Not So Famous…

What’s that, you say?  You didn’t know it was Moron Day?  In all honesty, neither did I when I woke up this morning.  However, I have since been informed by several people independently that it is, in fact, Moron Day.  It’s not too late, everyone.  You too can get out and celebrate Moron Day with the rest of the world.  As a public service, I am posting some ways that I have observed people celebrating Moron Day TODAY.  Feel free to use any of these or make up your own:

1. Tailgate someone who is stuck with no way to pass behind a LONG line of cars.  This serves to make the person you’re tailgating very happy with you, and when you want to pass them, they’ll be MUCH more likely to let you pass.
2. Drive 35mph in a 55mph, double-yellow line zone.  This is not enough to commemorate Moron Day, however.  Try this finishing touch.  When you hit a 25mph zone, like near an elementary school with many children walking around, speed up to about 40mph.
3. When you come to a 4-way stop, just sit there like you’ve never seen one of those red and white octagonal things with the letters S-T-O-P on it. Just sit there, and only attempt to go when you see that you’ve annoyed everyone else at the intersection, because it’s quite obvious that you got to the stop sign many seconds before anyone else.  Just another happy Moron Day tradition!
4. Cross a country road on foot without looking both ways.  But don’t cross perpendicular to the broken yellow line in the middle of the road…heavens no!  That would not be very Moron Day-ish of you.  No, rather pick some sort of acute angle to the road.  I’ve found that 3-5 degrees ought to do the trick.  At a brisk walking pace, it should take you at least a minute to cross the road like that.  Country roads are better for this, because usually people travel 85mph or so on it.  Then, dive out of the way when you hear someone downshift behind you, like you didn’t know they were there.  That is a true-blue Moron Day activity.
5. Drive 40mph on a country road.  Keep in mind, this is only effective if there’s a lot of oncoming traffic.  This forces everyone behind you to celebrate Moron Day with you.  Call it, “Spreading Moron Day Cheer.”
6. Pull out in front of someone who is obviously approaching you at a fairly rapid rate.  Most effective when combined with #5 above.
7. Finally, and one of the more fun of the Moron Day traditions I observed people practicing today: If you have a stop sign, but cross traffic does not, go anyway.  Flip off the cross traffic when they nearly wreck into your car.  Scream at them when they look puzzled as to why you’re apparently disregarding traffic laws. For best effect, honk your horn while gesticulating wildly as they pass.

Remember, Moron Day can be fun for everyone. It’s not just for morons anymore…unless…naw, there couldn’t be THAT many morons out there, could there be?

Sorry, but I just had to post.  Better that I rant on my blog than at any family I might happen to come into contact with this day.

Kim and I happened to look around at home prices, as we’d like to eventually own a home in our lifetimes.  What I’m annoyed at is the ridiculous price of homes these days in California.  Now, this is not NEWS to me.  I know that the Golden State is completely stupid when it comes to home prices, but I had been reading that they’ve been dropping.  If they have been dropping, then they were even MORE stupid before!

Because when Kim and I were looking, we discovered that there’s NO WAY we can afford a house payment if we even expect her to be able to stay home, which is both of our goal.  I make almost twice what is considered to be the poverty level, and it’s an average income for this area, according to all statistics I could find. What this means is that more than half the people who want to live on a single income in this area can’t do it.  They can’t even make the payments!

Wages in this area aren’t going to rise much, and home prices are supposed to be “UBER LOW” right now, which means that if we want to own a home, we’d better go to a state that isn’t so unbelievably retarded when it comes to home prices.

Well, I guess that’s all I have to say right now, and sadly, I don’t feel much better.  So I guess I sinned for nothing.  Looks like I’d better go kick a dog or something.

I am reading a Barnes & Noble edition of this great work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I must say that I rather enjoy this particular edition.  I also should mention that I’ve never actually had the pleasure of reading any Holmes stories, sadly.  I’m glad I’m getting into him now, actually.  His character really intrigues me.
The B&N editions of books have quite a bit of explanatory material at the beginning of these works, both of the author of the books as well as the characters’ place(s) in history.  In my preliminary reading for this novel, I came across the various inspirations for Conan Doyle’s character, Sherlock Holmes, and was intrigued.

Conan Doyle’s primary inspiration for Sherlock Holmes was a man named Dr. Joseph Bell.  From Dr. Bell, Holmes gets his amazing deductive powers.  I read in these materials an account Conan Doyle relates of Dr. Bell’s interaction with a patient and his students.  This is what he said:

In one of his best cases he said to a civilian patient: ‘Well, my man, you’ve served in the army.’ ‘Aye, Sir.’ ‘Not long discharged?’ ‘No, Sir.’ ‘A Highland regiment?’ ‘Aye, Sir.’ ‘A non-com officer?’ ‘Aye, sir.’ ‘Stationed at Barbados?’ ‘Aye, sir.’ ‘You see, gentlemen,’ he would explain, ‘the man was a respectful man but did not remove his hat. They do not in the army, but he would have learned civilian ways had he been long discharged. He has an air of authority and he is obviously Scottish. As to Barbados, his complaint is Elephantiasis, which is West Indian, and not British.’ - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures, p. 330.

