It's December 24th, and I've got nothing better to do that type this up right now. That's not to say that I don't consider the Journal important -- I move heaven and earth on a weekly basis to find the time and energy to update -- but there is absolutely nothing pressing, time-consuming, vital, or important on my calendar for this day or night. That wouldn't be true if I celebrated Christmas; if I did, I'd most likely be running myself ragged all day with last minute preparations and forgotten gifts, getting ready to either host or attend some sort of family affair about which I feel, at best, ambivalent, or at the very least, fighting to maintain a largely artificial sense of cheer and, dare I say it, good will towards all people. Instead, I've spent my day reading comic books, watching Boston Legal, playing with my new and extra-snuggly plush weasel, putting some work into my next scholarly article ("can we teach resilience to youths who are at risk of becoming suicidal?"), and getting some writing done. The only thing on for today which comes close to even being scheduled or requiring me to put on clothes is a small-scale party this evening which will be attended exclusively by low-key, relaxed sorts of people, and will be only loosely associated with the holidays in the first place. There's no stress penciled in on my calendar until December 28th. This zenlike state is directly attributable, more than anything else, to the fact that to my people, today isn't a day of any importance whatsoever.

Sometimes, I really believe that no Christian enjoys Christmas as mcuh as the Jews do.

I'm exagerating, of course. For one thing, there are at this moment countless of people who are finding the winter holidays just as relaxing as I am without having to be Jewish, by virtue of the fact that they are anything at all except Christian. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that there are Christians out there who find the holidays to be relaxing, stress-free, and generally wonderful -- I've never met them, but I've never seen the Queen of England in person and I still believe that she exists. Still, the simple fact is that as an individual living in North America, I get to have free time off without the stress of having to celebrate anything, and particularly not having to celebrate a holiday where celebrants are contractualy obligated to be happy and love their families, whether they like it or not. When I was younger, I would feel bitter about how society kept flowing smoothly in spite of Rosh HaShanah but how everything grinds to a halt for Christmas, but as I grew, matured, and wised up, I came to the inevitable conclusion: it's not so much my being firced to sit through Their holiday as it is me getting to use up Their vacation time and not even have to give Them a present in exchange.

Life is always more fun when it can be seen as a way of saying "screw you!" to the ruling powers.

The christians get their revenge, of course. On the one hand, they rule popular culture, but on the other hand, they rule popular culture. I get my free vacation, yes, but I dare not turn on a radio for fear of having to hear "White Christmas," "We Three Kings," or, god help us all, "Jingle Bell Rock." Those who know me well know that I'm exquisitely sensitive to sound; just as I experience real pleasure in response to the Imperial March, Hark The Herald Angel Sings is physically painful to me. It is ubiquitous and inescapable, and worse, the disc jockeys and bus drivers honestly think they're playing something good. It might be tolerable if it was ever encountered at under one hundred decibels, but of course, at Christmas time, anything worth doing is worth doing to a square-root power. I admire the enthusiasm, if not the sense. People ask me why I want to rule the world, and this is the sort of thing I point them to... whatever culture rules the airwaves defines what gets considered tasteful, even when that taste is Michael Jackson screeching off-key tributes.

Don't get me wrong, though... in defense of Christmas, there are some things even I like: in the words of my long-departed German ancestors, Das Blinkenlights. In the dead of night, with a harsh snow falling and a cold wind blowing right through your coat to crystalize your marrow,, and where every muffled sound might be a harmless far-off driver or a crouching werewolf about to pounce, there is a very real joy to seeing every house coated in happy coloured lights. There is only a tiny window in time every year when it is considered not only tasteful but also pro-social to put up the gaudiest, brightest lights possible, and when the sun goes down the whole world becomes so shiny and blinky that walking down the street can cause medium-grade mustelashock. I'm sure that my ability to enjoy this, though, is based in large part on the fact that I'm only forced to see it in moderation; all five of the houses visible from my bedroom windows are owned by non-Christians and no one has ever put up a two-million-candlepower Rudolph up where it lights up my room at three a.m. As with everything else, moderation is the key to enjoyment, just as moderation tends to be that trait most lacking in mortal minds between November 1 and January 2. Still, I wouldn't object if the goyyim wanted to keep their lights up until sunset moves back to around 7 pm, because they're pretty and shiny.

It's December 24th. Let's all raise a glass to the three things Christmas is really about: getting together with one's friends, family, and loved ones; kvetching about the holidays; and stealing from the Pagans. Hail Eris.

Of all the various branches of Greek philosophy, it is perhaps the Stoics for whom I've always had the least patience. In some ways, Stoicism is an excellent school; I approve of the focus which the stoics put on the understanding of supersitions to the end of not allowing them to control or hold back society (a focus, ironically, which almost certainly played a large role in the rise of Christianity). The Stoic ideal, however, is a thinker who is purely rational and detaches from emotion as much as possible (not necessarily 100%, but at least to maintain clear-thinking). It may be ironic that, given who and what I am, I'd disaprove of a philosophy which de-emphasizes emotion, but as with so many philosophies, they lose me in a matter of extremes. The Stoic school teaches that one should have a Zen-like acceptance of both good and bad outcomes, which eventually evolved during the Roman Empire into a sort of "well, you can't change what happening" determinism. I've always believed that the aim of philosophy is to be proactive and to change the world through thought, word, and if absolutely necessary, deed, so I've always found the Stoic perspective to be, in a word, lazy. More importantly, though, to a true Stoic, good and bad are more or less meaningless concepts, because only logic and ethics has true meaning; I approve of the idea that we all ought to be nice and ethical, but as soon as someone tells me that to be ethical means to forsake fun, I toss the book aside and go back to Socrates where I belong. It's a shame, really, because if modern Stoics hadn't exagerated everybody from Zeno on down, "follow where reason leads" and "live to minimize suffering through wisdom" would make for damn good maxims to live by. The Greek Stoics weren't so bad, but as with most philosophical schools, it got ruined when the Europeans got ahold of it.

