As a number of people of my aquaintance have come to discover in recent weeks, I've finally found a feature on Facebook which makes me want to actually use the website: the ability to play Scrabble online against people. I love Scrabble, in part because I'm pretty good at it and in part because it's a game that's more fun if you play it with the most over-educated, most well-read people you can find. While playing Scrabble, of course, one is constantly faced with the challenge of finding new and interesting words you can make using whatever hand you've got. The clever player may find all sorts of ways to use language to their advantage, be it legalizing the use of the Klingon dictionary or memorizing every word in the English language spelled with three Z's and a silent Q. When you get right down to it, though, what determines "game legal" for most players is nd always has been the famed TWL dictionary. This dictionary is extremely interesting for two reasons. First, the dictionary disallows any and all proper nouns, meaning that quite a number of words that the average player will think is legal, in point of fact, aren't. Second, the TWL dictionary contains thousands of words which you simply will not find anywhere else, no matter how hard you try... or at least, if you look them up in Webster, you won't find their definitions available in the freely-acessible online version, or in their standard "non-comprehensive" tome. So, since the definitions of some of these words can be terribly difficult to look up, I've decided to get some definitions for them for you... in the Gamers' Dictionary. Be pusillanimous... be very, very pusillanimous.

Coved:
The act of having becoming curved over or inwards, forming a concavity or or small, sheltered recess. Frequently an involuntary process, particularly in the formation of lonely beaches by erosion or head wounds by maces.

Davit:
A crane commonly projected over the side of a ship or boat to facilitate the lifting or hoisting of cargo. Legally employable only if a sworn statement in writing is affixed to the side.

Dee:
The fouth letter of the English alphabet, prized primarily for its ability to sandwich an ampersand.

Glim:
A small light or lamp, which gives off just a bit too little illumination to be said to "shine."

Jun:
1: A coin of North Korea
2: The last hemi-word of many an adventurous soul upon shaking a volatile object previously believed to be just a piece of.

Lee:
1: A crude or makeshift shelter from wind.
2: The side of a camel which is most foul-smelling at any given moment.

Loge:
A small compartment use for the carrying of objects just a tiny bit larger than really ought to be able to fit inside. An object which has been inserted into a loge is frequently said to be loged in much too well.

Moil:
To work so hard that the ends of your yoke snap off and dangle down your sides.

Pirog:
A large pastry often filled with potato or cheese, the confusion of which with a pierogi remains punishable by death in certain areas of Russia.

Qi:
1: The 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet, essential to the proper pronunciation of any pet whose covering is composed primarily of moss.
2: A "vital energy" believed to animate the body, central to some Eastern systems of medical treatment, certain forms of self-defense, the brewing of many fine teas and the ability to make an enemy's head explode by poking them in the sternum.

Quintal:
A unit of weight equal to one hundred kilograms or roughly two-hundred and twenty pounds. Derived from the Latin quintale, and earlier, centenarius, the weight at which Roman officers were forced to go on a diet until their breastplates fit again.

Wis:
As verb, archaic, To Know. As noun, one clever enough to think himself wise but not clever enough to ensure he has spelled it correctly after typing it.

Xi:
The fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet, as well as the Roman numeral for eleven, the similarity of which has led to must loss of life and many pairs of trousers being cut three inches too short.

Yag:
A synthetic yttrium aluminum garnet of marked hardness and high refractive index that is used especially as a gemstone and in laser technology. No, really.

Zee:
1: A common and barbaric mispronunciation of the twenty-sixth letter of the English alphabet.
2: Derogatory term for a German officer being portrayed by an American or Brittish actor.

Last year, on October 16th, I Took My Cthulhu To Work. As everyone knows, Unholy Cthulhu is known to occasionally look out at the world through the eyes of any and all icons which bear His image, and so one day each year, people worldwide carry their Cthulhus with them for a day. This serves two purposes. First, it allows those who know of Cthulhu's power to identify each other, and at times when the Mighty One isn't watching, they can form alliances, the better to thwart His plans in the future. Second, on one day of the year, as Cthulhu strains at his bindings in sunken R'Lyeh and threatens to break free to devour the souls of humanity, the Darkness Beneath sees how silly the world still is, decides it isn't worth the aggro, and goes back to sleep for a few more months. Everybody wins! This year, on October 16th, I again marked Bring your Cthulhu To Work Day, thus doing my part to forestall the doom of all mortal life and giving myself a fun activity for the day to boot.

Individuals worldwide carry many varied Cthonic icons with them. Quite popular these days are plush Cthulhus, though small statues or engravings remain popular among the purists and historians. Copies of ancient sacred and infamous texts are rarely seen outside of New England, and besides, they can be a pain to lug around for a full day. I personally subsribe to the "plush toy" school of thought, for several reasons. First and foremost, a plish toy, even a plush toy of an evil tentacled elder god, attracts relatively little attention, and when people do notice it, they tend to treat it as one of those "harmless" sorts of things. Second and equally important, it's just generally fun to have a plush toy with you during the day, even if it is a plush evil tentacled elder god. Sitting bored in a lengthy lecture is much more tolerable when you can reach over and stroke a soft, fuzzy stuffed toy, pick it up, make it dance, put it on the head of the student next to you and matter-of-factly inform them that Cthulhu is eating their brain, or what have you. All that, and I get to do my part at saving humanity (because, after all, it's not very satisfying to conquer an ash wasteland inhabit only by gibbering horrors).

All that being said, there is one major downside to my celebrating Bring Your Cthulhu To Work Day. Last year, Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day was declared to be one of my "eccentric niftydays" similar to Give A Present To A Wall Day, Abuse A Vorlon Day, and Thanksgiving. An eccentric niftyday (or eccentric "holiday" to some) is a celebratory day which is never ever celebrated on the same date two years in a row. In the case of Abuse A Vorlon Day, the holiday is never celebrated on the same day twice for that most pragmatic of reasons: nobody can ever remember from year to year what date it was last celebrated, and indeed, it's not unheard of for Abuse A Vorlon Day to be celebrated several times during the year, because we forget if we've already celebrated it. That said, last year I made the semi-catastrophic error of writing down when Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day was, and so this year, when I became curious, I couldn't help but go back into my Journal's archive and find out in the space of a few seconds precisely when it was. Sure, I *wanted* to celebrate it on a day different from last year, but there was concrete information regarding an actual date, as opposed to the terribly ambiguous and equivocal "one day, eventually" that I'd be working with otherwise. I might have been able to resist if October 16th had fallen on a weekend, or a day of normal lectures, but it fell on a Tuesday, when we had a small-group session in the afternoon where I'd be sitting with Dread Cthulhu in a group of only 15 or so students rather than 200, and I'd be better able to enjoy the confused stares of my classmates. A wise man one said that he could resist anything except temptation... I can resist most temptations, but I can almost never resist the temptation to do Weird Stuff in front of my classmates, especially whenever I think they're getting a bit too comfortable with the idea of me being straight-laced and studious. The Goddess sees fit to bless and curse me with a healthy sense of mischief and takes steps to ensure I use it, and I'm not nearly soo foolish as to disobey a determined Goddess.

