The Lighter Side of Absolute Zero

Person A tells Person B of a trial/crisis/tribulation. Person A understands Person B is going to pray for Person A. Fast forward a few weeks (or months) wherein Person B has been praying every day for Person A based on the initial set of information. Person A now tells Person B the problem was solved (or changed) weeks ago… .

I always feel weird in these situations. Were my prayers wasted in the later days? Were the effectual? Did I fail as a friend, or did they? What does God think on this issue?

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve been told and I’ve read that telling stories is inherently solitary. One person tells one story and that’s it. So why do we have traditions of collaborative story telling like the good old campfire ghost story activity? Why do we still pursue this illusive dream if it’s either impossible, improbable, or ill-advised?

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 2:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The most important aspect of playing any game is having fun. Fun should not be dependent upon winning for the simple fact that there will usually be more losers than winners. Fun should be had in the playing of the game and/or in being social.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems the more responsible I and my friends become the more restricted our free-time becomes. There are many reasons why this is so, and I’d love to explore this at some other time, but the why isn’t as important as the mere fact that free-time is a luxury commodity and that makes it valuable. There are some games out there which I find quite fun and engaging, and I’d love to play them as often as I can (I’m thinking specifically of Arkham Horror, Runebound, and possibly Descent though I don’t [yet?] own it) but they have one problem I’m not sure I can overcome: they all take multiple hours to play out to the finish.

I might be able to make the time to play, but can I find players among my friends who can? It seems two hours is the maximum limit for most of my game playing friends, and thus some opportunities are lost, that is until I can find more game playing friends. I wonder: how true is this across our culture? Is it just me and my friends? Is it our position in life? Or is it just a part of our culture in general?

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s no great revelation that some crimes go unsolved, even some murders. We only need invoke the name Jack the Ripper to testify to that fact (more recently my attention was drawn to the Black Dahlia case). The writer in me was surprised to realize this though. I like to wrap things up neat and tidy, and I like to read stories that wrap things up. The bad guy doesn’t win, the good guy does. We always know who did what to whom and why. But real life intrudes and serves as a reminder that sometimes a murder gets away without a trace.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What if there were some ancient dark power, some supernatural evil from the mists of time? What if people could make a contract with it, tap into it, or otherwise use it? What if they use their newfound power to terrorize others and get their own way? Wait a sec … did I just loosely group all myths, folklore, and superstitious tales? :)

It seems to me we have some classic material when we bridge the old superstitions with modern culture in our stories. Nothing is more strange, or perhaps even more terrifying than realizing there is something supernatural out there, and has been out there all along, and someone somewhere knows how to use it (usually for evil). Seems it me there ought to be a wealth of [good] stories still to be told by looking into the past and invoking some ancient evil.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (1)

Games are great little hobby, and by games I of course mean board games, card games, and even RPGs (though I personally would draw the line at SCA and LARPing, but find nothing wrong with either). There is of course one little caveat to gaming, and while it’s not a chicken and the egg situation it feels like one. Allow me to illustrate:

1. Good players make a good game fun.
2. Bad players make a good game not fun.
3. Bad games are not fun regardless of the players.

Games are inherently social, and if you have a bad social time the solution is to change your social context; if you have a good social experience but a bad gaming experience, change the game. The formula is simple, but executing it is hard. Games are dependent upon a social context, and sometimes that social context is dependent upon the games you play, for some games are good and some social situations are also good, but they don’t mix well for reasons of preference.