What all this really leads us to, however, is the man who wrote: "First, decide who you would be. Then, do what you must do."

I've always found that Epictetus is a sort of bridge between Socrates and the Stoics. Epictetus was a Stoic in the sense that he preaches about the importance of rationality, simplicity, and justice through accepting natural outcomes, but importantly he also speaks more about the value of self-development and, dare I suggest, egocentrism. Like the Stoics, Epictetus argues that good and evil exist only within sentient minds, in terms of the judgements, impulses, reasongs, and rationalizations, and that nature and the material cannot be called either good or evil in absence of sentient intent and will. Epictetus makes what I consider to be one giant leap away from his fellow Stoics; where most Stoics believed that both sadness and happiness clouded rational thought, Epictetus is one of the few Stoics I've read who actually says, outright, that it's good to be happy. Epictetus is probably most famous for saying that just because you have to die doesn't mean you have to be unhappy, a point of view which I personally find is more akin to Discordianism that to Epictetus' own teachers.

What is interesting about Epictetus is his vision of good and evil. I'm always looking for new perspectives on the nature of right and wrong, and Epictetus is among the first thinkers to try to really codify what things are capable of being evil. Stoics before Epictetus had argued that evil comes only from willful action but the thinkers who truly elaborated on the topic -- notably, Marcus Aurelius -- didn't come around until after him. Epictetus argued that in the world, there are things over which an individual has absolute control, which are things inside the mind (atributions, opinions, interpretations, and ephemeral concepts such as honour, duty, and justice) and things which are outside the mind and uncontrollable (cars, newspapers, and puppies for example). Only things which are controllable can be good or evil, Epictetus argued; a thought can be evil, and can lead to evil actions, but cotton candy is never evil in and of itself no matter how many budgies it's used to suffocate. Previous thinkers had tried to elucidate what sorts of behaviour were evil -- lying, cheating, killing, buying a Mac -- but few thinkers before Epictetus had tried to decide what things were *capable* of being evil, if they comitted an evil act. He argues that an anvil isn't an evil object no matter how many people you drop it on. Or, to put it another way: guns don't kill people, kids who play videogames kill people.

That's not to say I agree entirely, obviously. I'm generally a moral relativist but I have a hard time suggesting that sentience is a pre-requesitie for evil. I agree that it's not really evil for a lion to eviscerate a human and devour the still-screaming body, and that human intelligence is what makes our behaviour have the capacity for spite and idiocy where the same behaviours in (seemingly) unintelligent animals is merely nature at work. On the other hand, I don't believe that the Universe is a force guided by any sort of true intelligence or will, but I do believe that the Universe is evil by virtue of the laws it has in effect. An object is devoid of will and thus neither good nor evil; a predator is devoid of malice and therefore neither good nor evil; the Universe is just a jerk, so it's evil, even if it is devoid of both will and malice. Epictetus, of course, could not be reasonably expected to reach a conclusion of such subtlety and cleverness; given that he was raised with the Greek gods, an unfair, cruel, spiteful, and malicious Universe was exactly what he'd been raised to believe in and would probably have fit in perfectly well with his vision of justice.

Word of the day: Halibut.

Perhaps one of the most under-appreciated fish of the modern era, the halibut is a most wonderful animal. At the dawn of modern culture, so special and precious was the halibut that it was eaten only on the most holiest of days, and the word is, in fact, derived from the low German words for "holy" and "fish." Such is the glory and majesty of the halibut that its wonders cannot be contained within a single species of fish; "halibut" itself is more of a category than a speciation, justly describing any of numerous species of flat fish including Paralichthys californicus and Hippoglossus hippoglossus, although not flounder, because Flounder borrowed money from Halibut back in the late Cenozoic and has never gotten around to paying it back.

The halibut is perhaps the fourth best studied fish in modern science, appearing as it does in nearly as many publications annually as the cicclid, the goldfish, and the Peruvian orange-tailed wombler (an outlier which has only acheived prominence in research in the last two years because of studies showing its oils contain a particularly content of linolenic (also known as omega 3) acids). Research into the halibut goes back centuries, in fact, to the dawn of the age of reason. Carrolus Linneus himself is believed to have given the species name to the first subtype of halibut (Hippoglossus hippoglossus, which translates approximately as "shiny hippopotamus, shiny hippopotamus" for reasons lost to history). The early twentieth century saw hundreds of thousands of research dollars (which was a lot of money back now) put towards studying the halibut, on an early assumption that the fish had near-human level intelligence. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Freud once attempted to personally psychoanalyze one particularly promising halibut; Anna Freud, his daughter and chronicler, once told reporters that of this analysis, her father would say only that "this is the stupidest thing I have ever done." The validity of this story has been called into question on the grounds that, were it true, Freud would probably have said it in German.

Hablibut are capable of growing to truly remarkable size and physical ability. The largest halibut on record have exceeded six hundred metric pounds and been over eight feet long (equivalent to 0.0267 football fields). In pursuit of particularly tempting prey (octopus, salmon, lobster or Commander Philip H. Ross of the United States Navy), halibut are able to attain speeds in excess of fifty miles or one hundred and twenty kilometers an hour, assuming favourable traffic. A halibut swimming at full speed ("halibut-rushing") carries enough kinetic energy to kill a full-grown human male, severely traumatize a school of small fish, or significantly inconvenience small submarines. A particularly mighty halibut can prove to be a danger to all life in its vicinity, particularly because both of its eyes are on the right side of its head and it rarely checks its blind-spots before making left turns.