Fortunately, in addition to my sparkling with and stunning personality, I happen to be blessed with a nearly superhuman ability to do that most incredible of all human feats: rationalize! Last year was the first ever Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day, and this year, understandably, was the second. Last year, the day was declared to be an eccentric niftyday simply because I didn't think I'd remember it one year later and would thus fail to celebrate it on time a second time. My celebrating it for a second time on the same date isn't a failure on my part, but a tremendous sucess, nay, a triumph! I didnt fail to properly celebrate an eccentric niftyday... rather, my error was to last year presumptively declare the day to be eccentric in the first place. By all rights, a niftyday shouldn't be declared to be eccentric until it's been officially celebrated on the wrong date at least two or three times, just to be sure, and now I merely know that Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day is a normal niftyday, and not eccentric. I did screw up, I admit, but only a minor error of classification, and not an error of celebration. I'm allowed to make mistakes... to err is human, they say, which I suppose means that to ic is divine. Or something.

Take Your Cthulhu To Work Day to everyone! Although, of course, you're all going to read this much to late to celebrate it until next year.

Appearance is a powerful force. Tiny changes in how something looks, particularly variations in certain classically symbolic elements, can make a tremendous difference. People acessorize their appearance to give particular impressions. Adding or removing a tie from a shirt changes the overall impression of the clothes significantly, changing whether the wearer looks casual or professional, relaxed or formal. In films, this is a huge area of consideration for character designers; the Matrix wouldn't have been as much of a sucess if Keanu Reeves had worn torn purple pants instead of a black trenchcoat and copyrighted sunglasses. In the realm of comics, where an iconic costumes plays a huge role, not only in whether a character's immortality is assured but even whether or not they'll be recognizable in their own book, a tremendous amount of thought can go into every tiny aspect of a character's image, and it can be very interesting to observe some of the design changes which have gotten made over the years in the most famous ones. I've observed elsewhere in this Journal as to how significant I consider masks, but today, let's take a second to think about my second favourite part of any costume: the cape.

Perhaps no single element of style is more iconically "comic-book"ish than the cape. For this, we can largely blame Siegel and Shuster themselves for getting the whole mess stated back in the 30's. Not every comic book character wears a cape, and not even the most popular ones especially tend to, but it's still the very first element of fashion most people think of when they picture a superhero, with the one possible exception of spandex. The very idea of capes is so intrinsic to the genre that it's made cape jokes inherently funny, as has been proven by several films in recent years and by the writers of Captain America before them. Many Batman writers have poked fun at capes once or twice during their runs on the books, with the character's life more than once being contingent on whether or not the drag of his cape will allow him to jump a certain distance. Most persuasively, in most of the major comics universes, the very word "cape" is a synonym (and often derogatory term) for metahumans and adventurers of all sorts. It's hard to say why the cape has become so intrinsically tied to such images, or why the cape was added to the early superheroes in the first place, though there's no shortage of theories amongst psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and people with two much time on their hands (some of us may fit into more than one category). Does the cape evoke images of kings and lords? Did powerful people wear capes in history because a flowing cape evokes some naturaly-evolved emotional reaction, the same way that a genetic fear of snakes and spiders is selective advantage? And if capes are so impressive, why do people get so soundly mocked for wearing them outdoors in rea life?

And yet, even the cape isn't so simple and easily classified. There can be tremendous differences, stylistically, between the capes of heroes and villains For that matter, there can be tremendous differences between the capes of two heroes. Consider two of the world's most iconic comic heroes, Superman and Batman. Both owned by the same company, both created very near the same time, both sharing a universe and a fan-base, and arguably the two most consistently sucessful comic-to-film conversions and all-around toyetic marvels. And yet, they wear very different capes, above and beyond the obvious differences in colour. Superman's cape might be considered to be the classical "hero" cape. His cape begins at his shoulders, so medial as to be emerging almost from his neck. His cape comes from his clavicles; in addition to drawing attention to his Mighty Chest, the cape always hangs back behind him and never over his sides. Because the cape spreads out along his back, his arms are never hidden by it and he can't be seen to be hiding behind it. Furthermore, this maximizes the degree of waving and buffeting whenever he stands in a breeze or flies, so that it flaps out behind him dramatically. Finally, his cape is shorter than he is; it stops around mid calf level, right around the soleal line, so it never drags in the dist and doesn't trip up his feet. It's a proud cape, and defintely not a cloak. He isn't hiding anything in it or using it to cover himself up (as Alex Ross has proven many times in his own unique style).

In contrast, Batman's cape doesn't come from his clavicles, but from more laterally, along his shoulders. It tends to run first down the front of his chest a short distance, which means that as it spreads backwards, it runs, not straight back, but over his shoulders and down around him, over his sides and often over his front. Batman's cape, quite sensibly, isn't designed to play out behind him, but to flow and even pool around him. This cape *is* a cloak; it conceals him, hides his hands, and makes his equipment invisible. Interestingly, this is the style more often given to villainous characters, which, given modern conceptions of the character, makes perfect sense.

Most people know that I've got a thing for masks; most people would feel comfortable wagering I also like capes. Maybe I've been shaped by my upbringing (I did learn how to read by devouring X-Men books, after all), or maybe if there is a "cape-respecting" gene then I've got a hyperefficient allele. I've been known to incorporate capes or cloaks into a lot of my character designs (though interestingly, usually not into my superheroes), and when I've designed or constructed costumes based on the Empire, they usually have capes. It may or may not be significant that they tend to be shoulder-covering rather than clavicle-rooted capes; my feeling is just that with limited design skill, it's easier to build and secure a cape that attaches in front in a sort of Doctor Doom style. I think that a good cape adds a lot to any suit, and I'm not ashamed to admit that if I could do so without looking like a complete lunatic, I'd wear capes most days (actually, I'd probably settle for looking only a four-ninths lunatic). Sadly, the further into my studies I go at this point, the more and more limited my fashion options will be, so I'll likely never find myself in the position where I can get a away with wearing capes. Clearly, this is just one more reason why I need to conquer the world as soon as possible... the Emperor of the World would be *expected* to wear a nice, flowing cape.

Then said Prince Jack, my friends, if you have ever believed in me, believeth my words now. And, lo, the people fell for it, again.

