For those of you who don’t know, I’m the youngest of ten siblings. I have nineteen nieces and nephews, two grand-nephews, and a brand new grand-niece. That being the case, it probably doesn’t surprise you much that we have dramatically different ideals, faiths, and political beliefs. We pretty much cover a large swathe of the spectrum of ideology: we have liberals, conservatives, and libertarians; Democrats and Republicans; Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, atheists, and agnostics — and some of those don’t match up the way you’d expect. Anyway: big group, lots of diversity. No surprise there.

What is surprising is the fact that, on the whole, we all maintain civility and respect for one another. Sure, we’ve pretty much learned that there are times that certain topics must be avoided, but we’ve also learned how to interact when those topics do come up in a gratifyingly adult manner…and to extend love and respect in spite of our disagreements. 

So I was very pleased when my oldest sister, Caroline, responded via e-mail to my previous post. She’s a Christian who holds very different beliefs from mine, and also a very smart lady, so we ended up getting deep into discussion about the validity of evolution and the interplay of science and religion. And though we ended up agreeing to disagree—as so often must be the case—I enjoyed the conversation so much that I asked her permission to share it with you.

So here it is, unedited. Let it never be said that adults cannot disagree civilly about fundamental matters.

I read your blog post this morning, and though I don’t expect to change your mind about anything, I do feel I need to respond.

Firstly…MRSA, peppered moths, Darwin’s finches, are all examples of microevolution, which no rational adult will argue against because, yes, this kind of change HAS been observed. What IS still a theory, and not fact, is large-scale evolution…macroevolution…and this is, of course, where the controversy is and what virtually everyone expressing an opinion on it is referring to.

The “evolution” of one species to another has not been observed, nor are there fossil records to support the claim. It is a theory, and though I believe it should certainly be taught in our schools, it is disingenuous and unscientific to teach it as fact, refusing to include its many problems.

Secondly, please ask me your “questions about Genesis 1:27 vis-a-vis Genesis 2:22, among others.” Do you see some kind of discrepancy between the two? And I don’t see any problem with believing that an almighty God could have created the world in 6 literal 24-hour days, in a form that makes them appear billions of years old. But many wise Christian scientists and other thinkers have different interpretations of the creation story timeline. The time it took to create the physical world is not an issue for me.

But I don’t believe that the idea that God guided the mutation process supposed in the theory can be reconciled with what is revealed in the Bible. The whole thing, from start to finish, is the story of God reconciling humanity to Himself after the first humans sinned and were sentenced to die. All the problems with the theory of evolution notwithstanding, I find the conjecture that God’s chosen method for creating a species “in His own image” was a process that took millions of years and countless “random” but (incredibly highly unlikely) advantageous mutations, an idea hardly “elegant”.

Regarding the issue of global warming and the scientific community, just as for scientists who question or disbelieve in Darwinism, it’s tough to swim against the mainstream. And those who do can expect their careers to suffer. Scientists are human like the rest of us…with biases, desires for admiration and recognition, and the propensity to be less than honest if the truth will hurt. Here’s a link for you if you’re interested in more information about Richard Muller’s “conversion.” www.andrebernier.com/?p=329

Just a little more food for thought, dear brother.

Agreeing to disagree, with love,

Caroline

———

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Caroline.

I do think we probably will end up sticking with “agree to disagree” but I did want to respond to some of your comments.

Regarding micro- vs. macroevolution. I think you might be mistaken about whether there’s a fossil record to support macroevolution. Here’s just one example: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_06

But even if one disputes such evidence, I don’t see any logical rationale to support the idea that evolution only occurs on a small scale. Consider bacteria. As I mentioned in my post, we’ve observed bacterial evolution firsthand. In the case of MRSA, it’s human medicine influencing the development of the bacteria. But bacteria don’t exist in a vacuum; they live on and in plants and animals.

So we agree that Staph “evolves” on a small scale. Now consider what might happen if it developed into a much more virulent strain, one that proved deadly to, say, house cats. Logic tells us that the cats that survived its infection would be the ones that are somehow immune. And maybe they have some other trait in common that’s caused by whatever genetic idiosyncrasy makes them immune to superMRSA — big heads, an extra toe, bright-red fur, whatever. Over a long enough period of time, you end up with a new species of cat with big heads, extra toes, or red fur, because the ones without those characteristics have been killed off by the bug.

Of course this doesn’t happen all the time; usually you’d end up with a cat that’s physically almost identical to its predecessors, just with the built-in immunity. But given the number of species on the planet and the number of potential external influences on mortality, there’s a basically limitless number of opportunities for this kind of selection — which means even if the physical changes happen once in a million times, there are still plenty of opportunities for large-scale physical development.

My overall point is, we’ve observed in pretty much every area of life how small changes cause big changes. So to propose that evolution happens only on a small scale just doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of our understanding of, well, pretty much everything.

I do wholeheartedly agree that it’s wrong to pretend that evolution is a scientific law. I’m not entirely sure that anyone actually does that; if they do, that’s bad teaching, and bad science. But either way, I am hugely in favor of teaching students to look critically at any widely held idea; that’s what science should teach.

Regarding Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: My general question has to do with the order of Creation laid out in Genesis 1 as opposed to that in Genesis 2. I chose 1:27 and 2:22 as examples because they highlight the discrepancy in order. 1:27 implies that God made man and woman simultaneously; 2:22 is the more familiar story of God creating Adam first, then later creating Eve from his rib.

But in a more general sense, the order is different in the two chapters. Genesis 1 has the order of creation (divided into days) as: 1. Night and day; 2. Heaven; 3. Earth, sea, plants; 4. Stars, sun, moon, seasons; 5. Fish and fowl; 6. Land creatures, then man and woman.

Genesis 2 (starting at verse 4) seems to tell a very different story: Earth and heavens (specifically in one day); then plants; then rain, then Man; then Eden; then animals; and only then Woman.

If the Bible is true and accurate in every word, it cannot contradict itself. (The concepts of truth, accuracy, and contradiction make this impossible.) But it seems to do so quite clearly in the first two chapters. This leads me to wonder how one can believe that the Bible is true and accurate in every word. Reconciling this seems like it must require special interpretation — but again, a necessity for interpretation is incompatible with the idea of the Bible being word-for-word accurate. So there’s my confusion.

If one takes the Creation story as metaphorical or poetic, though, I do think that at least the six-day model can be reconciled with the idea of evolution. I find it particularly interesting that the progression goes earth, sea, plants — and only later fish and fowl, and land animals later still. That fits with the scientific understanding that life began as tiny organisms in the sea — neither plant nor animal, really — which led to vegetation, and then later to sea creatures, and then later to land, and then later to us. :)

I don’t see any theological problem with the idea that a divine Actor could be responsible for the genetic mutations that improve a species’ fitness for survival, and thus drive evolution. The reason I find it more elegant is that it does not diminish the role of a Creator — implying that God is a being powerful enough to oversee countless, minute manipulations while foreseeing and understanding the literally limitless changes that would result — and yet also does not contradict the detailed understanding of our world that our highly evolved and/or God-given minds have developed. (To be clear, I’m not saying this is God’s only role.)

