Video Games, Emotion, and XCOM

I like video games. If you don't know that we probably haven't spent much time together. I really, really like video games. I've written a little about video games in the past but after an experience I had last night I felt the need to jump back into writing about my pastime passion.

At the moment I do my gaming exclusively on my gaming PC (my most prized possession) and for the most part I buy and play my games through Steam. I play video games for a lot of reasons. I love the challenge of pitting myself against other players or clever AI. It feels good to overcome challenges and have an area of my life where I not only excel, but I am completely in control. I also love the thrill of swords and guns, battles and explosions and the overall epic feeling of being immersed in a video game world. But my favorite things that games can offer me is that ever illusive gift of story and emotion. Not just "dudebro, that was so epic! High five!" type emotion but the full range of human emotions experienced through the unique lens of interactive media.

This past week XCOM: Enemy Within came out and I have just been loving it. XCOM: EW is a fairly substantial expansion for XCOM: Enemy Unknown, one of my favorite games of all time. XCOM is a strategy game in which the player is the "commander" of the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit (or XCOM, get it?) and not only commands a squad of soldiers in battles against alien invaders but also builds a pretty cool base of operations while researching alien technology and upgrading the troops from basic soldiers in psychic super soldiers.

The basic premise of XCOM: Enemy Unknown is as follows:

I love it. I just think it's fantastic. Seriously, watch the trailer and try not to get excited. See? You can't do it. It's just too exciting. There's aliens and explosions and...ALIENEXPLOSIONS! What more do you need? Well, XCOM actually offers a lot more than just cool explosions. The story is solid. Not life changing, but enjoyable. The strategy is challenging, fun, and rewarding. But what really makes this game stand out is the way it gets you emotionally invested.

In XCOM your soldiers all have names. You only have so many of them and as you watch them grow and lead them in a variety of different missions you really begin to get attached. But then the unthinkable happens. Somebody dies.

XCOM has this concept they refer to as "permadeath." Permadeath is the idea that when one of your soldiers dies they are gone for good. Just like in real life. It doesn't matter how much you've leveled them up or invested in upgrades. Once they die all of that is lost. This really changes the way XCOM is play. This is not a game you can play recklessly. Otherwise people will die.

And that's where the emotions come in. XCOM is a game that makes me feel epic, yes, challenged too. But it also makes me feel sad. It makes me feel desperate and scared. It makes me feel responsible. XCOM makes me feel. It's an emotional experience. That's special.

What prompted me to write this post is the massacre that happened last night and emotions it stirred up in me. I started my current play-through on Tuesday of this week and I had been doing a pretty good job. I'd had a few scary moments, close calls where one wrong move could have killed one of my soldiers. But I always managed to pull it off without losing anyone. But then a call came in, a new mission. My people were called upon to deal with "a developing incident in Newfoundland, up the coast from St. John's. A fishing village has gone dark: reports from intel sources suggest alien involvement." Three out of my four primary squad members were unavailable. They were receiving gene modifications at the time. I figured I would be okay though. I could use my "secondaries," the back ups and people who filled in whenever thee was an injury. I didn't think this mission would be a big deal. I was wrong.

I went in with four soldiers. Then this happened:

Well that sucks.

Chrysallids, those purple bug like things, are arguably the most dangerous enemies in the entire game. They eviscerate your soldiers, killing them in a single move and implanting an egg within their corpse. This egg "zombifies" the corpse for a few turns before a brand new Chryssalid bursts out of the corpse. It's terrifying. At first I just saw three Chryssalids and through the careful use of a rocket launcher and coordinated shots from the rest of my squad I managed to take them all down before they could hurt anyone. But then as I climbed onto a beached whaling ship more and more Chryssalids kept charging at my troops. I bunched up the squad at the prow of the ship hoping that I could keep them alive if they hunkered down and took on the enemies one by one. My squad seemed to be doing okay for a few turns until they had to reload. Then the enemies were coming faster than they could reload and I knew if I didn't do something they would all die. The objective, a transponder for an airstrike, lay at the stern and I knew that if I could get my squad across the the infested ship they had a chance. I had the whole squad run a short distance and than turn and fire. Then one of them was cut down. I was upset but I knew I had to keep going. There was still hope for my other three soldiers. They ran, they fired. Then two more were cut down.

