My Lord,
Please help me to let go, and to let You.
Not my will, but Yours be done.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
For those following the BEING BIPOLAR series...
...and there are lots of you, apparently :-)
I am currently planning something of an experiment. If there are any questions - any at all, 'cuz there is very little that I have thought would be off-limits - that you have about bipolar disorder, e-mail them to me at theknightshift@gmail.com.
What I am particularly looking for are any questions that could be directed toward a person suffering bipolar, about what having bipolar is like.
Any question that you have about bipolar, shoot it to me. Y'all will be finding out sooner than later what this is for.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Meet the proprietor of the Wichita House of Burlesque!
He's cheap! He's sleazy! He's loud!
He's... Cigar!
Just got back from another technical rehearsal for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. This was my first in costume as Cigar: the owner of the burlesque joint that Louise and her crazy mother (and Herbie, can't forget poor Herbie) wind up at. And I am having a fantabulously great time in the role! Cigar is one of the most fun characters that I've played yet!
By the way, that entire costume is something that I put together. The fedora is one I've had for a few years now. And that bow-tie: I remembered that bow-tie very well 'cuz for this fourth grade program we did at Community Baptist School many years ago, Dad for whatever reason thought it would be classy if I wore a bow-tie. That thing was positively humungous when I was nine years old! Everyone in the sanctuary - students and teachers alike - were giggling at it. And that made me start giggling when it came time for me to speak my part! Ahhh, where do our fathers come up with such things...
Anyway, for some reason that tie just popped into mind and Dad found it sure 'nuff. And between that and the fedora and the cigar and all... yeah, that looks like a burlesque owner from the 1930s :-)
Gypsy opens this coming Friday night! Come if you can. This threatenspromises to be the most outrageous production in Rockingham County history!
BEING BIPOLAR, Part 3: The Hell Curve
In Part 2 of this series, "Sketching Unquiet", I wrote about what bipolar disorder is as a medical condition, and then I attempted to roughly approximate what it’s like to live with it on a daily basis.
In the week and a half since publication I've re-read that installment of Being Bipolar at least a dozen times and the more that I do, the more I can't help but feel led to ponder and expound on it further. Now don't get me wrong: Part 2 was the best that I could have written... at that time. But the composition and publishing of "Sketching Uniquet" has not led cleanly to the Part 3 that I had originally planned.
Instead it has been like God is showing me "Chris, you wrote about your understanding of this and doing so has helped you to understand it even better... so write that this time."
See how this is working out, Dear Readers? Being Bipolar is not a series of retrospective reflections about living with a mental illness. Indeed, there cannot POSSIBLY be any "retrospective" at all. That would imply that I have completely conquered this disease and that it will never, ever again be something that I will be fighting against. That it will merely be something that I can look back upon and feel some measure of gloating about "Hey, I licked this!"
And that would be a lie. Because I am never going to completely lick this thing. Bipolar disorder has no cure. There is only a lifetime of controlling this as best I can this that I have to look forward to. And the more that I discover about my own condition the more I am learning how the struggle to manage bipolar disorder is as unavoidable as bipolar was at all.
Bipolar disorder was a disease that I was going to be hit with. I can see that now. It was a condition that I was born with as much as some are born with hemophilia or congenital heart defect. The only way that I would have known a life without bipolar disorder is if God Himself had allowed me to be mercifully free of it.
I've already written about how I have cried out to Him, especially during these past few months. What happened to precipitate that? Ironically it has been my own recovery from two years and more of the worst of bipolar that I have experienced (and Lord willing will always remain the worst that I have had to go through). Bipolar took away feeling from me. It took away sympathy and it took away empathy and it took away the capacity to fully love and feel remorse. As one good friend put it: I went through the past two years "numb" to most of the life around me. And then just before this past fall something finally "clicked" into the right place in my neurobiology and everything that I should have already been feeling on my conscience crashed down on me.