To me, the alternative seems to imply that God gave us rational thought and powers of observation so well developed that we can formulate consistent, logical, and time-tested theories about the history of Earth — but He’ll punish us for using them. As though the entire geological and paleontological record of the Earth is a huge test, and as soon as we believe what our God-given brains, and the God-created physical evidence, have helped us to understand, we fail. That seems to me like a pretty mean way to run a railroad.

So…I hope this incredibly long e-mail helps illustrate a little better where I’m coming from. It probably goes without saying, but please understand I’m not trying to sway your opinions at all — just make mine more clearer.

I’m so pleased we can have conversations like this, Caroline.

With much love,
-joe

———

Ah, yes…Archaeopteryx. I’ve run across him (her?) before. Archaeopteryx looks like a bird but has some features that modern birds do not, so evolutionists see it as an intermediary form. But it doesn’t have “transitional” features like part scales, part feathers, which we should expect to see if new life forms evolved from existing ones. It’s probably just a bird that is now extinct. Scientists (evolutionists) disagree on what it is; it only “supports” macroevolution if you’re already a believer.

If macroevolution has occurred, you’re talking about the method of emergence of every life form that exists and there should be multiple fossils of intermediary creatures. Darwin himself knew his theory would collapse if there weren’t.

Your “overall point” about small changes causing big changes and so large scale evolution must be a reality is still a theory that does not have nearly enough evidence to proclaim as fact…which is a view that you were ridiculing Republican candidates for having. And which you now hold also? “I do wholeheartedly agree that it’s wrong to pretend that evolution is a scientific law.”

Your question about Genesis is an easy one. Genesis 1 is giving an account of what God created. Genesis 2 goes into detail about His creation of man and woman. There is no contradiction at all. We do this all the time today. We begin a thesis or a book with a general overview, and then develop it with detail.

Regarding our God-given brains and rational thought (which alone should give anyone pause in explaining the existence of by evolution), it’s interesting that you should mention that. Because many, if not most, of our greatest scientists in previous centuries have believed that it glorified God to use the intellect He gave them to approach science as a means of discovering more about Him by examining His creation, and gave God praise. Some still do.

But I believe the reason the theory of evolution has so many proponents today is because ours is a culture that is increasingly seeking to throw off the yoke of being in subjection to God. It’s much easier to do my own thing if I was created not by a God with a plan for my life and certain expectations, but through mindless, random mutations and “chance.” Sadly, we are seeing the consequences of a “meaningless” existence with all the teen (and adult) suicides today.

I know there are true believers for whom God and evolution are not mutually exclusive. And if there was good, solid evidence for it, I would be one of them. But the evidence weighs on the side of a marvelous, supernatural creation of life in all its complexity and should bring us to our knees in awe.

“I’m so pleased we can have conversations like this, Caroline.” Me too :) You are a gentleman (and a scholar?), Joe.

Love,
Caroline

———

I think a common misconception about fossils is that they are more common than they are. The truth is, an organism only becomes a fossil if the conditions are exactly right. Most often, everything decomposes long before there’s an opportunity for the bones to petrify. And then when fossils do happen, how many more must be lost to general geological activity?

Basically, fossils that last to the modern day are the exception rather than the norm. So it makes sense that there would be gaps in the fossil record, and that we see groupings of species rather than a steady continuum of ever-changing forms. What we’re seeing are the remains of only those animals who died in the right place and the right time to be preserved. So it’s no surprise that there are uneven groupings in the fossil record; any given fossil bed will generally offer up only those creatures that lived in the same general time and place.

That’s why evolution is considered a scientific theory and not a scientific law — because there are these gaps and open questions. That’s the point I was trying to make when I said that it’s wrong for schools to pretend that evolution is a law (as in, the law of gravity or of inertia) rather than a theory. But again, that’s “theory” in the scientific sense: something that still does have a great deal of evidence to support it. The progression goes hypothesis -> theory -> law. Hypotheses are ideas that have not been tested; theories are hypothesis that have been tested, and supported by substantial evidence; laws are theories that are proven and successfully tested in every case. Teaching evolution as though it falls into the last category is simply false, and any teacher or school who does so should be rightly taken to task for it.

Of course our understanding of evolution has progressed beyond Darwin’s initial exploration, just as our understanding of gravity has progressed past Newton’s. Given that we’re talking about things that happened very long ago, it’s likely that evolution will never make the jump to scientific law. (Well, assuming we can’t build a time machine!) But looking at the available information that science does have, combined with the observable data we can witness on a small scale, we can get a very robust picture that provides very strong evidence that our understanding of evolution is fundamentally accurate.

Regarding small changes causing big changes: I wasn’t trying to build a case on evidence; the point I was trying to make is that it seems contrary to logic and to our understanding of pretty much everything to propose that evolution can happen only on a small scale. The position seems to be saying that small things can change, but those changes don’t impact the larger things that they interact with, constantly and intimately. That idea seems incompatible with everything we know and have observed about interactions between pretty much any two things, animate or inanimate. How would a more complex organism somehow avoid being impacted by changes in the millions of smaller organisms it interfaces with constantly? It is, if nothing else, incompatible with our understanding of the most basic biology.

To put it another way: How could microevolution not result in macroevolution, over time? What quality, characteristic, or event makes larger creatures immune?

With love,
-joe

———

Dear Joe,

God created you, and that’s that!! :) Actually, I do believe He wants us to explore and investigate the world, and ourselves, and formulate hypotheses and theories for how things operate in His creation. But ultimately, He wants our observations to lead us to Him. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Romans 1:20 And…”The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.” Psalm 19:1-2

But to address your previous email…I understand that not everything that ever existed leaves evidence. But for a process to have resulted in the incredible diversity and complexity we see in all living things today, there had to have been some intermediary forms preserved in the fossil beds that have been discovered. If the problem is simply that fossils are rare, why would evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould have felt it necessary to propose “punctuated equilibria” – the idea that species evolved faster over a shorter period of time?

Beyond the fossil issue, one of the primary inadequacies of the theory of macroevolution is its inability to satisfactorily show how evolution could have occurred at the molecular level, where everything begins and the complexity of life is most clearly seen. I think if Darwin had been able to see what microbiologists today see in a single cell, he would not have had the confidence to propose his theory.

Add to that the lack of a workable explanation for how transitional life forms could have even survived, i.e. with half scales, half feathers, the issue of irreducible complexity, the fact that the precise instructions found in DNA require intelligence, and the absence of a reasonable hypothesis for how life originated in the first place, much less for how its “building blocks” came to be, to name just a few of the problems…and you have a theory that is based more on faith than on fact.