Equally comfortable at depths of one or two down to several hundred meters, halibut have evolved tough skins to enable them to withstand variable pressures, supplemented by their finely-crafted chain mail. Carniverous and voracious, halibut commonly feed on crab, salmon, lamprey, and cod, rising from its normal ecological niche (the bottom of the pool) to feast upon the oblivious prey at higher elevations whose upward-facing eyes make them all too vulnerable to a young halibut who has seen Jaws too many times. These rapidly ascending hunting trips can cause severe nitrogen narcosis in halibut, and it is not uncommon for intoxicated halibut to wash up on the shores of nearby beaches, angrily proclaiming that the resort service is terrible before expiring. Halibut bodies are less suspectible to pressure changes than their neuronal tissue due to millenia of natural selection, but in rare cases a halibut will forget its chain mail when it leaves home and, upon rising to near atmospheric pressure, explode. In turn, halibut are most frequently preyed upon by sea lions, orcas, small sharks, and humans, who may stalk areas known to be rich in the halibut's prey-fish or may simply follow the sound of popping.

In nature, halibut tend to be near the top of the food chain, which will not save them when the day of judgement comes and the seas turn to wormwood, amen.

Fun Halibut Facts:

• Halibut can easily outswim a human in open water, but still win only a small fraction of gold medals at each olympics.
• Halibut are hostile towards crocodiles and will attack them on sight. Only the fact that these species live on opposite sides of the planet has saved the crocodile from extinction.
• Halibut kill more people world wide each year than hippopotami. Or hippopotamuses.
• Though unintelligent, halibut have excellent memories and learn routines rapidly, and they have been known to imprint on frequent visitors, follow them home, and vandalize their bathtubs.
• All halibut are born male, and individuals may become female upon attaining critical weight and fat content.

  ---

  The Unbearable Lightness of Maccabeeing

  Hannukah began this evening at 4:12 EST. I celebrated by listening to tracks from A Very Scary Solstice, a CD full of Lovecraft-inspired Christmas songs, including such jems as "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fish-Men," "Do You Fear What I Fear," and "It's The Most Horrible Time Of The Year." At its heart, Hannukah is all about freedom -- freedom of religion, freedom from tyrannical government, and above all, freedom to spell words however the heck you want.

  If you read the papers in English, French, or almost any language except for Hebrew and a few others, you might see "Hannukah" written as "channukah" or even "khannukah" with a variable number of N's, H's, and S's. Hannukah is my personal favourite, which is why it gets used here, but it's probably also the most common variation seen in most English language press. More enlightened but less well thought-out documents will often try to add the ch at the beginning, which usually serves only to confuse and confound the reading populace. The holiday has been written as kanuka in an effort to make it simple, and as Cha'Nukah and Chah'Nu'Kah to try to transliterate the pronounciation. According to legend, there was even an attempt to Boston in the early twentieth century to spell the holiday's name as "Ckhahnuuchka" which ended in disaster and loss of life. All of these brave and inherently futile efforts come down to foolish attempts by mass-market publishing to capture the sound of the Hebrew letter chet (otherwise known as the "phlegm hitting the floor" sound) in an alphabet never designed to contain its majesty, because English-speakers have got the time and energy to steal words and phrases from other cultures but not to add to their alphabet the letters they would need to pronounce the words. That sort of thing takes a lot of chutzpah -- not that the people who've got it are able to say what they've got.

  There's no such thing as the holiday the goyyim know as Hannukah, of course. There is a holiday during that time and it has the meaning that most people think it does, but most Anglophone non-Jews will live their whole lives without ever realising that the holiday's name starts with a letter not found in their native tongue. Jews have always been kind, merciful people, however (or at least, most of the time, in the majority of countries of the world, they try to be), and so we've facilitated the spread of simple, Anglo-friendly spellings, and even pronounciations. Many Jews I know nowadays pronounce the word as Hannukah rather than (clearing your throat)annukah when they speak in English. In part, it's easier to just do that, because more people will understand you and because, to be fair, chet isn't the easiest sound to produce with a humanoid throat and overuse of it can cause severe laryngeal strains and lacerations. So, as surely as we tell our young children not to spoil the whole "santa" thing for their young conspecifics, we adapt to the changing (and lazy) needs of the culture around us. Hannukah it is (and oy, have I got a bridge to sell you).

  Give Hannukah its due, though... it's about more than just the freedom to spell the names of your holiday with three Z's and a silent Q. This week, we also remember the miracle of a tiny flame which burned for eight days on only enough oil to burn for one (and before the invention of power-saving mode, no less). Perhaps more importantly, we remember the Maccabees, a family of brave warriors who fought to free their homeland from unjust occupation by foreign powers. Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of one of the many Greek empires of his day, which was probably around 170 BC (long after Socrates would have told him he was a jerk but still before Ceaser would have told him to keep at it), had conquered a fair chunk of the world, and ruled a vast tract of land bordered by Egypt (which though still quite mighty at this stage, he conquered at least twice) and Rome (which was even more mighty and which Antiochus knew enough not to go anywhere near).

  Though apparently a deadly warrior and brilliant tactician, Antiochus failed to properly study the lessons of history and, indeed, got involved in a land war in Asian, conquering Jerusalem. This alone he might have gotten away with, but like most conquerors, Antiochus is believed to have triggered revolt against his rule, not through cruelty or mass executions, but because he tried to force the Jews (who have always been the stubborn sort) to worship the Greek gods. Jewish priests refused (understandably, as in the day of Antiochus the pre-eminent Greek god was Appolo/Hermes and all the interesting gods had fallen our of favour) and several led congregations of warriors into the mountains. At least one of the priests had the foresight not only to bring skilled warriors (particularly his own sons), but also to take with actual weapons, as well as Marty the press agent, and so Mattathias has gone down in history as being the man who initiated the Maccabee revolt by inspiring his sons (the only five men able to be properlylabeled Maccabees) to go out and, in finest Middle Eastern, slaughter some Greeks.

  We can take several morals from this story. First and foremost, we learn the valuable lesson, "don't stand under an elephant, stupid," for reasons which I won't go into here. Second, we learn that if you're sufficiently righteous and heroic, god will pay your heating bill (the lord helps those who help themselves, after all). Third, we see that Mossad's roots go back quite a lot further than most people imagine, which goes a long way to explaining just how the Jews really did survive all these thousands of years. Fourth, finally, and most importantly, we learn never to get involved in a land war in Asia... Antiochus was fortunate only that no Siccilians were involved, or else things might have gotten really nasty.

  ---

  Seriously

  Nearing the new year, many peoples' thoughts tend to gravitate towards questions of meaning and purpose. Mine don't any more than usual, of course, since I tend to think about that stuff all year around and, furthermore, my introspective time of year is generally in September. While I'm busy laying out my santa traps, bah-ing my humbugs and training with my kali sticks (the last being unrelated to the first two, unless my santa traps catch something this year), other people seem to be agonizing over whether they're doing things the right way in their lives and what sort of changes they should be making to their lives. Me, I dig up old interviews I've given to various newspapers.

  2006 was a good year for me, in terms of media exposure. I've seen my imperious countenance glaring out at me from an unprecedented number of sources this year, and I certainly hope the feeling that comes from that never gets old. That's not the thought for tonight, though, because it is indeed the season to ponder if you've been wise or foolish, generative or stagnant, naighty or nice... silly or serious. And what I can't help but notice when I look back over old articles is that every reporter who's ever interviewed me has asked one question: am I being serious or silly? Even the writers who didn't bother to talk to me either posed the question or publically claimed to know the answer. So which list does Dr. Claus have me on this year: sane or ridiculous?

  It is, of course, a meaningless question. I hesitate to call it stupid only because the people posing the question were obviously smart enough to seek to bask in my genius. Am I serious or silly? Why on earth can't I be both at once?

  I've been thinking I might actually take interviews that I give in the coming year and use them as Journal Entries, but I only started saving them recently and I don't feel it's appropriate for me to repost the material before the article itself runs. It seems disrespectful to the journalist. That said, I do feel perfectly able to repost the following, which will run in an Australian paper on or about January 1st.

  MM: What are your reasons for establishing your empire - are your goals serious, is it a political or artistic statement, or is it just a bit of fun?
  EL: I see no reason to separate those goals. I have a tremendous amount of fun through the Empire, but at heart, I genuinely do dream of building something real and lasting. Whether what I build ends up being a nation, a state, a political movement or a club, the goal is to create something people enjoy and try, however unlikely, to make a difference in the world while doing it. If I were to be melodramatic about it, I might say that my goals are serious, my methods are artistic, and my statements are fun. Everyone should be so lucky.

  How is it I can be so witty and charming in text and so abrasive and annoying in person, you ask? No one but me knows, and I'm guarding that secret to my grave.

  Look at that question again, and read it closely. Serious or political. Political or artistic. Serious and political or serious and artistic? Surely not political *and* artistic, the question implies. And certainly, if it's any of the above -- serious, political, or artistic -- it can't be any fun... That would be inconceivable.

  Incedentally, while we're on the topic, "a: impossible to comprehend; b: unbelievable." It means exactly what I think it means.

  This is, for example, precisely why I found the transition to medical school so difficult. Painful theses (and particularly data collection) aside, getting a bachelor's degree in psychology was stimulating, educational, practical, horizon-expanding, and above all, fun. I worked damn hard and even studied to the best of my ability, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed some parts more than others -- to this day, both cognitive science and neuroanatomy are my bitter foes -- but psychology was fun. Learning how people think was fun. Learning how to change what people think, now THAT was fun. Even as I sit here right now, I'm actually probably one of the world's foremost experts on the study of deception; I'd say that earning that title wasn't any fun, but no one would believe me. Medicine? Medicine, the first 18 months, at least, is all microbiology, hard science, and learning to differentiate the pudendal, superior vesical, inferior vesical, superior gluteal, inferior gluteal, umbillical, obliterated umbillical, inferior epigastric, deep circumflex, vaginal, uterine, prostatic, and obturator arteries from each other (and I wrote all those just now from memory, by the way). Very little of it can be considered fun. For that matter, I've done some asking around -- unscientifically, of course -- among my classmates, and fewer than one in every twenty kids who came to medical school out of a bachelors in anatomy, physiology, or immunology will ever tell you they had fun getting that degree.

  I refuse to admit that there are things which have to be *only* serious... why on earth would I ever do something that had no fun whatsoever? Sure, I'm not enjoying my studies right now, but it's all carefully organized to ensure I have maximum fun later, and damn if I'm not finding ways to put in some fun these days -- certainly more than I managed last year. And political but not fun? Anyone who lives in Canada (and has never run for a government position) will tell you that politics is *inherently* fun, or at least, fun-ny. How could anything so nonsensical possibly not be fun? To the reporters, I ask this question: I've got a smiley face on my flag -- I'm having a lot of fun-- but it's been there for twenty years... would I have pulled that off without some sort of seriousness? Would I have kept at it this long if I wasn't having fun?

  Fun is serious, if you do it right. In the long term, the people who have the most fun are those who are serious about having it (or who are sociopaths seemingly incapable of not having fun). I enjoy my fun, and that's why I'm serious about it. I think both politics and art are fun, and to hell with the politician or artist who has a problem with that. The Goddess has blessed me with the capacity to experience all sorts of paradoxical sensations simultaneously... fun is the least of them.

  Enjoy making your news year's resolutions, my friends... I'm seriously having too much fun to bother making any myself.

  ---

  Character Background: Kyuuzon Su'Haret

  It is a story which has been told on countless words and in endless histories: the forces of darkness seek always to conquer, consume, and eliminate the forces of light. The so-called Lower Planes, the lands of the Demons and Devils, have spent what may as well be eternity striving to find a way into and a way to wipe out the Prime Material planes. Far too often, these evil forces suceed in their goals, and none live who can count how many worlds have fallen before this tide. Always, though, there are worlds where the arch-evils seek to attack and conquer, worlds at war, and on these worlds, there are always defenders who will not allow their world to be taken without making the evil pay for every foot of ground with one hundred pints of ichor. Always, there is a light which seeks to combat the spreading darkness.

