It’s a weird, weird, weird, weird Christmas

It started ordinary enough. We played a little World of Warcraft, then S and her boyfriend came over and we watched some movies.

I someehow missed out on all the 80s teen flicks, even though I was an 80s teen, so Shelly decided we should watch Heathers. It’s a typical 80s teen flick, only with more psychotic behavior and a higher body count. Heathers is kinda like Reservoir Dogs, only it takes place in a high school, there’s no jewel heist, there’s no policeman hostage, nobody’s ear gets cut off, the dialog is completely different, there’s no warehouse, the characters aren’t named after colors, not as many people die, and it wasn’t written by Quentin Tarantino.

We also watched the movie Adaptation, which is a film about the making of the movie Adaptation.

Then the Christmas kitty showed up.


For the past couple nights, I’ve been hearing a cat crying somewhere outside the window. Shelly and I have looked for it several times, without any success, which sucks because it’s been cold and wet and rainty and miserable for days, and there’s nothing more heartbreaking than the sound of a miserable, frightened cat. As S and M were leaving last night, they finally spotted the cat–on the third-story roof of the apartment next door. Apparently it climbed a tree, dropped onto the roof from an overhead branch, and then got stuck.

We couldn’t get up to it, and we couldn’t get the animal rescue emergency hotline to respomd, so we tossed some tuna fish onto the roof (which made the cat deliriously happy), then the four of us stayed up ’til 3 AM trying to figure out how to get the poor thing down. We finally called it a wash when we struck out trying to reach maintenance, the non-emergency fire/rescue number, animal control, and anyone else who might have a three-story ladder, which was disheartening because it stormed something fierce after we went back inside. This morning, Shelly knocked on the neighbor’s door, who finally rescued the cat through the top-floor window.

So the cat was hungry, cold, and frightened but seems none the worse for all that.


Today; hanging out with the Smoosh, and more World of Warcraft.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

On the first day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 2nd day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 3rd day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 4th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 5th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 6th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 7th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 8th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 9th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 10th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 11th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Eleven harpies screeching
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

On the 12th day of Warcraft, Blizzard gave to me
Twelve caverns wailing
Eleven harpies screeching
Ten Voidwalkers walkin’
Nine trolls a dancin’
Eight Windriders ridin’
Seven scorpids stingin’
Six Alliance raiding
Five [Glimmering Shard]s
Four goblin shredders
Three [Ruffled Feather]s
Two lockjaw turtles
and some Night Elves with a cursed tree

…yes, I have problems.

Some thoughts on morality

Moral (adj): a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL b : expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior, as, a moral poem c : conforming to a standard of right behavior
ety from Latin mos, moralis “custom”

Ethical (adj): a: of or relating to ethics b: involving or expressing moral approval or disapproval
ety from Greek ethikos “tradition”


It seems I’ve never had a very clear grasp on the concept of “morality.”

For many years, I’ve had a working, internal definition of “morality” that says something is “moral” if it recognizes the inherent worth in human beings and seeks, as far as is possible, to further the basic values of dignity and compassion for all people. Because of this, I’ve often been more than a little puzzled by public discourse on morality.

Morality, as it’s understood by a great many people, confuses the hell out of me. It seems obvious and straightforward that issues such as gay marriage and equal opportunity are moral issues; what’s always tended to puzzle me is the fact that those who speak the loudest about “morality” condemn these things. Homosexuality, we’re told, is immoral. Gay marriage is immoral. Non-traditional relationships are immoral. Yet affording all people everywhere equal opportunity in a society seems to be a very basic means of expressing the values of worth and dignity for all human beings; how, then, can any reasonable person call these things “immoral?”

Shelly was the one who pointed out that my definition was flawed, and when she did, a great deal of public discourse about ethics and morality suddenly snapped into focus.


Ambrose Bierce, a man famous for his cynicism, defined “moral” as “having the quality of general expediency,” and there’s more than a little truth to that.

The origins of the English words for “moral” and “ethical” are telling. Both words derive from words expressing, not concepts of human worth and dignity, but concepts of tradition and custom. In its most basic form, the public discourse on “morality” focuses not on what is right by the standards of human dignity, but on what is traditional. And this understanding changes everything.

It has long been an axiom of any society that that society is falling into decay and moral ruin. Socrates was reported to complain “Today’s youth love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for elders and they chatter in place of exercise.” And of course this must always be so, because traditions change over time. If one understands “moral” to mean “traditional,” then of course all societies always decay morally and always will, for the process of life is a dynamic one, and old traditions are constantly giving way to new.

Traditions form because people find a way of doing things that generally seems to work fairly well for most people. Over time, these convenient ways to do things gradually become entrenched, until what started out as an expedient way to get things done becomes Right and Moral and Just, and any other way to do things becomes Wrong and Immoral.

In this context, it’s quite simple to understand the current public discourse on morality. To determine whether or not something is moral, one need only apply a simple one-part test: is it the way things have been done in the past?

Gay marriage? Untraditional; therefore, immoral. Open tolerance of diversity? Untraditional; ergo, immoral. Non-traditional relationships? Immoral by definition.

Even things which seem at first blush to be blatant moral hypocricies are perfectly moral, with the proer understanding of “moral.” It is and has for centuries been traditional for men of wealth and power to cheat on their spouses; by this light, the actions of peope like Bob Barr, the Georgia representative who launched the crusade against Bill Clinton for his extramarital affair, and campaigned aainst legal abortion, but who paid for his ex-wife to have an abortion and then cheated on her with his current partner, has a long history in the tradition of American politics and is therefore completely moral.