Though we are surely going to have to continue to agree to disagree on the veracity of the theory of macroevolution, can we at least agree to agree that the scientists and laypeople (and there are many) who do not believe it are not idiots? And, in fact, may be very intelligent people?

Love,
Caroline

———

Hi Caroline,

Sorry for the long delay in response. Have been busy with other writing.

I do feel like this might be the point where we have to agree to disagree. I recognize that the idea of evolution on a large and long scale is just plain incompatible with the belief that the world was created in six days, six thousand-ish years ago. And that’s OK! :) I think the important thing is that we’re able to discuss things of serious meaning civilly and rationally!

On that note, I did want to clarify that I absolutely do not think that those who don’t believe in evolution are idiots! And I apologize if I gave that impression. The point I was trying to make is that there is a very specific definition of the word “theory” in a scientific sense — and as a result, when politicians try to dismiss a scientific theory by implying that it’s as valid (or more to the point, untested) as the colloquial definition of “theory,” they appear ignorant of a very basic element of the scientific method. (And I don’t think one’s opinion about the veracity of those theories matters in this instance; I’m talking about the definitions of the word, not whether the theories are defensible or not.) I know that “ignorant” can be a loaded term, and of course I do disagree with those who don’t believe in evolution. But my larger point was intended to be about politicians who appear ignorant about some pretty fundamental issues — either due to genuine ignorance or a calculated attempt to misrepresent the issues.

And to be clearer, I certainly don’t think YOU are an idiot! :) We disagree about plenty, but I have great respect for your obvious intelligence. I particularly appreciate your willingness to engage in thoughtful discussion.

On that topic, would you mind if I posted this e-mail thread as a follow-up post on my blog? I think it would serve as a good example of how it really is possible to have a civil debate about very fundamental issues, and also help educate folks about the deficiencies that some see in evolution. I would leave everything as-is, except for reversing the order of course, and posting a short introduction.

Let me know! And thanks again for a very thought-provoking conversation. :)

Much love,
-joe

———

Dear Joe,

I was just sitting here wondering if I should find out if you received my last message when I received your email. I figured this was probably going to be the point where we leave things.

Thank you for your respectful and loving attitude. My love for you and Kim goes beyond our disagreements too, and yet it motivates my argument because I want you both to know the God who created and loves you….the one who “knit you together in your mothers’ wombs”. He is real, and He can be known. Any other questions/problems you have with the Bible…please ask me.

None of us knows how much time we have on this earth. It behooves us to consider what, if anything, lies beyond and if you even allow the possibility that Christianity is true, you would be wise to consider its claims.

Yes, you may post our discussion on your blog.

Hope your Thanksgiving holiday is truly memorable!

Love,
Caroline

In talking about global warming and evolution (and in some cases, both at once!) the Republican candidates tend to fall back on some variant of this phrase:

“It’s just a theory.”

Evolution? Just a theory. Global warming? Just a theory.

Let me back up for a second and lay out some disclosure: I believe that — no, wait a minute; strike “believe.” Evolution is real. We know evolution is real because we see it in action. Ever hear of MRSA? Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has become a serious problem in hospitals and nursing homes over the past few years. S. aureus is a bacteria that usually lives pretty harmlessly on the human skin. Occasionally, though, it can flare up into relatively serious infections. Historically, these infections have been pretty easily treated with penicillin or other antibiotics. Then came MRSA. This nasty little critter dodges most of what we would normally throw at it, forcing doctors to bring out the big guns. Where did it come from?

Evolution. Wide use of traditional antibiotics killed off, by definition, only those strains of staph susceptible to traditional antibiotics. What was left were the ones that had mutated in such a way that traditional antibiotics didn’t wipe them out. New drugs, hardier bugs. Survival of the fittest. Sound familiar?

(As an aside: I happen to agree with Newt Gingrich that recognizing the truth of evolution doesn’t mean you can’t also believe in a divine Creator. Unless you take the Bible as word-for-word accurate, and believe that the world was created in six twenty-four-hour days — in which case, I’d like to ask you some questions about Genesis 1:27 vis-a-vis Genesis 2:22, among others — there’s nothing in evolution that precludes the idea of a Creator guiding the mutations that result in evolution. In fact, I tend to find that idea more elegant.)

So, that’s evolution. Global warming? I’ll say I’m not nearly as up on the science here, but I’m willing to take the word of ninety-seven percent of the people whose job it is to know about this stuff. Because the alternative is a laughable global conspiracy with basically no upside for the alleged conspirators. (But you know what? Even if global warming is a complete fabrication, what the hell is wrong with working to reduce waste? That’s the fundamental goal of proponents of global warming, you know: to reduce waste. Fossil fuels are absurdly inefficient, and thus expensive far out of proportion to the benefits they provide. If we can come up with more efficient, less wasteful, less expensive ways of doing things, why wouldn’t we? I don’t know about you, but my parents taught me that waste was bad. But anyway.)

My point of these disclosures is that I recognize that having these views dismissed predisposes me to not take the dismisser seriously. But you know, it’s a big world, it’s a free country, you can feel free to believe what you want to believe, you know?

The problem is when you try to support your beliefs by saying these things are “just theories.” And that’s the point I want to make here. (I know, it took me long enough.) When you say that global warming or evolution is “just a theory,” you’re either displaying 1.) a dismaying level of ignorance about the way science works, or 2.) a cynical willingness to pretend to such ignorance if you think it makes you more electable.

Here’s why I say that: “Theory” in common parlance and “theory” in the context of science are two very different things. Anyone who took a single high school-level science class ought to know this. Outside of science, we use the word “theory” to indicate an untested idea. It’s the start of the process. If you say “I’ve got a theory: It could be bunnies,”  you’re essentially announcing your intention to explore the idea that bunnies could be at the root of your problems.

But in science, that’s called a hypothesis. A theory is what happens when a hypothesis has been rigorously explored. In other words, a hypothesis becomes a theory only after evidence has been gathered.

Now, this isn’t the end of the process by any means. Scientists are always re-evaluating theories to ensure they still hold up. That’s the great thing about science: You have all these really freakin’ smart people constantly checking to make sure everything works the way we think it does, so we don’t have to. And yes, sometimes new evidence arises that disproves a theory, even a long-held one. But that doesn’t change the fact that theories are based on evidence, not just wild speculation.

So dismissing a scientific theory — especially one as well-tested as evolution — as  ”just a theory” is simply absurd. It’s like saying Earth is “just a planet.” The Grand Canyon is “just a big hole.” America is “just a country.” (U-S-A! U-S-A!) What I’m saying is that it makes you look ignorant. And then we all laugh at you. Because we’re mean.

