The Republic of T.

In the course of researching another post, I came across some events that weren’t on the the abortion-related violence timeline I posted earlier. So, I’ve updated the timeline and shared it below.

Further updates will follow as I find events to add to the timeline.

A dream of mine — or, more specifically, a dream job of mine — may be dying. At the very least it’s in the ICU of broken dreams. The doctors are stumped. The priest has been called.

I haven’t written much lately about my longstanding love of computer/video games. It started back when I was growing up. We got a gaming console. I don’t recall what kind it was, but (and I’m dating myself here) it played Pong.

For those who don’t remember or are too young to remember Pong, it looked something like this.

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Some people might call Margaret Atwood paranoid, but you know — if you’ve been paying attention at all — that there are some people who’d move to the Republic of Gilead tomorrow, andwould drag the rest of us with them if they could.

I read The Handmaid’s Tale either during my senior year of high school or my freshman year of college. By then I’d already heard Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition recommend quarantining people living with AIDS in “cities of refuge.” I remember thinking then that it wouldn’t be a far leap to suggest quarantining gay people altogether, and that Lou would probably think it was a good idea.

Then I read about “gender treachery” and how it was punished in Gilead.

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It’s not something I haven’t to do, in the past few years, as much as I used to. And with two kids I have even less time for it. But, always the enthusiast, I keep up with news, and I know pretty early when the next big new thing is coming out. I start counting the days up to a year in advance, buy it as soon as its available, take it home and spend hours playing around with it, figuring it out, and just immersing myself in it.

That was the case with The Sims, and that’s been the case with Spore. Well sort of.

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OK. At this point, I know it’s not necessarily nice to derive even a tiny bit of pleasure from someone else’s misfortune. But after blogging about the computer game based on the rapture-drenched (and blood soaked) Left Behind series of novels a few times (and even playing the demo version), am I allowed just a little smirk at the news of layoffs at Left Behind Games? [Via GameLife.]

Officials from controversial Christian game developer Left Behind Games (Left Behind: Eternal Forces) have announced that senior management at the company have accepted the resignation of senior vice president Jeffrey S. Frichner, with CEO Troy Lyndon also demanding the resignation of the company’s other three board members.

Left Behind Games was created in 2001, for the purpose of developing games based on the Left Behind series of novels, which depict an Evangelical Christian view of the end times. Left Behind: Eternal Forces was criticized by Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups because of its relatively violent RTS theming, with calls on major chains such as Wal-Mart not to carry the title.

In February, the developer reported a $4.1 million loss for its third quarter ended December 31st, 2006, on revenues of $2.2 million for the first six weeks of the game’s sales. The exact reasons for Lyndon’s call for additional resignations has not been stated, nor the likelihood of the board members agreeing to the demands.

I guess not many people actually wanted to buy what they were trying to sell. But maybe that’s understandable, given what they’re trying to sell. There’s a whole eight-part series of posts about the game at Talk To Action that pretty much spells it out.

Technorati Tags: computer games, religion

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Like about 37% of adults, I’m an avid gamer. But like I’ve said before, I’m a bit of a odd duck when it comes to gaming. I’m pretty bad at first-person shooters, and most of them don’t appeal to me. My bent is towards simulation games. Those are common enough but only occasionally do I come across games that also involve another interest of mine, like political simulation games.  

So, I was surprised and intrigued to learn of a game that incorporated another interest of mine: Buddhism. And when I found out it was a game about Buddhist ethics, I decided to check it out. After all, it’s a game where you lose points for killing (including animals). How could I not check it out?

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I wrote about my gaming habit earlier. Well, I’ve acquired a new gaming distraction. It started last week on our company retreat, when I had fun with the Nintendo Wii and joined in another game that everyone seemed to enjoy. It wasn’t something I’d have ever tried in public of in front of strangers. But once I tried it, I wanted to do it again and again. And since then I have.

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Well, at least now I know why I did it.

On December 31st, the four-year-old PC I used almost exclusively for gaming up and died on me. I turned it on to find that it wouldn't load Windows XP and made a strange clicking noise for several minutes before telling me the second hard drive was fried. Shortly afterwards, the mother board joined the hard drive in its demise. I knew then it was dead. I'd added a second hard drive, upgraded the RAM and the video card, but a new mother board was beyond my capabilities.

By January 1st withdrawal and depression started to set in. By January 2nd, I was out buying a new PC, just for gaming. I felt silly at the time, but now I know I was just fulfilling a psychological need.

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This will be probably be the last I say about this, at least for today since the family and I are off to shop for a "big boy bed."

Honestly, after reading the latest FDL post — and comments — aimed at Liza, I'm begnining to think that some of these folks aren't people I want sit at a table with anyway. There's nothing more offensive than being told to remember your place, as zuzu aptly puts it. And we're supposed to be on the same team? Well, I've got a lot more to think about now. If nothing else, though, I'm glad I saw that FDL post. Experience has taught me to value and pay close attention to those moments when the mask slips and people (as Oprah one put it) show you who they really are.

Bottom line on all of this, given that folks were gonna blog about this meeting and folks were gonna read about it, some prior knowledge about who was invited but unable to attend would probably have saved everyone a lot of bandwith. There wasn't any intent or conscious effort to exclude bloggers of color, but neither was there any conscious recognition of how things would look and how they'd be interpreted in the absence of any context. Still, I'm glad I posted what I did because it was the catalyst for a much needed discussion. And because, as the FDL post I mentioned shows, it makes clear some things that weren't before.

Beyond all that, I want to chime in on a few other things.

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It’s been a while since I wrote about one of my favorite passtimes: playing computer games. Maybe that’s because I don’t buy new games very often. I don’t play violent games, with the exception of World of Warcraft (which I only play after Parker goes to bed), so most of the first-person shooter games don’t appeal to me. That leaves mostly simulation and city-building games, and I pick up new titles from time to time, most recently City Life and Glory of the Roman Empire, but they come out less frequently than the other kinds.

So it doesn’t often occur to me to blog about computer games. But couple of items in the news got me thinking about it again. In the aftermath of the “Hot Coffee” scandal around Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas there was talk of banning violent or “adult” video games, or making it illegal to sell them to minors. Minnesota passed just such a law earlier this year, and this week a federal judge tossed out the state’s video game law.

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This is a bit of interesting news. I have a movie coming out on DVD. No, it’s not one I starred in. Just one I wrote, produced and directed. Sort of. Late last year I started playing The Movies, a movie studio simulation game, and posted about a couple of movies I made in the game. I uploaded one of them to YouTube, and promptly forgot about it until this week.

I received an email from some people in Australia about some DVD they were putting together, and would I like to have my movie included. It took a minute (and reading it a couple of times) before I realized they were talking about the movie I uploaded to YouTube back in January.

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