Replace the word “moral” with the word “customary” or “traditional” and the official stances, and behavior, of many conservative religious groups begins to make more sense. For example, one of the peopl who worked on the Bush campaign was a First Assemblies of God pastor named Mike Hintz, who spoke on behalf of Bush, praising Bush’s values. Pastor Hintz was recently in the news again, this time after being arrested and charged with the sexual exploitation of a child.

Child abuse and child molestation have a long tradition in Western society, which was elevated almost to an art form during the Victorian era. Hintz wasn’t immoral; he was merely acting in accordance with an older tradition, and that by definition made his actions perfectly ethical.

Churches are in a peculiar position when it comes to teaching morality, because churches, like any other organization, rely on their members to exist. A church with no members no longer exists. A church must, therefore, always follow the moral values of its flock, and never lead them; should a church tell its flock that behaviors they support are immoral, its members will leave and go to a church willing to say that they are all good, just, morally decent people. So churches, the very institutions beople believe are charged with moral leadership, are, by the nature of their position, always going to be the last organizations to respond to moral change.

(This sometimes creates some delicious ironies. The Sothern Baptist Convention, one of the largest and most influential of conservative American protestant churches, was originally formed by pro-slavery members of the Baptist church who refused to accept the anti-slavery stance of the mainstream Baptist doctrine of the time. Today, the Southern Baptist congregation is largely black; one has to assume that a significant portion of its membership is quite unaware of the sect’s history.)


So. My confusion all this time has come from my own badly skewed understanding of what it means to be “moral.” With a better grasp of the meaning of morality, the public discourse is more comprehensible to me, and I can see that my initial confusion arose from my own error.

I still prefer my definition of “moral,” however.

Random things and stuff

First: Got a Christmas card from jul3z…thanks! It was awesome.

Second: Rather than reposting it here, I’ll just point to a snippet from Scientific American about a possible mechanism behind life extension from Scientific American in papertygre‘s journal. (datan0de, if you haven’t seen this yet, you should.)

Third: Spending the evening this evening with S; Shelly’s spending time with S‘s boyfriend this afternoon. Yay!

Fourth: Spending part of the upcoming weekend with phyrra and nihilus…yay again!

Fifth: I had about two hours invested in a 2,000+-word post, with links, that got eaten by LJ…grr. I foolishly typed it in Explorer for PC, so it’s gone. Is it just me, or if an error occurs when trying to make a post, should the LJ page actually print the text of the post along with the error message? That way, you wouldn’t lose it if something happened…

Random updatey stuff, or, Christmas comes early this year!

So. A few weeks back, one of my clients replaces fourteen G4 Mac systems with G5s. Most of the G4s are destined for the scrapyard, which seems like a shame, so I asked my client about it, and I ended up with one of ’em. It’s an older model, but still better than the machines I have.

Bought an upgrade for the system–1GHz processor, DVD-RW drive–which arrived at the office on Friday. Went home, checked the mail, and my Alcor bracelet also arrived on Friday. W00t!

Saturday: World of Warcraft. ‘Nuf said.

Sunday, Shelly and I spent some time with S anbd her boyfriend. We did fondue; Shelly’s been craving it since my parents took us to the Melting Pot for Thanksgiving. It does seem like the developing romantic interest between S and I is going along quite nicely; I really like spending time with her. Shelly and her boyfriend M are getting closer as well…it all seems very natural and wonderful… Still a pity about the timing, though.

Also did the last bit of work necessary to package up the MOO I’ve been working on porting to Mac OS X. Well, the last bit of work ‘cept for documentation. Got permission to distribute the MOO code and database, but I have to get permission to distribute the documentation as well, or write my own, suck suck suck. There’s a very cool person I “met” on OK Cupid who’s been helping me work on the MOO project; when we’re done creating the MOO environment we’re working on right now, I’ll put up a link for the three or so people left in the world who still care about text-based role-playing environments.

(And then comes World of Warcraft!)

Addiction and stuff

For quite some time now, Shelly has rather like playing MMORPGs…massively multiplayer online role-playing games, such as Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot. The idea, for the two or three people who haven’t heard of those games yet, is you create a character, then introduce that character into an online world where there are tens or hundreds of thousands of other players, all playing other characters simultaneously. You can interact with the other characters, buy and sell weapons and equipment, team up to fight monsters, even fight with other characters. It’s all kind of silly, and given the server stress involved in hosting 100,000 simultaneous users, there are inevitable server glitches and whatnot.

I’ve never played MMORPGs, and I sometimes tease Shelly about them. Well, there’s this new MMORPG, see, and it’s called World of Warcraft, see, and Shelly convinced me to try it, see, and…

…my name is Franklin, and I’m an MMORPG addict.

In case anyone cares, I’m on the Midevh server, and my character is a troll fighter named Ragnarokkr. Those of you who play can usually find me at Crossroads or Orgrimmar, the rest of you can take pity, snicker, or both, depending on your inclinations.


I’m not a complete junkie, however. We’ve been spending time with S and her boyfriend lately, and it’s been a lot of fun. We wen to Tampa Fetish Party with them last Friday; it was their first exposure to a BDSM play party, and it’s always fun to break in play party virgins. Sunday after PolyTampa the four of us went to the beach on a kinda-sorta date-type thing, and we looked upon the Kinda-Sorta Date Type Thing, and It Was Good. Shelly and S‘s boyfriend seem to be getting close, which is also Good.


And now for something completely different: