Category Archives: Logic and Reasoning

#500: A Five Cent Review

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #500, on the subject of A Five Cent Review.

As I was posting the four hundred forty-ninth mark Joseph “young” web log post, I realized I was approaching half a thousand, and wondered whether I should do something to note that milestone.  I decided that a quick look back picking out some of my favorite posts might be worth the effort.  If you missed these, well, I won’t say that there weren’t other good posts nor even that these are all necessarily the best, only that they are the ones I remember fondly.

Unfortunately, on my first pass through those original four hundred forty-nine posts, I marked sixty-five as significant in one way or another, and realized that I would be publishing another fifty before I hit the milestone in question, so I was going to have to go back and read quite a few articles and pare down the list a bit.  I did remove some of those originally included, but I added one or two as well.  Hopefully I’ve succeeded in producing something of quality.

Of course, I have made a practice since this mark Joseph “young” web log began of posting an annual review of almost everything I published over the previous year, here or elsewhere.  The most recent one was #490:  Looking Back, and the previous ones are linked from there.

  1. I test, politically, as a moderate slightly left of center, but I hold a number of more conservative views; one of those is on abortion.  I somewhere suggested that conservatives needed to find way to promote and explain their views to people on the fence, and this, #7:  The Most Persecuted Minority, was a proposed television spot.  It was eventually turned into a radio spot and aired on Lift-FM for a while.
  2. Also on the subject of abortion, #9:  Abolition compares the pro-life movement to the abolition of slavery, in an unexpected way.
  3. #10:  The Unimportance of Facts is my proposed explanation for why voters don’t care what the facts actually are, only whether the politician holds the same views as themselves.
  4. Written a few days after my father died, #51:  In Memoriam on Groundhog Day memorializes him with my recollections.
  5. Having read that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg (now deceased) believed that abortion should be strictly a woman’s decision as an equal protection right (and not a privacy right to be decided by her and her doctor), I wrote #63:  Equal Protection When Boy Meets Girl, suggesting that in regard to unexpected pregnancies most of the advantages are with the mothers.
  6. I’m glad I wrote #65:  Being Married, because I have referred quite a few young couples to it in the years since.  It is a collection of some of the best marital advice I ever received, and worth a read even if you’ve been married as long as I have.
  7. #72:  Being an Author discusses how to identify such a person, that is, how to know whether you can call someone, including yourself, an author, or indeed a poet, artist, or musician.
  8. Having read that Neil DeGrasse Tyson stated it was highly likely that the universe was a similation, I suggested in #76:  Intelligent Simulation that this was entirely inconsistent with his assertion that the theory of intelligent design was not scientific.  The article quotes from my then-pending book Why I Believe.
  9. A satirical article becomes the springboard for a consideration of #79:  Normal Promiscuity, which looks at the fact that what were once identified as illicit and abberant sexual liasons because they were dangerous are now embraced and encouraged as normative.
  10. I genuinely enjoyed writing #83:  Help!  I’m a Lesbian Trapped in a Man’s Body!, a satirical look at the notion that our gender is dependent on something we believe about ourselves.
  11. #84:  Man-Made Religion challenges the notion that the diversity of religions demonstrates that they are all human inventions.
  12. A famous landmark ice cream shop in Milwaukee faced a protest and a boycott when the owner would not permit customers to order in Spanish, and in #87:  Spanish Ice Cream I explain why expecting him to do so is unreasonable.
  13. #88:  Sheep and Goats explains why the popular parable is so badly misunderstood and what it really means.
  14. I almost cut this one as I reread it, but it struck me that #90:  Footnotes on Guidance, as a recounting of my own experiences, might be useful to those whom God is leading to places they did not expect to go.
  15. #93:  What Is a Friend? describes two different understandings of what constitutes friendship, and how that matters.
  16. The notion of government taxing the rich to help the poor is put into perspective in #105:  Forced Philanthropy, asking whether we want the government eagerly awaiting our deaths so it can spend our money.
  17. I wrote what I consider a very valuable nine-part series about ministry, how to recognize and identify it, and how music sometimes fits into it.  The last of those, #107:  Miscellaneous Music Ministries, is not the best of them nor the most useful, but it does briefly identify and link the other eight, and so is the easiest to include here.  I would recommend the entire series, but usually find myself recommending specific entries in it which relate to particular ministries.
  18. Reacting to a discussion of my previously mentioned article on forced philanthropy, #108:  The Value of Ostentation looks at how ostentation actually helps the poor, and why it is a bit illogical to object to it.
