Worship: Size DOES Matter

Man. I am mega-tired. I would mega-like to take a mega-nap and mega-reduce-my-metabolic-rate-and-secrete-additional-growth-hormone.

Wow. That is annoying. It's a good thing mega isn't used as a prefix seriously.

Oh wait:


Megachurch (The Crystal Cathedral)

That's right. Megachurch. I'd love to say "How very typically American, making something ludicrously oversized, because the bigger it is, the more powerful and thus the more meaningful." BUT. Apparently the biggest churches happen to be in Korea.

Yoido Full Gospel Church

How typically Korean.

The Megachurch
The trend that led to this kind of garbage is easy to explain, hard to show by example. The wikipedia entry describes the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, which attracted 5,000 to witness the powerful sermons of a man named Charles Haddon Spurgeon in the late 1800s. The church later burned down. Am I the only one that finds that kind of funny?

The Crystal Cathedral (pictured above) is a monstrosity placed in the white-and-asian haven, Garden Grove, California. Oddly enough, it's a very middle-class area just bursting with people with disposable income. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. The beast cost $17 million dollars and broadcasts its sermons worldwide on a TV show called Hour of Power

The mega-criticism...sorry...the major criticism of these kinds of churches is that they put value on entertainment, on flashiness, rather than on actual worship. It's hard to break out of this stigma, as once church service becomes such an enormous ordeal, it becomes a production. No more humble little preacher reading from a book while his congregation reads along (or falls asleep). Now the words to hymns are blared across seven-yard-long TV screens in flashing colors with a barrage of orchestral music blared over a system of PAs.

Yes. Slight difference, there.

Hillsong: Doing Chuch better than Wal-Mart

To explain just how strange the whole megachurch phenomenom is, it's best to have a really odd example.

Hillsong Church is a chain-church, if you can believe that, that first got real popularity when it put out a CD called Hillsong. It then promptly changed its name from Hill's Christian Center to Hillsong, based on that popularity. Which, I guess, is as good a reason as any.

Hillsong originated in Australia and now has centers in London, Moscow, Berlin and Paris. Basically, it went from a country that didn't matter into every country that does. With the exception of Russia.

Hillsong does everything. Music, TV, women's groups, kid's groups, education, social justice, you name anything high-profile and Hillsong is all over it like Jesus on a T-Shirt.

Unsurprisingly, Hillsong has come under some, just a little, criticism for teaching what is known as Prosperity Gospel. Basically, what it is is the entire content of The Secret. By being religious, you will gain material wealth. Whew. What a relief. And here I thought I was going to have to work hard.

Soapbox
Okay. I'll admit. There was an alterior motive to talking about megachurches. A certain man, let's call him Jeremiah W. No, no...let's go with J. Wright, has been on TV more than Flava Flav, and that's a travesty. Mr. Wright was at one point a preacher at the Trinity United Church of Christ.

Just to be clear, the TUCC is NOT Hillsong, OR Crystal Cathedral. I am in no way insinuating Mr. Wright is a prosperity gospel bullshit artist or a flashy little nothing. I happen to think a lot of what he says is pretty strong and well-reasoned.

HOWEVER. One thing people seem to be missing is the fact that Mr. Wright is taking this media attention, which is OBVIOUSLY hurting one of his former congregation members, and riding it like a wave of sensationalist journalism. Fact is, the guy was a successful preacher at a high-production church a good portion of his life. Of course he's going to jump at the chance to propound his views on TV. He wouldn't have been as successful as he was if he was the kind of person to pass up this opportunity!

With that in mind, I wouldn't blame a certain B. Obama if he decided to distance himself from the guy. He handled the last flare up so well, only to have Mr. Wright come barreling back into the spotlight. It's unfortunate, but the media is going to take Wright's comments and turn them against Obama, no matter WHAT he says. The fact is, Wright is seeking attention and hurting Obama in the process. One of them needs to cut the other out.

Sorry.

I'm allowed one political rant every so often.

We'll be back to Squirrel Fishing later this week.

 Subscribe in a reader

A bold new sport

So. How about those extended periods without a single post, eh?

Did you, my invisible audience, miss me? I'm sure you did.

Either way, back to business. And by business, I mean a supreme waste of time. Which isn't too far from what business actually is. Or, at least a business degree.

For years mankind has struggled to understand nature, to commune with nature. Henry David Thoreau removed himself from the crowded world for this precise communion. He claimed that "there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright"

The Romanticist William Blake claimed, "Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street." He then proceeded to curse the King of England and get in a fistfight with a soldier.

In the tradition of these great poets and thinkers, a number of young people have started a grand reopening of the dialouge between man and nature. They call it:



Squirrel Fishing

These pioneers, these (I am not ashamed to say it) heroes, have taken the brutal act of fishing and adapted it to become a serene commune with nature. I am proud to feature them here, in this blog, to my vast(ly) invisible audience.


How to
Squirrel fishing is so simple you might mistake it for a hilarious and silly game rather than an intimate meditation with Mother Nature.

1. Get a rod. Some say fishing rods, but a lot of times, it just looks like people use a big stick. In the pictures on this site, they don't even use the rod.

2. Get some string. It seems a lot of the critters like to bite through the string, so something slightly strong might be worth it.