There is a thorn in my mind, that I have cried out to God to deliver me from. And still, He won't do it. "My grace is sufficient," He has told me just as He told the apostle Paul that His grace was enough to let that great apostle endure life with the thorn in his flesh. I do wish that God had never let me have this. Because I have to believe that I would have never have had to lose friendships, opportunities, and my marriage.
But, it was going to happen. Bipolar was set to strike me and there was nothing that I could have done about it...
...but there is plenty that I can choose to do about it now.
So, I can never be cured of bipolar disorder. But I also believe that God has a purpose for everything, and that for those who love Him that even the trials and tribulations of this life... no matter how painful and bitter they may be to go through... He can and will use not only to make manifest His wonder and majesty, but also to deliver us to greater things than we could possibly imagine.
The only "selfish" reason I have for doing Being Bipolar is because working on this series is helping me to explore and understand my own condition. Beyond that, I am doing this because I know what bipolar does to individuals and their loved ones... and I will do anything within my power and ability to spare others that unimaginably severe grief and suffering.
And, I am doing this for God. Not because I feel like I "have" to, but because I want to. If He has allowed me to have this condition, then I absolutely and sincerely do want to use this to give all the honor and praise to my Lord and Savior.
Isn't that what all of us who have chosen to follow Christ are meant to do, with the trials and tribulations in each of our lives?
We serve and follow a living God. He is shown to be great in our weakness and frailties. If I am strong for doing this series, it is only because He has brought me through worse than fire and fear.
And like every other trouble in life, this also is a means of growth and learning. So it is that I will never stop learning from being bipolar.
And I'll never stop sharing what I am learning from it.
And if I was always bound to have bipolar, well... I feel no small amount of gratitude that I am able to write about this.
So in the past week since writing Part 2 a new model (well, new to me anyway) of what existence with bipolar disorder developed and coalesced together in my mind, and it immediately occurred to me that many people would find this of immensely more help toward understanding this disease than any amount of words that I could write with that goal in mind.
I call it "the Hell Curve". And yes it is meant to be a play on words with "the bell curve" (quick, get me to a punnery! :-)
Now, math ain't my strongest suit (in fact I had to get some advice from a way smarter person than I'll ever be in the realm of higher numerical operations) but regardless of that, I am going to put into graph form how most people experience mood and emotion. And then I'm going to present what it is like for a person with bipolar disorder.
Here is how I pray you and everyone else reading this blog experience – more or less – normal mood during the course of your life...
A nice, simple sine wave. You have ups and downs. Mountains and valleys. Peak moments of joy and thrill and rock-bottom periods of sadness and depression. But even when you have your "down" times, you almost certainly know to expect a rebound back up. And I am aware that real life isn't that clean and neat. That it would be really nice if our moods could be so perfectly rhythmic. But that said, you gotta admit: that is a graph that suits the needs of visualizing normal moods.
It's something so beautiful, that it almost makes me cry to know that I can't know what it must feel like to have that day after day, week after week, month after month...
And going from left to right, that is your cycle (I hope) of mood through time. Keep that in mind. You, good reader, if you are so blessed, have a good ol' fashioned two dimensional representation of your moods.
That graph is nothing like what a person with bipolar disorder can know on a routine basis. Oh sure, there can and thankfully are periods that I can have "ups and downs" like most people. And I am glad that at last those periods are becoming longer and longer as I learn how to better manage my condition. I wouldn't be able to document and chronicle my own personal journey with bipolar if I wasn't at last afforded that because of medication and counseling.
But that isn't something that I dare believe that I have the luxury of finding complete rest from and letting down of my guard again.
This is the Hell Curve. Here is the graph for bipolar disorder...
At the moment I am writing to you from what I call the "Productive Life Zone" (sounds like something out of Star Trek, doesn't it?). This is where most people spend their entire lives at, without ever knowing any different. That is where I wish that I could have spent my entire life at. But the best I can do is strive and work and pray that I can maintain a presence there, for however long I possibly can. Within that zone, that narrow band of sense and rational mind, I am completely as good a person as anyone is likely to be.
