scheme of which others spoke. How could they be so easily duped! While other young boys spent their early mornings in the temple listening to crippled priests spew old lies about Garl Glittergold and his travails against the Big Folk, I sat alone, staring out over the valley that spread beneath my window, and wondered. It was the unknown that called to me! It was the unknown that made itself in my image each morning as I stared over that wide expanse. I read voraciously from my mother's tattered texts of illusions. I longed for a taste of the valley as it really was, not as it seemed from my sterile cloister. Garl be damned! I would leave this place and seek true knowledge. Alas, it was not until my forty-third year that I had the funds with which to leave. But leave I did! And from there I sought the greatest illusionist in the land. My mother had mentioned his name casually once, but I did not forget. Haurdwen the Neverseen she called him---and her voice was pregnant with awe as the name lifted from her tongue. Yes, it was Haurdwen who would teach me.

Searching for nearly ten years, I found Haurdwen in the city of Moy, near the southernmost coast of the Mercara Bay. There he sat, alone and unconcerned. He was a gnome to be admired. Haurdwen the Neverseen. Haurdwen the Black. Haurdwen Shadowbringer, Many were the names of Haurdwen from the few people who'd heard of him and lived. To himself, he was merely Haurdwen. Haurdwen saw my potential and chose me as his only student in nearly forty years. The pride filled my fluttering chest and gripped my legs with iron as I heard him accept me as pupil. My tales would be grand. I would honor Haurdwen. Never would he look back on me and think this a mistake.

And he never did. My history with my mother's old texts proved useful to my studies under Haurdwen. I quickly moved past the basic Glamers expected of apprentices. Haurdwen chose well. It was my eleventh year of tutelage under the great master when he introduced me to the next level of my studies:

My lessons took a turn toward the stealthful arts. I learned the workings of locks, so that no secrets can be kept from me. I learned to move without the signs of sight or sound, so that I may come and go as I please in secrecy. I learned the arts of subterfuge and innuendo, so that I might speak without telling all and listen to parts while hearing the whole. Many were the lessons Haurdwen taught me, and many more were the questions I had for him. I learned well.

Then came the time---nine fruitful years later---when Haurdwen was to let me go into the world. Saddened but prepared, I left Haurdwen's lair---the place I'd called home for the past twenty years. Coming to Deas Caer, I called upon a party of adventurers in search of a thief. I am no mere thief, but they could not be expected to know that. Perhaps they weren't meant to know that....

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Shifting Values - Resource Worth in the New Economy

Posted on 2005-12-30 at 16:14

Abstract:
Concerning the New Economy and the rise of virtual property valuation. This paper was written in February of 1998 during the swelling of the Dot Com Bubble. Though the figures are dated, the thesis is, I believe, still defensible.

Paper:
So you say you want a revolution? Well, here you go. Welcome to the New Economy---yes, capital N, capital E. I know, why have a New Economy when we haven't figured out the old one yet. Perhaps that's true, but it doesn't seem to concern the next-generation digital bean counters whose hopes seem laced with visions of information and trust-based commerce at the expense of the integrity of the manufactured product. A revolution, indeed.

What is this New Economy exactly? It's no less than the shift from things and machines to people and ideas. From competition to coopetition. From causality theory to complexity and chaos theory. What does all this jabber mean? Have a seat, and let me tell you.

Twenty-five years ago, any billion-dollar company would've had suits strutting in, slumping out, and moving throughout all day long. A day in the life of a Ford engineer would likely have been prescribed from a recipe of 1 part incremental innovation, 2 parts posturing, 3 parts corporate politics, and a dash of middle-managerial excess sprinkled in for good luck. Red Tape was the protein of a good company. Order, management, control, and manufactured products were the building blocks used by every successful business to survive in the dwindling last days of the industrial age. Now, these blocks seem like wrecking balls.

Order can't be maintained when management hasn't any idea about how to measure productivity. Earlier in the century productivity was simply the ratio of produced materials to the cost of production. This formula is forced into obsolescence by a shift from manufactured goods to collected information. How much is an idea worth? How much did it cost to produce that idea? These seem to be the questions plaguing fortune 500 companies. Traditional ideas of supply and demand cannot be superimposed onto this economic model. Oh, that's to say we don't try. Look at IBM. Once the undisputed champion of the technological arena, IBM kept its old-world business model and lost this title to Microsoft and Intel. What happened to the IBM-Compatible system? It's called the Wintel system now. Go figure. As for IBM itself, though it produces over US$76 billion---far more than Microsoft's US$11 billion---it is valued at only US$100 billion compared with Microsoft's US$150 billion. Now you tell me something hasn't changed. Look at General Motors. Producing US$160 billion, it is valued at only US$56 billion. Why? It's the shift from things to people.