"Holy crap!" I said aloud, slamming my fist against my desk. "What wrong?" my wife said from where she was sitting on the couch.

"I, uh. Dang it, Jenny. I just lost three of my soldiers. I screwed up. They're dead."

"Okay Chris, well, I'm sorry to hear that."

Back in my game I had Lt. Miu 'Scotch' Matsumoto hit the transponder and take off running. That was when the screenshot above was taken. An army of Chryssalids were biting at her heels the entire way, but champ that she is Lt. Matsumoto made it to the extraction point and survived. She was the lone survivor of what I had expected to be a routine recon mission.

That's what makes XCOM special. I feel emotion because of this. Almost 24 hours later I'm still thinking about it, agonizing over what I could have done differently. Movies and books can make you feel emotion, but nothing else gives quite the same level of immersive and personal emotion that video games can. And that's what makes video games special. Video games that make you feel are video games done right.

Got a Bad Case of the Feelings

I've always despised the stereotype that men aren't supposed to feel emotions. I'm a man and I feel all sorts of emotions! You know, like, anger, frustration, hatred, um, punchiness. Well, maybe I'm bad at expressing myself emotionally with any variety. I'm not sure if that's a man thing or me thing but either way it sucks.

This is the general theme of this post

Lately I've had an attack of the feels. Bit by the emotion bug or something. I've got all these feelings that I wish I could make go away just by shooting things in video games. But no matter how much I binge that doesn't seem to help.

Probably the biggest thing I'm dealing with is a ton of insecurity. I mean, I feel insecure about pretty much everything. My job, my writing, my friendships, my faith. I'm convinced I'm the worst at all of it. I'm afraid I'm extraneous and not doing a good enough job at work. I'm afraid my writing is terrible. I'm afraid I'm a terrible friend who no one likes. I'm afraid I'm a terrible Christian.

The hardest adjustment for me has been doing a job I legitimately care about. Working in customer service or being a cashier I was ultimately going to work just so I could pay rent. It didn't matter if I didn't do a good job just as long as I got that paycheck. It was okay to just be "good enough." But now I care. I want to be better than just "good enough."

I'm afraid I suck at my job. I'm afraid someone else could do it much better. I'm afraid I'm not making a difference. If I'm not making a difference aren't I just a waste?

I'm also afraid of being judged. About everything. My writing sucks. Time and again I hear that reinforced. I mean, I can see it myself. Right now you are reading this and thinking, "this sucks."

I'm afraid you think I'm just being whiny. I'm afraid you think all these insecurities are true and I'm just in denial. I'm afraid you're one of the many people I interact with through work now also thinking I'm not that great in this position. I'm afraid you think I'm weak for feeling this way.

I'm afraid I'm a loser.

I'm afraid.

The fact that you are still reading at this point is both impressive and surprising

I'm also terribly lonely. "But Chris," you say, "aren't you happily married?" Why yes, I am. But anyone who said marriage eliminates loneliness was an awful liar. I honestly don't know what I'm looking for here. I mean, I have friends. Pretty much all of them are several states away, but they do still exist. There's just some level of connection missing from my life. I go to work, I go to church, I go home to my wife, I videochat with my friends. But I never hang out with friends in person. I have no buddies, I guess. No one to just waste time with.

I mean, Kurt Vonnegut always helps me out with explaining things. I'm going to massively cut down this quote from him, but click through for the full thing:

"What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them...It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to...But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.  When a couple has an argument...What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”"

 I'm a very introverted person but I still miss the community of friends I used to have. Right now I have no one to tell dumb jokes to or share my life with besides my wife. And honestly, that's just not enough people. I'm lonely and I don't know what to do about it.

So, there's my whiny feelings for you. I am, of course, afraid that this post will make you hate me or some other annoying negative conclusion, but I think it's good for me to write again. I haven't really been writing about my life and I think that's not good for me. I want to make a few changes in my life. I want to be more transparent, less inhibited, more honest, more real, more me. I want to throw caution to the winds. This should be easy for me, but I’m so scared of consequences.

I would be surprised if I lost my job over anything I would write, but I could certainly lose the respect of several people. I'm afraid that by being a more transparent person people would think less of me. If I drop this image of a really quite put together person and admit that I am so very weak I think most people would look down on that. Humility is good, of course, but not if it means admitting imperfection or fear or, heaven forbid, doubt and hopelessness.