I loved every letter of this exchange of Dr. Bell’s, but it sounded familiar to me, somehow.  Almost as though I had heard Dr. Bell speak…in fact, I even had a particular gruff voice I was assigning to him in my head.  All of a sudden, I realized that Dr. Bell sounded eerily similar to Fox Network’s Dr. House of the show House, M.D.  In reading this, I realized that Dr. Joseph Bell could very well have been the inspiration for Dr. House.  I did some quick research and found that I was not far wrong, actually.  David Shore, creator of Dr. Gregory House, based House almost entirely upon Sherlock Holmes, and thus Dr. Joseph Bell is the inspiration for House.

You can read the connection on Wikipedia here. So far, I REALLY very much like the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Holmes could very well have been what I based my own intellectual pursuits on, had I actually known much of Holmes before now.  Holmes seeks to know about many different subjects, although we find that he has a very specific purpose in mind.  I, also, seek to know as much as I can about many different subjects, though I don’t have a specific goal in mind.  I just like to know things, and I dislike very intensely NOT knowing things.  :)

Anyway, if you’ve never read the Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I highly recommend getting your hands on some.  If you’ve never seen the show House, M.D, and you have a television set at home I also recommend that. I think it comes on Tuesdays at 9pm in California.  (Check local listings.)  Hugh Laurie does an excellent job…especially if you’ve seen Jeeves and Wooster.  Hugh Laurie played an excellent Bertie Wooster, I must say!  :)

Those of you who have read TheDow for any length of time know what a heavy emphasis I place on books. I love to read them, review them, re-read them, and possibly even re-re-read them! Equally important to me is good writing, for without the writing of good stories, where would we avid readers be? In the course of doing some work with a friend on an upcoming video game, I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Eric Rhea of Rhea Studios. Eric has been toiling away on a concept he has titled the Work. The first glimpse into the Work is the commercially available The Red Regiment: Foundations (buy it at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com). This book is an exceedingly interesting tale of swords, sorcery, and yes…an undead dragon. Keep an eye out at Not So Famous (and Amazon.com) for a review of this new book.

It’s not often that I get a chance to interview the author of a good new fantasy novel…strike that, make it “never”. At any rate, Eric and I have worked on a couple of projects, and I was honored to be granted this exclusive interview to promote the first in what I personally hope will be a series of books detailing the exploits of the Red Regiment.

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TheDow: Hi Eric. Thank you for joining me today.

Eric Rhea: I am honored to be here. Any chance I get to push words into people’s heads to grow the virus that is The Red Regiment … why, it just doesn’t get better than that!

TD: So, without getting too terribly off-topic, how does this project relate to Rhea Studios as a whole? Is this the pet-project of Rhea Studios, or is this just one of many balls you guys are juggling over there? Before we really start talking about TRR: Foundations, what is going on at Rhea Studios?

ER: The singular purpose of the Studio is to manifest the Work. The Work is a series of Arcs that carry forward a setting that mixes in elements and stories from people that I have met over many years. You might say it’s a kind of story telling tradition that not many people are aware of.

To that end, TRR is one of a handful of projects that the Studio is working on that are all components of what is known as the Work. We call it so many things that I settled on the Work just for lack of any other way to describe it. What am I doing all day?

“Working on the Work.”

You’d think me insane, if the phrase was not so terribly poetic.

Anyway, there are three things that the Studio is working on right now. First is the TRR series. Then, we have our game project. This game (http://www.wraiththegame.com) takes place in Arc 1, whereas TRR takes place in Arc 3. The third thing we do at the Studio is creative consulting and education. What we do is work with folks who are interested in learning tools of the trade to help promote the Work. It’s been a decade long affair working on this, but the Studio concept is fairly new. We celebrated our first successful year of operation at the ring of the New Year.

TD: The Arc concept is a very interesting one. How did you choose the
numbering scheme from Arc 1 through 3? Are they chronologically in order
from 1 to 3, or were they chosen for another reason?

ER: The time-based chronology holds true, which is a fancy way of saying that time moves in an expected fashion from Arc 1 through to Arc 3 in the sense that a character born in Arc 1 will become much older by Arc 2. The “arc” concept is relatively new, being born in late spring of last year when I sat with going through all these totes and binders trying to bring order to the chaos. Out of this, I created an Arc, which is simply an Act but filled with more information, events, and happenings.

Lastly, the Arc resolved one of the curious situations with the Work in that it enabled me to group storylines thematically. Arc 1 has a certain theme which evolves into Arc 2. Era is an okay word to use here, but whenever I see the word Era used in the context of fictional worlds these days I see a lot of vacuum in the sense that an author eludes to a potential, mythical era that might have existed. In the Work, stuff is already done. I just need the magic combination of time and resources to complete it. Consequently, the word ‘Arc’ conveys not only the idea of an ‘Act’, but also an ‘Ark’, which is intentional.