Is there a solution? I suppose the solution would be to have a wide circle of friends with whom you can play games, and hope that you enjoy their company to play the games and hope you enjoy the games to suffer their company. Either that, or we need to have a longer discussion on friends and social contexts. Bottom line: you need to enjoy both the game and the friends you are playing with to really enjoy playing games.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 9:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Life is full of changes, so much so that change is inevitable and about the only thing you can count on. Some changes are irrevocable; with one decision your life could be changed forever. These changes you prepare for. Marriage will change the rest of your life, as will having children. These two things you should definitely prepare for. So I don’t understand when people think my wife and I ought to take a chance and just have a child and see what happens and how we’ll be provided for. As far as I am concerned other people can screw around and wind up pregnant then fight to provide, but as for myself and my wife, we’ll be a little more ready for it than that.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 8:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have always been flummoxed when a woman will openly and even boldly talk about the removal of her reproductive organs. I always feel like it will be a sensitive issue, and I try to make sure I have some appropriate measure of empathy whenever the [horrifying] subject of hysterectomies come up, but so far it’s all been for nothing. I’ve not yet met a woman who had one who was ashamed or embarrassed to admit it. Contrast that with men and you get a much different story. Men do not want to talk about castration, even if it’s a medical procedure that would save their lives, it’s sacrosanct. I always assumed women were the same way, and I usually find they are more sensitive than us brutish men, but I guess, thus far, this is one area where the opposite is true.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I’m listening to a book (so far it’s good, but I’ll reserve final judgement for when it’s finished) and in this book a couple of rare books come take center stage for a while. The author describes them in a rich tactile way, making you want to reach out and touch, hold, even caress the books. There is still something about books, an actual physical book, that is pleasing. I love to read books, and I’ll have to admit I like collecting them as well. I have quite an alarming number of eBooks in my collection I want to read, but there is still something mysterious, perhaps bordering on the mystical, about handling a physical book. What is it about books? Why do they hold a fascination with me, and why is it more preferable to read out of a soft bound leather book than an eBook with all the annotation, dictionaries, and bookmark support you could think of. What strange sway do books hold over me (and possibly others)?

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I will say nothing new here, nevertheless I will say it. Our standard pantheon of horror monster figures have become too familiar to be frightening. Vampires are all too prevalent, zombies abound everywhere (they even march around in broad daylight now). Wolfmen (lycanthropes to get all “technical”) aren’t all that common, but still common enough they don’t cause much fright. Whether or not these monsters ever actually caused real fright is beside the point; they no longer are efficacious.

Am I tired of them? By no means, but that doesn’t mean I won’t grow tired of them. I think, perhaps, this is one reason I drift toward H. P. Lovecraft: his monsters are/were original and still sparse.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

I was recently talking with a friend of mine and each of us confessed we have never been scared by a book, and in truth feel no contents of any book will ever instill even a remote sense of fear. I’m sure psychologists everywhere have opinions on why this is, and frankly I don’t much care. I’m not sure I read stories to scare myself, I’m not even sure if I like being scared (and I’ve read articles stating scary movies succeed because we like being scared). And yet, when the weather cooperates and casts a pallor of gloom around me, you will be sure to find me in a dimly lit room (candles if I can) devouring as much Lovecraft and other “masters” as I can find. You might even be treated to an impromptu ghost story of my own creation.

So what am I writing when I write a horror story if I concede I will not scare anyone with it? If I am not writing to frighten, then what am I doing exactly? I’m still coming to grips with why I read, but it seems to me, from my perspective only, horror literature isn’t about fright and terror in the reader’s psyche, it’s about something else, something I can’t put my claw finger on.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I took all of two psychology classes in colleges, which makes me about as knowledgeable as any post-doctorate in the field, so believe me when I make my outrageous claim. There are three modes of living: survival, maintenance, progressive. I don’t yet know how this pertains to writing, but I know it could have some impact. As I have been in all three modes (though it’s been quite some time since I’ve been progressive) I know there is a difference in my actions and my motives based on the mode of life I am in.

I can’t help but state that any author would benefit from keeping this in mind when creating characters. It probably will not be transparent in the story, but this is the kind of information about a character that will help to make them more real and believable.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Allow me to put my theology cap on. My demonology isn’t all that refined as that was not actually covered with anything more than a passing reference in my course of study, but I do know a few things. For one I know demons masquerade as angels of light; I also know Satan’s goal is to gain worshippers of his own, not necessarily to destroy, to create chaos, to corrupt into gross acts of sin against God (though I cannot deny that he might approve of such tactics; see Job). Is it so hard to believe that a person would cooperate with an angelic figure who merely wanted their worship? Then is it so hard to imagine that a person who might have sold his soul to the devil might not be a dark and sinister man?