People and the ideas they naturally create have come to replace manufactured goods in order of importance in this New Economy. Having the right idea or the right list of employees in Silicon Valley---the traditional nesting ground of information industry pundits--- is far more important than having a working product ready to hit department store shelves. Who cares that no one has ever seen the mysterious vaporware called Trinity by Id Software. All that matters to Id's market value is that John Carmack, coder-extraordinaire, is leading the way and that the idea---that of a truly immersive 3D first person gaming environment with photorealistic scenes---is a good one. Everyone knows that Carmack is reliable and is one of the best 3D action game programmers ever thrown to earth from gamer heaven. Id is a formidable company so long as Carmack sticks around. How much is that worth?

And speaking of value, how does a company truly engage the Internet to its best interests? Sure, a web site is great, but the real concern is with what this new medium means to accountants and advertisers---that is to say, to the people who traditionally determined value to a company. Who needs to concern themselves with just what Betsy down the street wants in a product or service when one has the entire world with which to deal? I mean, are Betsy's wishes where the money is? Research will determine that---not a manager or a marketer, just research. Who needs to limit corporate affairs geographically when a global communications network allows for the disintegration of territorial concerns? Besides, won't Betsy choose to bootstep in line with the rest of the world when she realizes---via that same global communications network---that what she thought she wanted wasn't what she actually needed? I mean, she can only thank the industry, can't she? It inspires a comfortable feeling to know that corporate interests will help us to learn more about our needs and desires---even those we never knew we had. It's kind of nice having a Big Brother, of sorts, looking out for us, isn't it?

But the real economic concern isn't about what the world needs---or could need with the right prodding. That can be determined with an appropriately expensive data-mining query to look for overarching spending or lifestyle patterns. Easy stuff now. Entire companies have been formed with no product other than immense databases culled from every entered contest, filled out form, credit card purchase, and library card transaction ever initiated by the population at large. No, the real concern is in how to manage that data. Copyright protection doesn't extend to databases and yet we pay big bucks for access. Copying a program to another disk and giving it to a friend doesn't affect Microsoft's hard profit line, but it is illegal. Why? Because corporate America desperately wants to control, to manage, the flow of information. If we didn't, Microsoft surely wouldn't waste its time writing all those great programs. Id wouldn't bother working on Trinity. Data mining corporations wouldn't see a reason to gather all that freely available information into one place.

This information-based commerce, however, cannot be controlled so easily. Information is all becoming 1's and 0's. The technology industry calls that convergence. Everything, from movies to doctoral theses, is being moved to the new digital format. And as we all have learned, this new digital format cannot be kept secure. Data leaks. Information, no matter how the industry black-boxes it, is free flowing. Ideas cannot be truly protected from theft. Apple created the concept of a Window-based Graphical User Interface. Microsoft used their idea. One can almost hear Bill Gates voice. "Thanks Apple, but we can take it from here." Sure, Microsoft changed it a bit---they call that innovation in the New Economy---but they didn't invent it. When Id's Trinity was announced, other companies agreed it was a good idea. So good, in fact, that they are now working on separate software versions of the same concept. Maybe in a few years one of them can say to Id Software, "Thanks Id, but we can take it from here." In this New Economy, companies are forced into the unprecedented position of having to display proof of good ideas to the industry in hopes that they can then get the idea to market before the imitators, whose numbers seem to be a good indicator of the validity of the idea, can do the same. Suddenly business is thrust into a playing field where, for the first time in history, the economy of time far outweighs the economies of scale or quality. To survive in a world where the primary commodity is impossible to fully control, companies must move from a competitive state to a coopetitive state. Even in competing companies, a measure of cooperation is necessary. Microsoft cannot compete in the Internet technologies market without recognizing that standards will drive consumer acceptance. Standards cannot be achieved without cooperation. No one wants another company controlling the standard because it necessarily creates a new sort of monopoly---one where a single corporate entity controls the shell in which information is stored, viz. Microsoft's operating system. The Sabre reservation system, originally created by American Airlines, is open to all its competitors, who have a say in its structure, so that every airline can benefit from its existence. Without all airlines being onboard, The Sabre system doesn't have much market appeal. With all of them onboard, it becomes an invaluable resource for information and the distribution of the air travel commodity to the public. A rising tide lifts all boats … in theory.