If you look back at my older, much older, blog posts you will see that I was incredibly whiny and annoying. But I was also almost indecently honest. Between my pride, my desire that people will think well of me, and my fear, my worry that people will think poorly of me, I feel paralyzed into only blogging about the good things in my life. I feel like only sharing triumphs and never mentioning defeats. I only feel safe mentioning praise reports, never prayer requests (to put it in Christianese.)

When I was a teenager with nothing to lose honesty was so easy.

But now that I do have so much to lose I find that for fear of losing it I never want to show any honesty at all.

I saw that comic and, man, I can't tell you how often I've thought of that. It's very Fight Club, I guess. "Its only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything."

The fact that I now have something to lose means that I've lost the freedom that comes from having nothing to lose.

One Year in Portland & My Adventures in Retail

Yesterday marks one year since Jenny and I moved to the beautiful city of Portland, Maine. Overall it has been a really good year. We moved here for Jenny's job at the Salvation Army's Divisional Headquarters and over the past year have really come to view Portland as home.

Though I am now quite happily living the dream in my job as a Youth Director at the Salvation Army I haven't always had it this good. We moved here for Jenny's job but I came into this city unemployed and desperate. My current job is the fifth I have worked this year. I bounced from temp, to seasonal, to sales, and finally retail before leaving for my current job. My retail job was probably the one I enjoyed the most, though each was it's own special kind of adventure. Today I'm in the mood to write about the adventure of working on retail.

I worked at CVS in downtown Portland. CVS is a great company to work for and I was blessed with a fun manager and a laid back team. The only real difficulty the job presented was in the customers. Maybe it was our location, or maybe every CVS is like this, but for some reason our store seemed to attract a very certain type of customer. It's a difficult type of person to describe without describing how they act. You know the kind of person who takes something off the shelf and then tries to return it because they "lost the receipt." It's the type of people who looks at the tabloid covers as if it's news. One week a tabloid ran a cover story claiming all sorts of new and bizarre sexual revelations about Bill Clinton. "Oh Billy," one customer remarked, "what have you gotten yourself into now?"

My biggest customer pet peeve (aside from the gentleman whose t-shirt literally had porn printed on it) were the ladies who view a bra as an extension, or even replacement, of their purse or wallet. I could easily identify these women through the iPhone peeking through the top of their shirt. A woman would come to the counter, plop down a couple sodas and reach down the front of her shirt and begin the inevitable search. You would think a bra would only allow storage for a few items, maybe a phone in one cup and a small wallet in the other, but these women seemed to store everything  from chapstick to coin purses in there. The worst part of this search would be the way that, inevitably, the longer the search took the further down the woman would have to pull the front of her shirt. Also frustrating is the fact that as a cashier there's not a whole lot of options while waiting for customers to find their money. You either look at the customers, look down at the counter, or you try to find some spot on the ceiling that might hold your interest. But part of good customer service is maintaining eye contact and staring off into space can be considered very rude. It's a very awkward situation to be stuck in.

The worst time was a particularly warm summer day when a large woman with a peach fuzzed upper lip dropped a couple of beers on the counter in front of me. "Umm, could I see your ID?" I asked, praying that her phone was the only thing stored under her shirt. My hopes were dashed as she plunged up to her forearm into her chest searching for ID. About thirty seconds of uncomfortable fumbling later she produced a state ID that did in fact confirm she was old enough to drink. I handed the ID back to her and once again her hand leaped into the abyss. Another long wait and she produced an EBT card. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, you can't use food stamps for alcohol purchases." I informed her. "Oh, right" she said and hesitated for a moment before using her other arm to search. Apparently one side was devoted to cards and the other to cash because a moment later she produced a damp $20 bill. She handed it to me. "This bill is wet," I thought. "She pulled this bill out of her boobs and it is wet and in my hand and I feel unbelievably uncomfortable right now." She looked in my eyes with a smug defiance as if daring me to show any discomfort on my face. I jabbed a finger at my register and waited the endless half second for it to open and the shoved the bill in as if it might bite me. I gave the woman her change, which was dry just the way I like it.

Ethical Marriage: A Year Without Bacon

"Tastes ethical!"