The problem though is that as a person with bipolar disorder, I can not be perfectly secure in that zone. Because my own mind – if I cease to manage my condition - will begin to tear me apart between the wildest extremities of heightened mood and uttermost depression. Trust me: if I could I WOULD stay nestled and safe in that zone... and never have to endure the pain of being yanked violently between those two realms of wild emotion and agonizing darkness of mere being.
THAT is a picture of bipolar disorder, ladies and gentlemen. THAT is where I and many, many others must live and contend with every day of our existence. And I am glad that I can know and appreciate this now. I wish that someone could have shown me this graph a long, long time ago. It might have saved me a lot of pain. It might have saved others in my life more pain than they should have ever had to go through.
It is called the "Hell Curve" for a reason. Because if I can't maintain myself within that very slim margin of mental clarity, my life can, will and does become a living Hell. It turns into Hell for those that are closest to me and who I care about most. It is because I was incapable of abiding in that zone that I lost... well, darn nearly everything that I held precious.
Knowing where I need to be, where I must persist in being, I can have a life as normal and wonderful as anyone. But I've got my work cut out for me. I can't see going without medication and counseling for as long as I live. But I know where I want to be. I know the life that I do still want. And that is worth doing what I can to stay "in the zone".
Notice that the curve doesn't cycle up and down. On one side it soars and on the other it plummets. There is no upper and lower limit to the Hell Curve. If I were ever unable to stop – or for someone to help me stop – my mind from climbing in mood intensity, it would doubtless take me to a very dark place that would end... well, it would end bad. And if I were to slip into a state of bipolar depression that could not be abated, I would perhaps inevitably commit suicide. That is, if I didn't understand bipolar as well as I do now, because I do understand that this is part of the medical condition. It's not a part of the real me. But bipolar and suicide is something that I'm gonna go into further in an upcoming chapter of Being Bipolar.
On the "normal" sine wave for most people, there is mood across time. I noted that it's two-dimensional for "regular" people, right? The Hell Curve adds in a Z-axis to the graph (remembering my eighth grade Pre-Algebra class, which I never failed to give poor Mr. Hill no small amount of frustration... but I'm glad that I get to acknowledge now that I did learn something useful from him after all :-). The Z-axis becomes time proceeding for the bipolar person, so that's then mood across three dimensions. I'm trying to keep within the Productive Life Zone while working to manage my bipolar across time. Doing what I can to keep my mind from deviating toward one mood pole or the other.
And if I can stay within that zone, no matter how much time goes by, I know that I can and will have at long last the life that I have been unable to most fully enjoy until now. My being here has become a work of art in multiple dimensions, across a span of time and will continue developing and growing into what God would have it become, for the rest of my life.
So in a way, having bipolar disorder has helped me come to appreciate how beautiful and precious life really is. I don't know if I could have come to the perspective that I have now, if I did not have this to overcome.
And as one friend put it over the weekend: God never lets anyone be an overcomer if there is nothing to overcome to begin with.
But back to the Hell Curve. Again, I wish that I had been given this model years ago. It shows not only bipolar disorder and what it means to struggle with it, but it also has much to illustrate about how this can be an extremely difficult illness to give medical treatment to and to bring it under control.
The biggest example from my own life that I can think of was a time between late 2004 and around the middle of 2005. That was when I was working on my first film, Forcery. The one that spoofs Stephen King's Misery, but in our version it's George Lucas being held captive by an obsessed Star Wars fan. Forcery had been a personal dream of mine since getting the idea in 2001... even though I had no idea at all how to put a movie together.
Well, come summer of 2004 I had a script, a camera, and I had a great cast, including my lifelong best friend Chad Austin (who I persuaded or conned or something into playing George Lucas... and he did a terrific job in the part!). There were fits and misfires... not to mention how I nearly burned down my parents' house with some real fire... but come late fall of 2004, I had all the footage that I needed to assemble Forcery.