If you want to fall back on scientific skepticism, we call all discuss things rationally, like adults. Point out holes in theories and sic the scientists on each other. I have no problem with that. There are plenty of things that well-meaning adults disagree on, and there’s just so much we don’t know. But if you try to pretend that you know more than science does — but use words to do so that betray a fundamental misunderstanding about one of the basic precepts of science — well, it makes it hard for folks who know better to take you seriously. You might as well debate the existence of gravity.

You do believe in gravity, right?

I very likely would not be doing this for a living if it weren’t for the desktop-publishing experience I had before graduating college. First was high school, where I designed flyers for my first band on an original Mac. (In Zapf Chancery. I know. Shut up.) Then came college, during which I taught myself rudiments of more complex graphical design by laying out my next band’s first CD on a Mac at a Kinko’s. Desktop publishing skills — especially those on a Mac — looked great on a resume in 1996, which probably helped me get my first job out of college, at P.S.X., which later became The Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. And if they didn’t help me get the job, they certainly helped me succeed at it, and keep it for over 10 years. For that entire time, I worked daily on a Mac. It was my livelihood.

But before that, I learned rudiments of programming — something that’s served me well in critical thinking as well as in basic web design — on an Apple IIe in grade school. For my seventh-grade computer project, I hand-coded an interactive version of Steven King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. For my eighth-grade project, the assignment was to write a program that generated a color picture on the screen. I ended up crafting a pretty impressive (for the time, and the technology) image of Gene Simmons’ face, in full makeup — then went a step further than required by animating it: he appeared on the screen, then turned his head and breathed fire. I still have that 5 1/4″ floppy somewhere.

Last night, I was checking e-mail and reading my RSS feeds on my iPad in between texting my wife on my iPhone. I had music going in the background, streaming from iTunes to an AirPort attached to my stereo, controlled by the iOS Remote app. A notification window popped up on my iPad from the AP News app: Steve Jobs had died. Of course we all knew this was coming, and I certainly felt a sadness for all the ideas that might now be unrealized, a certain concern that Apple might lose some of that creative spark that had made it such an interesting company. But I also thought, “Oh geez, ridiculous hyperbole incoming!” I winced in anticipation of all the maudlin blog posts and frothing overstatement of Jobs’ influence on the world.

Then I thought about the work I needed to do today, and the 360, and Microsoft, and Windows. I thought about that Apple IIe and the string of Macs and sitting in Kinko’s at 11:30 at night aligning pictures. I thought about the music I was hearing, the music I’d sold online, the fact that I was sitting comfortably on the couch with an amazingly powerful and usable computer sitting in my lap like a hardcover book. I thought about the fact that I never again have to take a road trip without bringing my entire music collection with me. And I realized that much of what I’d be reading about Steve Jobs might not be hyperbole after all.

No, he didn’t feed the poor or cure a disease or land on the moon. He wasn’t even the person directly responsible for creating the Apple, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad. But he drove those creations. As a result of that drive, my life is better: I can communicate with loved ones more easily, I can work more efficiently, I can enjoy more pleasurable road trips. He didn’t “change the world” in the sense that, say, the inventor of the printing press did. But what he was in charge of has inarguably changed my world for the better, in many different ways. And he’s done the same for millions of others. And that’s definitely something to be proud of. That’s more than the vast majority of us could ever dream to do.

So here’s to you, Steve Jobs. Thanks for taking the lead on so many projects that have improved my life. Here’s hoping Apple will honor your legacy by continuing your vision. But if not, that won’t diminish the impact you had.

Cleveland’s food scene is kicking ass right now.

Yes. Cleveland. The city that everyone else in the country (not to mention a nonzero number of its own inhabitants) pretty much laughs at is undergoing a spectacular renaissance of high-quality dining. I don’t think you can overstate Iron Chef Michael Symon’s influence on this, but that influence would have come to nothing if Cleveland’s chefs hadn’t taken the ball and run with it. But they did, and today a city that was a culinary wasteland as recently as 10 or 15 years ago is becoming a major player in the dining world.

Yes. Cleveland.

There’s a lot of room for improvement, to be sure. As a whole, Cleveland still needs to educate its servers regarding how they’re expected to behave in a fine-dining environment — especially regarding wine service, holy crap. And restaurant owners are still figuring out that whole pricing thing; some of the city’s best places price both food and drink low enough that I’m worried about their continued financial health, while others rival San Francisco or New York for prices. The answer should really be somewhere in the middle, but these are not-unexpected growing pains that will, no doubt, eventually settle out. Overall, Cleveland has a ton of really, really great restaurants, not to mention a healthy and growing assortment of excellent destination-neighborhoods where these places are congregating. Really.

Anyway, the reason I’m talking about this is because a friend of mine recently asked which food blogs I read on a regular basis. It was a timely question, because I’d recently realized that a few of my regulars had started dropping off or going downhill, so I did a little bit of poking around and discovered a nice lineup of local food blogs that should keep me well up to date with the city’s culinary happenings. And in attempting to answer her question, I discovered that Google Reader has this neat “bundle” feature that allows you to easily share whole lineups of blogs.

Therefore, behold!

• Bite Buff
• Cleveland Food and Brews
• Cleveland Foodie
• Eat*Drink*Cleveland
• Exploring Food My Way: Satisfying the Craving
• Fun Playing With Food
• Plain Dealer Food Blog
• Scene Food Blog
• Tasty Cleveland

Not all of these are equally good, but there’s definitely a lot of good stuff therein. Here’s the link to the whole aggregate feed. Enjoy.

As an aside, it’s only recently occurred to me that answering random questions like this publicly is a nice way to keep momentum going on my blog. So if you’ve got something you’d like to ask — anything — please feel free to drop me a line.

Now that that’s out of the way, I wanted to let you know I’m now on Google Plus. This is me. And now that I’ve synced G+ with Twitter and Facebook I’ll probably use that as my main social network, at least for stuff I want to share publicly.

By the way, in case you’re wondering how I did it, I have this article by PC Magazine to thank. After some back and forth with a variety of different options, this seemed like the simplest and most painless method. I’d love to see links and photos get formatted properly at Facebook, but that’s probably being unrealistic.

And now I’m off to crawl back under the rock from whence I came.

The esteemed and always awesome Mr. Wil Wheaton put up a post recently about the influence game publishers and PR reps appear to have on the games media. He cites a post from another site, which in turn cites yet another site, both seeming to indicate that videogame reviewers are pimping scores out to the highest bidder and totally misleading you about games because You Can’t Trust The Man.

I spent some time responding in Wil’s comment thread, but it’s way down at the bottom and it’s also quite long, so I figured I’d repost here. I’d love to hear what you think.

Wil, there’s an element to this dialogue that a lot of people don’t seem to be considering, based on the sources quoted and many of the comments here.