Do I have eras in the sense that I use the word?

Of course! :)

TD: So, how long have you been thinking and dreaming of bringing this particular project to fruition? Has this been a decade in the making? More?

ER: The concept of the Work began in 1992. I took over the walls of a quaint home that I was living in at the time and drew out what would become the basis of the much more ambitious epic that I would begin working on in 1994. It was through the help of many, many people over the years that helped to share and shape the story of what was to come. Then, in late 2005, when facing the prospect of two potential futures, I chose to make the Work a reality. I leveraged my entrepreneurial background as the vehicle to carry the Work forward and so far, everything is working according to Plan.

If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here today.

That all said, I still continue to hold onto these acceptance letters for various publishing houses just the same. One can never be to sure about running a business. Or the dead. One can never be too sure about them.

Something wily about those folk living six feet under. Too quiet. That’s always the first sign of trouble. They’re down there plotting something big. Real big.

TD: Especially dragons and wizards, methinks! One of this novel’s greatest strengths is something that I feel is quite possibly the most important skill a writer can develop, and that is creating memorable characters. As a writer, do you see bits of yourself in each of the characters, or do you identify strongly with one or two, with the rest being standard archetypes (comic relief, sidekick, etc.) How did you go about creating these characters?

ER: In a pragmatic business sense, I put them to my demographic market through the simple act of sharing the story with them. So, through this I evaluated a cast of thousands. The ones that people remembered, or would ask questions about, or would draw up fan art for … why, those were the ones I kept as the means to carry the principle story forward.

Originating character ideas comes from many different places, not the least of which is writing them. Interestingly, there are several characters persisting since 1996. Included in that bag of characters are the Four of Legend, who we meet in The Red Regiment: Rescue.

Also, while many married, male authors would like to pretend their wives do not exist, mine does and she plays a significant and important role in both the Studio and in the manifestation of the Work. Understandably, she likes to keep out of the spotlight. So this one fleeting mention about the mysterious Wife is all my fans will see in this interview.

The fan favorites include Gregory Spade, Thisbe of Montague, and the Four of Legend. Gregory Spade is based on an idea given to me by Justin Rogers for a character that was the antithetical wizard. Thisbe originated out of Rebecca Rossiter who had an idea for a character with a twisted fascination for a particular color. The Four of Legend were born out of ideas from Nick Savini, Kevin Carmany, Joe Smith, and Brad Michaels. All of the characters were then contributed to by just a grand list of people over the years, in nearly every state in the continental stretch bound by I80 and various three inch binders that I carry with me as I travel.

TD: Gregory Spade is definitely my favorite character.  You just never know what he’ll come up with at any given time. Is there a great deal of background and history that you had to write before even coming to this novel? Is there a chance that you’ll release prequels, or will we learn the pertinent details in subsequent books?

ER: TRR:Foundations takes place in Arc 3 of the Work. The Work is at present two very large totes of writing, most of which is illegible since it is in my short hand. There are two jokes about bad writing, both of which involve my illegible short hand. The important thing I would like to convey about the stories, however, is that my intent by creating the Studio is to leverage it to tell these stories in formats that the media will allow. Arc 1 of the Work is titled Wraith and we are telling those stories through the format of a video game. Arc 3 of the work is The Red Regiment, which is the easiest point for me to write and also the easiest point, as I found over the years, for people to get into the series and whose story is told through the media of a book. One day I would like to do Arc 2, which is The Great War. However, I require resources that I do not yet have to accomplish that. One day and in time, I shall.

Shall there be books for all the Arcs? So long as I am living and of sane mind, there will be such attempts to do so. The Arcs are done. The books are not. My mind? Still mostly here, so looks like you’ll be hearing from and reading me again.

TD: The reason I asked the last question is that when reading this novel, I got the same sense I got with the Weis and Hickman Dragonlance novels. When you meet Greg and the others, you get the sense that much has already taken place, and it lends a sense of history to TRR: Foundations that you don’t get with “moment in time” novels. Were you going for something like that with this work?

ER: You nailed one of several reasons why I chose the third Arc to begin from. You’re entering a setting that was long established and so when you’re inside this world and exploring it, you don’t have to worry that if you look too deeply that you’ll find there’s a little gnome sitting behind the curtain controlling everything. I experienced that with a popular fiction author I was reading once. While the more poetic authors are quite able to whip up a fantasy story out of thin air, as a reader, you don’t want to know that. You want the book to be a bit more. That, incidentally, is how I approached it.

TD: That question lends itself neatly to your influences. I don’t know for sure, but I detected a hint of Weis and Hickman with the Dragonlance Trilogy for a continuation of an already elapsed legend. Many of Greg’s lines reminded me much of Douglas Adams’ writing. It really is part of the honor of being an author to pay homage to those greats who have come before us. So, who really influenced you in your formative years, and who have you continued to read up to today, fiction or nonfiction?