  The Monks of Kasaire are one such light. From their fortress monastery, the Kasaire teach that all things in the universe exist in perfect duality: light and dark, eternally conflicting. The ancient scrolls of the Kasaire are said to be one massive recording of all the greatest evils which have been perpetrated and perpetuated in their world, weighed against all the greatest goods, leading up a sum showing that the darkness has had the upper hand for millenia. All students of the Kasaire learn this first: it is the natural tendency of darkness to spread, and left to its own devices, darkness will always swallow the light. Thus, the light must be continually rekindled, fed, fanned, and fueled, to forever slow the coming of darkness and, perhaps one day, even push it back. The Kasaire train warriors whose sole purpose in life is to hold back the darkness; one candle may illuminate a face, but a thousand candles will illuminate a mountain.

  It is thus not a surprise that when the dark armies came through their portals to lay claim to the homeworld of the Kasaire, the monks were among the first to lend their strength to pushing the invaders back. In these, the early battles of the invasion, the Kasaire have shown that their small number of adepts can stand before the enemy and slow it. Warriors of Kasaire have furthermore been dispatched to join the armies of other factions which stand before the dark, to lend their light to the pre-existing lanterns and make them ever brighter.

  Kyuuzon Su'Haret is one such adept. A young warrior who has spent his life training to combat the great enemy, Kyuuzon is an experienced and efficient fighter and no stranger to the evils that mortals can create. Where the great masters of the Kasaire have gone off alone to combat the dark, and the youngest pupils remain in the fortress monastery training to take up the fight themselves, the mid-level students, Kyuuzon among them, have been sent forth to join the existing armies of the great nations and lend their experience, skills, and wise counsel to the fight on all fronts.

  Kyuuzon is a young man who grew up in the Kasaire fortress and has never known any other life. He is utterly dedicated to the cause of light and believes that there is no greater good than to live a life of service maintaining the light. Though only a novice in the arts of the Kasaire, Kyuuzon is considered by his masters to be one of their students with the greatest potential and the brightest-burning soul, and so they have honoured him by being among the first to go forth and join the secular armies. Though initially reluctant to leave his masters, Kyuuzon cannot deny that the greatest darkness, and thus the greatest need for light, is elsewhere, and will go wherever he has to, to hold it back.

  Kyuuzon's education has been specialized. Though he was taught the same skills of combat and philosophy as his fellow students, he was additionally taught the Way of the Star, a variation of the science of alchemy. In their long history, the Kasaire have found that there are times when strength of body is not enough to hold back the darkness, and have thus pioneered the art and science of creating vast amounts of light in one place. To the Kasaire, it is a holy teaching which manifests the power of the light and soul in a form that the darkness cannot withstand, though in less enlightened societies, such a science might be known instead as "demolitions."

  The Kasaire:
  The Kasaire are light worshippers. The monks teach that all things in the world are constructed of four elements, each of which corresponds to one part of the human being. Though Earth and the body, Air and the breath, and water and the blood must all be venerated and respected for the body to thrive, it is the fire, the soul, which is most vital to nurture, particularly is one hopes to shine the greatest light against the dark. The Kasaire respect, love, and in many ways worship flame. Great, ever-burning braziers light the Kasaire monastery, and most of their most holy teachings are couched in the language of fire, heat, and burning. The Kasaire respect the destructive power of fire as well as its ability to illuminate and nurture, and believe that all aspects of fire, both good and ill, are parts of the soul which can be turned to both pure and impure ends but which must be accepted and used properly.

  Over the course of a student's training, the student must demonstrate an understanding of fire both as a metaphor and as a practical force. The students spend years training themselves to tolerate greater and greater heat, using meditations and alchemical applications in addition to simply developing thick calluses and a tolerance to pain and burns. Where raging fire would burn most humans, a Kasaire gains the ability to withstand and endure, and to emerge from the flame unscathed. This gift allows the Kasaire to bring the cleansing light directly to the great enemy without fear of being burned, and is particularly valued among those who follow the Way of the Star who may often find themselves exposed to the same searing light as the enemies they seek to push back.

  Appearance:
  Kyuuzon Su'Haret is a young male human in his early adulthood. His skin has aquired a perpetual tan from years of working and training in the sunlight, and the skin of his hands and feet have aquired the texture of stone from his arduous training. The tips of Kyuuzon's fingers have been stained a yellowish-black by his years of working with alchemical mixtures. Though Kyuuzon regularly shaved his head while a student, he has repeatedly allowed his hair to grow since becoming a secular soldier, and he may thus be clean-shaven or have his hair tied back in a tight pony-tail as the mood suits him and the luxury of free time with which to groom presents itself. On his own, Kyuuzon prefers loose, simple clothes reminiscent of what he wore as a student, but when among other soldiers he typically wears his uniform even when not strictly required, to remind himself and others that he is one of them.

  Roleplaying notes:
  You are Kasaire: you stand before the darkness and shine whatever light you can, no matter how small, in defiance. Your first duty is always to be this light; to shirk this duty for a short time might be acceptable, with sufficient penance aftewards, but to turn from the light and embrace the darkness would be utterly unthinkable. You have little mercy for those who work to spread the darkness -- they will sear in the light. Particularly among the soldiers with whom you now serve, some of whom lack your dedication and enlightenment, you must always set an example. A small amount of drinking and gambling may be necessary to help the soldiers think of you as one of them, but you must conduct yourself always with honour, dignity, and in a manner befitting the Kasaire.