From The Book of Contrivance, The Parables of Jack the Knave, chapter 11, verse 2063.

The Codex Dolosus defines an "Implicit Lie" as any lie which is implicit and acknowledged by two parties as being part of a truth. On the surface, this would seem to be an impossible concept... how could a lie be implicit it in something which is true? Consider, though, that lies are actually implicit in a lot of what we say and do, but we accept them for simplicity or, equally often, for the sake of beauty. One of my favourite examples of this is the oft-repeated claim that Columbus landed on the Americas in 1492. Columbus actually didn't stumble across either one of the American continents until 1498, on his third voyage West, but because he began his famous voyage(s) in 1492, this is the year which was immortalized. Try writing 1498 on a test in any history course prior to university and you'll be mocked and possibly failed, because the popular conception of "truth" is 1492. I myself have been mocked while playing no less a soure of knowledge than Trivial Pursuit for not answering 1492 in response to this "obvious question." A little thing like "historical accuracy" is no match for institutionalized education. We all accept the lie as true because, let's face it, most of us didn't enjoy memorizing dates in history and we're most of us happier learning a single year rather than the dates on which Columbus set sail *and* returned home each time. We say that the truth is 1492, but there's a lie implicit in that statement.

Not dissimilar from this is the well-known "Scientists' Retcon" effect, wherein each time a student ascends to a new level of study in the same science, they are inevitably taught that several of the principles they had been taught were true and real -- proverbial "laws of physics" -- were outright lies, because the truth was too complex for younger students. A significant number of my teachers have lied to me over the years, to my face and with enthusiasm, trusting that future professors would tell me the truth eventually. Each and every one of them was telling an implicit lie. Let's not even get into the fact that it was "for my own good."

This past Friday was the McGill medicine White Coat Ceremony. White Coat Ceremonies are held at numerous medical schools across the world; at McGill they date back about eight years. The ceremony is a sort of miniature graduation, marking the moment when the student leaves the lecture halls to continue their learning in the hospitals at the hands (and often underfeet) of practicing physicians working with real patients. The ceremony was something of an implicit lie, in so far as that we don't actually finish the lecture component of our education until mid December and even then we'll find ourselves spending a fair chunk of time after the winter break coming back to the auditoriums in between hospital visits, but that's not important right now. The ceremony was attended by some five hundred guests, they tell us, and in many ways it was actually quite lovely. Our dean gave a really excellent speech which I'm sure I'll steal bits from someday, and it was actually kind of fun being handed a shiny white pseudo-doctor's coat in front of a live audience. Many photos were taken, and in a few of them, I dare say I even looked good (I may not like the look of myself most of the time, but I really do look good in any sort of formal-looking coat). The interesting thing is this: When I received the pictures, the first thing I did was open up Photoshop and clear them up a little. My parents' camera isn't the highest quality, for example, and so the lighting required some adjustment. I cropped the images down, to save space and cut down the number of extraneous faces in the images. And, succumbing to vanity, I touched up my own face. I often have a bit of trouble with acne, and while it doesn't bother me most of the time, I feel it detracts from the quality of pictures of me. For a picture at a party I never care particularly and certainly can't be bothered to go around editing the images, but for these, which are pictures of a special occasion, I made judicious use of the "smudge" function to smooth out flesh tones and remove a bit of red. The result is a picture which is quite a lot nicer... and is also an outright lie to anyone who sees it.

What is a photograph? A picture is a representation of what something looked like at a particular moment of time. Each photo is, in theory, an immortalization of that moment, capturing a nice and accurate image of the scene. There's an old proverb that "pictures don't lie" but whoever first said it had never used Photoshop or, for that matter, been exposed to modern advertising and magazines. Pictures lie all the time -- pictures of me, perhaps, doubly so -- and most people nowadays have a pretty good idea that when they see a picture they may be seeing an artist's version of truth. Photodevelopers remove red-eye from pictures as a matter of course, whereas magazines both family and adult-oriented each keep whole stables of air-brush artists to remove every blemish from subjects. They're *basically* still true, but just enough changes have been made that they're no longer *wholly* true. Let's be (ironically) honest: the pictures of me from the White Coat Ceremony no longer look quite like me, and do not give an accurate representation of what they're supposed to. Any given individual who looks at these pictures, if not informed that they have been edited, will make the perfectly reasonable assumption that they accurately capture the moment, because, after all, pictures don't lie, but if you then told them that they'd been touched up, most people wouldn't react with particular surprise... it's accepted and expected that most people will touch up photos of themselves these days.

To be fair, of course, the pictures do still *basically* capture the important information... they show that it's me, that I'm wearing the white coat, that the coat has my name tage attached, where I am, who's around me, and who's posing for the photo with me. All of this information -- who, what, when, where, why, arguably all the *important* information -- is still there, unedited. And yet, the lie is in the details, and like any good lie, it is hidden in the small, unimportant details, the details most people would never notice. The lie is small, unobtrusive, subtle, inconsequential... and implicit. Every person who looks at this picture, for the rest of eternity, is being deceived. None of this to say that it's a bad thing, naturally. A lie well-wrought is its own reward.

Today being National Tryptophan Overdose Day, at least in Canada, it seemed like it would be appropriate to take some time today to contemplate some of the things I'm grateful for right now. The whole concept of a day of Thanksgiving is pretty ridiculous to me, of course, since I try every day to appreciate how improbably lucky I am and take as little as possible in my life for granted... I think that if I only contemplated that sort of thing once a year, I wouldn't deserve to be as lucky as I am. Then again, if my luck really does come from Satan as I've been known to quip, I'd probably get more of it if I *didn't* show proper gratitude. In any case, in the spirit of a certain other livejournal I follow, ten things which, today, I feel really absurdly grateful for.

1) I am grateful, generally speaking, that Satan likes me enough to loan me his luck when he isn't using it. Last night, I walked into the local Subway rastaurant with a friend. Moments after we walked in, the line behind us extended some six people back. My friend and I ordered approximately thirty six inches worth of sandwich (we were buying for three people), and there turned out to be precisely forty two inches worth of bread. Suffice it to say, not all of the six people who lined up behind us received their food. Had we been thirty seconds later, we wouldn't have gotten our dinner; had we been five minutes sooner, we wouldn't have gotten a good laugh. Had I not received a bunch of coupons in my mail earlier that week, we probably would have ordered pizza instead, which would have been more expensive, less nutritious and less yummy.

2) I am grateful that I am an absolutely astonishingly incredible writer. I may not always produce marvelous results, but I produce the stuff that I do produce quickly and largely painlessly, often requiring only one draft and minimal or no editing. I am grateful that, even if I spent three days agonizing over trying to think of a topic for a post, as soon as I think of one, which I always do before the deadline, it more or elss writes itself. I am also grateful that I can sit down to write a paper for class, even on a dull topic, and logorrheate two thousand words plus academic references in a few hours. I am grateful that the result is good enough that the only checking I need to do before I hand it in is run spell-check and I will still get over an eighty percent. I am grateful for spell-check, because I made an astonishinglyhigh number of typos while writing that paper, for reasons unknown to me. While we're on the topic, I am grateful that my writing gives me the opportunity to verb new and interesting words which I have never verbed before.

3) I am grateful that my computer can play music. My musical tastes may be unenlightened, amateurish, and even outright bad, but my life always feels better when I can hear my music in the background. I am grateful that Media Player is able to play my collection in random order, because I hate knowing what the next track is going to be, or only hearing the same few songs over and over. I am grateful that my tastes have changed over the last ten years so that I can now appreciate more than just Weird Al and John Williams (even if what I'm listening to at this precise moment is Weird Al anyway). I'm grateful hat the Internet lets me find new, strange, wonderful music every day, often simply by typing pseudorandom keywords into search programs and downloading everything that comes up.

4) I am grateful for cartoons, because they are entertaining and bring a smile to my face. I am grateful that I have yet to outgrow them. I am grateful that I can boot up my computer and, at a moment's notice, be watching ninteen-year-old Garfield cartoons over breakfast, and still remember a number of the musical number well enough that, if I ever wanted to (I never have), I could sing along. On a related note, I am grateful that Sympatico stops charging me for exceeding my montly bandwidth quota after twenty gigabytes, though I would be more grateful if they didn't have download and upload limits.

5) I am grateful for Wikipedia. I am grateful because it is a source of instantaneous and reasonably reliable knowledge on thousands of esoteric topics, such as hepatic risperidone metabolism, FDA drug-testing guidelines, and obscure comic-cook characters. I am grateful if you type my name into their search engine, the second match to come up is the Aerican Empire (soon, soon it shall be the first! Bwa ha ha ha!). I am grateful to have my beloved Empire listed on Wikipedia, because for reasons I am totally incapable of understanding, a significant number of people find the article there and apply to join.

6) I am grateful for my friends. I am grateful that I can speak to interesting and exciting people on MSN, reunite with old and long-lost friends over Facebook, go out to nice restaurants on a lazy Friday night and have really interesting conversations, welcome people into my home for gaming, and spend anywehere between ten and fifty hours per week with my girlfriend (and never for a moment think that it's more time than I want to be spending). I am grateful to know exciting people, even when they do persistently beat me at Scrabble. I am grateful that even when ties have been broken off with people, there's always a chance, sometime in the future, of reconnecting. I'm grateful that there's no doubt in my mind that I'm lovable and able to love, despite and in spite of the fact that I'm a scheming little bastard sometimes. I'm grateful that my friends invite me out to bars and parties, even when they know I'll spend a lot of time just sitting around and not saying much and sometimes be a little boring.

7) I am grateful for my Stuff. Every toy on my shelves and every miniature I've ever painted holds a special place in my heart, and every time I look at them it does nice things to my serotonin levels. I am grateful that I'm able to cherish the same toys now that I did five or ten or twenty years ago and not grow bored with them, and I'm grateful that such a small and simple thing in my life is able to make me feel warm and fuzzy and happy.

8) I am grateful that I started keeping this Journal way back when and that I was clever enough to give it a search bar. I'm grateful that this lets me go back instantaneously to see if I've already used taglines or post ideas, and I'm grateful that at a moment's notice I can look up when I declared that Bring Your Cthulhu To Work Day was last year or how I celebrated Topin Wagglegammon in 2004.

9) I'm grateful that I'm close enough to my family that I look forward to going to see them and can just tell them that I'm sleeping over one night because I've got an appointment nearby the next morning. I'm grateful that when I go there, they give me free food, free access to a washing machine and dryer, a comfy bed, nice company, and access to many videogames. I'm grateful to have a computer there all to myself, even if it does take ten minutes to boot up and disconnect from the internet every five minutes. I'm grateful that getting to and from my parents only takes half an hour, as opposed to, say, a twelve-hour flight or a ouija board.

10) And, last but not least, I'm grateful that I'm an all-around exciting and wonderful person. I'm grateful to be smart, clever, charming, healthy in my own way, very lucky, sufficiently handsome, and really just wholly remarkable. I'm grateful that I'm a little bit egotistical and egocentric, and that I have just a touch of delusions of grandeur, because people who don't have those qualities don't seem to enjoy life as much as I do. I'm grateful that I believe I'm totally stupendous, that there's just enough objective evidence of this that I sound only a *little bit* over-inflated, and that I'm surrounded by people who think my egocentrism is a cute little quirk rather than, say, a serious personality flaw. I'm grateful that there *is* that objective evidence of my wonderfulness, because I'd feel really silly if I believed I was amazing and I was only good enough.

These, then, are the things that I'm grateful for today. unsurprisingly, many of them are things I was grateful for yesterday and will probably still be grateful for tommorow, because, as I'm quite grateful for, a lot of the great stuff in my life is with me every day, Thanksgiving or no. And, by the way, I'm grateful you read this.

Last night, I finally had the opportunity to watch the new film version of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Neil gaiman is, of course, one of my top five favourite authors of all time, due in large part to his contributions to Good Omens and his single episode of Babylon 5. I'm not a huge fan of Stardust, though I enjoyed reading it once, and I went into the film with the expectations of seeing a decent, though not stunning, film. Indeed, for most of the movie, I thought it was only "sufficiently good," actually a fairly high rating for me to give a movie associated with an author or universe I particularly enjoy but certainly not the rating I would give to any movie I really loved. That is to say, I gave the movie only a middling rating until very near the end, during the big climactic. I won't give away much in the way of details here, since I know for a fact that some people reading this right now have not yet seen the movie and hope to in the future, but suffice it to say, one of the villains gets nibbled to death by a swarm of angry weasels. Stardust is therefore in the running for the title of "best movie ever."

What this got me thinking about primarily was that Stardust is an example of the one the very few times I've enjoyed a movie more than I've enjoyed a book. Commonly, if I read a book and see the associated movie, I tend to prefer the book, as is probably true for most people. That said, I found myself contemplaying what factors help decide whether the movie or book is superior. In the case of Stardust, the answer is obvious -- a swarm of angry weasels -- but in other cases, it's something more ephemeral. More often then not, I think it's a matter of which came first.