We've moved into a world in which we cannot point conclusively to a specific cause for a specific economic effect. The old causality business model doesn't work anymore. Some of the more adventurous economists---bet you never thought you'd see adventurous and economist in the same sentence---have proposed that we ought to look at economy as the product of complexity theory or chaos theory forces. Complexity theory holds that it often seems true that the sum of the parts doesn't inevitably explain the existence of the whole. You want to see complexity theory at work? Look at a rainforest or Ford Motor Corporation. Chaos theory fills in the blanks that Complexity theory doesn't touch. It is a science that tries to approach incredibly complex systems as they are rather than by simplifying them as other sciences tend to do. It upholds the cause-effect relationship but concludes that many things have a causality string that we simply cannot follow. The classic example is one wherein the beating of a butterfly's wings over Afghanistan ultimately results in the formation of a hurricane miles away. One caused the other, but the relationship between them is too complex to distinguish its component parts. According to these economic theorists, economy in this new environment works similarly. The President is accused of sexual impropriety and New York Stock Exchange safeguards are triggered to avoid serious detriment to the stock market. Every leading analyst points to a correlation but none can explain the relationship in detail.

To say that this New Economy is simply about the creation of new market demands, the expansion of the market to global levels, or the shift from material goods to information is to see this revolution in short-sighted terms. Perhaps complexity theory is adequate to describe this as well. These things may be a part of the whole, but the whole itself is something entirely different. It's about change so fundamental that we cannot quantitatively express or measure it. It's about a change so thorough that it affects the way in which we view change. Canons of economy are obsolete before reaching the printer's press. What is a businessman to do? Well, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the corporate structure and practices of a company like Netscape. Small product development teams, decentralized management, and a less rigid environment all work together to create a model that makes it easy to shift focus from one project to another quickly as market demands necessitate. This is the model adopted by everyone from Microsoft to Saturn Cars in hopes that it will allow them the flexibility needed to react to the last minute demands of the anarchy of our modern economy. Will it work? Ultimately that is a question that history will have to answer. This is a revolution that hasn't ended yet. Perhaps we'll all know in a few years. The business world at large seems to have hope that a new model, like the Netscape one, will work and allow for a stable structure in the midst of a Post-Modern economic mess. Most answers to the problem of information control have thus far been teetering between outright censorship and capricious idiocy. Whatever the answer, we had better find it soon or we may be facing a global economic meltdown of behemoth proportions.

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The Shakespearean Dichotomy - Comedy And Tragedy In Measure For Measure

Posted on 2005-12-25 at 15:05

Abstract:
Concerning the interweaving of Comedy and Tragedy in Shakespeare's work, Measure For Measure. This paper explores the interpretative tensions associated with treating this as cheifly a tragedy or a comedy and argues that this work is something in between---a comedy of a tragedy.

Paper:
The two disparate concepts of comedy and tragedy worm their way into the daily lives of all living men and so it would seem important to note and explore this intimate and personal relationship. Drama, from its inception, has done just that. Interestingly however, once in a great while an individual arises from the literary crowd to speak candidly about these concepts in a manner which calls into question the very nature of humankind. Shakespeare has done this in his play Measure For Measure. This play skirts back and forth between comedy and tragedy in a way which forces the audience to take note and maybe raise an eyebrow at the notion that perchance these "disparate" concepts are not so disparate.

Since it will be shown that this play makes a socio-cultural statement about mankind, it seems appropriate to use terminology which more closely intimates the Shakespearean intent and thus the definitions of comedy, tragedy, and also irony need to be explored not in terms of their standard literary significance, but in their broader and more applicable social significance. Inevitably, when one speaks of comedy and tragedy in the same breath, irony as a conglomerate between the two is brought forth. As simple as it might be to accept the definition of irony as a special blend of the comic and the tragic, it does not appear to bear out. Comedy can be said to be a parody of that part of life which when experienced makes little sense yet when viewed from a transcendent perspective shows itself to be humorous. In Freudian terminology, comedy is simply civilized aggression. Tragedy, according to Reinhold Niebuhr in his work The Irony Of American History, is "constituted of conscious choices of evil for the sake of good" (Niebuhr vii). So that a king who sacrifices a son to save two daughters has been involved in a tragedy. It appears the largest difference between comedy and tragedy is that while comedy is created, tragedy just happens---it is perhaps simpler in that respect. Irony, though possessed of both the comic and tragic requires more than those two components to exist. Reinhold Niebuhr, in his work mentioned earlier, talks about irony: "A comic situation is proven to be an ironic one if a hidden relation is discovered in the incongruity" and irony "is differentiated from tragedy by the fact that the responsibility is related to an unconscious weakness rather then to a conscious resolution" (Neibuhr viii). Though irony may be quite illuminative of the human situation, it is illuminative in a wholly different manner than comedy and tragedy.