This was my wife's reaction a moment ago as she took a sip of some fair trade hot cocoa that I tracked down at our grocery store. Marriage is weird. Like super, super weird. If you're married you probably already know that. If you're not married it's probably pretty obvious from where you stand. I'm kind of dense, so I'm still very confused by a lot of the strangeness that is marriage. I've written about this type of thing before.

To me the most weird (I need to use that word less) part of marriage is how different two people are and yet how completely their lives and decisions become intertwined. For example, I suddenly can't just go to the grocery store and buy the cheapest of everything because that food isn't just for me and that money isn't just mine. Not only do I have to take my own preferences and thoughts into account with each decision, but also those of another person. And that is why I have not bought bacon for a year.

Let me repeat that for overly dramatic effect. I, Chris Clark, a manly man with hair on my face and chest, have not bought bacon, as in bacon bacon, for 1 whole year, 365 sad days. A year without one of my favorite artery cloggers. A year without the internet's favorite food.

Don't panic. It's okay. I have some bacon now and will be cooking it on Monday. What a relief! But why has it been so long since I had meat candy at my disposal for easy consumption? Simple.
 

So, my wife is what most people refer to as a "good person." I knew this when I married her. Heck, her kindness and passion for social justice were some of the things that I found so attractive. It's not that I'm a bad person, or that I don't also have a passion for social justice, it's mostly just that I really like food and really hate doing hard things.

Jenny and I have been completely switching to fair trade and ethically sourced foods. This is something that, in theory, I am very much in favor of. In college my good friend Gordon and I spent a considerable amount of time attempting to get our school to boycott Coca-Cola due to their many unethical practices, and to this day I avoid Coca-Cola products. But Jenny is taking things a little bit farther than just skipping a few unethical corporations. We're slowly eliminating everything unethical from our pantry and refrigerator.

This has meant largely cutting meat out of our diet, at least when Jenny cooks, as well as switching to fair trade coffee and chocolate. When it comes to fair trade that means I have much more limited options and that I can no longer buy brownie mix for brownies or chocolate chips with which to make cookies. I'm just thanking God that I finally found fair trade hot cocoa or else my life would have a sad lack of chocolate.

But today something beautiful happened. Portland has of the oldest farmers' markets in the nation and, in my opinion, one of the best. It's really great. You can get almost anything and it's all local and mostly organic and ethical and all that good stuff. So my wife, being the great person she is, loves shopping at the farmers market and we now buy our meat exclusively from our local farmers. It's more expensive, but it's nice to know we're not supporting factory farming. Jenny read Eating Animals this past year and has become completely committed to getting our animal products ethically. We mostly only use meat in my lasagna, which is just so good that we can't give it up. So aside from that one dish we've mostly been living a meatless life. Until now.

Today I tagged along to the farmers market. I normally stay at home and play video games (I buy all my games digitally via services such as Steam to avoid the slave labor production of physical discs and boxes. That's my halfhearted attempt to jump on the ethical bandwagon anyway.) But today I went along to pick up a bunch of veggies as well as a pound each of pork and beef. And then I saw it. As my wife bought a large bag of vegetables I wandered over to a cooler with a sign saying "Smokey Bacon." It was so beautiful. Local. Ethically sourced. Bacon. It's everything Jenny loves and everything I love all in one tasty, meaty package.

Now that package is sitting in our fridge waiting for me to eat it. Marital differences can be hard to reconcile, but when opportunities arise where there can be both compromise and bacon it's just too good to pass up.

Change '1962' to 'Hannaford' and '2011' to 'Farmers' Market' and you see why I sometimes struggle with getting ethically sourced food.

Reboot: Starting Fresh

I think it's time for a re-introduction.

Hi there. Nice to meet you. No really, the pleasure is all mine. My name is Chris and, as I'm sure you've guessed, this is my blog. My blog that, for numerous reasons, I have mostly abandoned. Until now. Rather than writing a post which is half apology and half whining about why I couldn't be bothered to keep blogging (which is an embarrassing number of the last 5 years of posts) I figured I should just start fresh. Let's put the last 7 or so years and 593 posts in the past and actually get back to writing.

So, back to that re-introduction. To the right you will notice the question "Who is Chris?" paired with my relatively snarky answer. If you ever forget who I am I would refer you there. In the meantime read this.