And then, my mind went from working at a hard creative high... to dropping like a stone without warning. It was as if as soon as the last bit of footage that we had shot was in the can, that I became totally drained. And not just of creative juice either: my mind rapidly and without any obvious reason became void and empty of all passion and desire.
It was a severe episode of bipolar depression. But I didn't understand that at all at the time. Or at least, I didn't completely understand what that meant. I didn't know what it was doing to me.
I struggled to find desire again. I struggled to find my energy and determination. Yeah, that is the word for it right there: my "determination". Where was it? To have that suddenly robbed from me was unendurable. Meanwhile the months were going by and creeping into 2005. I had set a goal for myself that Forcery would be finished in time for the premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Why? Not just 'cuz I thought it would be great publicity for my own film, but because I really did want there to be as much attention as possible, while the "iron was hot" so to speak, on the efforts of the film's cast. Chad Austin, I have known all my life. Melody Hallman Daniel, the amazing actress who played Frannie: well, she became a great friend too and I was seriously hoping and praying that Forcery might somehow propel her onto the big screen where her talents deserve to be.
(And in a way, I did succeed. Forcery, including Chad and Melody's performances, became included in the award-winning documentary The People vs. George Lucas. Chad and Melody are being seen on real movie screens all over the world right now! And I've heard that a lot of people have been enjoying Forcery for the first time because of it :-)
Anyway, back to the story. Time was against me. But my mind was against me even worse. It was like a thick heavy steel door in my brain, shutting me away from the DETERMINATION that I needed to tap into. But, I just couldn't get to it no matter how hard I tried to focus my mind on it.
In early 2005 my psychiatrist prescribed a medication. We thought it would elevate me out of depression and get me to a point where I could be functioning and creative and able to work again. I was totally debilitated in mind and... well, we had to try something.
The medication turned out to be a horrible, horrible mistake.
Did it take me out of the depressive leg of the Hell Curve and propel me toward the Productive Life Zone? Yeah. Yeah, it did that, most certainly. But the medication wouldn't STOP there either.
My ability to compel myself with drive and desire went from a state of near-zero, and shot up like a rocket to a place that I never, ever want to be at again for as long as I live.
I know of no other way to put it than this: the medication, which was supposed to work on one extreme end of my bipolar, drove me crazily toward the other end.
The medication made me feel almost God-like. And that was very, very wrong and I even knew that it was wrong!
But the sense of euphoria, the feeling that I could accomplish anything, was so intoxicating and overwhelming, that my mind couldn't or wouldn't make the connection to the drug that I was prescribed.
The people who have known me for most of my life will tell you: I have always been an inquisitive, curious, scholarly kind of guy. I read the entire World Book Encyclopedia in the summer after my second grade year. Things like science and politics and history and religion were what I was "into" as a kid, more than sports or whatever (although I did pretty good on the swim team in high school, but anyway...)
A friend in college once told me that I had a very analytical mind. But that it was keeping me from really enjoying the grace of God: that I should just accept God and His ways instead of trying to understand it (and if you ever read this, please know that I did finally get to that place and I'm thankful for your telling me. But, I'm digressing again...)
You can't begin to imagine what a mind like the one I have turned into, when medication drove it into what I have come to call a state of rampancy.
If I couldn't do anything because of bipolar depression, then accelerated bipolar thinking was even more hideous in its ability to incapacitate. Nothing became beyond my ability to take apart and comprehend. Look, I know what I'm talking about, because my mind did things... things that I wrote down even... during those few months, that I could NOT and WOULD NOT have ever done if the "real" me had been able to be at the controls.
What kind of things? I now have an understanding of God and the physical universe, and how His laws and its laws are not exclusive of each other at all but rather complement each other beautifully, that I did not have before then and likely would never have arrived at where it not for my mind going places that Thomas Aquinas would never have dared. I could practically see space and time and matter and energy working in ways that I hadn't realized before. Instead of being overwhelmed by the scope of the universe my mind began to comprehend it as was not possible previously. I could zoom my attention from the scale of a subatomic particle on through where I was sitting in a room on through the void between the furthest galaxies...
Somewhere in there I began to feel the desire to die.
No, not in the "Goodbye cruel world" sense that I'm sure my words have just suggested.
How do I put this? Okay: instead of being driven to wonder about suicide because of depression and the absence of feeling, now I was seriously wondering if dying might free me of the confines of flesh and allow me to become a creature of pure mind. Death wasn't a measure to escape an unendurable life. For longer than I have the heart to admit, death became something to consider pursuing to free me to exist in a whole 'nother and greater state.
Delusions of god-hood? Or was I thinking that I was only trying to be what God wanted me to be, were it not for things like hunger for food and desire for intimacy holding me back?
It was the most powerful that my mind has ever been. And looking back, I do realize that there was no delusion involved: my mind reached a place of comprehension and ability and understanding that... we aren't meant for. That none of us are meant for. That I certainly will never be ready for on this side of Heaven.
It was the rarest of the rare air that has driven some of the greatest of geniuses and artists to madness even unto the bitter end.
Two things kept me from destroying myself one way or another in that time. The first was Forcery, and knowing that I needed to finish it. That I should get it done for Chad and Melody, and for Ed, and for everyone else who helped me make that movie. And in each their own way, Chad and Melody and Ed helped me to keep it together not just for Forcery, but for long afterward.
The second thing was my wife. Who I will never stop regretting the pain that I put her through and wishing that I could take it all back. I don't know if I will ever see her again, this ended up destroying our marriage so thoroughly. But, I have to thank her. She was always the best reason that I ever had to persevere. If it were not for her, I have no doubt that I would not be here at all to write about this.
Well, it was too long before we understood that it was the medication that was driving my mind toward the other length of that cruel geometry. I went off of it in June of 2005. But by then I had become addicted to that particular medication. I'm still addicted to the drug, even though I haven't taken any in about six and a half years. Just as recovering alcoholics can't drink alcohol, so I also now have a well-developed relationship with this drug. It was many months of "coming down" and "detoxing" it from my system and my psyche... and it only served to add even more pain and confusion to what I was already going through because of the bipolar. Part of the summer of 2005 I felt great sadness and sorrow for what I had done. I cried a lot. My wife told me that she was proud of me for working through it.
I want to believe that she would still be proud of me. I am always going to be grateful to God for the time we had. I am a much better person for her being in my life than if she had not. And I doubt there are many ex-husbands who will ever be able to say that.
I want to believe that everyone who I have been blessed to have had in my life would be proud of me for what I am doing now, that I am talking about having this illness. Praying that this will find its way to others who would need to read what one has gone through with bipolar. Praying that this will help steer others clear of the suffering that I and too many in my life had to experience.
I will always be living on the Hell Curve.
But I thank God and I thank the many people He has put into my life, that it's not a curve that I have to be graded on.
Very special thanks to Ashley Trent McHale for telling me that y=x^3 is the formula for the curve that I was trying to find :-)
Monday, January 31, 2011
If you aren't watching STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS lately...
...then you are missing some of the best and most daring storytelling that the Star Wars saga has enjoyed in a heap many moon!
I found myself genuinely shocked at how much I enjoyed the three-part "Nightsisters" arc which concluded a week ago this past Friday. Written by Katie Lucas (daughter of The Flanneled One himself), the storyline showed that Lucasfilm does have the willpower to not play things safe... as well as bring on some bigtime "What the...?!" moments (which if you saw the final moments of "Witches of the Mist" you know what I'm talking about). That new villain Savage Oppress is voiced by Clancy Brown (who I still think should eventually provide the voice of Darth Bane) was the sprinkles on top of a fine dessert indeed.
And then there was this past week's episode, which featured the return of Liam Neeson as the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn, as well as Pernilla August doing the voice of Shmi Skywalker...