Let's take a quick look through my bookcase and count how many of the books there were converted to (or from) movies. The Princess Bride is obviously one, being both my all-time favourite book *and* movie. There's Dune, which has been incarnated as multiple movies plus several videogames, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which began its life as a radio play and which now has become everything else. There's my much-loved copy of Starship Troopers, which contains the original text despite the cover art, embarassingly, being a screencap from the movie. I've never seen any of the Discworld films, so I won't count those here, and Good Omens, despite many promises, is not yet a movie, nor does it look like it will be any time soon. Then there's the books I've read but don't have in my bookcase, either because I didn't like them enough (such as The Lord of the Rings, or Gaiman's Neverwhere) or because I have yet to pay to have my own copy (such as The Revenge of the Sith). Looking at the list, the split of book-better/movie-better is actually very close to fifty-fifty, and the deciding factor does seem to be which came first.

Consider Starship Troopers as a good example of why the book, if it comes first, is often better. The novel, by father-of-modern-sci-fi Robert A. Heinlein, is a somewhat twisted philosophical discourse on the nature of society and the responsibilities of citizens to fight for freedom and life, whereas the movie is ninety minutes of talentless actors (Michael Ironside, you're wonderful, but I'm sorry, it's true) shooting things, getting cut by other things, and occasionally taking off their shirts. To put it bluntly, aside from the names of some of the main characters, the two stories are basically totally unrelated and unconnected. The novel, which is a good deal older than the film, is better, despite its unfortunate deficiency of weasels.

In contrast, there's Neverwhere. What makes Neverwhere interesting is that, although Gaiman wrote both the movie and the book (with a co-author), the movie actually came before the book. While I know some few people who liked the book more, I personally thought the movie was far superior. It's difficult to say exactly why one might be better than the other, since both are extremely similar, having been written and then adapted by the same people. In large part, I think it's a question of characterization. When a book predates a movie, characters are created indepednently of what they look like or do, but if the film comes first, then the character begins its life as an actor and is later converted to text, which must try to capture all the little quirks brought in by the actor and often fails to do so. The casting in the movie is superb and every character (especially Croup and Vandemar) are wonderful to watch, but in the book, I felt the characters came off as being a little two-dimensional in comparrison, and really culd have been improved by fleshing them out a bit more and adding some weasels.

Then, there's The Princess Bride. What makes this a curious case is that the author was an established and respected screenplay writer but widely considered to be something of a hack novel author in his day. The Princess Bride was his one great success writing a book, and when the time came to adapt it as a movie, the choice of writer to craft the screenplay was rather obvious. I would never presume to say that either the novel (which came first) or the movie is better than the other; arguably, the movie isn't an adaptation, but simply another take on the same story, had the author chosen to modify a few elements. If I had to pick, though, I'd probably say the movie was better... again, it wasn't an adaptation, so much as an author sitting down a second time and saying, "if I was writing this again, I might change this and this." The one great weakness of the film was, of course, the omsission of the Zoo of death, wherein we would surely have seen some variety of deadly weasel.

Finally, there's the matter of The Revenge of the Sith. In this case, I felt that the book was better than the film, despite the fact that the novelization arguably came second, since it was an adaptation of the existing script by an independent author. As much as I'll always love Lucas for what he created and gave us, the simple fact is... Matthew Stover told the story better, and futhermore cut out all the stupid bits and put in lots of new bits so that old bits began to actually make sense. So well-crafted is the novelization, in fact, that you hardly even notice the lack of weasels.

The Lord of the Rings, I just plain didn't like. The movie(s) was/were the better of the two on the grounds of shortness, and if you fall asleep then it finishes without you and you don't have to just pick up where you left off.

So, all that being said, I defintely enjoyed the film version of Stardust more than I enjoyed the book. I don't meant that as a slight against the book, which I did like, but sometimes, The simplest thing can shift the balance between good and less good. SOmetimes it's changing every single thing which happens in the story. Sometimes, it's a better author working on one part of the project and not on another. And, once in a while, the deciding factor is a swarm of angry weasels.

One of the single most famous logic puzzles known to modern humanity may be the Knights and Knaves puzzle, which was made famous by the film, Labyrinth. In the Labyrinth version, a character faces two doors, one good, one bad, and must deduce which door to take by asking one signle question of two guards, one of whom always tells the truth and one of whom always lies. I won't write the solution here on the assumption that 1) almost anyone who reads this already knows it and 2) anyone who doesn't yet nkow it wouldn't want me to spoil the ending. Understandably, I've always found this an interesting sort of riddle, not because I enjoy logic puzzles (I don't, as a general rule), but because it plays off of the contrast between absolute truth and absolute deceit, and relies on the idea that a lie doesn't have to be, per se, a direct untruth.

Thought for the day: The Codex Dolosus defines an Absolute Lie as a lie wherein the information transmitted is the exact opposite of what is true. This is actualyl a very hard lie to tell, because if you peer closely enough, few concepts don't have a precise opposite. You can't tell an absolute lie to the question "how far is the store" because there is no perfect opposite for a numerical value, nor is there a perfect opposite for such words as close, near, far, distant, here, there, and so forth. Etymologically, "near" may be the antonym of "far," but the meaning of the words isn't perfectly opposite. If, in the case of the store, near means a ten minute walk, for example, there is no perfect opposite of ten minutes. An absolute lie can usually be told only in response to a yes or no question, or a question with only two possible answers. This concept is of no practical relevance to anything at all in the world. Most lies are not perfect opposites of any given truth, and in fact, as any succesful deceiver knows well, sometimes the most effective way to lie is to tell the exact and perfect truth, if everybody assumes that's the last thing you're going to do.

At a party this past weekend, I found myself taking part in a multi-person game of chess. I say "taking part" because I wasn't a player so much as a part of a very vocal -- and, dare I say it, particularly disruptive -- peanut gallery. This was one of the most wonderful games of chess I've ever been witness to, and I can still feel the warm and entertained gaze of the Goddess now, quite some time later. The set-up was this: The game had four players, split as two teams of two. All players had been drinking, though all were in very varied states of inebriation. Each team had one skilled player and one... well, let's call them "less experienced." All four players were highly intelligent individuals. In addition to the players, there were four observers. One observer chose not to take part to any degree, while another opted to offer his insight to both teams, but particularly, his girlfriend. This left myself and another observer -- a young man who's as much or more a knave as I am, which I say with moderate admiration. Standing next to him as we watched players try to decide what moves to make during the opening gambits, I hit upon what was, on reflection, one of the most sublimely beautiful ideas I've ever had. From a nearby deck of cards, I picked up one black card and one red card, and shuffled them. Each turn, he and I would pick one randomly. For that turn, we would both suggest a move to the black team: one of us suggesting a good move, and one of us suggesting something to sabotage them. And, of course, the players were left to their own judgement to decide which of us held which card on a given turn.