Kurt Vonnegut, my writing hero, says that in writing always "Start as close to the end as possible." So I will start as close to the end of this story as I conceivably can. Today. If I could start by telling you about tomorrow, or the real end of my story, the end end, I surely would. But I don't know the end so I can't tell it.

Today is August 21st, 2013. The sky over Portland is utterly clear. From my office window I face South towards Mt. Washington, which lies somewhere in the area where the blue turns into a vague off-white on the horizon. On my desk next to me lie four stacks of Sunday School material and a clipboard with a boardgames inventory on it. I'm a Youth Director as of just over a month ago. It is no exaggeration when I say this is my dream job. Youth Director is a vague job title to most people, even Christians, but it simply means I'm a youth pastor without any aspirations to becoming a fullfledged pastor.

It's easy to understand why I love my job when you break it down into it's core parts.

It's like we like each other or something equally gross

Things I love:
God, my faith, and The Salvation Army
Working with other people who love the above
Working and hanging out with children and youth
Playing games
Storytelling and teaching
Efficiency and organization

Things that are a part of "work":
See above list

Suffice it to say that I am very happy at this point in my life.

Work isn't the only part of my life. I'd be remiss if I were to leave out my wife. In introducing myself I must also mention her since she's sure to be mentioned in my writing a fair amount. My wife's name is Jenny and we were married June 9th, 2012, shortly after graduating together from Houghton College. She's a pretty cool person. She sells stuff on Etsy. I spend most of my time with her and our cat, Sneaky.

So, I mentioned we graduated from Houghton together. We also met there. I guess I should be pretty grateful to Houghton for that. Jenny majored in Intercultural Studies while I doubled in Writing and Psychology. I majored in writing intentionally. Psychology happened by accident when I realized just how few academic credits it took to complete a Writing major.

That brings me to the next point of introduction. I am a self-proclaimed writer. I don't know what people define as being a "writer" these days. Anybody can sit down and pound out some narcissistic blog post (just look at me!) but I think the term implies you're actually good at it. Or make money that way. Or something. So I guess to be fair I'm an "aspiring writer." Due to the low volume and quality of writing I actually produce I often think I'm more of a transpiring writer.

"Wow, you're awfully down on your writing!" you say, "But look at this blog post! This is the best thing I've ever read in my entire life!" Well, it's nice of you to say that. I'm sure it's true. At this point my view of college is that it gave me a wife and a wrecked sense of self-esteem regarding my writing and not much else. I don't have a lot of confidence in my writing at the moment, but I'll get there.

Anyway, I've saved a final piece of introduction for last because it's the least interesting bit. I love video games. I love them so much it hurts sometimes. Hurts my wallet mostly. This morning I woke up and saw that Origin had put Mass Effect 3 on sale. I've been waiting months hoping it would go on sale. So excited. To return to my point, I love video games. I play them a lot. If you also like video games we should play them together. I particularly want someone to play Planetside 2 with. Get in touch with me.

I think it's about time to wrap up this post. Just to jump off that last paragraph, here's a non-sequitur: let's be friends. I've been lamenting the fact that I have very few friends in the Portland area who I really spend time with. If you want to play video games: get in touch. If you want to go get bubble tea: get in touch. If you want to hang out: you get it.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: I'm also mostly inactive on Twitter! Check it out @KuriJaVaba

Just a quick statement on guns, video games, and correlation fallacies.

Sometimes I make a Facebook status I'm so proud of that I just have to save it. So, my dear reader, enjoy this little gem of research.

 

Video game spending per capita/year in USA=$40+
Guns per 100 residents in USA=88.8
Gun related murders in USA per 100,000=3.6

Video game spending per capita/year in South Korea=$100+
Guns per 100 residents in South Korea=1.1
Gun related murders in South Korea per 100,000=0.04

If we're concerned about gun violence we either need way less guns...or way more video games! Your choice America!

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/12/17/ten-country-comparison-suggests-theres-little-or-no-link-between-video-games-and-gun-murders/

I'm a Writer, Shouldn't I Be Writing?