Let me preface this by pointing out that in exactly two months I will have been reviewing games professionally for 15 years. Ten and a half of those years were spent at Ziff Davis Media, home of EGM, and later, 1UP. Most of that time was spent at the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (yes! a magazine! made of paper!), and most of that time was spent in charge of the Reviews section. Since OPM went kaput in late ’06 I’ve been a freelance writer, primarily doing reviews for many of the big gaming publications: EGM, 1UP, GamePro, GameSpy, PlayStation: The Official Magazine, OXM…er, I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, but you get the idea. During this time I’ve reviewed well over five hundred games, all for publication in major outlets.

What I’m saying is that I know how reviewing games works.

Over the past decade and a half, I can think of exactly one — one — occasion in which a PR person attempted to directly influence the score of a game before the review was written. It was the type mentioned in this articles: “you can get review code early if you agree the game will be at least a certain score.” We of course turned them down.

On maybe, oh, ten or fifteen other occasions, a PR person called me (in my capacity as reviews editor) to debate one of my reviewer’s scores after publication. And in every one of those occasions save one (in which a memorably loony PR dude pretty much went off his meds) they went away satisfied that their game was given a fair chance. Disappointed it didn’t do better, sure, but satisfied that we were evaluating the game thoroughly and fairly.

And that is, of course, a rightful part of the PR person’s job: to ensure the game is being treated fairly. And in my experience, the vast majority of PR people, and the publishers they represent, are ethical, sensible people who are as appalled by sleazy back-room dealing as journalists and consumers are. Because they know what every publication should know:

If a reviewer isn’t honest about the bad games, no one trusts them about the good ones, either.

Trying to artificially inflate a score is an incredibly shortsighted maneuver; it may bump up the Metacritic rating of the current game, but it kills the credibility of both the publication and the game company. If consumers buy a game that’s been artificially praised, they don’t just resent the outlet that did the praising, they resent the game company, too! And they’ll be that much more hesitant to buy the next game.

This is what I would tell the vocal minority of PR people: If we’re not honest about your crappy game, no one’s going to believe us if we praise one of yours that’s legitimately good. And most folks recognize this. That’s why these kinds of sleazy deals are the exception, not the norm.

But here’s the thing that I find particularly amusing about all this. So many people involved in this discussion (including many commenters here) use this news as justification for not trusting the big enthusiast sites or magazines. You even mention in your post not being able to trust 1UP.

But it’s the big media outlets that are most immune to these kinds of deals! The big media outlets know that the game companies need them more than they need the game companies; they’re big enough that they get their clicks or their subscribers whether one particular game is reviewed early or late; they have the budget and manpower to generate tons of non-review content; and perhaps most importantly, they know that if one particular company is going to withhold review code, they have plenty of other companies willing to fill those spots.

Furthermore, the big media outlets have ad-sales teams completely separate from the editorial teams. I know at Ziff there was an impenetrable barrier between ad and edit; we referred to it as the separation of church and state, and it was inviolable. Oh, we might hear that publisher X was threatening to pull ads — I mean, stuff gets around, you know? — but there was never — ever — any pressure from that side, or from our managers, to change our editorial content in any way as a result.

Now, I do know that hasn’t always been the case everywhere. The Gerstmann/GameSpot debacle is the most offensive example of ad influencing edit, but I can think of a few other stories (or at least rumors) I’ve heard over the years.

And it’s been a bit over four years since I worked full-time at a gaming publication, so I suppose things may have changed a bit. But if they have, it sure hasn’t trickled down to me; none of the publications I mentioned above has ever attempted to influence the score of a review I’ve submitted. Not once. Not even a little bit.

And of course this makes sense when you think about the power these bigger publications hold. If we really need to be concerned about someone falling prey to publisher and/or PR pressure, I think it’s the smaller sites we need to beware of, the ones who have limited access to begin with, limited resources to devote to non-review content, and limited staff to serve as buffers between pushy PR and writers. To be clear, I strongly doubt many of those succumb to that pressure, either. But wouldn’t you agree that they have more incentive to?

One final note before I release my choke-hold on an entire page of your comments section: If we want to point fingers here, we should consider pointing them at aggregator sites like Metacritic. The section you quote mentions that “sites which use letter grades don’t get advanced copies” because of how Metacritic translates them. And if you think of this from a PR person’s perspective, it makes perfect sense: Metacritic calls a “C” a 50 out of 100. If that same reviewer reviewed the same game on another site, it would likely get a score around 75, because most game publications use a number-based rating system that roughly translates to percentage grades in school: e.g., 60 or lower tends to be “failing.”

To combat this, either all publications could adopt the same rating system (ah, no) — or Metacritic could get their heads out of their asses and use some sense when standardizing scores: If a C is 50, fine — but make sure that for sites that only rate 60-100, an 80 is also 50. It’s pretty simple math, you know? Calculate the mean (or is it median?) score for each source, and make that the middle of the scale.

In closing, I’ll say this: It’s fun to bash on The Man; it just doesn’t always make a whole lot of sense. Also, this sort of thing is news because it’s the exception, not the norm. Also, I’m rather hungry.

Your fan,
-joe rybicki

Sponge the dryness from these lips.
Sour disinfectant burns
the rips and cracks and tears,
the gnawing fears,
the hollow absolutions.

For they do know what they do,
and no pious platitude
can save the unrepentant thief,
or shake belief in unbelief.

See: the needle-dicks of rich men
prick the temple-cloth
of civilization,
and rend us all.
Three hours of night?
A day? A year? A century?

(Their camels balk
and sweat holier waters.)

And history repeats
again,
again,
again,
raised from the dead
to shamble down fear-shrouded streets
in deathless search of spongy treats.

Who bears a spear with edge enough
to pierce those bullshit-swollen guts
and spill that reeking discharge?

(We will know the unfit candidates:
they’ll be the ones raising their hands.)

Behold the science of our time,
a secular faith whose communion wine
is spiked with Rohypnol:
Its apostles spread the call
to put faith only in one creed:

Misology.
Misology.
Misology.

Case in point: Did you know I’ve put up four new songs for your listening pleasure since last we spoke of it here? It’s true! You can get all the dirty details at johnnyhighground.com.

And don’t tell anyone, but I’m currently working on a new tune that will be very, very different. That’s all I’ll say. FOR NOW.

This schedule flips 12 hours every three weeks. On top of that, she’s a new nurse, which means that her schedule is periodically interspersed with eight hours of classes — in the daytime. Even when she’s working nights.

This messes with the rest of her schedule, such that every so often she ends up working one night, having a day off, then working another night.

This is not conducive to normal human behavior.

As a show of solidarity during this last round of nights, I’ve been doing my best to try to match her schedule, and so last Thursday found her with a night off, and us looking for something to do around Cleveland in the middle of the night. As it turned out, a sushi restaurant I’d been meaning to try is open late on Thursdays. (Sushi Rock, for you Clevelanders; there’s one downtown but we went to the one in Beachwood.)

This excited us, as we’d not been out for sushi in ages. So we got dressed all pretty-like, hopped in the car and drove the 20 minutes or so to Sushi Rock.

