Another of the books on tape I’ve borrowed from the library to while away the long commute, The Seventh Scroll is a servicable Egyptian tomb raiding story. Though neither the plot or characters are particularly remarkable, they manage to be a little bit more than cardboard stereotypes.

The story centers around the discovery of a set of scrolls, the seventh of which details the previously unknown location of one of Egypt’s richest pharaohs. As news of the discovery gets around, a race to find the tomb ensues among the scientists and scoundrels who find the prospect of a previously undiscovered treasure hoard intriguing.

Altogether, an ok read if you find yourself trapped in a stairwell with nothing to do, but not particularly worth seeking out unless you’ve exhausted your other options.

This past weekend, I spent 3 days in Muscatine, Iowa where Steve Johnson and I had the opportunity to play a concert for the church where Steve’s friend Paul Rekward serves as the Pastor of Christian Education. The trip was a good one, though exhausting enough that I’m glad to be home once more.

The flight up was fairly uneventful. The curse of the travel gods rested lightly on my shoulders, and the only unusual happenings were the fire trucks and police vans on the tarmac at O’Hare, and the abrupt abort of our landing due to the fact that, as the captian told us, “one of the lights that shouldn’t be on was on.” Hmmm. Oh, yes, and the baggage monkeys threw my guitar around enough to do in the battery terminals I’d recently resoldered, the dastards.

Upon our arrival, Paul and his wife Christie made us very welcome, treating us to chicken fried steak (in Iowa!). Paul and Steve and I then went down to the church to check what equipment was available and what we’d need to rent. After getting all of that squared away, we drove around Muscatine to see the sights, visit with some of the local storekeepers, and promote the concert a bit. One of the most distinctive aspects of that time owed to the grain processing plant that was upwind from town that caused my nose to wrinkle as my nostrils were repeatedly assailed by the distinctive odor of vegemite.

On Sunday morning, we joined in to help with the worship service, playing several tunes before it officially began, and joining forces with the choir and organist for Be Thou My Vision, the opening hymn. (Mental note: choir, guitar, pennywistle, and pipe organ is not necessarily the optimal ensemble for this particular hymn.) We then went down to Children’s Church, for which Paul was responsible, and played and sang with the great lot of kids they had there.

After a quick lunch, we came back and set up everything for the afternoon’s concert. Dan, a local music fan, had very generously offered to tape the concert and put together a video for us, which he would air in a few weeks at the public access cable station where he worked. We helped him get his gear set up and chatted with him about the local music scene for a while, in the process learning a lot about the area and its history.

Finally, the concert began. It was a little off-putting for us, being used to playing in coffee shops where there are lots of distractions, to have the undivided attention of a few hundred people, but Steve, as our dynamic front man, rose to the occassion admirably. It’s a funny thing, but I don’t get stage fright as long as I don’t have to be the person doing the talking. If I can sit quietly, play my instruments, and do some singing, I’m clam-happy.

The concert went well, though I was happier with the front half than with the second set. We got a lot of enthusiastic feedback from several of the church members, and sold a good number of Steve’s CD’s. After helping Dan tear down his gear, we adjourned to the Rekward’s place once more to enjoy another bit of Iowan culture: a Taco Pizza from Happy Joe’s. I’ve had other taco pizzas, but this one easily topped them all, with crumbled taco shells, lettuce, and little packets of taco sauce all included. Yummy. We then partied until the wee hours. (The previous was a code to salve my ego. Translation key: “partied” = “watched Godzilla 2000 on pay per view”; “the wee hours” = “9:15pm”.)

On Monday, we returned our borrowed gear and went poking around Muscatine some more. One of the interesting stops was the dam and lock, where barge traffic is raised and lowered to the different levels of the Mississippi river. There are evidently 29 of these dams and locks along the river’s length, creating a liquid stairway across the country. Since the areas near these dams are one of the few areas of the river that don’t freeze up during the winter, great droves of fish-eating bald eagles tend to congregate nearby during the winter. Though there were fewer than usual this year, we were still able to pick out a number of the majestic birds in the treetops along the way.

We finally made our way to the airport, where we discovered that United had cancelled our flight, and we’d be rerouted to a TWA flight with a layover in St. Louis. At last, we saw the welcome lights of Austin. After pulling our bags from the carousel, we met up with Steve’s mother-in-law Carmen, who had driven out to pick us up at 11:00pm. I made it home a bit after midnight, and after kissing my snoring children and sleepy wife, fell gratefully into bed.