Black won. I feel this really had little to do with either red-card advice or black-card advice, but more to do with the fact that the white-team was at an alcohol-induced tactical disadvantage, and as this was a drinking-game chess set, where each piece on the board is a shot glass, when white began to lose, a bottle of Goldschläger saw to it that white kept losing.

One interesting thing about playing this way is that it is not always easier to be either the red card or the black card. For most of the game, it was significantly easier and more entertaining to play the devil and suggest a sabotiginous move. At times, however, particularly towards the end when black's advantage was sizable, it became quite difficult to identify really bad moves to suggest, and painfully easy to spot good moves. Often, I didn't know which card I should hope to draw, and once or twice, I simply didn't have time to find a properly bad move to suggest before the black player had simply moved a piece himself. Of course, the most amusing moments, as happened at least two or three times, were when the red card and black card players both found themselves suggesting the same move on a turn.

There's a great deal of strategy to playing chess as the shoulder-devil. In some ways, it's as though you're playing two games of chess simultaneously. As the shoulder devil, you have to be constantly assessing the state of the game as though you were a normal player, working out what you would do and what the other player is likely to do. In addition to that game, you're playing a second, mental game, running through your mind all the possible moves for the turn and trying to find the best worst move to recommend, which requires you to deduce what the opponent's moves are likely to be, but also what your own player's strategy might be. These two similar but non-identical games are both going on in front of you, and you have to not only keep track of the game, but also calculate how many mvoes ahead of time not on, but two players are planning. Now, for complexity, imagine that each side of the board is a team of two players, wherein two players of the same colour don't necessarily have the same strategy in mind, and might be working towards different goals, and suddenly you have *four* psyches you have to be reading. It was marvelous.

A bad move, you see, doesn't have to be the opposite of a good move. A good soulder-devil can't just suggest to his player that, say, he should attempt to put the king in check by moving the queen to an undefended square immediately adjascent to the king; a players has to be pretty drunk before he'll fall for that just, just like it's a rare schoolteacher who will believe that the proverbial dog has eaten a child's homework. An obvious lie is rarely one which gets swallowed. Besides, this is chess, and the whole object of the game is to work two or three or twenty moves ahead at all times. There are thus two good ways in which to sabotage a player: you can either suggest a move which will disrupt his formation -- move that one critical pawn one square too far forward to defend the piece next to him -- or put him in a position to lose a piece when it's not worthwhile -- persuade a player to sacrifice a rook to kill a knight, for example, or to move up a bishop to a spot being subtly covered by a queen from the other side of the board. Most players won't fall for a sabotage move if it's a move that will put a piece into immediate danger. Rather, if you want a player to put himself into a bad position, you have to suggest something that will weaken him in the long run only, as short as two turns away or as far as you can scheme. This isn't easy to do, particularly when the opposing players are drunk and there is no guarantee they'll notice, let alone pounce on, any openings you hand them. As with any form of lie, a sabotge move has to be subtle, and has to appear plausible and even profitable in the short term.

The important thing is that a bad move doesn't have to be the opposite of a good move. A bad move can be as easy as persuading a player to move a pawn up one square to offer support to an undefended bishop, as long as it means he isn't spending this turn moving his rook into position or a checkmate. Not every act of sabotage takes a piece off the board... all it really has to do is slow the attacker's momentum, get one of his pieces out of the defensive line, or put him into the position where the piece sacrifice play he's setting up costs him two pieces instead of one. All of these little persuasions are relatively easy to pull off... especially if your player has been drinking or, better yet, if that turn's shoulder-angel happens to be someone the player is already condition to distrust. Sometimes, a lie can be as simple as ensuring that the decision-maker ignores the person they should be listening to at a critical moment, and few things are funnier than watching someone who *normally* lies get brushed off and disbelieved when he's trying, with all his heart, to suggest the very best move he can think of.

Editor's note: Gun'Mora created and originated by Mr. Andrew G. for the Dungeons and Dragons storyline The Doom of Shelezar.