Now, I’d known this was considered kind of a hip place, which is normally so not my thing. But it was late and we were feeling saucy, so when we walked in and saw the dim lights, noted the Spartan decor, and heard the thumping dance music, we sort of grinned at each other and followed the hostess to our table.

It was about that time that we realized how loud the music was. The conversation went something like this:

“____ ____ __ ___”

“What?”

“I SAID, THIS MUSIC IS QUITE LOUD.”

We were sitting about two feet from one another and literally had to shout to be heard.

Now, look: I’m 36 and married. I know I’m not the target demo for a swank sushi restaurant for singles. But here’s what I genuinely don’t understand: Assuming your venue does not have a dance floor (as this one did not), what is the benefit of playing music so loud that your patrons literally cannot speak to one another? What am I missing here? Is it so that we antisocial Americans need not feel pressure to interact in anything but exaggerated facial expressions and suggestive gestures?

I say “Americans” because this is something that immediately struck me on my first visit to the U.K.: here you have a society practically founded on pub culture. There as common there as Starbucks are here. (I know that’s hard to believe, but trust me.) And the one thing nearly every pub I’ve been to in the U.K. — and there have been many — has in common is that even when they’re playing music, it’s never too loud for conversation. The result?

People converse.

Shocking, I know. But there, pubs are community hubs, centers for socialization, for making new friends and enjoying the company of old ones. (The one exception I found? The “Chicago Rock Bar,” an American-themed joint in Norwich, East Anglia.)

It drives me crazy, and constantly perplexes me, that so many bars I’ve been to around here seem designed not for interaction, but for shared solitude. It’s sad, but it’s more puzzling.

Can anyone help shed some light on this, one of the great mysteries of our time?

Oh, and if you’re wondering, we of course left Sushi Rock immediately, and headed down the street to my friend Fish’s place, Melt. Tonight we finally got our sushi fix, at the outstanding Pacific East, where I had literally some of the best sushi I’ve ever had — and I lived in San Francisco for five years. So this story has a happy ending.

But I just can’t stop thinking about that crazy-loud music, and what purpose it serves. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety, but I just don’t get it. I wish I did.

I know, I know.

But I mean it this time! Really! Here’s an example: I’ve written a review for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters for my friends over at GamePro. You can find it here.

It’s funny, I reviewed my first Tiger game for OPM something like 10 years ago, simply because we didn’t have anyone else on staff who could be persuaded to do it, and we didn’t have a freelance budget at that time. I was never really a big fan of golf or golf games, but something about it hooked me in a serious way. So I reviewed the next year’s version. And then the next. And the next.

Now I’m kind of the go-to guy for Tiger reviews. All because of basically random chance.

And while I have your attention, I might as well point you once again to my Wigilia story, which I still haven’t been able to top. Enjoy — happy holidays — and I hope the coming year brings you everything you desire.

This one goes in the “so simple I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it” file. When I moved and consolidated my iTunes library, there were some tracks that iTunes just absolutely refused to locate on its own — even though it moved everything itself. Yeah, awesome, right? So I’d been manually scanning my library to see what tracks weren’t linking properly to the source files. But I had a couple hundred files that I just could not track down. I looked for scripts to do it (Doug’s AppleScripts was a great source), but the best I could find was one that made a text file of the missing tracks; helpful, but not as efficient as it could be for actually fixing the problem.

I finally stumbled on this post at iLounge which made the whole thing almost stupidly easy. Here’s the gist: You make a regular playlist and put all your music in it (you’ll want to right-click and select Add to Playlist rather than trying to drag or you’ll be there all day). If iTunes can’t find the source file, it won’t put the song in the playlist. So then you just make a smart playlist with the criteria Playlist > Is Not > [the playlist you just made]

Voila, all yer dead tracks in one place, ripe for the locatin’. Simple, eh?

A toast to you, the healers:
you fixers of men,
and women, and children;
you soothers of the aged.

You body mechanics,
you protectors of life,
you guardians of spirit.

You shepherds of the bowel.

You ushers of the soul
(coming in,
and going out)
and of nourishment
(going in,
and coming out).

May you wear your pins with pride.
May you sleep soundly in daylight.
May your skin glow under fluorescent light.
And may you never need to take
the peerless service that you give.

Na zdrowie! To your health.

“I weep for the future.” -Ferris Beuller’s Day Off

I’ve been following this thread over at the GAF about a guild who crashed a virtual funeral in World of Warcraft, and it makes me sad. Basically, what happened is this: A member of a WOW guild suffered a stroke in real life and died. Her guildmates, knowing her only through the game, but nevertheless wanting to offer some remembrance for one of their own, decided to hold a memorial service in the game. A rival guild decided that would be a great time to show up and kill everyone. Hilarity ensued.

Now, is it sort of creepy and vaguely sad that a group of people elected to hold a virtual funeral? I’d say so. It lends a depressing weight to the stereotype of basement-dwelling gamers who can’t function in the real world. In my opinion, it trivializes the real loss that this person’s real-life loved ones feel. But saying gamers aren’t the most socially adept subculture isn’t going to surprise anyone, and the fact is, these people did have a relationship with the deceased, however unorthodox. You can’t criticize someone for feeling grief simply because they haven’t met the deceased in the physical world. You can criticize their method of paying their respects, but I don’t see how you could criticize their right to do so, or the validity of their desire to do so.

And so this rival guild storms in, in a very well-planned strike (and yes, it’s pretty comical if you don’t think about it too hard), sending virtual mourners scurrying and leaving a trail of virtual bodies in their wake. Were they within their rights as WOW players to choose this moment to strike against a rival guild? Oh, absolutely.

But “within your rights” does not equal “right.” Fred Phelps is acting “within his rights” when he pickets the funerals of servicemen, trying to convince people that God is killing soldiers because America harbors homosexuals. The KKK is acting “within their rights” when they hand out their entertaining little photocopies (as an aside: for a good time, ask a Klansman what race Jesus was).

These phenomenal fuckwits who thought it would be funny to take advantage of the (admittedly naive and perhaps misguided) funeral proceedings to boost their stats — or even just for entertainment’s sake — were certainly within their rights. They’re also a bunch of gaping assholes.

“But wait!” you may say, “It’s just a game! How can you criticize this but defend killing hookers in GTA?!” The distinction is quite simple: The hooker is not a virtual representative of a real person. A game is “just a game” when it has no impact on the real world. But you put another person on the other side of the equation and things change. Is killing a person’s avatar the same as killing a person? Of course not. It’s not close. But it does have a real effect on that person. You are inflicting suffering upon someone else, even if only putting them through the tedium of building up another character. We have ways to describe people who get off on inflicting suffering on others. One of them is “sadistic.” Another is “evil.” (Another is “gaping asshole.”)

The important distinction here is that for many (perhaps most) players of MMORPGs, the game is just a medium for socialization. It’s one step removed from instant messaging…which is one step removed from telephone interaction…which is one step removed from face-to-face contact. It’s different only in degree, not in substance.

