I have many musings about this, but I still don't know. Especially reading the Neil Gaiman web and seeing how much he just enjoys writers and stories, I find it hard to say to myself that I don't enjoy writers and stories, and that this computer stuff, however lucrative I hope it becomes, will be a colossal waste of life.

So what's the deal? Where do I go for these burning questions? Even more, why can't I write a simple story?

I got up this morning and got in a fight with my wife on the way to work. We made up.

Then I found out I had left my keycard at home and showed up almost an hour late. I ate my lunch for breakfast.

Then I went home for lunch and burned it to the pan. I got back from lunch late.

My neck hurts.

Basically, I am worried that money will get in the way of my getting a degree. The Expected Family Contribution on my FAFSA is 7000+ dollars! 600 a month. No way.

I'm basically stuck with it though. I don't know how much money the school will provide. I suppose they expect me to pay with money from the job I will be going to half time at most while I study math and science. Or from my wife's job, that she'll have to leave soon here (for private reasons).

I guess the last solution is just to get more loans. I can't believe I'm on this train, again, but sooner or later, it had to happen, I guess. I've taken too long to go back to school and now my wife and I have to hang on for the ride of our life.

Today, hopefully, we'll head out to a condo and see if it is right for us. We've seen a very similar one and liked it, and we are supposed to get a good deal from them and a good helper to sort out the loan for us. It'll be a little more per month. Hopefully, the food stamp people will be generous with us while I get my technical degree.

Really hopefully, the school will take our monthly situation into account when everything finally shakes out.

Just real fast, about Big Fish.

Go see this movie.

The best thing about it is what you might call its underlying philosophy, its raison d'etre. This story about stories asks the question, "Which is better, the story or the reality?" What is not obvious from previews or even favorable reviews is the question behind this question: "Which is more real, the story or the reality?"

This question was taken up by The Matrix, which played with the masking of reality by a plastic, digital world. "I think the Matrix can be more real..." says the traitor Cipher, as he pulls the plugs on Epoch and Switch. In that film, the fake, pleasant, cultured world is the evil world, and the real world, though dirty and broken, is the heroic one.

In Big Fish, though, the bright, fantastic, untrue world is the heroic world. Reality isn't good enough for the sheer joy of that world. The same theme is taken up in The Silver Chair where Puddleglum tells the Queen of the Underworld, our fantasy world can lick your real world clean. So, I will behave as a citizen of that world, not of your world.

But which world, in Big Fish, is more real? You will have to decide for yourself, but I can say for myself that the "real world" in that movie was less real than the world of the fish. In the same way, sometimes this ordinary life is less real than the reality that lies behind it.

This is a first shot at this blog stuff I hear so much about. Some of my favorite authors and people maintain a blog, and maybe it's a good idea for me to get back into the practice of writing.

This is a strange week for me. All my materials went in to USU to start a BS in Computer Science this summer. The same day all this was getting done (meeting an advisor, getting my financial aid forms in order, applying to the school), Ask Slashdot posted a question about a doctor who wanted to become a computer scientist, and many people said "Don't do it! Foo!" All that made me a little nervous.

In truth, I think that the coming education will be good for me. In the process of going to school, I'll be finishing a first Bachelor's in Linguistics (with Math and English minors), and who knows what else. I've been working with a book company for the last year or so laying out textbooks and learning computer stuff. The times I've gotten to use Perl have been the most fun.

I've been watching this whole Mel Gibson Jesus movie thing lately. It seems to me like the criticism is a little too wild and hyped to be believed. The Jewish critics (i.e. officials from the Anti-Defamation League, and maybe pundits) seem to think that a movie only about Jesus-bar-Joseph, King of the Jews, will make anti-Semites take steno pads to the theater and write down torturing ideas, or that non-anti-Semites will be convinced that the Jews were or are responsible for the death of Jesus. They asked Mr. Gibson for a blurb at the end of the film about how the Jews were not responsible, this movie should not be an excuse to hate, etc.

I don't see why this film, which will mean so many things to so many people, should be forced into a box by some special interests. Along with most of the public, I haven't seen the film yet, and to comment on specifics is impossible. But the spirit that tries to take the film and make it into something it's not, or in any way diminish or shortchange its meaning, is wrongheaded. The reason I write this is not because of the clothing this particular film wears, but the message at its heart.

Many special interests at many times have tried to diminish the event of the cross or shortchange its meaning. The powerful story is that God revealed (him)self on the cross (not really a him but the label is traditional), as much as God will ever be revealed to anyone anywhere. All the stories that the human race will ever write, all the sadness and danger and betrayal and pain and death in any story, are all in that story.

The story is not about that one sentence, "His blood be on us and our children," that a special interest has recently taken up to criticize the story itself. The story is not about that one line, "One man must die so that the nation will live." The story is not about that one prophecy, "You will deny me three times before the cock crows." The story is not even about that heart-piercing cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

No. God is revealed on the cross. That is the message, the torment that for a few hours one day, a brief moment in the breadth of human history, we tortured and executed God.

I say we. We did it. All of humankind is implicated. We need no argument about Adam's sin to know that we are members of the crowd in Jerusalem. We need no thought experiment about our likely response if Jesus had appeared in, say, downtown Los Angeles. It would be no surprise that this voice would be silenced again, by powerful men with an agenda, in a city of civilization and mixed cultures, while we all looked on and did nothing. We need only search ourselves, our desires, our sins, and determine that many of the things we love, he loathed and hated. Many of the things we care about, he would call trash to our faces on television. Many of our most cherished beliefs and relationships, he would cut apart with a look. He would reveal the best things in us to be worthless, not just the worst.

To test this in yourself, just read the story. Later this month, when the film comes out, if it is even reasonably faithful to the story, watch the film. Say to yourself, "The whip is in my hand. What will I do?" Say to yourself, "The crowd will tear me to pieces. What will I do?" Say to yourself, "I am holding the nail. What will I do?" "I am surrounded by soldiers. What will I do?" "I am drowning in politics. What will I do?" Think about it to yourself, and be honest in your heart of hearts.

Then remember what he did, instead.