ER: When I set out to learn this whole writing thing, I was long a reader of fiction writing and so cemented this curious opinion about what mattered in writing was the dialog. After a certain number of fantasy books all describing the rolling grasslands of some other world, I began to roll my eyes. The dialog, however, always captured me in ways that I could not begin to describe for fear of giving this interview an ‘R’ rating. You may or many not find it surprising to know that my favored top three writers are Homer, Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, and Plato. That’s four, not three. Ah well.

TD: What was the first fantasy novel or series you remember reading, and what about it drew you to find more fantasy?

ER: There were three moments in my life where I read a book and went, “Wow, that affected me in some strange, sensible way.” So here goes.

One is a book whose author put forward this curious idea that a child could control a massive army in a struggle for the fate of humanity. Orson Card delivered with Ender’s Game in a way that just blew me away and was my first exposure to science fiction beyond what was shown on the television.

The boy’s conflict was a just war, as I understand it.

While in college it was a whim that took me into a course in political philosophy, which covered political philosophy from the Ancient Greeks on up to Augustine. Of those works, I will say that Plato opened up both the reason and the method for why I prefer dialog over expository prose: it gets inside the head and sticks there like bubble gum to hair.

Lastly, I spent my American share of time in front of the glow of television. You’ll find just as many influences in my writing from ideas presented in the movie theatre and on the TV. You’ll find arrangements based on inspiration from folks like George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg to whimsical stuff from folks like Seth MacFarlane, Blue Collar Comedy, and a little bit of everything in between. The television is a book. It gets inside your head in a similar way.

Admittedly, a book is a bit lighter to carry around with you than a 42” television.

TD: I wouldn’t mind having one of those to begin with! Are there other genres of escape that you enjoy?

ER: Don’t let it get around that I enjoy watching giant robots fight each other over rights to the universe. Something about that simple concept just touches me in a way that will probably be outlawed in the not so distant future.

TD: And I believe there’s more than meets the eye to that answer. How do you come up with a story like what you have begun in TRR: Foundations? Was there a moment in time that you can point to where you had the germ of the story created, and knew you could turn this into a series? Where did it all come from?

ER: The overall Arc and Master Work evolve as I come into new experiences and meet new, friendly faces. The seed starts out in a well lit coffee shop, where I am able to keep a lazy eye on the flow of people going from here to there, with rhyme and purpose.

Interestingly, it was a Russian real estate agent who had been living in the States for a few years who told me that I needed to quit making money and start making the stories I was telling him; something that he could buy in a book store.

At the time, I thought he was insane.

He told me that anyone could make money, but not anyone could make interesting places.

Three years later here I am, sitting here with you. Funny how things work out.

As for turning the third Arc into a series, it happened quite easily. I had a great deal of material at my disposal for the Arc itself, I took a small sliver of that and converted it into a form that would be intelligible to a wider range of people.

TD: Can you tell us about the world you have created with TRR: Foundations? What are the major political factions of the world, and are there any events that have really shaped the history of the world? (Without giving too much away, of course.)

ER: There are three groups of consequence at this stage. First, we have the Sudinese who live near the An’Kurakians just north of Lo’Ratio beyond the Cliffs. Second, we have Underwood. Underwood is an aggregation of many small towns and villages and so is recognized as a city-state, for those familiar with the concept. These two sides have held a cold war with one another for a hundred years with geography being the sole barrier to further confrontation. The undercurrents between these groups are the plots of the river city Azile, Port Galan, and the Village Nar. These are a handful of significant social politics that get mentioned here and there in the first book, but as we continue to explore the world we’ll come to know these places quite well.

An important note is that I apply a theory to the politic of the world where each factional side has their own interpretation of the history. So while what I told you is true, it is only true from the perspective of the people of Ghen, who have had their own issues with the nearby areas. It’s a subtle detail in plotting this project that adds a great deal of interesting dimension and several volumes of notes, late hours, and a lot of coffee.

I repeat: a lot of coffee.

TD: Ah, an element of reality to the fantasy. The history books are written by the governments under which you live, I guess. I asked earlier about the characters of TRR, and wondered how you came up with them. I wonder the same thing about the cities and places of your world. Are there real-world cities and places that you based some of your fictional settings on?

ER: TRR locations are built around real and fictional places depending on which village, town or major city settlement we’re talking about. The city of Underwood grew out of my experiences in Omaha, Nebraska and Chicago, Illinois, although the initial concept of the city is based on the city of Lafayette, Indiana. The town of Ghen is based on Iowa City, Iowa. The Village of Nar can be found in Florida and the seedier district of Underwood is less Omaha and Chicago and more New Orleans.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of very real world geography built into TRR and the overall Work. I’d mention a fictional city or two, but I don’t want to go to jail for mentioning the author or the place. While I’m sure the free time from distractions would serve the project well, the environment of cold concrete, iron bars, and loud, angry men wouldn’t be very conducive to the writing of engaging dialog.

TD: About the future of The Red Regiment: How many books do you foresee this series being? And what is your estimated release schedule? Sounds like an ambitious question, I know, but how many of us have waited and waited for an epic series to finish? Just wondering about your future plans for the series, and how often can we expect these books?