The amazing, anonymizing internets have made it easy to forget that there is a real, living person on the other end of your messageboard diatribe or your Fark flamewar. (And please, before you hash out a comment along the lines of “ZOMG YOU HYPPACRIT YOU ARE DISREPECTING SERENTY NOW BY CALLING THEM GAPPING A$$H0ELS!!!111!” understand that these guilds forfeited their right to be treated with respect when they acted like gaping assholes.)

As socially inept as these virtual mourners may be, let me ask you…who is behaving with more social grace? The gamers who chose to pay in-game respects for a real-world loss, or the ones who used a real-world loss to gain an in-game boost? Who’s more in touch with the real world? Who would you rather have living down the street?

Am I alone in thinking this way?

In the mid-’00s I sort of fell off that wagon, though, due to work schedule and time constraints and not knowing anybody in San Francisco I could play with.

But now, dammit, I’m getting back on.

I’ve redesigned and relaunched johnnyhighground.com, and put a hefty chunk of my older material up for sale on iTunes. With the exception of three tunes recorded with a live band in ’01, these are all songs I’ve written, performed, and recorded entirely by myself.

And that’s just the beginning. First off, those same songs should be up for sale at Amazon any day now. Once that happens, I’ll probably put the rest of my current catalog up for sale as well. And then: new tunes! I’ve got a backlog of songs that I’ve been dying to record for years, and I’m trying to trick myself into getting motivated to put them down for posterity at last.

I’m hoping to get some live performances in, too, one of these days. But it’s been years since I took the stage, so I plan to start small.

Anyway, I’d love it if you’d head over to johnnyhighground.com and check out the songs. And it would mean a great deal to me if you’d help spread the word about this musical endeavor. The great thing about having sat on these songs for so long is that the tools for spreading the word about new music have gotten much more widespread and powerful since I’ve been away. And you’ll find lots of those tools at the site.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

But then I remembered.

So here it is.

Second Coming
(with apologies to William Butler Yeats)

The dough-faced anti-Christ
is oozing crocodile tears,
building an army of the lowest of the low.

They wave their grease-stained placards
scrawled with badly misspelt fears,
a new religion with a one-word creed:
just, “No.”

Now the best lack all conviction, while the worst
are shouting fictions on T.V.

And what rough beast slouches across the screen?

But until then, I’d like to once again share this story about Christmas in my house. Here’s hoping your holidays are every bit as wonderful as they can be.

I grew up in a very large family: I’m the youngest of ten kids. Yeah, you read that right. I have five older sisters and four older brothers — an even 5/5 split. To make things even more surreal, there was an eight-year gap between my youngest sister and my youngest brother, so most of my siblings are at least ten years older than me, with the difference in age between me and my oldest brother clocking in at ten days short of an even twenty years. So even in my earliest memories, my siblings had significant others, and very shortly thereafter, kids. (I now have a niece and two nephews who are married. But I’m not a great-uncle, yet.)

In addition to that, my dad’s biological mother died shortly after he was born, and his father got remarried, which made for five separate and distinct branches of the family tree just two generations back, counting the families of my maternal grandmother and grandfather, paternal grandfather, paternal grandmother, and paternal step-grandmother. And many of them came from big families. (We’re talking about turn-of-the-century reproduction statistics here, mostly for recent immigrants to the country; this was not at all abnormal.)

Anyway, to sum up: we’re a big family. So the holidays were always a fairly substantial production.

While Thanksgiving and Christmas Day were reserved mainly for our immediate family (that is, the twelve of us plus, later, spouses and kids — I think we were up to forty-two attendees at the last count, including my late parents), there was one event each year that brought out the entire enormous clan: Wigilia.

Wigilia (pronounced vuh-GEE-lee-uh) is a Polish Christmas Eve celebration (Wigilia shares its root with “vigil,” as in waiting for the birth of Christ) that, in its traditional form, is celebrated with very specific foods and forms of preparation. Some of the observances include sprinkling straw under the tablecloths to signify the odd cradle choice at the Nativity, and setting an extra place at the table, to signify hospitality to travelers (I presume to make up for a certain Bethlehem innkeeper’s legendary faux pas), especially travelers of a divine nature. Some of the foods include pierogi (a type of savory stuffed pasta, similar to ravioli but much, much bigger and much, much more filling), baked apples, and probably some type of vile fermented cabbage that your parents force you to eat even though it quite literally makes you gag, and you tell them so but they think you’re just trying to get out of eating something you don’t like but someday you really will end up throwing up all over the table and then they’ll be sorry!

Sorry, where was I? Ah yes: Wigilia. We didn’t observe all the traditional foods or ceremonies. In our house (or, more specifically, in the sprawling, cavernous basement of our funeral home), Wigilia was about getting every damn distant relation we could find together for a night of entirely too much food, quite a bit of alcohol, Christmas carols, visits from Santa, games, moderately priced gifts, and oplatki.

(A word about oplatki. This is another Polish tradition in which a wafer — or in our case a truckload of wafers — having been blessed in a special Catholic ceremony, is distributed among all the attendees of Wigilia. Each person takes a wafer or wafer piece, and wanders around the room. When they encounter another person, they each break off a piece of the other’s oplatki and exchange a familial greeting appropriate to their relationship. This continues until every person at the gathering has either a.) exchanged oplatki with every other person at the gathering, or b.) run out of oplatki. Do the math on my family and you might assume that the length of this operation could be measured in hours. You would be correct.)

So: A huge space packed with probably a couple hundred relations, all making merry in age-appropriate fashion and stuffing themselves. It was great. As a child, I found this massive influx of people I barely knew just short of miraculous, a feeling only intensified when inevitably, in the middle of the evening, the sound of sleigh bells would herald the approach of Santa, who would take us young ones on his lap, ask if we’d been good, then reach into that giant garbage bag and pull out one — just one — small gift for each child, more than enough to tide us over until the next morning. He’d stay for one more Christmas carol and then ho! ho! ho! his way back up the basement stairs.

Somehow my dad always missed Santa coming by.

Now, Wigilia was a wonderful event in itself, but even more wonderful was the fact that on his way back up the chimney Santa would leave the rest of our gifts under the Christmas tree in the living room, two floors above.

(A word about the Christmas tree: It was magic. You see, every year my parents would put the Christmas tree stand on the floor and fill it with water, whereupon my youngest brother and I would drop in one of the magic Christmas tree seeds my mother kept in the kitchen, at the back of the top shelf to the right of the sink. The next morning, we’d wake to find a full-sized Christmas tree in our living room. It wasn’t until much later we noticed that the magic Christmas tree seeds bore a striking resemblance to whole peppercorns, and that the back steps always seemed to be freshly vacuumed the morning after a planting.)