3. Get a peanut. OR a slice of apple. Apparently both work pretty well in attracting your prey-I mean-furry friend. Also, according to wikipedia raw peanuts might be somewhat unhealthy for the squirrel, so it might be worth getting roasted ones. Or just go with the apple.

4. Get a key. You'll need this to weigh down the line. Tie it about three inches up from the end of the string.

5. Tie one end of the string to the rod and the other to the peanut (or through the apple slice)

6. Carefully approach the squirrel and attempt to gain its interest in the nut.

7. One the squirrel is hooked, it's time to commune. Relate to it. Be the squirrel. Try to lift it off the ground and dangle it around. Because that shit is funny.

The Heroes
UC Berkeley Squirrel fishers - Apparently one of the largest groups, boasting more than 80 members. Apparently also boasting an inter-club drama, where groups are divided and need unification. How, exactly, a group dedicated to lifting squirrels off the ground has anything to debate is beyond me. Link.

University of Oregon Squirrel Fishing Club - A group of about 30 members that is currently struggling with recreation to have squirrel fishing sanctioned as an official sport. Fight the good fight, lads. Link.

Harvard University Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences - Yes. That's right. Harvard. This is how people at Harvard apply sciences. Honestly, it's things like this that make me think that maybe Harvard isn't a bunch of puffed nonsense desperately trying to improve student satisfaction to distract them from the fortune and a half they're spending on tuition. Then again. I went to Rutgers. I have no room to talk. Link.

Soapbox
This is hilarious.

I'm gonna do it.

End soapbox.

 Subscribe in a reader

Don't gimme no grief...ers

Well. After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back. And I'm sure my invisible hacker audience couldn't be happier. I say hacker because they must be super-hackers to be able to erase all trace of their having visited this blog, leaving no record of my blog having any vistors.

My hat goes off to you, invisible hackers.

Speaking of hackers...more specifically visible ones who may not, in fact, be hackers...today's topic is sure to cause a zillion zit-faced youngsters to writhe, gnash their teeth and shatter their poor optical mice.

I speak of the few (many), the proud (not so much), the...

Griefers

What is a "Griefer"?

The kind of griefing I'm going to focus on is griefing in games. I could go on for Illiads worth of epic prose if I was going to address all onling griefing ever.

Griefing in onling games is a kind of emergent gameplay which is basically exactly what it sounds like. It's strategies or methods of playing a game outside of the original design, or ones that develop from an interaction of basic game elements. A (less malevolent) example of this would be the online economies of games like World of Warcraft. Items increase and decrease in value, just like a real world economy. Further, items can become so valuable that people will pay REAL WORLD money to buy something that equates to a line of code stuck in a server somewhere.

Griefing, however, is simple maliciousness. Well...sometimes, very complex maliciousness. Basically, what a griefer does is live up to the name. Causes another player grief. This is accomplished in any number of ways, using game mechanics to generally ruin another player's day. For example, in team-based First-Person Shooters, doing damage to one's own team or generally getting inthe way of the team doing what they're supposed to.

Griefing is different from laming, which consists of just being ignorant of the rules or generally useless, as griefers choose their targets with focused maliciousness. Lamers are just stupid.

Anshe Chung CNET Interview on Second Life
Second Life was a masterpiece. The Sims had hit on something when they had made ordinary, happy people into mindless zombies slaving over the tiny lives of tiny little people babbling in their tiny little retard-speak. Second Life developers stroked what were no doubt stringy goatees soaked in the stench of pot and debauchery, toiling hard over what would be their next scheme to enslave mankind and put a Democrat in office. Then, it hit them. Why not make a game exactly like the Sims in every way, except with less complexity and much worse graphical interface, and call on people to give up their boring, mundane lives full of rewarding social interaction and opportunity that was not pre-programmed for a few shoddy textures thrown together into what looked vaguely like a human being.

Thus, Second Life was born.

Ailin Graef is the self-styled Rockefeller of Second Life, earning thousands of digital dollars, which convert into a modest salary for this tiny, extremely plain-looking asian girl. Her avatar, Anshe Chung, was brought in for a CNET interview in the only evironment she's every known a modicum of success...Second Life.

The crowd entered their sit commands and chose the emoticons indicating rapt attention. The interview started simple enough, Anshe gesturing jerkily and throwing in the odd, angular smile, when all of a sudden..


DISASTER!!

Griefing at its finest. And I mean, finest.

Final thought
I want to show some more examples, but that'll have to come later.

For now, begin rant:

I think this stuff is hilarious. The ideology of the griefer is to keep people from thinking that just because they've found six hours a day to sink into a digital world and have made hundreds of tens of dollars, real or fake, they are not a success. The highest of the high can be bowed by a bunch of code junkies with a chip in their shoulder and a great sense of irony.

Even if that irony sometimes comes in the form of giant, floating penises.

Griefing is obnoxious. Yes. I don't think anyone would say it wasn't. But you have to admit. It's pretty gol' darn hilarious. I think there's a griefer in all of us. We all have those moments where we just want to sock our boss in the face, even if our boss is the nicest, friendliest, most understanding sod in the world. We all want to knock a little kid's ice cream cone on the ground. We all want to ruin the enjoyment of others once and a while.

Thank Gore for the internet. If it weren't for the web, we'd all be off starting wars and subordinating minorities to do near-slave-labor.

More reading:
WIRED article on griefing - Excellent article, very well written and, I'm not ashamed to say, hilarious :)

 Subscribe in a reader