The Rusted Musket

Mubarak will not capitulate, he has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose. Consider last week how President Obama asked Mubarak to consider his “legacy”; legacy matters in a democracy of course, for it is we, the people, who write our leaders history. But if you’re Mubarak, living in dictatorship, who cares about legacy when you’re a tyrant who already gets to write your own administrations presidential history?

Mubarak is just going to drag this thing out till the protesters run out of food, money, and will. Napoleon once said that an army marches on its stomach, protesters probably march on something similar.

I truly hope something positive for Egypt comes from this democratically aimed protest, but I remain pessimistic.

The Old Testament speaks of an Egyptian Pharaoh, who in the face of mighty plagues, refused to give captive Israel its freedom. My fear for Egypt is a Mubarak who, like Pharaoh, denies captive Egypt its freedom. For if I remember correctly, the escalating plague that finally broke Pharaoh’s hold, was the killing of Egypt’s sons…

Wall Street Journal this week had a short piece concerning the Army’s desire to finally move on from it’s current M16/M4 battle rifle platform. This is a great idea; Iraq taught us the 5.56 bullet hasn’t the knockdown energy and Afghanistan taught us the 5.56 hasn’t the power to effectively reach past 600.

In my opinion though, this is a fourth quarter substitution making little to no sense; it’s just too late in the game baby. We have a handful of troops in Iraq and we’re leaving Afghanistan in July. What war then are we fighting that justifies a new battle rifle? The ones we just left? I believe, out of necessity, we are entering an era of Department of Defense budget cuts that won’t fund foreign wars or gun projects; rightly so. I’m ready for about a decades worth of staying home and letting the world figure out their problems without US troops and guns. (That last sentence was indeed nothing more than a rant faced bunny on a trial, apologies)

More in Parenthesis

(Does the UN still matter? We’ll find out what we always secretly knew, without our troops, guns, and money, it doesn’t. I can’t be too hard on those other UN members though, they don’t have any money either, they spend it all on healthcare, for better or worse)

All that to say this project should have been funded and decided upon five years ago. So, in closing, I couldn’t agree more, and ironically less, with a new US battle rifle…

Once upon a time I led Liz on a scavenger hunt that, among many things, ended with a BMX bike and a marriage proposal. Fast forward many happy married years later. There’s an arrow leaning against the wall in our bedroom, it’s a symbolic arrow (it was part of the scavenger hunt), but the arrow itself isn’t cool looking, it has yellow and red fins, which is why it waits in a forgotten corner of our bedroom.

The other day we had children over (not our own, we don’t own any children) and of course they found the Symbolic Arrow. As responsible adults living in a not so responsible non-kid proof apartment we reclaimed this potential weapon of mass destruction before any eyes had been poked and leather made swiss. At some point during the reclamation, or its aftermath, I found myself holding the Symbolic Arrow and immediately lapsed into some sort of nostalgic trance which took the form of a two pathed dialog tree!

Dialog Branch One: When I held the arrow, it reminded me how Liz had hit the bulls eye of my heart.

Dialog Branch Two: When I held the arrow, it reminded me how much I wanted to get a bow and some arrows.

Image Credit: Deviantart.com – DreamerSeven

I just got done reading Dr. Chauncey Crandall’s utterly fascinating book, Raising the Dead. Dr. Crandall is a charismatic Christian who believes in healing, even raising people from the dead. As a side note, I also believe in Christ’s power to heal and raise the dead, even though I don’t necessarily subscribe to charismatic patterns of belief.

The book starts off with a bang, basically on September 20, 2006, Dr. Crandall feels the Spirit prompting him to ask God to bring back to life 53-year-old Jeff Marken who had died on his operating table forty minutes ago. Mr. Marken was so dead even his fingers had turned black. After praying, Dr. Crandall zapped Marken with the defibrillators and, wait for it, Marken came back to life! Incredible, right?! The nurse in the room didn’t think so, she screamed and then yelled at Crandall asking him what he’d done, she thought for sure the guy would be a vegetable. Miraculously, Mr. Marken didn’t have any brain damage at all; a miracle no matter which way you spin it. Of course I found this to be incredibly powerful stuff, but the reason I wrote this piece was for another reason, a bunny trail of sorts, concerning the spirit of our age.

After reading the book I went to Amazon to see what some of the reviews had to say (I have a bad habit of doing this) and there was one in particular that I thought really captured the modern mind. The reviewer in question gave the book a two star rating because there were only two instances of dead raising. Think about that! The God of the universe can’t even impress us moderns with raising the dead, not even twice! Matter of fact, raising the dead twice only gets you a two star rating…

I know, I know, that mystery missile blasting off California’s coast a month ago is ancient tweeter fodder, but com’on, surely it was weird enough to remember for at least a few weeks, right? Well, this morning I wondered if they ever figured out what it actually was and according to forgetomori the case appears closed. Supposedly it was nothing more than commercial flight UPS902 from Honolulu to Ontario, California.