     1: I am Gun'Mora, thy god. Thou shalt worship and give devotion unto Gun'Mora.
     2: I am Gun'Mora, god of plague. I am Gun'Mora, god of fear. I am Gun'Mora, they god. 3: I am Gun'Mora the Deathless, that which cannot die, yea, nor can Gun'Mora be contained, nor destroyed. Gun'Mora is all.
     4: In the deep desert is my home. Gun'Mora rules the desert. Thou shalt venerate the desert, for it is pleasing to Gun'Mora. 5: The desert tests all. It raises the strong even as it culls the weak. In the desert, all life knows fear and all are tested. 6: In the desert, all that live are tested, save Gun'Mora. Gun'Mora is the desert.
     7: It is written: thou shalt serve Gun'Mora and give unto Gun'Mora thy devotion, and thy love, and thy life, unto thy dying breath. 8: For Gun'Mora is a kindly god. I reward the faithful with wealth and power. Their hands, I fill with the power to heal, and their voices, I fill with the power to destory. Thou who worship Gun'Mora shall never know the touch of plague, nor fear, nor final death. 9: For even Death is subservient to the will of Gun'Mora, who cannot die, and whose most faithful servants shall find their place with him in the next life. They shall spend eternity basking in the glory of Gun'Mora
     10: All that is plague, all that brings illness, and that cleaves life from the unfit, all of this is Gun'Mora. 11: Every illness is beautiful unto Gun'Mora. He cherishes the vermin and he holds to his heart the vile. Him that believeth in me, though he shall walk amongst the corpses and festering bodies, yet shall he he be whole and uncouched. And whosoever embraces Gun'Mora and loves plague me shall never fall to their beauty. 12: Blessed is the plague, which touches the weak, the small, that the strong may thrive. Blessed is death which gives value to life. Blessed is Gun'Mora.
     13: Gun'Mora is fear. All that knows fear knows Gun'Mora. 14: I stretch forth my hand, and its shadow covers all. All that breathes, all that has mind, all that has soul, all of these knows my touch. All of this knows fear. Blessed is terror, for it is felt by the strong and the weak. Blessed is fright, which unites the human with the rodent from which he came. Blessed is panic, which brings strength, and blessed is dread, which focuses the thoughts. Trepidation, apprehension and horror, all of these are holy unto Gun'Mora. 15: Quake before me, oh ye bold and courageous. Tremble at my countenance, oh ye dauntless and doughty. You who are confident, you who are assured, you who stand before the darkness and draw a line, look upon my works, and know Fear. 16: For all that knows fear is beloved by Gun'Mora, and he that believeth and loveth Gun'Mora shall feel the cold fingers of fear around his heart and yet shall never falter, shall never run, shall never be swept away. Gun'Mora, who loves fear, who loves the fearful, the servants of Gun'Mora love fear and are strengthed, and never weakened by it. 17: Blessed is Gun'Mora.
     18: Know ye the names of Gun'Mora. Hold the names of Gun'Mora in your heart, and venerate them. You who love and worship Gun'Mora shall call upon these names, and shall speak with them love, and yea, with fear, for Gun'Mora hears when his name is spoken. 19: Gun'Mora is Gun'Mora. Gun'Mora is thy god. I, thy god, am Gun'Mora. 20: Gun'Mora is Deathless. Gun'Mora cannot die. Though arrows pierce him, though swords cut him, though fires burn him, though the beasts of the desert chew his flesh, Gun'Mora can never die. Behold, nor can the chosen of Gun'Mora die, their flesh shall grow anew, and they shall rise again to plague their foes. 21: Gun'Mora is the Dwarfslayer. The race of stone is anathema to Gun'Mora. In their hallowed halls, the Dawrf-Lords scheme against Gun'Mora and ever have. Yet is Gun'Mora mighty, for Gun'Mora is beyond the machinations of this least of races. You who love me and venerate fear, who love the sick and embrace the terrors, you shall make war upon them mountain lords, and collapse their tunnels upon them, and present their gold and steel unto Gun'Mora in sacrifice. 22: Gun'Mora is the Plaguelord. All that is filth and disease knows Gun'Mora. Gun'Mora is the Great Unclean, whose touch is sickness and whose voice is pestilence. 23: Gun'Mora is fear. All that know fear, know fear when they behold the visage of Gun'Mora. Yea, Gun'Mora's very shadow shall fall upon the brave, and their knees shall quake, and their hearts shall break, and their armies shall turn and flee. Gun'Mora is the Lord of Fear. 24: Gun'Mora is the Witch King. Gun'Mora is heir to the lost king of the desert, heir to the empire of bones. Fall upon thy knees, kneel and genuflect, bend thy tails and fold thy wings, for Gun'Mora rules the desert, Gun'Mora is the desert. Praise be unto Gun'Mora, the Witch King. 25: Gun'Mora is the Souleater. Yea, those who atack Gun'Mora, who seek to thwart his divine will, who foolishly pit themselves against him, they shall fall, before his mighty weapons and his mighty words. They shall fall, and shall not rise again, for I shall reach into their hearts and pull forth their souls, and consume them, for the taste of their power is succulent unto Gun'Mora. Gun'Mora shall feast upon their spirits, and with each spirit, Gun'Mora's power shall grow. The power of Gun'Mora's fallen foes shall be the power which fells their comrades, and their families, and their nations, until all who live, live for Gun'Mora. Gun'Mora is the Souleater. 26: Gun'Mora is the Ancient. I outlast ages, I outlast empires. Where mighty stood, now only ruins remain, but Gun'Mora, who strode amidst the palaces, strides now amidst the dust. And the palace and the dust are one and the same to Gun'Mora, and the kingdoms and the ruins are equally pleasing unto Gun'Mora, for Gun'Mora has seen that all that is, in time, is all that was, while Gun'Mora remains. For Gun'Mora has reigned, and does reign, and shall reign. Gun'Mora measures his time in millenia and a wait of twenty thousand years is not but a brief distraction to Gun'Mora, who is the Ancient. 27: These are the names of Gun'Mora. Speak them, and I shall know thy words and thy heart, for I am Gun'Mora.
     28: I am Gun'Mora. I am thy god. Bow before Gun'Mora, and prosper. 29: Gun'Mora is plague. Gun'Mora is fear. Believe in Gun'Mora and love him, and you shall live amongst these and never know harm from them. Serve Gun'Mora, and plague and fear shall serve you. Give your self unto Gun'Mora. I, Gun'Mora, am thy god.

I'm reminded of Gremlins 2 and one of my all-time favourite quotes from any movie.

"Fire: The Untamed Element! Oldest of Man's Mysteries, giver of warmth, destroyer of forests! Right now this building is on fire. Yes! The building is on fire! Leave the building! Enact the Age Old drama of Self-Preservation!"

The building I'm living in now is, by and large, quite wonderful, and if not for the fact that the ceiling in my bathroom started leaking today, I'd have almost no complaints about it. That said, in the month and one week that I've been living in this building, the fire alarm has already gone off three times, and I'm reliably informed by other residents that this is pretty much average. All three times that it's gone off, once was around late dinner hour and nearly cost me yummy sushi, and the other two were at 1am and half-past midnight, respectively. I should say, the alarm has gone off three times *that I know of* because, obviously, if the alarm went off when I was at my parents, in school, or otherwise out of my home, I wouldn't know. Two of these alarms occured while I was awake, and so were only mildly horrific; the middle one took place while I was happily asleep and persisted beeping for just over ten minutes, for which I have not yet forgiven it weeks later. None of these alarms, blessedly, were real fires, but this itself is a bit of an ambivalence-provoking fact.

This is one of those situations which can be looked at with a "glass half full" or "glass half empty" mentality. If you're the sort to see your glass as half full, you look at a hyperactive fire alarm and you appreciate the fact that, if nothing else, at least I have very clear proof that the alarm works and that it is very sensitive. Not only that, but I can now sleep soundly, assured that if the building does catch fire in the middle of the night, the alarm is loud enough to wake me up. My safety should be my paramount concern, and I know, without question, that if there is a fire in my building, I'll be notified and warned. Heck, I can even say with authority that I know precisely how long it takes the fire department to reach my building... mere minutes!I know more than one friend whose life or property was threatened because the fire alarm in their building didn't work, or because it took the fire fighters better than half an hour to get to the scene. I can feel safe in the certainty that the alarm here works well, that the fire department takes it seriously, and that they get here quickly. On top of all that, all the building's rooms are apparently linked together into a rather sophisticated system, such that the people in the lobby can actually determine what room the fire alarm started in, and inform the residents via an intercom system built into every room. When i lose a night's sleep over an alarm, I'll know exactly what appartment to blame.

The glass half empty point of view, on the other hand, is that I seem to be living in a building where I should apparently expect a fire alarm, on average, once every two weeks. In fact, I should perhaps become worried if I go three weeks without having my sleep interupted by the loud screechy-beepies. Furthermore, there's a clear "boy who cried wolf" effect in play here. The other appartment residents clearly do not look particularly worried when the alarm is blaring, and though the fire trucks arrived at the building in mere minutes, when I saw them walking through the halls, they were sauntering casually and chatting amongst themselves. Had this been a real emergency, I can only assume there would have been a lot more yelling and running by all parties involved, but in the time before it was found to be a real emergency, would the fire have consumed one appartment, or spread three or four doors down the hall?