I think one of the bigger complaints that many fans have come to have about the saga is that Star Wars is being kept too risk-free and pristine. And there's some frustration about how Star Wars could, should be a toy that Lucasfilm plays with and plays hard.
"Overlords" - which is the beginning of a new three-part story - proved us all wrong. At last, this is some of the potential that Star Wars has always had... and it's being allowed to blossom forth brilliantly.
So to the cast and crew of Star Wars: The Clone Wars: my hat is tipped to you! These episodes have given me all new reason to not only watch this show but also DVR it for further enjoyment :-)
Federal judge rules "Obamacare" UN-Constitutional!
But it shouldn't have been passed by the House and Senate to begin with!
Y'know, I am getting mighty fed up with the sorry lot of politicians in Washington... in both major parties mind ya... who have NO respect whatsoever for the Constitution.
Obama's "health care reform" was always unconstitutional. It was the most brazen violation of the commerce clause in perhaps all of United States history. Of course it was going to be struck down by somebody in the judiciary sooner or later.
That this was lost on too many members of the House and Senate, who persisted in advocating and then voting for Obamacare in spite of all sane understanding of constitutional law...
Grrrrrr...
Anyone else doubt that the political system of this country is hopelessly and irredeemably broken? I mean, if people like this are the only ones that we can expect to vote for... then what good is voting at all, for the person who sincerely strives in his or her stewardship as a citizen?
Seriously, seriously: this kind of thing makes me understand voter apathy.
Well anyhoo, it's some good news for a change. Read all about Federal Judge Roger Vinson's ruling here. And here's hoping it'll keep getting declared unconstitutional all the way to the Supreme Court.
Tailgate365: A great site from another awesome friend!
Perhaps I'm being biased in saying this, but I've thought this for a long time: my high school (I'm a proud alum of Rockingham County Senior High) produced some really talented people. Last night I shared a link to the blog of one such person. And tonight I'm gonna share another...
I met T.J. Lee in the summer of 1988 during an enrichment program, so we've known each other for awhile. But I didn't learn of his website Tailgate365 until a few months ago...
Well, what can I say other than this site is pure-D T.J. Lee! It's got entertainment news (in fact Tailgate365 is where I first heard about Henry Caville being the next actor to play Superman), movie trailers, reviews of films and video games, all kinds of good stuff. It even has recipes! One of which, for Jack Daniels wings, I am getting sorely tempted to try for myself 'cuz they sound so good!
So if you want a good destination "for the stuff you like", give head on over to Tailgate365. Hey, you might find some great ideas for this year's Super Bowl "big game" party! :-)
John Barry, epic movie score composer, has passed away
The baton behind some of the most iconic themes in motion picture history has fallen silent.
John Barry won Academy Awards for his scoring of Out Of Africa, Born Free, The Lion in Winter, and Dances With Wolves. He was responsible for many other soundtracks as well. But it was his work for something which didn't garner him any Oscar nods which he will be most remembered for: the legendary James Bond theme music, beginning with Dr. No in 1962. It was a film series that he was actively composing for until 1987's The Living Daylights.
My personal favorite John Barry score is from what is for me a "guilty pleasure" movie (but hey, it's a guilty pleasure for a lot of people): Walt Disney Picture's seductively disturbing 1979 science-fiction film The Black Hole. For whatever other... issues... that movie has, Barry perfectly captured the sinister brooding mystery of the U.S.S. Cygnus: a long-lost ghost ship teetering on the brink between reason and madness in a place where normal physics lose all meaning.
Here's the write-up at Entertainment Weekly's site about John Barry, his life and his long career. He will be missed.
Out-Of-Season Bear Alert
I don't know if this warrants a 9-1-1 call or what, but to this blog's readers here in Rockingham County, North Carolina:
Be advised that a large black bear was spotted by Yours Truly on Vernon Road not far from Rockingham Community College earlier this evening.