Anyway, since everyone knows Santa won’t leave gifts if he’s observed, it was strictly forbidden for us to leave the basement under any circumstances during the course of Wigilia. In fact, we’d often leave for midnight mass at St. Josephat’s directly from the basement, thereby prolonging the revelation of the gift count that much longer. And trust me, even the most hyperactive child would struggle to maintain interest in anything other than sleep after a two-hour Christmas production in which everything is said twice: once in English and once in Polish.

But time passed, like it does, and us kids started getting older, like kids do, and one year — I was maybe eight or nine years old, I’d say — I worked up the courage to boldly disobey the prime directive of Wigilia and sneak up to the living room. After Santa had left, I let a reasonable time pass and then padded up the business stairs from the lesser-occupied new section of the basement, inched open the door marked “private” in the main parlor, and crept up the back stairs into the house. Even before I turned the corner I could see the soft, reddish glow coming from down the hall. With my heart climbing higher and higher in my throat, I tiptoed the last few steps into the living room. What I saw there I have not to this day forgotten, and I doubt I ever will.

Let’s go back to the math for a moment: There were twelve people in my immediate family at that point, plus spouses in a number I would have to have been paying better attention to remember. But since I was approaching double digits in age, that meant that many of my older brothers and sisters had already gotten out of college and started out on their own. That meant less mouths my parents had to feed, and less school tuitions they had to pay. And furthermore, the family business was continuing to improve thanks to the passion and caring of my dad and his employees. (Plus, you know what they say about funeral homes: people are just dying to get in. Ah, ha. Ah, ha, hah, ha. Ahem. Sorry.) So understand that this was an unusually good year in the Rybicki household.

Now, our living room was pretty huge. I’d estimate it was maybe fifteen feet deep by maybe forty feet wide. Big enough for our whole family to squeeze in, if that gives you any indication. Even factoring in a generously sized Christmas tree and a couple couches, there was a pretty good amount of free space in this huge room.

But not this night. The room was lit solely by the lights from the Christmas tree, two or three candles on the mantle, and a dying fire in the fireplace. That soft light glinted off of the wrapping paper of presents stacked carefully upon every available patch of floor. There were presents behind the TV. There were presents on top of the five-foot-long record player console thingy (there was a time when both TVs and stereos were furniture). There were presents on the coffee table, behind the couch, and damned if I don’t remember there being presents under my dad’s chair. There were presents leaning against the walls all the way around the room, I swear. It was ridiculous. It was magical. It was the manifestation of childhood holiday fantasies, the Platonic ideal of Christmasness encountered at just the right age for it to make an indelible impression.

And as I stood there, with the hi-fi murmuring carols softly in the corner, the golden light reflecting a thousand thousand times off of glitter and tinsel and ribbons, I wanted to cry. Sure, I wanted to dance, I wanted to sing, I wanted to laugh, I wanted to tear open presents and roll around in a pile of wrapping paper. Certainly. But I think most of all I wanted to cry. To this day I don’t know why; I would have thought I would have been too young to be overcome by complex emotion. But I wonder if some part of me knew that it wouldn’t be long before I outgrew some of that magic, before the simple wonder of the holiday started to wilt under the withering glare of crass commercialism.

I didn’t do any of the things I wanted to do at that moment. Instead I tiptoed back downstairs, closed the private door behind me, padded back into the basement and jumped into a game of statues with my cousins. Later, we went cross-town to midnight mass. And when we got home, I went to bed. Through all this, though, I was only half-present. A significant portion of my brain was still up in that glowing room, buzzing with anticipation, drugged by holiday atmosphere. From the moment I came back down those stairs, it was all I could do to sit still. I never slept easily as a child, but it must have taken literally hours for me to finally drift off that night.

And what did I get out of that enormous haul the next morning? What did Santa bring to reward my having been good all year (or at least all week)? What early-eighties toy craving was satisfied that day?

I haven’t the faintest idea. Can’t remember for the life of me. And honestly, I think it’s probably better that way. Because in the end, what’s under that wrapping paper doesn’t matter one tiny bit. The magic is what matters, and that will always be there, whether there’s a hundred presents under the tree or none at all.

So: from me to you, from my family to yours, Merry Christmas. Also: Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Winter Solstice. Here’s hoping your winter holidays are every bit as magical as they should be. May they be filled with laughter, good food, good music, fine people, cherished memories, and all the pierogi you can shove in your face. Na zdrowie!

See, I love music games. I mean, I really love them. This is in part because I love music in an embarrassingly wide variety of genres, and in part because I’m a musician myself (I sing and play bass, guitar, and drums, in case you didn’t know). So these games sort of hit me right in the sweet spot.

Anyway, I’ve been spending the last few months putting this site together. This is a solo project; I’m doing all the writing, design, coding, PR, administration… Suddenly I’m very tired. Where was I? Oh yes: This site is all me. But I’m also hoping it’ll be useful to other fans of music games, who can keep up with the latest news and releases, and find lots of new music in The Vault.

So there it is, my Big Secret Project: Plastic Axe — Music games for music fans. Go have yourself a look around, and let me know what you think in the comments (over there rather than here, please).

Ahem, sorry. Anyway, the reason I called you here today is to let you know that Mac|Life has posted a how-to I put together many months ago, which aims to provide tips for home recording with GarageBand. You Mac owners may enjoy it — and for anyone on Windows machines, I tried to make these tips as general as possible, so many of them can be applied to any recording situation.

So I hope you enjoy them.

Steve Taylor writes to ask: “What PS2 or PS3 game would you recommend for those of us who LOVE Ratchet & Clank? I don’t know of anything like it.”

Well, let’s assume you own all the Insomniac-developed Ratchet games. (No? Here are Amazon links to Ratchet 1, 2, 3, Deadlocked, and Ratchet Future 1 and 2.) My next recommendation would be the Jak and Daxter series. The first is my favorite by far, followed by the third, then the second. There’s also a pretty solid racing game.

Also within the same basic genre (and most certainly within the same level of quality) is the Sly Cooper Series.

Beyond these, the Big Three of PlayStation platformers, you may enjoy Psychonauts and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil. Aaaand that’s where my recommendation engine stalls out, because I honestly can’t think of any other really good games that are remotely similar.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

This is just to say that Green Pixels recently put up a couple more reviews of mine, for Guitar Hero Smash Hits and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (the Wii version, with the fancy-schmancy new Wii MotionPlus pack-in). They’re both good! Go find out why.

Thou shalt post pictures of thy cats.

Clearly this is a profoundly impactful omission, which must be rectified immediately. And so, I give you: Fiona.

Now don’t we all feel better? Oh, fine, here’s one more to ensure that balance in the universe is maintained.

You’re welcome.

OK, I’ll give you a hint: It has something to do with plastic. And that’s all you’re getting.

Anyway, please bear with the lack of updates here for a little while longer, OK?

[Update: Fixed link to reflect where the stories are actually posting. Come leave a comment!]