ER: George R. R. Martin is one of the more infamous authors when it comes to quality, shock value, and penning epics that one hopes to get finished in the author’s lifetime. The future of The Red Regiment is a bright one, but with purpose. Once the Arc is complete, the books will be done and I will at that time be free to move on to the next part of the Plan. The release schedule of these books, quantity, and when will all be decided by a mix of marketing, the editors, and the publisher. So, as you see, it is quite out of my hands at the moment.

TD: I am one of those people waiting for George R. R. Martin to finish. Robert Jordan is another who is notoriously tardy in his release schedule. When you come to the end of TRR: Foundations, it’s obvious that this book was never meant to stand alone. The demand this cliffhanger-style ending has generated has sort of even surprised you, I understand. Was this always the plan, or did you realize in the middle of writing it that you wouldn’t be able to get it all in one book?

ER: While writing the book, I took a fifty page treatment from the Arc itself and began expanding it. Then, when the book was rearing an ugly three hundred page monster, I cut it in half, again. The cuts were made because a book is something beyond the story that it contains that I have to place in context here. Foremost, a book is a product and so there was a lot of decision making on my part, and power to do so thanks to my Studio, to decide on things such as length, cover artwork, format of the presentation and even the paper size. Every detail in the book went through product testing with a very dedicated and wonderful group of people who helped to give me feedback over the course of well over a year.

As I wrote the story, I developed the product of the book because I knew that it needed to be something that could achieve much more than being just an interesting story: it had to be a passport into another world. So the artists and everyone with the Studio took a lot of care into crafting such a thing with our limited, back seat budget.

TD: How long have you been writing, and Is this the first book that’s made it to print?

ER: I’ve won various non-interesting awards for writing for many years and have several items in print beyond this series. Prior to entrepreneurship, I wrote several technical articles, short stories for newspapers, as well as articles for various game magazines. This is all to say that I wasn’t foreign with the writing and publication process.

The nature of this beast is definitely unlike anything I’ve ever done before.

You just don’t pen an epic without having done your years of homework, earned your dues, and met with hundreds of people to validate your thinking.

TD: Do you have any plans to release anything you’ve written in the past, or are there any other ideas you’ve been working on that you’d like to talk about? Anything in other genres?

ER: Thanks Chris. I would like to mention the Wraith project. The website for this project is www.wraiththegame.com. This video game is an interpretation of Arc 1 of the Master Work and is an adventurous and bold move by many talented people to bring together an online game. For an independent game company to produce this title, why, it really is quite amazing and I’m consistently amazed by the range of expertise people involved demonstrate to bring the idea to fruition.

TD: Anyone who reads this blog knows that they can expect something of a reference to morality or spirituality in it. Tolkien’s values influenced every aspect of his work to where he even had very stringent rules to which his storytelling had to conform regarding the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. How influential is your morality or spirituality to your work? What are your thoughts concerning morality in literature? Is a clearly defined boundary between good an evil a good policy, or do you find that a certain amount of ambiguity is to be desired to keep readers thinking?

ER: I spent several years studying philosophy and religion. The tones are present, but this is one of those areas that I have learned best to not comment on.

I should note that a significant factor for my pursuit of the Work is a belief in God and facing my own untimely demise on three occasions in a single year. After the third time, I got the message. Thankfully, I’m not six feet under right now. While I’m sure the bingo parlor in the afterlife is quite nice, I’m just not ready for it.

TD: The Red Regiment: Foundations is a novel that surpassed my expectations. With a new fantasy novel, one never knows what to expect. I enjoyed the characters immensely, as I said, but I think one of the best things about these characters is their capacity for humor. In some places I actually laughed out loud, which I always enjoy. Is this lighthearted tone what we can expect for the rest of the series, or as things get more serious, will the overall feel get darker and more ominous?

ER: The Red Regiment and our other series will be places to escape into, enjoy and explore. There are a many books that take on the serious tone of the Perfect Epic. Buggar that! Open our books and get sucked into a world that’s just darn interesting. What more would you want?

TD: Well, Eric, you have written an excellent work. As I said earlier, I will be reviewing this novel on this blog, but I can comfortably say here that I am looking forward to the continuation of this saga.

ER: Thanks, Chris. As I told a reader who called me last weekend, the next book will be done just as soon as we understand how to handle what’s happening with the first one!

Other News:

Right now, the sequel to The Red Regiment: Foundations is going through the second phase edit, so with a little luck and a little blessing from high above, we’ll be out in the market by summer.

Today, we were sitting with some family talking about her job.  In the course of this conversation, I found out some interesting things about my wife’s job.

She is a child psychologist, etiquette instructor, behavioral analyst, physician’s assistant, Bible professor, daycare professional, and a family therapist.  What does she do?  Oh yeah, she’s an elementary school teacher, so I’m sure somewhere among her other duties, she finds time to actually teach something.