Yeah, I'm certain it was a bear. At first I wondered if it might be a large black dog instead. Until I saw its face and muzzle. It's a bear all right.
It was acting a bit lethargic. Walking on all fours with its head going from side to side. Maybe he (or she) had just woken up from hibernation and was looking for a mid-winter snack?
Anyway, now y'all know. There's a bear somewhere around Vernon Road.
Ummm... don't tease it?
My thoughts about the situation in Egypt
It's late. Had a way long day. I'm tired. So I'll make this quick. Or as quick as I'm apt to be with this sort of thing...
In a way Egypt is demonstrating why I was always against the Iraq War that began in 2003. And it's also demonstrating why the American government is never going to feel safe about pulling out of that country.
Because once we do, Iraq is going to very quickly turn into what Egypt is becoming now.
The uprising in Egypt began in large part to long-festering mistrust of Hosni Mubarak (who has been ruling Egypt since I was knee high to a grasshopper). That's thirty-some years. Way too long for anyone to be in power. I don't blame the Egyptian people for wanting to peaceably put an end to his regime.
But increasingly I'm seeing the efforts of the "nice 'n peaceable" Egyptians getting co-opted by radicals like the Muslim Brotherhood.
And in short: what's now happening in Egypt is looking insanely like what went down Iran way in 1979.
I can understand why the average Iranian was honked-off at the Shah. There was plenty enough of that to fuel the urge to overthrow his government in Iran at the time. The thing is, the average Iranian didn't care to be ruled over by wackos like Ayatollah Khomeini. The politics of the revolutionaries was immaterial. They just happened to have enough momentum to be the ones to topple the ruling order.
Sorta like what happened in Vietnam. Anyone seriously believe that the Vietcong were Communists purely because of its ideology? Feh! Communism was just a means to an end for what Ho Chi Minh and his gang were promising: an end to a thousand years of fighting for Vietnamese freedom.
My gut feeling: Egypt is going to wind up as another Iran. Maybe not as quickly as Iran turned into, but yeah: basically a bunch of good people who will realize too late that they are being ruled by a small band of nutcases. If you want me to use the words "radical Islamic state" then I suppose I've reason to.
And if we pull out of Iraq now or anytime in the foreseeable future, the same thing is going to happen there: people wanting freedom only to be co-opted by the radicals. And then we're looking at a bunch of Mid-East gone Islamic theocracy with a lot of shootin' irons and worse.
Awright, that's my analysis. G'nite!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Michelle Bradsher enters the blogosphere!
In case anyone's wondering where the list of links went to: I haven't forgotten about it. In fact it'll probably reappear sometime this week if I can find time to put it together anew. It's just something that I made a secondary priority during this blog's recent redesign. And I'm looking forward to spinning some traffic toward friends and accomplices who also maintain blogsome presence on the Intertubes :-)
As it turns out, tonight I discovered another to add to the roll. I have known Michelle Bradsher for a long time (like, going back to seventh grade). And I am delighted that she has chosen to share her unique voice and her talent for conveying the stories of others on her new site, Bradsher's Blog.
Welcome to blogging, Michelle! I'm looking forward to reading your site and I am glad to spread the word about it with others :-)
Busy week ahead
Look gang, the next few days I'm gonna be swamped with stuff. Especially with the lead-up to opening night for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy. I'm not gonna have much time to entertain you, enlighten you and otherwise play around with your heads like I usually do.
So here's something to tide you over until The Knight Shift resumes regular blogging. It's a YouTube clip that blurs the line between reality and imagination... well, more than most things that readily come to mind. From 1982's The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, it's Tony Clifton!
Depending on how old you are, this video will either make you laugh... or confuse the heck out of you. Ironically it's the older viewers who are likely to be scratching their heads in wonder.
"If you believed they put a man on the moon..."
Friday, January 28, 2011
Twenty-five years ago today...
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
No 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941
In memory of the crew of Mission STS 51-L of the Space Shuttle Challenger, who perished on this day a quarter century ago, January 28th, 1986.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Let's conduct a weather experiment!