So, just a boring commercial flight instead of an uber awesome ghost rocket. I feel just a wee bit let down…

The following is a minimalistic, spoiler filled, rant/kudos dissection fest featuring COD’s latest offering, Black Ops, for the Xbox 360. Before I get to that though I just want to say how much I loved the interactive main menu! Breaking your bonds! Roaming the room! The computer terminal! That guy in the window who becomes a zombie when you switch over to zombie mode! Brilliant! Okay, now lets get to those scatter gun thoughts of mine.

Multiplayer = Great

- Dolphin diving is fun! Now, I don’t use it to avoid death, I just use it to dive into the first flag I see during Domination games like everyone else, it’s hilarious…

- My PHR clan tag scratched into my gun is cool, this is cool, I’m surprised at how cool it is, I wonder why it’s so cool…

- The levels are multi-layed, multi-routed, much better than MW2’s

- Love the double mag attachment allowing for super fast second mag reload. I’ve been sitting on this idea for years, glad to see someone think of it as well…

- The fact that kill streak kills don’t count towards the next kill streak reward is flipping fantastic. Keeps you from constant attack helicopter flybys, which is fine by me…

- The contracts are just okay, but not cool, they should be cool like Halo Reach, but again, they’re not cool. Low war buck amounts make you not even care to set yourself up with one…

Campaign = Good

- If you don’t suffer an epileptic seizure while watching load screens you’ll enjoy the campaign. I started closing my eyes to avoid headaches during said load screens…

- Loved the espionage cold war era the game took place in, a time when info wasn’t immediate and needed to be obtained the hard way, not by simply perusing wikileaks…

- Really graphic chocking and knifing sequences done by the player, makes you wish for a clean, fast, non-gratuitous kill factor, they made me feel weird, I don’t want to feel weird when I jam my games…

- Good storyboard throughout except the end, which was total fail. Basically you destroy your arch enemy in an underwater soviet base which you also destroy and then you need to swim to the surface and when you emerge from the water you’re surrounded by friendly destroyers, and a lame rock track, and a lame one liner…

Zombies = Fair

- The presidential zombie level is great though, not fair. There’s much fun with those guys at campaigns conclusion, which unlocks this particular level of zombie slaying action…

- I never seem to know what to do, wish they had in game hints to tell you what in the world is going on. Like, what do you do after the power is turned on? For the life of me I still don’t know…

- Wish you could use your perk setups while in zombie, that would make me a for sure zombie killer, but I usually just get zombie killed…

- There’s nothing like zombies to bring people together, have generally loved my split screen time with family and friends, even if we somehow end up dying by round 4…

Conclusion = Hurrah!

Thus ends my brief review of Black Ops, which is in no way exhaustive, fair, or balanced. I believe this game is a good purchase only if you get it for a couple bucks off, and if you’ve got some friends to jam with…

I’ve been ruminating on forgiveness this week because some people need to forgive me and I need to forgive some people, especially the girl at UW Waukesha who walked up to the back of my Highlander today and purposely put a scratch through the Jesus sticker. Bad news for her could have been the fact that I was sitting in the car when she did it. This incident though brought about an important needle of thread and thought for I wondered how I could so easily settle into a madness that refused to forgive this preppy chic for a shenanigan that caused no actual damage to either Jesus, Jesus sticker, or car. Especially since I frequently walk up to God’s allegorical car to not only scratch His “I Am” sticker completely off but then break His windows as well…

Image credit: honeytofla – deviantart

I thanked God for nothing as intense shoulder pain throttled my better judgment on the way home from evening class. The night before I had somehow torqued my arm while sleeping and could barely move it, even a day later. There are no coincidences though and sometimes my books prove this better than anything else. I was in the middle of reading about Christianities desert saints who believed serving God “was not intended to spare them from suffering but to inspire them to choose suffering because through the incarnation suffering has become redemptive.” ¹ Or, as John Chryssavgis put it, “The more profound our personal misery, the more abundant God’s eternal mercy.”

I was seeing nothing profound in my pain, or was I? It was like slamming the door shut with one’s foot in the way, something you feel you should reconsider. For instance, a conversation I had engaged in a few months back swirled about my head. It centered on the French author Simone Weil’s difference between affliction, (the crap of the world) and suffering (participation in Christ’s suffering). One is chance, like a fire leading to ashes and smoke, the other is choice, like a purifying fire leading to redemption. I had missed the opportunity, seen it to late, the choice of transforming my affliction into something more…

Image Credit: Michelle Stone

I’ve been sitting back, mildly assessing the stupid sums of money being spent on arguably the most worthless things in the 21st century, political ads. Let us have 95% less salty dog political ads in exchange for 95% more shoulder angel charity. If only Michael Jackson were alive, I’m sure he’d be leading a telethon asking candidates to donate 95% of their commercial monies toward soup kitchens, Scott’s Tots, and rescue missions.

Sadly, I am much more “virtuous” when talking about Michael Jackson and other peoples money than my own…

Image Credit: Corbis @ MinnPost.com

Nothing deep here but doesn’t the new GAP logo look like something off a software suite, like from Cisco Systems or something? The old GAP logo was cool like Apple’s, the new logo is not cool, like Window’s…