Measure For Measure is a comedy first and foremost. Most scenes found within its mercurial plot can be read with a comic edge---even though some of those scenes may, at heart, concern serious subject matter. Even the character list itself alludes to the underlying comic element in this half tragedy. Elbow, the constable, Froth, the foolish gentleman, and Pompey, the clown servant to Mistress Overdone all lend themselves to laughter by their mere pre-play description and names. Joseph H. Summers, in his work entitled Dreams Of Love And Power, discusses the comedy of the opening scene:

From this laudable beginning, the plot unfolds and envelopes its audience further and further into a delightfully comfortable mire of comic irresolution. Just as an audience thinks it understands the path and point of this play, another bend in the plot's road forces them to rethink their previous position. Though the comic element is evident throughout the play, often it is a cynical comedy. When Lucio describes Angelo to Isabella for the first time, his description foreshadows a cynical opposition to itself in the actual character of Angelo. He describes him as follows:

Such pious upbuilding of a character who proves unworthy of such unconditional praise as has been given him here and elsewhere in the play forms the underpinning of the primary comic tools Shakespeare uses in Measure For Measure: opposition and contradiction. Later this contradiction displays itself more subtly in the first conversation between Angelo and Isabella. In this scene, which at the outset appears more serious than comic, Shakespeare contradicts the feminine stereotype of Elizabethan culture, that of a near mindless servant to man, with the actuality of Isabella's presence which proves far more than a match to Angelo's lordly wit. Though he begins speaking to her in quick and dismissive tones---i.e., "Well; the matter?", "Maiden, no remedy.", etceteras---he soon finds her arguments to be greater reasoned and driven by a greater intellect than he'd perhaps anticipated. His reaction to her weighty arguments shows in his transition from short, almost condescending tones to long eloquent discourses in an attempt to rebuttal her well thought out objections:

That Angelo was neither prepared nor accustomed to explaining himself to a woman becomes evident later in the scene when he is reduced first to "Why do you put these saying upon me?" (Line 133) and second to nearly recanting his adamant death sentence. Though this scene is one which delves into a matter of grave importance, Shakespeare through the mastery of the more subtle comic elements has rendered a scene which is in fact pleasing to read and comic in that it ends in a manner entirely unexpected---that is, with the woman, Isabella, standing triumphant after a battle of wits against the acting lord of the domain. Other equally comic elements are found driving this curiously confusing plot. In Act IV, Scene iii, Lines 26 - 29, a prisoner by the name of Barnardine is approached by the stoically funny executioner, Abhorson and Pompey, the clown. Pompey makes the comment that Barardine "must be so good ... to rise, and be put to death," as though the prisoner should feel privileged to have been chosen for such an honor. Barnardine's response, however, brings even more comedy to an otherwise bothersome scene: "Away, you rogue, away! I am sleepy." Barnardine then contends, making surprisingly good sense, that he has caroused and reveled too much the night before to have an execution on this day. He argues that the execution should be postponed until such time as he can be better prepared! Interestingly, throughout the play executions are a common component. And though it would seem difficult to utilize such a grim topic in a comedy, it is done masterfully. Even at that moment when the play seems most likely to lose its comic element, when the Duke chooses to punish Angelo for his apparent crime against Claudio, the audience is set at ease by the very wording used in the death sentence. The Duke proclaims "An Angelo for Claudio, death for death ... We do condemn thee to the very same block where Claudio stoop'd to death" (Act V, Scene I, Lines 409-415). While at the outset this killing of a major character would seem to a catalyst for removing the comic element of the scene, the audience quickly, if not immediately, realizes that there is no such "block where Claudio stoop'd to death." Indeed, the very reference to a death which didn't occur sheds a comic light on the death which was just sentenced. The comic sensibilities of the audience are thus spared the shock of true death.