Just for fun (or maybe not)...
I have heard it said, since at least 1993, that if it thunders in the winter that it means snow is coming ten days later.
The first time I was told that, it was by Dad in February of that year. Exactly ten days later we had "the Storm of the Century" blizzard.
And every time since then that it has thundered during winter, we have had snow: if not precisely ten days later then very closely thenabouts.
Well, we had thunder this morning here in Reidsville, North Carolina. A lot of thunder.
So with this post as a benchmark, I'll check back in ten days from now Lord willing, and we'll see if there's any wintery preciptation :-)
GYPSY: 10 days until Opening Night!
Y'know, it's incorrect to refer to this ethnic group as "Gypsy". The real term is "Romani". The reason they got tagged with the name "Gypsy" is 'cuz as they spread into Europe from their original home in the Indian subcontinent, the locals thought wrongly that they were Egyptian.
So don't you think that "Roma Rose Lee" has a better ring to it? Or is that just me?
Well anyhoo...
Next Friday night, February 4th, is Opening Night for Theatre Guild of Rockingham County's production of Gypsy! Rehearsals have been going great. Everyone was roaring with laughter last night during the run-through of "You Gotta Get A Gimmick". And I am having an absolute blast playing Cigar. He is completely sleazy and, well I just can't help but have fun with this character: he is the manager of a burlesque house, after all. Expect lots of yelling and waving my stogie around. And expect lots of other stuff that probably couldn't have been done in Rockingham County twenty years ago :-P
Gypsy runs for six shows from February 4th through the 13th. Hit here to go to the Theatre Guild website for ticket information.
Message on a church sign that I saw this weekend...
"Following Christ means to be a witness, not be a prosecutor".
Very, very true. And the more that I've thought about it, the more I've appreciated how that is everything that it truly means to be a Christian.
It is not us that the world should be seeing, but Christ within us. We will always fail. But He never fails.
Release trailer for DUKE NUKEM FOREVER. Yes, really.
On April 28th, 1997, video game studio 3D Realms announced that Duke Nukem Forever, the follow-up to its 1996 hit Duke Nukem 3-D, was in development.
Fourteen years, hundreds of thousands of wasted man-hours, numerous rendering engines long gone obsolete, two or more full generations of console technology and a bankruptcy later, Gearbox Software - which picked up the pieces last year to try to make some sense of this mess - will be releasing Duke Nukem Forever on May 6th.
Yes, as in: this year. 2011.
Look! Release trailer!
Here's the official synopsis:
Put on your shades and prepare to step into the boots of Duke Nukem,whose legend has reached epic proportions in the years since his last adventure. The alien hordes are invading and only Duke can save the world. Pig cops, alien shrink rays and enormous alien bosses can't stop our hero from accomplishing his one and only goal: to save the world, save the babes and to be a bad-ass while doing it. The King arrives with an arsenal of over-the-top weapons, non-stop action, and unprecedented levels of interactivity. This game puts the pedal to the metal and tongue firmly in cheek. Shoot hoops, lift weights, read adult magazines, draw crude messages on whiteboards or ogle the many hot women that occupy Duke's life - that is if you can pull yourself away long enough from destroying alien invaders. Duke Nukem was andwill forever be a gaming icon, and this is his legend.I wonder if THIS guy is going to get his pre-order honored by GameStop.
I still can't believe this is seriously happening. All the jokes about "Duke Nukem Whenever", "Duke Nukem If Ever", "Duke Nukem Not Ever" are about to come to an end. When this game was first announced the Star Wars Special Editions were still in theaters. Bill Clinton had not yet done "that thing" with a cigar and Monica Lewinsky. Gas was ridiculously cheap. You could go to the airport without getting molested by government goons. "High-speed Internet" meant 57k baud...
I probably won't be buying it, but I'm planning on being at GameStop for the midnight release, just to see it with my own two eyes :-P