Now, I’m not knocking this particular school, nor am I knocking particular parents.  I don’t know what their individual situations are, etc.  However, I do have a problem with my wife being saddled with all the responsibilities I listed above, and then being expected to teach these children, while all the time dodging parents’ accusations about her challenging the students too much, not challenging the students enough, being too hard on their discipline, being too lax on their discipline, being a wonderful teacher who makes learning fun, and being a horrible teacher who makes learning boring. All of this in one class…

What are the actual responsibilities of being a teacher?  More to the point, what SHOULD they be? I’m sure there are parents out there who are wondering why she has to do all these things.  They know their kids behave well, because they’re involved in their kids’ lives.  These are not the parents I have a problem with.  My wife has a couple mothers of kids’ in her class that really help out with both their own children as well as the others.  My wife is lucky to have these mothers there, because without them, there is no way that she would be able to manage the class.  You see, there are parents out there who don’t bother to teach their children etiquette.  It’s rude to talk when others are talking. Don’t take others’ things.  Don’t poke your neighbor in the eye. When children are exhibiting these behaviors, my wife can’t teach class.  No one is paying attention because Little Jonny just pulled on Little Suzy’s hair, and laughter ensues.  My wife then has to switch roles, teaching the children to respect others’ property and person. While she’s doing this very individual activity, she can’t teach! She has to get past the behavioral problems so that she can move on to teaching while the class is behaving as they ought.

At any rate, my wife manages this class admirably.  I don’t think I would be able to take care of it all without a couple swats on the bottom. (Yes, that’s required sometimes, and no, it’s not child abuse…I wouldn’t actually swat another parents’ child, even if they should.  This is why I am not a teacher.)

So yes, I’m proud of her.

I’m not thinking of anyone specifically here…well, more precisely, I’m not thinking of anyone I know reads this blog specifically.

Recently, I’ve done some thinking about people who claim that they use the Bible for guidance on general issues, or that the Bible is a very good book, and they agree with it. Yet in their day-to-day actions, they live completely contrary to the Word of God. I’ve been getting somewhat annoyed lately about it all, so this post is sort of an amalgamation of my thoughts on this matter.

First off, don’t say this unless you’ve spent any amount of time reading the Bible. Some of these same people think that “Judge not lest ye be judged” is one of the 10 commandments. Some people think “Judge not lest ye be judged” means that no one can tell them that their actions are wrong. THAT is not what that verse is referring to, people. We are to call sin what it is…straight up. And that is not one of the 10 commandments…read the Bible.

People who say they like the Bible for guidance and then live contrary to it show that they may look to what they THINK the bible teaches, but prove they know nothing of what the Bible actually teaches.

Read the Word of God…The Bible is silent on very few issues, and simply taking the ones you like and following those isn’t going to get you to heaven. In fact, even following MOST of what the Bible teaches isn’t going to get you to heaven. And there’s no way you’re going to follow it ALL, so apart from the atoning work of Christ, you’re screwed.

Salvation is not based on what you can do for God, so if you tell me you’re basically a good person, I still hear, “I’ve sinned, and therefore can’t make it into heaven on my own steam.” because that’s what the Bible teaches. Your righteousness is as filthy rags…you can do nothing for the Lord that can effect your own salvation. You must trust in Christ as your Lord and Savior, and at that point, you will continue to become more like Christ. However, you are justified by His perfection…not your own.

However, if you say that you can then just go on sinning, and God will continue to forgive you, you show that you do not have the mind of Christ. You are using the Christian liberty taught in the Word of God as an occasion to sin. You are demonstrating that you are not, in fact, saved at all. In that case, the Lord WON’T forgive you. Think about this, the Lord Christ said that on the last day, there will be people who think they’re saved, but really aren’t. People who taught in the name of Christ….people who performed miracles in His name, but when they get to the last day, they are shown to be unsaved when Christ says “I never knew you.”

This is why we are told in Philippians to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

However, remember that I am not advocating a salvation based upon works. Your works do not earn your salvation…they prove your salvation…they demonstrate your salvation. What works are these? Obeying the Lord. He who heard the words of Christ and put them into practice is like the wise man who built his house upon the rock. The foundation of our Christianity is obedience to the Word of God.

So if you think you look to the Bible for guidance, you’d better know what that Bible says.

Tonight, Gabe and I went to a festival called Hops and Bangers. It was a great festival, where a LOT of people got together, drank a lot of beers, and ate a lot of sausage. A true MAN festival if ever there was one.

Anyway, Gabe and I tried many different kinds of beer, and the clear winner of the evening is…

He’brew Messiah Bold. Now, the name itself is enough to make me wary. Gabe agreed that we’ve always steered clear of the He’brew beers because they always seemed…gimmicky. The Messiah Bold was a dark brown ale that was amazingly awesome! If you get a chance to try it, I highly recommend it.