So, I really need to start writing again. I'm running out of excuses. I mean, I wrote this (and 5+ other typewritten pages) in my notebook between dials at work. I have the time, especially since I have such inconsistent hours at work. One thing I've been thinking about when it comes to a possible return to blogging is that if I am to be a blogger again I should really try to be a part of the larger “Blogosphere.” I mean, I know quite a few people with blogs and I think that maybe blogging should happen in community, reading each other's work. That's pretty much the complete opposite of what I used to do, writing in a vacuum and expecting readership to pull in from the gravity of my charisma and awesome writing. I've never made the effort to really read someone else's blog. I mean, come on, blogs are boring! So, I guess I'll try to do better this time. Yeah, see that “Fellow Chroniclers” section on the lower right (you may need to scroll down) I think I'm going to try to be friends with them.

 Part of why I'm hopeful that I'll make time to write is my nifty new Excel sheet. At church last week  Major Ditmer spoke about tithing. This is always a tricky subject but one I usually tune out for the most part. But this week as I spaced out I started thinking not about tithing money, but time. Now, that is where I struggle. Giving up money is easy. I mean, I spend it all the time. Easy come, easy go. But my time, ah yes, with that I am a total scrooge. Once time is spent you can't get it back. There's no ATM for time and I can't go to work to earn more of it. Time is the currency I spend at work to get money. It's the most valuable resource I have!

So how do I generally prefer to spend that most valuable resource? Well, I love video games. Coming from a guy who just explained how precious and fleeting time is this may make no philosophical sense. But hey, this isn't about philosophy. This is about fun and the epic Steam game library I've built over the years waiting for the day when I would an epic computer equal to the task of running them all with the visual glory God intended when he invented video games on the eighth day. Today is that day. Now I am finding it most difficult to pull myself away from my glorious new gaming experience into the mundane-ness of most of real life.

The point is that I recognize that I balance my time budget like the US government balances their money budget and before I end up with a 16 trillion hour time debt I realize I'd better get a handle on things. So Jenny, my Excel smart wife, helped me make an excel sheet that would split my 168 weekly hours into percentages:

10% God time (Time tithing!)
10% Chris time (Video games! Woohoo!)
20% Jenny time (She's my wife, of course she gets twice as much of my time as I do. Plus, time with her is almost always better than my games anyway)
30% Work time (Not only does this include bringing home the bacon, but also things like blogging like I am now. Basically a collection of things which, though they may be good or enjoyable, I probably wouldn't choose them over video games even though I should.)
30% Sleep time (Sleep takes up a depressing amount of my time. It's like income tax for my time! After living with these percentages for a week I think I'm going to have to rearrange it because for my last night I only have 3 hours of sleep left in the budget...)

Now that I've set up my time as a trackable and spendable commodity I've been way better at time management. Raptr, a gaming service, sent me my weekly gameplay report and told me I had played about 50% less than I usually do. That's probably a good thing, as much as I hate it. I mean, my natural hoarding instinct is finally a HUGE help as I focus on working to hoard up gaming time for binges.

So, there it is! I have realistic plans to help me ensure I blog more. Now lets see me do it. I hope you're looking forward to it, because I am.

The Library Gang

Hey.

Currently the apartment Jenny and I share is depressingly devoid of internet. To me this often feels like living on a planet that is devoid of all life. To combat my cabin fever I have been spending a considerable amount of my time at the Portland Public Library. To be more precise, I have been spending a considerable amount of time using the library's Wifi. I need my Facebook fix, man.

During my internet binges I have become familiar with "the regulars," those people who spend their days haunting the library and doing whatever middle-aged men do on laptops in libraries. It's quite an interesting group of people so I decided I would write about them and, by extension, share them with you. Allow me to introduce you to the "library gang."

First up there there's felt-fez guy. Felt-fez guy makes noises whenever he feels emotions. Sometimes he makes noises because of computer problems and will get tech support from silver ponytail guy. Silver ponytail guy just sits and stares at his computer. I never even see him type anything or move his mouse. I have no idea what he's doing. Then there's bald-goatee guy. Today he didn't even have a computer. He just sat there.

There is also The Incredible Orb. You see, The IO isn't one of the cool kds. He's not really part of the gang; he just orbits. While we chill in fiction The IO sits next to the DVDs and music, right where you can look through the shelves and see the Somalis yelling at each other in the teen section. When looking at The IO he doesn't strike you as fat, just incomprehensibly round. An incredible orb.

I see The IO more consistently than I see any of the others. He's always there, always in the same spot. When I told Jenny about him she said "Maybe he works online? Like stock exchange stuff." Today as I walked past him he was very clearly on Neopets. Of course this made me wonder how my own abandoned Neopets account is doing.