Of all the books on tape I’ve listened to, Steve Alten’s Meg is easily among the worst. (See? It’s so bad that I’m not even linking to it, as I want to spare you the possibility of accidentally buying the thing.) The story gave the distinct impression that it was written after reading the Thrillers chapter of Writing for Dummies, with cardboard stereotype characters, a big scary prehistoric critter, a trite, predictable story arc, and a ridiculously unrealistic ending. Alas, the audiobook version compounded these sins with its sound track. Hmmm, where have we heard a two-note rising half-step motive in the low strings associated with a shark before? If plagarism is the sincerest form of flattery, then John Williams should be feeling pretty good about himself right now. (Though since Williams swiped it from Dvorak, I guess we should extend some grace here.)

Steve Alten, in spite of his evident desire to topple Michael Crichton from the top of the thrillers list, doesn’t even manage to register on his radar. Steer clear, my friends. There be dragons here.

Warning: Rant Ahead. Proceed With Caution.

Today while catching up on some game industry news, I happened across a link to Project X, an initiative to create a text-based, multiplayer “Christian” game. This project really seems to epitomize much of what I find abhorrent about the American Christian subculture. These are some of the reasons I think this is a terrible idea, both as a Christian and as someone who works in the gaming industry.

First off, we Christians have a command from Jesus to be in the world, but not of it. We are elsewhere called to be the salt of the earth. Now, by creating a “Christian alternative” to the mainstream gaming scene, we remove ourselves from contact with the rest of the world, and thus deprive ourselves of the chance to obey these mandates. Christians need to be fully engaged with the world. We don’t need to encyst ourselves within a protective layer of isolation. Want to apply your faith to your gaming? Then go buy Ultima Online, Everquest, or Asheron’s Call and see what it’s like to live and play as a Christian among real people. (I’d vote for Ultima Online myself, but that’s probably because it keeps my kids in peanut butter and diapers.)

Second, if you’re going to market something as “Christian”, you’d better be dang sure that it lives up to the highest standards of quality in the industry, and is compelling in its own right. Putting a fish on a crappy product doesn’t honor God. Believers created much of the finest art in history. Bach signed all his music SDG, which stood for Sola Dei Gloria – To God Alone Be The Glory. But you know what? Most people don’t buy The Goldberg Variations because they see it as a way to practice their faith. They buy them because they’re fine, compelling, well-crafted pieces of music. And if you’re a Christian designing a game, your responsibility is to make it a fine, compelling, well-crafted game. Your responsibility is not to swipe intellectual property from Bunyan and Lewis so that customers with more money than sense recognize it as “Christian”.

The fact that Project X is being designed as a text-based game, a genre generally considered passé in the industry, and that the page describing it is rife with misspellings doesn’t bode well for the quality of this product.

Third, the very concept of a “Christian Game” seems to me an elusive one. What makes a game qualify as “Christian”? That it has angels in it? That it swipes a setting from authors who write from that understanding of the world? That it says it is? That it has the word “Jesus” in it at least 58 times? Bah. Even if they design their game as “Christian”, by their nature Role Playing Games give players the chance to behave in ways anathema to that world-view. The only way to keep an RPG “Christian” is to severely limit the player’s choices, and thus make the game less compelling once again. Double-bah.

So, what’s the ultimate motivation for this project? The chance for Christians to feel a little better about themselves while playing a feeble, watered down version of what the rest of the world is playing (and enjoying more)? The chance to make money off the same individuals who buy golf balls and swizzle sticks with WWJD emblazoned on them? The Project X site says that the organizers want to “[create] a deep, online gaming environment in which Christians can immerse themselves in a world that honors the Christian world view and nurtures a Christian’s faith.” But it seems to me that if you’re relying on a game to nurture your faith, then you’re already in a bad place, and withdrawing into a fictional world isn’t likely to help that.

So after examining all of this, I’m still left wondering – what’s the point? This sort of undertaking seems bound to be at best a disappointment, both to gamers and to any but the most undiscriminating of Christians. And at worst, it seems the sort of thing that would get one driven out of the temple with a whip.

End of rant.