There were plenty of good beers, but many of them I had already had. Another winner for me was the Mammoth Pale Ale, which was put through an infusor with fresh hops and wood chips. I would rate ths Best of Show, except that you can’t get this anywhere. The infusor made it a one-of-a-kind, which was a great experience. Overall, I’d have to rate the He’brew Messiah B0ld as the best new beer there. :)

One day, completely out of the blue, my cousin contacted me through MySpace.  Now, I think I’ve mentioned on here that I totally hate MySpace for many different reasons.  No offense to anyone who might really like it, but every time I have to go on there, I get annoyed.  :)  I love the people with whom I have been able to keep in touch, and I loved it when Aaron got a hold of me through it, but I still hate it.  I still toy daily with cancelling my account, etc.  But that is neither here nor there.

Aaron and I met somewhere between 1st and 3rd grade at Small World Christian Elementary.  He quickly became a close friend of mine, and we always talked about how cool it would be if we were cousins.  At this particular school, when class was over, you would go on the playground (or in the gym if it was raining) and just play until they announced over the louspeaker “Chris and Erica Dow, time to go home.  Chris and Erica Dow, time to go home.”  You would then go to the office, where your parents would be waiting to take you home.

One day, we were playing on the playground as usual, when they announced, “Chris and Erica Dow, time to go home.  Aaron and Leah Codoni, time to go home.”  We were excited as each of us would get to meet each others’ parents at last.  When we got up to the office, our parents were talking like old friends, and we were somewhat baffled.  We were informed at that time that we were cousins, at which time we acted like idiot kids, running around the playground, coatroom, etc., shouting at the top of our lungs…as kids are wont to do.

Anyway, we spent a great deal of time together for many years thereafter.  We each had our own sets of friends, but we loved going over to each others’ houses, and we often spent the night there, just staying up all night and being goofy.  I’ve often said that I picked up my sense of humor from my dad, but recently, I’ve been reminded that much of my sense of humor and whatever creativity I posess, including my storytelling style, was developed with Aaron.  Together we filmed movies, music videos, and created radio shows.  We killed each other countless times playing guns (and we’re not homicidal maniacs…imagine that!)  We played many video games.  We tied his brother to a chair.  (Really, we did.  He was being annoying.  And apparently, he still remembers that and tells it frequently.  LOL.)  Our collective childhood was pretty screwed up, looking back. It’s not the experience I want to provide to my kids, that is for sure.  But we survived, a little worse for wear.

At the beginning of my Christian walk, I had met a girl named Jennifer, who is Gabe’s sister.  I introduced Aaron to Gabe’s family, and we often spent entire Sundays together, just hanging out.  Aaron and I got less close as the relationship with Jennifer took precedence in my life.  Aaron started hanging out with another mutual friend, and then as my relationship with Jennifer disintegrated, I left the church.  Around the same time, Aaron and Chris (the mutual friend) sort of went their own ways as well, and I don’t think I saw Aaron much after that, if at all.  That was around 10 years ago or so.

Anyway, to make a long story boring, after Aaron contacted me we talked about getting together to hang out. I invited him over to my house along with Gabe, and we just talked late into the night about old times, newer times, etc.  He remembers stuff about our childhood that I don’t, and I remembered stuff that he doesn’t…but there were some stories that we were able to remind each other about, and there was MUCH laughter.  He told me a story about a tarantula in his truck that will give me the jeebs for YEARS to come, I think.  (shudder)  I told him stories about me and spiders wherein I screamed like a little girl.  As I said…there was much laughter.

In hanging out with Aaron, I realized where my storytelling style was formed.  I remembered much of how much we laughed when we were growing up.  I remembered that we helped keep each other comfortably insane enough to survive in a world of drugs, alcohol, and being left alone for days at a time.  Gabe laughed at stories that I hadn’t yet told him, and Aaron laughed at stories that I pulled out of the mist of long ago memory.  It was the most fun I have had in a long time, and it felt so good to hang out with the person in the world outside my immediate family who has known me the longest.

Aaron has returned from a life of bad stuff to the Lord.  The Lord drew him back to Himself, and His Holy Spirit has helped him to stay there.  It really is awesome to see the Lord working in someone’s life.  I heard through my sister some of the things Aaron was going through, and I prayed for him, but I didn’t know if I could renew the friendship back then.  I didn’t know if I could successfully start hanging out with him again when he was in the middle of some bad stuff.  He would have resented me, and he would have chosen his friends over me every time.  Looking back, the Lord was at work in Aaron’s life, keeping him from dying when everything he did should have killed him.  Eventually drawing Aaron back to Himself, after which Aaron and I can renew a friendship without resentment.  Where Aaron can come to Bible study, knowing that we’ll always welcome him.

The Lord is wonderful, and I thank Him for the blast we had last night.  Here’s to many more to come!  (clink!)

When I said that some people apparently don’t consider Jesus to be the sinless sacrifice that the Bible explains that he was, I was speaking specifically of their beliefs concerning alcohol.