Then of course there's that one weirdo, leather jacket-comb guy, who's actually here to read. All the time. He reads the paper. A lot. Like, maybe he's a workaholic newspaper editor and just has to read it that fourth time to be really sure. Today I saw him with a book. He reads with the book or paper in his right hand and a plastic comb in his left. Occasionally the situation on the top of his head will get just a bit too raucous for his liking and he'll use the comb to settle everyone down.

Lately the library has been missing the first member of the gang I ever saw. I call him Mister Pornography, or Mr. P. for short. I met Mr. P. on my first day in the library. I had just become the proud bearer of a key-chain sized library card and was prepared to begin borrowing. I headed over to the graphic novel section and, while flipping through Batman comics, I noticed him.

He sat facing the window at the long desk adjacent to the graphic novel shelves, his back, and the bright screen of his netbook, facing anybody who walked within twenty feet. His paling hair hung in kinked waves nearly reaching his shoulders and, over those shoulders, the content of his screen was very clearly in violation of the library's rules as well as what many would call "common decency."

Mr. P. sat reclined like he was on his couch at home, the angle of his body doing nothing to obscure the screen. He flipped from image to image with the utmost swagger, as if he were the head librarian of the pornography section, master of the Dewey "Blow Me" Decimal system.

Today I watched a new guy get kicked out for looking at porn. I think that's probably what happened to Mr. P. This new guy was nothing like Mr. P., though. I felt bad for him. He looked so ashamed as the security guard made him pack up his stuff. He could tell that the entirety of the gang, as well as myself, were watching and listening to everything being said.

And that, friend-o, is my life.

Jobs anyone?

Well, a sticky note on my desktop tells me I have 18 jobs I should apply for tomorrow. After filling out four applications today I guess I'm ready to tackle some more tomorrow. That's right, three months out of college and I'm still unemployed. It's frustrating to be sure, but I'm nowhere near hopeless yet. Well, I guess nowhere near hopelessness is a little bit extreme. I'm still like a month from hopelessness. That's more accurate.

You see, I'm writing this blog post because I'm feeling more hopeful than I have since last week when Jenny and I were turned down for a job we had been really hoping for. But of course life is never just that easy.

But now I have some things to be excited about! Yesterday I passed my driving exam (on my fourth try) and got my license! I was just fed up with failing so I just went in and did everything perfect. I hit a grand total of zero babies and scraped zero cars and parallel parked like Mr. P. A. Rallel himself. It was wonderful. I do think I freaked out the tester by thanking him so emphatically for passing me, though. I don't they usually have people try to kiss them on the job.

And the other excitement? Tomorrow I am going to use my fancy shmancy new job to drive my beautiful wife, Jenny, to a job interview that I believe she is wholly qualified for. So one of us might be employed tomorrow!

Yet the fact remains. I need a job too. In the past three months Jenny and I first honeymooned, then house-sat, and now we have been in repose at her parents house until such a time as we have somewhere else to go. To be honest I am exceedingly excited to move out and start our life in earnest. Also, once we have jobs I can get a new computer. That Dell XPS 8500 looks mouthwateringly sexy from where I'm sitting.

So, aside from the three applications I am dropping off tomorrow I am also willing to just have you hire me. That's right, YOU! I LOVE YOU! Like, seriously, whoever you are, my resume is a thing of beauty and eligibility and my e-mail is always hoping for job offers. I'm multitalented, very talented, and buckets of fun to work with. I would especially welcome offers to work as a video game writer, rock star, facial hair model, or general nice guy (every office needs one). Trust me, you want to hire me.

Anyway, that's enough for one post. I'd love to hear from you in the comments or an e-mail. Until next time, this is Chris, you're friendly neighborhood rambler, asking that you keep in touch.

Married Spirituality is Weird

Okay, it's more than that. Marriage is weird. But marriage in general is two big for one post, so let's focus here.

I've been trying to figure our how to articulate this for a while and it took an episode of Modern Family and, as usual, pulling out my notebook and writing during church. I remember reading somewhere that Brian Jacques came up with part of Redwall in church. It's a good place to get the writing juices flowing. Even if it makes you look terribly un-devout.