  ---

  Eranneous

  I've always been very interested in the phrase "I was born in the wrong time." Commonly, the phrase in used in the context of "born (number of years = X) too late" although usage of the phrase in the same way as "ahead of my time" isn't unheard of. For my part, I can't get behind the idea... clearly, I was born right on time, give or take five to ten years at the maximum.

  It can be tempting to say we shoud have been born in another decade, era, or epoch, of course. Few and far between are the people who feel utterly happy with their lives and at peace with their place in the universe. Moreso amongst gamers and other social misfits than most populations, it's hardly shocking when the flamboyant rake says he should have lived in the days of high-seas adventure or when the medieval recreationist wishes he could have earned his living by putting on heavy armour and bashing the heck out of his lord's enemies. It's also easy to argue that the success of the whole pirate and medieval fantasy genres are based on people wanting to have lived elsewhen. I can certainly sympathise; there are parts of me which would have paid almost any price to live among the ancient Greeks, where the ability to produce snappy dialogue was one of the most important criteria for rising in wealth and prestige, or in Victorian England where wit and presence was properly valued. Completly ignoring such issues as sanitation and Internet access, which have been discussed to death elsewhere I wouldn't actually want to live in those times, nor would I probably be able. The future is equally unattractive to me, for completly different reasons, leaving me with a peculiar distinction: Unlike the average human, I have absolute assurance that I was born in the best possible time period for me to be in.

  All the fun periods of the past aren't options for me, of course. Carl Sagan used to relate the story of the time he asked a room full of educated, intelligent, healthy middle-aged people to raise their hand if they would have lived to their current age if not for modern medicine. One hand went up, and as Sagan relates, "it wasn't mine." The first recorded case of surgical treatment for Hirschsprung's Disease, a pull-through procedure conducted on a relatively minor case of the disease, took place in 1948; prior to this, the standard medical advice to parents of children with a severe form of the disease was "try not to get too attached for the next week." It wasn't until between fifteen and thirty years later (medical histories differ) that the procedure became refined enough to treat an individual such as myself with the really severe form; being born in 1982 may even have been pushing it a little bit. I would not have had a long, happy life if I'd been born in Victorian London... Heck, I wouldn't have had a long and happy life if I'd been born in the sixties. It's just as well, I suppose; we can romanticize and dream of visiting the past all we want but, like New Jersey, nobody really wants to live there.

  That said, it's also for the best that I wasn't born later. Let's assume, optimistically, that the world won't have ended within 50 years, and consider what life would be like living there. For a creature like myself, it sounds like it would be a miserable place. Sure, my life might have been more pleasant given certain medical advances, but on the other hand, with every year that passes, it becomes harder and harder for any film to so completly warp an entire generation the way Star Wars did, and probably by the time my contemporaries are having children, no single film or cultural icon will ever have the power to shape a culture like that again. Future children will not have a Hitchhiker's Guide to grow up reading because of the glut of similar books to distract them from forming a proper obsession. None of that is the main reason, though.

  No, the big reason, as with so much in my life, is related to the Aerican Empire. Over the course of the last month, because of my involvement in the Empire, I've been busy with details relating to two newspaper interviews, two radio interviews, one museum exposition (for which, as of today, I've officially been sent free tickets to the opening night, which would be great if it wasn't taking place in Paris on a school night), a half-dozen citizenship applications (always potential new friends), and one offer to model for an advertisement. If I'd been born five years sooner, I would almost certainly have missed the chances which saw me getting the Empire online. If I'd been born later, I would either be too young these days to know what I was doing in my quest for world domination or, worse yet, I might have been born late enough that the general public had already heard about micronations and they were commonplace and unexciting. There is only a brief and tiny historical window in which I have the chance to attain the level of notoriety which I already have and which I have every chance of obtaining in the coming years. If I hadn't been born precisely when I was, the odds are that either I would never have had the medium to make it "big" or there would have been so many people trying that I would have gotten lost in the noise. Instead, I was born at the exact time that I was, and that's why my picture runs in obscure Australian newspapers.

  I've always been a big believer that things tend to happen when the time is right. It's certainly proven true up to now in my life that stuff tends to happen to me at a time when I'm most able to take advantage of it, even if such things do end up going catastrohpically wrong with them. By that same logic, sure, it might have been fun to sail the seas while swashing bucklers, but that's not where I was meant to be. I'm in the nearly unique position of being able to look at the whole of human history up until now and even cast my gaze a moderate distance into the future and say, with certainty, that I'm living exactly when I was best suited to live. Keep your ren-fest and post-modernism; I'm living now and I like it fine that way.

  ---

  Contrast

  Last night, I had the rare chance to socialize with two groups of people sequentially. Over the course of the same night, I attended a concert attended by some of my classmates and, afterwards, went to a double birthday party which mixed various interesting groups but which predominently featured the Dawson-side of my gaming buddies. Moving between two groups with very different perceptions of you is actually very interesting -- my mannerisms, speech patterns, and even body language were different at both venues. More interesting, to me at least, is the way that I've cultivated and shaped the image people have of me differently in both circles.

  The concert was a show by Eclipsis, opening for another, less interesting band. I personally went because the bassist is a very good friend of mine and I know it means a lot to her that at least one of her friends makes it when she plays (and, in point of fact, only one of her friends did make it, so I'm glad I went to the trouble). The lead singer, however, just happens to be one of my current classmates, so I was going in part to show support for her, despite the fact that we've exchanged about one line of dialogue in the first 16 weeks of classes. I do not think she expected me to be at the show. For that matter, when she saw me, she smiled warmly, waved, and then said, "hey, you're in my class! Sorry, I don't actually remember your name." When some of our other classmates showed up later in the evening, the lead singer brought them over to me and, excitedly, told them I was in their class. "Really?" one of them asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you before."

  I can hardly criticize these kids, of course, and in truth I find it only funny. I always tell people that I'm not a social person, and this is only exacerbated ny how easy it is to blend into a 200 student class. Even though it's always the same two hundred people in the lecture hall for between 3 and 7 hours each day, but even so, on average, every week I'm still seeing at least one student who I could swear I haven't seen before, and just this past Friday somebody I'd never chatted with before came up to introduce themselves to me as a fellow gamer (he recognized me by my amulet -- stories circulate, it seems). I've made friends this year, and there are about twenty people in my current class I'm able to chat with comfortably, which is probably about double last year's class at this time into the year. Still, the fact remains that as a general rule I don't talk to my classmates, and it's not unusual for me to go a full day from 6:30 am to 4:00 pm without opening my mouth for anything except lunch. This isn't a complaint, of course; I'm a proud misanthrope and not about to change my ways, and on top of that, plenty of my friends have observed that I've got a knack for not being seen when I don't want to be. I probably could socialize more with the kids around me, and I will... when I get around to it.

  Social circle number 1: I don't exist; at best, I appear to be a quasi-mythical figure that people only half believe in. Can't complain.

  The party I went to afterwards was quite different, of course. At the concert I only had one person there who I would really consider any sort of friend, whereas as soon as I walked into the party aftewards, there were people I didn't recognize saying hi to me by name, and there's a 50% chance that if I checked their pockets, I'd have found dice. One of the birthday boys was giving everyone "hello, my name is" stickers with one-liners or phrases he associates with them; during the evening I watched him agonize for tens of minutes over what to call some people, but within moments of seeing me walk in he'd drawn up a "you can trust me, I'm a doctor" tag. This became the subject of several conversations during the night, as several people attempted to put their finger on why, precisely, they couldn't actually trust me. The crowd at the party was filled with people who know me for what I am -- a wisecracking, flippant, snarky, deceitful weasel -- and enjoy keeping me around precisely for that reason, because that's what many of them are, too. People in that circle also know that I'm anti-social and not prone to initiate conversations, but that just makes them put all the more effort into putting me into a positon where I'm at ease and, thus, at my mental prime. This is the kind of circle for which you gotta thank the gods: people who accept your flaws, admire your strength, and offer you their booze even if you don't drink.

  Social circle number 2: I don't talk much, but if you can get me going, I'm one of the sharpest minds there. Although I have the capacity to be really, really annoying...

  Obviously, I need to start being snarkier to my classmates. They'll all love me in no time.

  ---

  Words On A Page

  It has not escaped my notice that for some time, the majority of this Journal has been occupied by gaming-related material as opposed to essays, satire, or anything of any sort of mass-market appeal. On one hand, in an ideal world, I'd be covering a slightly wider range or topics here. On the other hand, I don't honestly have a problem with this and no one else has complained. Tonight's topic, therefore, is gaming related. If you have a problem with that, roll for initiative.

  Thought for the second: I'm currently playing in three games (one weekly, one bi-weekly, and one irregular, for all intents and purposes). In all three of them, I am playing characters who might fairly be accused of having similarities, being that all three are silver-tongued non-combat-oriented merchants of one sort or another. Furthermore, all three keep a journal, notebook, or diary of some sort. It is worth considering, though, that all three record their thoughts in vastly different ways and for very different reasons, and then on top of that, only one of their journals ever gets posted here for public consumption, despite my feeling chronically short of material.

  First off, since I know people from all three of the games I'm in read this, a small disclaimer. I often criticize players who I feel always play the same character, so I'm very aware of the fact that that's what I'm doing right now. There are, however, extenuating circumstances. At the time that I created Neyrr, I was in no games at all, and so opted to play a glib character because those ar my favourite. When the Game of Thrones game began a full year and a half later, I had just done away with the combat character who preceeded him in gaming with the same group, and since I was told that the GoT chronicle would probably be heavily political, another talker seemed like the best choice, even though I was already playing one in another game. Finally, when the Covenant of Consequences LARP started up, Clayton was deliberately resurrected as part of a larger gag, and he had been created as a schemer and merchant a full two years before Neyrr (his first appearance, in The Giovanni Chronicles, having been in the summer of 2003). The problem is not such much that I keep creating talkative characters as that, once I create them, they never go away. That's my defense and I'm sticking to it.

  So anyway...

  Journal is, of course, not a very descriptive term. It was an early Entry in this very archive where I first observed that, according to mister Webster, the word journal could refer to a diary, a monthly publication, or the rotating part of an axle. In this case, though, all three characters use the word to refer to a place where they record their thoughts and memories, albeit all for very different reasons. None of them keep the same sort of Journal as myself, naturally -- only one of the three having Internet access, for one thing.

  Of the characters, Edmund is the one who comes closest to keeping a normal diary. That is, in fact, precisely what he keeps: a record of his daily thoughts and experiences. Edmund is a seventeen-year old traveling far and wide with important people for the first time, so understandably, he finds his thoughts easier to order when they get written down. I never did this sort of thing at that age (I was much too busy scheming, even back then, to get too worked up about the present), but given that I don't have a very clear mental image of his heart and mind, it's safe to say that he certainly doesn't, and that, psychologists believe, is why most youths keep a journal in the real world. Additionally and more importantly, Edmund keeps a journal for story purposes; by writing up his thoughts about events in game, I can compare notes out of game with players, get our stories straight, and give other players insight into what the character is thinking in and out of game. Finally and almost as importantly, the Game of Thrones game is held only every two weeks, and often a full month goes by without a game session for one reason or another, which means that if I don't make some written notes about the game, I have no chance whatsoever of remembering what happened from one session to another.

  Neyrr, in direct contrast, keeps absolutely no record of his daily thoughts. The main reason for this is that, if anyone were to read them, he would probably be burned at the stake. At a conservative estimate, at least two personalities are currently active in Neyrr's head, and since one of them is an ageless, evil, and ancient god of plague, he reasonably feels it would be a bad idea to leave a paper trail. On average, I'll do between two and four things in a weekly session which another character might kill him for if they knew the precise thinking behind it... even if Neyrr did write a journal, it would be a bad idea for me to make it public, even out of game. Neyrr's intellect is sufficiently beyond human, however, that as far as I'm concerned, he's fully capable of composing his journal inside his head, and remembering it verbatim years later, and in any case, the only information he feels a real desire to record are his laboratory notes, which 1) would be pretty well untranslatable to anyone who reads them, since they're written in Koorivari and 2) wouldn't make exciting reading to other players. The lab notes are pretty incriminating too, in any case, including as they do such notable experiments as "To Transfer A Koorivar Mind To A Koorivar/Troll/Spider Hybrid Body," "To Create a Sexually-Transmitted Fear Plague" and "To Create a Toxin With Which To Wipe Out The Dwarven Race."

  Finally, there's Clayton's journal. Clayton keeps extremely detailed records of his relationships and significan life events and has since childhood, which is in large part why he remains able to quote his date of birth six hundred years later. Clayton has little interest in recording daily life events, however, and could not imagine a need to do so; what Clayton does keep is a record of the strengths and vulnerabilities of everyone he knows. Years ago, when I was playing Virrar Crysthalus in the Utopia Online RPG forums, I created Virrar's Files, a website where I actually wrote up his villain's eye observations of others' characters, and I was told more than once that I impressed another player by how efficiently I captured the essence of their character, and creeped them out by devising the perfect means of destroying them. Clayton is no villain -- he earnestly accepts the Via Humanitas -- but he keeps careful notes of everyone he meets and spends time near, so that he's ready for it if they try anything and ready for it if he's the one who needs to make a move first. Some (but not all) of Clayton's notes actually get typed up and saved on my computer, but they won't be seeing publication in this journal. Edmund is helped by other players having insight into his plans, but Clayton's plots run in an entirely different direction.

  So, which characters get their journals published? Most of the characters I've played over the years have had some method of recording their thoughts, but most of them do not have thoughts I want other players to know I have. They get schemed, and they might even get physically written up, but they don't go where anyone except me will ever read them. And five will get you ten, Clayton and Neyrr both outlive Edmund.

  ---

  The Diary of Edmund Lannister, Part 2

  The next time that I find myself doubting the marvel and majesty of Westeros, I shall remind myself of the day when I was traumatized by flora. If uncle Tywin should ever read this, he will probably have me killed, unless the shock kills him first.

  I am, thus far, unimpressed with the North for the most part. The landscape is bleak and dull. Worse, it is cold. I have not seen snow in something in the area of ten years, and now marching in the sub-freezing temperatures has rapidly lost its appeal. My dear sister ran out to play in the snow when we first saw it, and her not only the elder of we two, but a septa besides. While the Lannister name carries with it no rules against having fun, the whole situation feels rather beneath my dignity. I am cold, tired, and annoyed. I am also getting very, very tired of traveling in the company of men at arms.

  Was it a mistake to leave the Queen's side to go on this side trip on our way to Winterfell? On reflection, probably not. The soldiers are coarse and crude men, but noble in their own way, and several of them are obviously both intelligent and educated. I am allowing my distaste at the weather to colour my feelings about these men, which is an injustice to them. Doubly unjust, after the way they put themselves at risk to protect us from attack by the wolves who dogged our trail last night. The men at arms could surely have defended themselves better had half their number not formed a defensive circle around we two Lannisters, and yet they did without hesitation put their own flesh between ours and the wolves' teeth. Not that I let them do all the fighting, of course, my hours of training with my crossbow proving their value when I landed more quarrels than some of the men at arms, but it would have gone badly for me with fewer armed guards. "A Lannister pays his debts," as it was drilled in to me from my earliest days; I will honour these men and not speak ill of them. I will freely speak ill of their country, of course, and of the snow.

  I wonder if you can drown in snow? I should ask that Ironborn fellow who travels with us.

  But, diary, is it really even the snow and the cold that upset me? Still three or four days South of Winterfell, it is not yet truly bitterly cold, and surely not as cold as it will be if I do decide to travel all the way to the Wall while in the region. No, what troubles me still, even days later, is that tree, the Weirwood. Before setting off on this trip, I had only ever read of the sacred groves of the Northmen where the trees they venerate are worshipped, and had half-disbelieved the stories of the groves. Those who worship the old gods are said to believe that the "faces" they see in the wood of the trees were carved there by some ancient race, and last week, I would have dismissed it as the same silliness that drives particularly devout (and gullible) worshippers of the Seven to sometimes see the face of the Blacksmith in a sword or the face of the Mother in their gruel. For all that, though, I can hardly explain what happened when I stood before the Weirwood. For a moment I could swear that the tree was looking at me. Or, into me. I ascribe the sensation to a bit of healthy imagination brought on by being in the presence of the excited worshippers in the grove, much as the fervor of war will spread amongst soldiers before a battle or as anger spreads through a mob in a confined street. It was wholly natural and explicable, and needed no gods or magical trees to bring it on.

  Still, it is a poor merchant who makes hasty judgements about things he does not understand. Being a center of this silly faith, Winterfell shall no doubt have an even larger and more impressive godswood than this one, so I shall go to see their Weirwood and see if the experience occurs again. If it does, I should consult with whatever they have analogous to a septon -- if they even have such things for their groves -- and inquire further, as no Westerlands book is likely to have much useful information about the Weirwoods.

  As much as I have ruminated about this "magic tree", I shall almost be disapointed if the grove of house Stark fails to animate and thrash around me! Though if what happened before was merely imagination, I shan't be too badly put out. There are worse fates than to have proof that the old gods are not, in fact, out to get you.

  Enough for now. The men at arms are surely finished loading supplies by now and will want to set out, and I should like to take down my crossbow and train a bit more with it before leaving. There are surely many more wolves on the roads and I doubt I shall have warrior Castamere and his men to guard me again on the road South.

  ---

  
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