First off, we know that Jesus drank wine. There is no indication that this wine was non-alcoholic, and in fact, this makes no sense from a scientific standpoint. The only way the drink would keep in the hot climate of the Middle-East would be if there were some sort of preservatives in it. The only preservative that could possibly have been in grape juice would have been alcohol. In fact, the technology to create non-alcoholic wine is quite recent, so they couldn’t have made non-alcoholic wine if they had wanted to.

Jesus was not stingy on the didactic nature of His ministry. (Teaching) If something was wrong, He stepped up and said so, no matter who was listening! If drinking alcohol was wrong, there is no doubt that He would have stood against it, no matter what the consequences.

Many have said that wine was the only safe beverage for them to drink then. That Jesus endured it as a necessary evil. I highly doubt this as well. Jesus counseled people that if their eye caused them to sin, they should gouge it out to avoid sin. If wine is sinful, then God does not permit it…there are no sins of convenience. Believing that Jesus endured a sin for even health reasons shows that we don’t really understand the horrific nature of sin to the Lord, and brings up a far more dangerous point.

If Jesus committed a sin in drinking wine (as well as commending others to drink it in the Lord’s Supper), then He cannot be the sinless sacrifice, and His death on the Cross was completely worthless. Christ’s life, death and resurrection is entirely dependent upon Him living the sinless life. He was to be the spotless Lamb of God. If wine is a sin, then Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross was worthless, and the Jews were right to condemn Him. God cannot sin….Jesus did not sin…I would be wary of condemning something that Jesus obviously did. His opening miracle, after all, was changing water into wine. Not only did He choose wine rather than purify whatever water might have been unclean, He made GOOD wine. The master of the house thought the Lord was mad for bringing out the good stuff when everyone was already too drunk to enjoy it.

Furthermore, the creation of wine encouraged everyone around to continue drinking wine. Those who eventually discovered Who Christ was could have remembered that miracle, and would have made the same leap of logic that I have here. Drinking win cannot be wrong, because Christ promoted it at that party by bringing more when it ran out.

If Christ had created non-alcoholic wine, what better place than a drunken party for a didactic interlude about how He would not contribute to their sin by making more wine. Rather, He would have created good, clean water, and told them, “Go and sin no more.”

Many Christians ask what drinking in a bar or otherwise does to your witness.  I ask, what witness do you think you have if you do not spend time with the ungodly preaching the Word.  When my buddy and I used to go have a big glass of pear cider, we’d discuss theology, and nearly every time, we’d attract the attention of those around us who wondered how a Christian could enjoy eating and drinking with friends in a sports bar.  I don’t know what happened to any of those people, but they were granted light by encountering us and our discussions of the Bible over a burger and beer.  The Lord has used that in the past, and He will again.  I’ve found that it’s Christians who look down on other Christians in a bar…not non-Christians. Non-Christians often feel as though Christians look down on them, and in that aloof way, Christians destroy their own witness without having even stepped into a bar.  However, I remind you that nothing you do can destroy the chance of salvation for another person.  The work of salvation is from beginning to end the work of the Lord, and not you.  The Lord is sovereign in whom He condemns and whom He has chosen for salvation, and your works or lack of works has nothing to do with that.  As little tiny men, we cannot wreck the plan of God, and to think that we have that power is yet another problem in modern theology.

No, people…you cannot escape the fact that drinking alcohol is perfectly fine…within limits, of course. There are limits to everything in this life. Do not be a glutton…do not drink to drunkenness. Enjoy sex within the holy bounds of marriage, but not outside of it, etc. Nothing should take mastery over you, and that includes all manner of activites that are perfectly fine in moderation. “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” In Galatians 5, Paul opens his new section with this, and then goes on to talk about the legalism of circumcision.  Legalism is the yoke of slavery, and we are not to submit to it.

Now, if a Christian doesn’t want to drink, of his own will, then I have no problem with that.  If I know that a Christian doesn’t want to drink, I won’t ask him to.  But he needs to know that I am free to drink, because Christ has permitted it.  I will not submit to a yoke of slavery.  If he comes to my house and happens to notice my beer bottle collection, he cannot condemn me because I practice the freedom of Christ.  Likewise, I shall not condemn him for his lack of freedom in this area.  However, I will contend earnestly for the Truth, and that is that Christ IS the sinless sacrifice, and His drinking of wine was not, therefore, a sin.

Many Christians these days indicate that we should not drink any form of alcohol as Christians. They appear to believe that either Jesus was not the sinless sacrifice that the Bible claims He was, or else, He somehow managed to get His hands on non-alcoholic wine, which didn’t exist.

An interesting point that I considered this morning while listening to Alistair Begg was that when the apostles were speaking in tongues, (actual languages…not babbling incoherently, people) some of those gathered thought that the apostles were drunk. Peter stood up and said, “These men are not drunk.” Why aren’t they drunk? Because they didn’t drink wine? No, they very well COULD have been drunk on the wine they were drinking. Because the wine they drank did not produce the effect of drunkenness? No, the wine they drank could have produced that effect. No, the reason these men were not drunk was because it was too early in the day for them to be drinking at all. THAT is what Peter said.

Consider that.