I may have neglected to mention, the last fire alarm, which occured just this past weekend, was apparently triggered in the apartment two doors down from mine. This does not instill one with a sense of safety.

The really interesting part, I think, is the building's protocol in the event of a fire alarm. Presumably because the building administration knows that the alarm regularly goes off for false alarms, the residents are advised not to panic if the alarm goes off. In point of fact, the residents are advised to not even leave the building. The horrid blaring alarm is really more to get people's attention than the prompt an exodus. In the event of the alarm being notice of a real fire, the alarm will shut off after several minutes and the building's intercom system will be used to tell people that the alarm is going off because of 'insert appartment number here" and that now would be a good time to step outside for a few minutes. With the first fire alarm, I didn't know all this, and understandably went outside at the first sign of danger, where I was told of the regularity of the event. The second alarm, which woke me up in the middle of the night, wasn't even persuasive enough to get me out of bed, though I did turn on a light and read for ten minutes until the alarm cut out with no further notices given. With the third alarm, I stayed at my computer (any gamer would be hard to pull away from a copy of Bob, Lord of Evil), only going outside when the intercom clearly advised that all residents leave. I obviously wasn't in the minority, since a significant number of people were only leaving their appartments and descending the stairs at the same time as me, and the fire fighters (who were walking past my door and down the hall just as I was closing and locking it) didn't spare me a second glance.

All in all, I suppose I'm glad to know that the alarm works well. It's probably better to live in a building with too many alarms than too few. Given my lifestyle and temperature preferences, it'd be downright embarassing to die by fire, so I think I'd like to do things which reduce the likelihood of it happening. The price of safety is occasional loss of sleep, or something like that. As long as I don't wake up one day to hear my appartment being announced over the intercom, I suppose i haven't got cause to be too upset.

Over the Yom Kippur services in the last two days, I spent a lot of time skimming the mahzor (high-holidays prayer book) in synagogue while other people were praying, and read a lot of interestings things which the great scholars have had to say about lying. A lot of the prayers in the mahzor are little more than lists of sins we know we commited or are likely to have commited, and the idea is that you apologise repeatedly for all of these by reading off these lists. The lists are very in-depth and cover pretty much every sin and circumstance you could imagine, including all kinds of different mitigating or exacerbating factors. What's interesting is that "sins of the tongue" appear on the lists more than any other. Gossip is equated with theft and then said to be even worse than theft, because with theft, the property can be returned, but gossip can never be un-spoken if it's spread and harmed a reputation. Worse than gossip, though, is the sin of lying, poetically referred to as "stealing a man's mind." Deception is equated, in terms of its evilness, not with stealing, but with premeditated cold-blooded murder, and is said to at times be the worse of the two sins. This is particularly striking given that, from the example of the Jewish forefathers, of Joseph, and of many of the heroes of the Bible, lying is not merely acceptable but very useful, practical, and efficient. One might argue, from the functionalist perspective, that the great emphasis on sins of the tongue is designed to speak not in terms of justice, but in terms of putting the extra emphasis on the sins a population is most likely to perform. The average Jew in the eleventh century, when a lot of our modern prayers were composed, did not regularly commit murder, but did have the opportunity every day to spread gossip and cheat customers, and so understandably, the rabbis and lawmakers were more worried about their congregations indulging in Lashon HaRah ("the evil tongue") than going out and killing the neighbour. Either way, it casts serious doubt on the idea that the Jewish god has many warms thoughts for me. I probably haven't been inscribed in the Book of Life in a decade.

So Anyway...

Once again, I fasted this year for Yom Kippur. I don't imagine god cares particularly whether or not I fast, given all the other sins I perform during the year, but it matters to my parents that I fast and attend shul that day, and they've more than earned my respect and obedience over the years. The fast lasts about 26 hours -- we finished the pre-fast feast at about 6 pm on Friday and I was eating glycemia-raising cookie goodness a few minutes before 8pm on Saturday. During this time, I ate no food, and drank only about one glass of water, to stave off the effects of hypotension and psychosis. I did cheat a tiny bit, in that I took an acetaminophen tablet the first night before bed, as prophylaxis against the headache I often get while fasting, but medication is perfectly legal according to Jewish law. The intereting thing which struck me while I was fasting was that the hunger doesn't bother me, but the need to conciously stop myself from automatically getting up to get food drives me crazy.

See, I'm a bit of a compulsive snacker. I picked up this habit in my first year of medical school -- with nothing to preoccupy my hands and thoughts while studying, and with the constant need for glucose and sodium to keep the neurons firing, I began to constantly crave munchies.Fortunately, being a clever sort of fellow, I got into the habit of keeping my snack cupboard stocked with low-fat, high-salt crackers and similar snacks, so that I could spend literally the whole day snacking without gaining anything in the way of weight (of course, my rapid metablism and unique digestive tract helped). During a pre-exam weekend, I can easily read through one thousand pages of notes and polish off an entire box of Lucky Charms. In the two years since, it's become a habit -- I'm sitting around and not doing anything else, be it studying or watching a movie, and I'll crave snacks, whether I'm actually hungry or not. I pay careful attention to my food intake, so gaining weight isn't an issue, but it's a bit worrying to me sometimes that I've gotten into the habit of eating simply because I have nothing else to do, and so now that I'm living on my own, I've tried to make the habit healthier, by stocking huge piles of grapes and tomatoes in addition to crackers, and that's been working fairly well. The reason this comes to mind, however, is during and after a fast.

During the Yom Kippur fast, I paid careful attention to my physiological state. At no point at all during the day and second night of Yom Kippur would I really say that I was hungry. On a concious level, at least, I didn't really feel any desire at all to go eat, and there was no feeling of having an empty stomach. That said, as I was sitting at my computer in the hours between shifts at synagogue, I would find myself starting to stand up, purely automatically, and knew that had I not checked the movement, I would have walked down to the kitchen and grabbed a bite to eat. I wasn't hungry, but because I was sitting at my computer and not doing anything particularly important, my body thought it was snacktime. I resisted it each time, but it got rather annoying, particuarly given the issues I have over control.

"Habit" would be a bloody stupid reason to mess up a fast and get doomed by a god. It would be embarassing. If I'm going to be doomed, I want it to at least be for soemthing I did on purpose and got to enjoy.

On that note, it's lunchtime, and I hear fresh sweet black grapes calling me from in my fridge ten feet away. Fasting once a year is plenty, and I'm not so big on using self-deprivation as a means of proving either faith or penitence. When I want to praise my gods, I'll go do two good deeds, do something nice for myself, and then go play D&D, and we'll see who goes to Heaven when the time comes.