The episode of Modern Family, Punkin Chunkin (Which iscurrently available for free on Hulu), had a nice little food for thought moment at the end. You know how sitcoms do that sometimes; They're like "well, that certainly was a silly episode but we've managed to squeeze a moral in here too. You can thank us later for BLOWING YOUR MIND WITH PROFUNDITY!!" Yeah, just like that. Anyway, the moral of this story is that there are two types of people in the world: dreamers and realists. You would think dreamers would marry dreamers and realists would marry realists but that's often not how it happens. In fact, in Jenny and my marriage that's not how it happened.

Jenny is a dreamer. She went to church today in a tie-dyed dress. I wore a black t-shirt with a black button up shirt over it. Yes, black on black. I'm that bad of a realist. Meh, gift and a curse. Jenny and I view the world in very different ways and plan in very different ways. For example, neither of us know where we're going with our future. I've been looking at apartments and found quite a nice and affordable one in Schenectady. The other day Jenny said, "After we're done in Fillmore why don't we just move to Schenectady and see what happens?" I am a realist (or pessimist) so I think we'd be better of applying to every McDonald's on the East Coast and moving wherever they're hiring. We're under-qualified, inexperienced fresh college grads. No one wants us.

But, my realism aside, we do need to do something. That's where being different is good. Jenny gives me something more than McDonald's to dream about, and I try to make her dreams work.

But didn't I start out by saying marriage is weird? Yeah, I did. Though it is good it's also just bizarre. To be joined together with, be one entity with, another person who thinks so utterly differently (and often what I would consider illogically) than I do is at times just downright uncomfortable. Differences that compliment each other are good; but differences are still differences. It's a big adjustment.

Now, the title of this post mentions spirituality with, up to this point, I haven't talked about. As I mentioned earlier I wrote a lot of this in my notebook at church so I have to talk about spirituality, at least a little, or else God may smite me for letting writing distract me during church.

Jenny is "non-denominational." All the cool kids are these days, at least at Houghton. I'm the loser who stuck with my denomination because I feel at home, and called, here. Nothing against non-denominational people, it just is, and has been, an adjustment to be marrying one.

Today during church Jenny took communion. For any non-Salvationists reading this you're probably thinking, "well, duh, that's what Christians do at church, right?" Well, not Salvationists. Not me. The Salvation Army isn't against communion, it's just not a tradition we practice for a multitude of reasons I don't have the space to go into here.

So, what do I do during communion? It depends. Sometimes I pray. Other times I pull out the Bible and read. Still other times, like today, I write. But I just sit there. Whether it's a "pass around" communion where the body and blood come past us or a "come and get it" communion where everybody lines up (this is where I am most noticeable in my non-participation) I do my own thing and people often notice. It's not bad or a problem, it's just a little awkward. To not be partaking in a ritual that's happening all around you is a strange experience. What makes it a step stranger is that my wife does participate.

Jenny and I spent hours and hours in the early stages of our relationship discussing our faith. We both know what the other believes and respect each other in the areas where we differ. Every time we are in a church and there is communion Jenny offers not to take communion if it makes me more comfortable and every time I answer in complete honesty that I don't mind if she does and that it's between her and God, not between her and I. This in my mind would be like if I was reading in 2 Corinthians and Jenny said that made her feel uncomfortable and would prefer I read in 1 Corinthians. Both books are good, and it's between God and I where I read. In the same way though it's a little awkward communion is between Jenny and God, and I don't think I should have say. Just because communion is a tradition I don't practice or because it has a significance to Jenny that I don't fully comprehend is no reason to make her miss out.

So Jenny usually takes communion.

What's weird to me is that as a married unit we have become one. We pray together. We read the Bible together. We sleep together. We are one, yet fundamentally different. Inherently different in some areas. We are two different people in one marriage entity--yet still two.

To some people this might be a bigger deal. To me it's about as disturbing as the fact that she prefers to play Soul Caliber II on my X-Box (that's what's been keeping her occupied while I write this) while I stick to Blacklight: Retribution on my laptop (even if this four year old machine means I have to run the game on minimum everything). It's just strange to be discovering new ways in which we are unified every day and at the same time finding new ways in which we are different.

Not bad, just--different.

Anyway, that's my rambling for today. It feels good to be blogging again. If you, my dear reader, know of any job opportunities please, please, please let me know. I am quite unemployed.

Looking forward to writing again soon. Comments are always welcome!