Go forth and write. I know of few characters who made a pact like this, but it seems far more likely than the usual means of making a contract with demons and the devil. And no, I have no ideas how one might actually go about contacting a demon in order to make this contract in the first place, I’m assuming it will happen by chance when least expected, and it will seem pleasant and beneficial.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have published a comment feed for those of you who want to keep up with the discussion without having to do so manually.

http://blog.0kelvin.net/lite/comments.xml

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was talking with my sweet little missus last night, inundating her with all kinds of conjecture, ideas, and much conversation. I fear the poor little woman couldn’t get a word in edgewise (note to self: refuse all future “energy drinks”). Somewhere in the middle of the rabbit-trail like conversation I hit upon a series of “What if” questions that sparked my writer’s imagination.

What if there was a genie who granted his master some wishes, in return for praise and public acknowledgment? What if there was a succubus who visited a young man in the night and granted his desires (though maybe not herself, but just arranged it). What if there were supernatural beings who desired worship and adoration and had it within their power to perform “miracles” (i.e. demons)?

What if the seminal genie was a demon? In exchange for some wishes he got praise and it has lasted the test of time, we still talk about genies. What if a great number of these type of mythical beings are based off of some pact made with the devil or a demon? Seems plausible enough to me for at least one or two stories.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It amazes me, though in a negative way, how much one person can affect another for ill. Trauma is so easy to perpetrate, and is so difficult to heal from. There is that old adage that it takes seven compliments to undo one discouraging comment; whether or not this is true (certainly it’s a bad formula) the principle holds. It takes much effort to undo wrong done to another human being. I’m just stunned when I think about how much one person can do to another with do little and in so short of a time.

For me I still am working to overcome and shrug off most of the crap an old boss burdened me with. It’s been years, and I’m mostly fine, but every once in a while I am yet reminded that his actions and words haunt me still, and I still have to deal with them. Am I the worse for it? Probably not, but I still have to deal with it, and in some situations I act differently (cautious when I don’t need to be) than I used to. Amazing, but I wish there it wasn’t. I wish this were not so impossible, but if that were the case we couldn’t affect people in a positive way either, and it’s those stories that we all love and enjoy.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I love living on the West Coast of the good ‘ol U. S. of A. I especially love living in the western part of Oregon where the weather is mild and the Pacific Ocean is just an hour’s drive away. If I were an anthropologist or a sociologist I might be able to give some sort of authoritative treatise on how the West Coast is different from the rest of the nation, and from the rest of the world (though it would be even more interesting to know what areas of the globe the West Coast culture is like). Alas I am but a poor Bible scholar cum author (seasoned with computer programming) so I’ll have to just conjecture and blather on.

Recently I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a gothic tale. Think Walpole meets Poe and you’ve got an idea of the tone I’m aiming for. I think I’ll have a good time with it, and I might actually write a story I would love to read. There is a bit of a problem though … I don’t have exposure to anything approaching gothic. Out here if a building is more than 100 years old its either a dilapidated barn or a farmhouse, and I don’t find those particularly haunting, chilling, nor gothic (though how odd would it be to have a barn with flying buttresses and gargoyles?).

I went “back East” once, when I was a child, to tour some of our great American points of interest, namely Revolutionary War locations, Civil War locations, and D.C. I didn’t go there on a writer’s holiday, so I fear my impressions are biased and skewed based on the historical nature of the visit. However, I do know there were a number of buildings, locations, and narrow streets that are a result of the original colonies. There are features of the landscape and architecture that are impacted from 200 years past. I know this is even more true in Europe.

So I’m trying to write a gothic story, and to get the feel and flavor I want I can’t just take a stroll downtown like Poe or Lovecraft might have been able to do. I’ll have to dig around picture books, troll the Internet for pictures and videos, and generally rely on not being there and creating a composite world for my story. So, can an Oregonian write a gothic tale that doesn’t involve a haunted barn? We’ll see.

Posted by Seth Croston Barber at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)