My first exposure to Caleb Carr’s work was The Alienist, the engaging, if graphic, story of an murder investigation in late 19th century New York. Rooting through the books at the library to see if Carr had done anything more, I came across his latest publication: Killing Time

Killing Time contrasts sharply with The Alienist. Though the lead characted is still a phychologist, he isn’t involved with a murder mystery in the past, but instead a disinformation campaign in the future. I’ve always enjoyed the “Person Living Normal Life is Plucked Out of His World By An Unusual Vehicle and Discovers that Things Aren’t As They Seem” genre (The Matrix, Sewer, Water, Gas: The Public Works Trilogy, Atlas Shrugged), and this is a worthy addition to that body of work.

Carr’s story is an incisive reflection on a love-hate relationship with information technology, and its uses and abuses. He paints a vivid picture of how it can lead people away from the truth, or even to lose touch with what truth is — some of the same themes he explores in a recent article for Salon. The book also manages to be an engaging adventure story at the same time, deftly combining social critique with good storytelling.

Finally, it’s a bit shorter that The Alienist, so if you’d like an introduction to Carr, this is a great entry point.

As per my earlier resolution upon having to buy jeans with a 38 inch waist, I’ve been hitting the gym pretty regularly for a while now, and have started to see some results. I’ve dropped a few pounds, redistributed a few more, and am fitting comfortably into some of my older pants again. I’ve been doing a mix of hikes through the hill country, time on the treadmill, and some work with weights. Now, if I can only convince myself that I like salads better than cheeseburgers, I’ll be in excellent shape.

When I was in middle school, the first album I ever blew my own money on was 90125 , by Yes. At the time, I was convinced that it was one of the most spectacular collection of songs I’d ever laid ears on, and played the vinyl to extinction on my parents’ old stereo. Just tonight, I got it in digital format and have been listening to it again. To my surprise, unlike many of the fondly remembered watermarks of my young life, the album is every bit as good as I recalled, with some spectacularly well-arranged and tightly performed tracks, creative use of stereo (much better on headphones), and a great sound. What a treat for the ears! I’m excited to have this one back in my listening queue.

For those of you who haven’t yet been sucked in by the temporal black hole that is The Sims, let me describe it for you so that you can keep away and continue to have something resembling a normal life: basically, the premise is that you create a little pretend family on your computer and tend to their needs — bathing, going to the bathroom, getting better jobs — all the while failing to do the same things yourself.

Though usually immune to the insidious draw of computer games, Kathy has fallen victim to the cunning charm of The Sims, and has been enjoying relaxing in the evening with it from time to time. Now, in spite of her enthusiasm for the game, she was unaware that it was possible to create and add new objects to the game. So as a small practical joke, I stayed up after everyone else had gone to bed on Tuesday and created several paintings that you can buy to go in your Sims’ houses featuring photos of our children on them, and then scattered them liberally throughout her Sims’ home.

The unfortunate thing turns out to be that the game is difficult to play when zoomed in all the way, but the pictures are difficult to discern unless you’re looking at the game at its largest size. So instead of being surprised and delighted at finding pictures of our children in the game house, she was vaguely puzzled by the mysterious paintings of unknown children that had appeared while she wasn’t looking. Sigh.

Anyway, if you’re another Sims junkie, and for some strange reason you’d like to have pictures of our kids in your Sims’ home, you can download the set of four right here. Enjoy!

Since coming to work for Electronic Arts, one of the titles I’ve been most excited about seeing brought production is Majestic, an ambitious projects that aims to immerse its players into a conspiracy-theory-driven adventure. The interesting thing about it is not so much the plot as the ways the plot is communicated to the player: by phone calls, faxes, emails, pages, and Instant Messages. There’s an excellent article that gives some idea of the visceral impact of this method here. My favorite part is that you can set the game to not use the phone at all, to put a tag on the messages to make it clear that they’re part of the game, or to just mix them in with your other phone calls so the line between reality and the game starts to blur.

Only a few short months to wait…

My apologies, gentle reader, for the lack of updates here lately. Our family has been embroiled in several projects that have sucked up most of our available time and energy, including working through some post-Christmas financial issues, helping with the church’s first Sunday service, and dealing with some nasty illnesses. (Liam at one point had both pink eye and a viral GI infection that was causing him to expel unpleasant substances from both ends with a great deal of vigor.)

In any case, we have a lull now, as everyone seems to be returning to good health, and extra resposibilities are few for the next couple of weeks. I’m still preparing for a gig in Iowa the weekend after Valentine’s day, but it’s mostly familiar music, so shouldn’t be too taxing.

So, how are you?