The fact that Measure For Measure is a comedy is little disputed, but what manner of comedy and to what end did Shakespeare drive the comic purpose becomes the prevalent question. Though it is a comedy, it is a comedy of tragedy. At the same time as Shakespeare provides this comedy of contradiction and tragedy, it seems he has laden it also with a burden of cynicism toward the human spirit. Gareth Lloyd Evans, in his work The Upstart Crow, addresses Shakespeare's apparent cynicism:

In Measure For Measure, he shows the audience a glimpse of themselves at their worst, yet he does so from the blunted and more entertainingly palatable edge of comedy. Certainly, the plot, if stripped of its comic element, becomes a tragedy of the worst order. Isabella, the virgin nun-to-be, discovers her brother to be arrested and sentenced to execution. She is asked to make a decision between her chastity, which she associates with godliness, and her brother's life. Angelo, the saint-turned-villain of Measure For Measure, puts the choice to her: "You must lay down the treasures of your body to this supposed, or else to let him suffer---What would you do?" (Act II, Scene iv, Lines 96-98). Her answer becomes the quintessential expression of the play's primary tragic element: "Better it were a brother died at once, than that sister, by redeeming him, should die for ever" (Act II, Scene iv, Lines 106-108). She makes her decision and in doing so has participated in a tragedy. She has made a conscious decision of evil for the sake of good. This tragedy is brought to a culmination when Isabella threatens to wreck Angelo's community standing by publicly relating the particulars of Angelo's indecent proposal. It is here, perhaps, when the play takes on its most serious tone, and here also where Measure For Measure seems most in danger of losing its comic quality to the sobriety of the situation. Here Angelo asks her:

This is a soberingly true statement not only for Isabella but for the audience as well, who lives in a real world consisting of such similar malcontents and crimes that they cannot help but empathize. The Duke, seeking to test the mettle of his underling, Angelo, finds himself disappointed in the worst way as Angelo abuses the power granted him in the Duke's name. The Duke is thus forced to make a decision also. He must decide between revealing himself and righting the wrongs done by his erstwhile replacement, hence disallowing Angelo any opportunity to reprove himself and his actions, or he may choose to allow Angelo to continue consequently risking the onslaught of further lordly abuses by Angelo. And yet it is in the light of these various and sundry tragedies that the story's plot is brought to fruition with the semi-tragic and yet wholly hilarious marriage solution. Certainly the comedy of this ending escapes no one, but its tragedy is vastly understated by the playwright. Issues of severe importance are brushed aside with the broom of convenient marriage. Worse yet, the marriages which suppose to resolve the problems beset by Angelo's crimes do nothing more than parlay those crimes into lifelong punishments for all involved. The Duke, though in the end married to Isabella, never recants his statement that " the dribbling dart of love can [never] pierce a complete bosom" like himself (Act I, Scene iii, Lines 2-3) and Isabella never reconciles to the audience of the play the issue of her married fate with her desired nunnish dreams. The other marriages, in a fashion similar to this one, seem to meet disconcerting problems upon examination. Evans' work, The Upstart Crow, touches on the issue of the tragedy and comedy of Measure For Measure:

To understand this tragic element best, one must fully understand the particulars of the plot's primary tragedy which is, as explained earlier, the attempted seduction of Isabella by Angelo. This is made a tragedy by Angelo's demand and it should be noted that this tragic difficulty is never resolved, but only diffused and rearranged.. The tragedy is found in that she wishes to keep her honor unstained and yet does not want her brother to die. As mentioned earlier, she chooses her honor over her brother, thereby beginning her part in the tragedy. In the end, she is married to the Duke, thus her virginity becomes forfeit, it is assumed, under the tenants of marriage and her brother's life is spared. Not only is this not what she wanted at all, but it is in fact the opposite of what she chose when given the option by Angelo! That is hardly what one might call a happy, or comic, ending.

Measure For Measure addresses many grave topics---some of which might easily lend themselves to tragedy---but rather than simply allowing these issues to occur and setting some character to the task of addressing them in a manner which more closely mimics real life, Shakespeare has chosen to present them in the form of comedy, thereby giving the audience the ability to sufficiently transcend the matter and perhaps thus understand it better. The comedy of Measure For Measure teaches the audience more about the nature of power, corruption, greed, and authority than any tragedy could hope to. Only through comedy could the audience stay fittingly unattached from the topic to truly analyze it without the subjective-interpretive quality of emotional attachment to the situation which is typically evoked by tragedy. While this play can be read to betray Shakespeare's lack of confidence in human nature, it seems as likely that Shakespeare was attacking the concept of piety and making a Christian point about mankind's natural desire versus spiritual duty. Measure For Measure shows the audience what can happen to man when ethics (in this case Christian ethics) are abandoned. To borrow a phrase from Wordsworth, it shows the audience "what man has made of man." Shakespeare leaves it to the audience to resolve the situation and for this reason alone this play cannot be considered a Christian allegory or parable. Considering the nature of the situation Shakespeare has produced, an easy resolution is virtually impossible. Shakespeare has, in this way, shown the tragedy that life is everyday in a world where human nature and self interest force themselves into the relational fray. What Shakespeare has done is to create a c