  19. I explain why so much current popular Christian music is comprised of simplistic songs, and why this is not so bad a thing as good musicians tend to think, in #109:  Simple Songs.
  20. #114:  Saint Teresa, Pedophile Priests, and Miracles responds to the argument that God cannot exist if He allows priests to abuse children.
  21. Inspired by a television show, #115:  Disregarding Facts About Sexual Preference applies it to reality, noting that people who deny a connection between environmental factors and homosexuality are ignoring facts.
  22. #120:  Giving Offense is primarily about tolerance, that it does not mean declining to state opinions but only willingness to respect those with whom we disagree.
  23. #126:  Equity and Religion addresses the argument that governments should not provide funding for pre-school education run by religious organizations.
  24. #130:  Economics and Racism explains why racism, by and against everyone, rises when economic conditions fall.
  25. #132:  Writing Horror gives a few tips on writing horror stories and running horror in games which must be worth reading, because Places to Go, People to Be republished it in French as Maîtriser l’Horreur.
  26. A misunderstanding of what it is to be “racist” inspired the composition of #135:  What Racism Is, clarifying that blacks and other non-whites can be and frequently are racist against whites, and that assuming that because someone is white she is racist is a racist assumption.
  27. I wrote a four-part miniseries on the sin and judgment in the first chapter of Romans.  The fourth part, #141:  The Solution to the Romans I Problem, links and summarizes the first three, and gives the solution, that we Christians need to repent of our hidden idolatry.
  28. Responding to a foolish statement from PETA, #162:  Furry Thinking discusses the proper relationship between humans and animals.
  29. In the 70s and 80s I asked a lot of major contemporary Christian musicians their advice for anyone wanting to do what they do, and in #163:  So You Want to Be a Christian Musician I consider the best of that advice, and what we should really want.
  30. I refer people to #168:  Praying For You frequently–whenever someone asks me to pray for them–as it explains what I think is a correct understanding of the obligations created by such prayer requests.
  31. I was hesitant to write #193:  Yelling:  An Introspection, which discusses the futility of yelling and the negative counter-productive impact it has, but several readers thanked me for it.
  32. I would be remiss were I not to mention at least one article about temporal anomalies, and my list includes #199:  Time Travel Movies That Work, a few films in which the outcome is not disastrous.
  33. #200:  Confederates actually argues that the American Civil War was about modern issues like state drug policy and immigration rules.
  34. #207:  The Gender Identity Trap suggests that the idea that someone can be a different gender inside than their physical sex is entirely about prejudices and stereotypes, with nothing to support it in reality.
  35. #208:  Halloween is one of two articles I wrote about the holiday (the other Faith in Play #11:  Halloween) examining Christian attitudes toward it.
  36. Following up on #207:  The Gender Identity Trap, #212:  Gender Subjectivity observes that no one can know that he feels like the wrong gender inside, because that isn’t more than that he doesn’t feel the way he thinks society expects him to feel, and in this case society is simply wrong.
  37. #215:  What Forty-One Years of Marriage Really Means is an addendum to the previous #65:  Being Married, providing an important understanding of what it means that marriage is a covenant, not a contract.
  38. #216:  Why Are You Here? answers the existential question, that is, why do we exist.
  39. #230:  No Womb No Say challenges the notion that men, not having uteruses, should not be able to express an opinion about abortion, by raising a different issue in which men lack the requisite anatomy but still are expected to express an opinion.
  40. #239:  A Departing Member of the Christian Gamers Guild answers suggestions that involvement in fantasy role playing games is detrimental for Christian faith.
  41. #245:  Unspoken Prayer Requests explains why I think they are theologically invalid.
  42. In June of 2019, after attending The Objective Session of The Extreme Tour, I began publishing my songs on this web log.  I ranked about forty of them based on music, lyrics, and the quality of the performance and recording I had available, and began with the one I thought (with a bit of input from one of my sons) best, #301:  The Song “Holocaust”.  It includes a link to a recording of the song.  Additional songs are chained beginning with the second, at the bottom of the article.
  43. #309:  Racially Discriminatory Ticketing highlights and explains a blatant example of racial discrimination by blacks against whites.
  44. In March of 2018 I began a miniseries about early contemporary Christian and Christian rock musicians, still ongoing, with Larry Norman.  Two years later the thirty-ninth entry in that series focused on one of the best bands of the eighties, #342:  Fireworks Times Five, with extensive links to videos from all four of their excellent albums.  It also links the previous thirty-eight such articles.
  45. In 2020, after COVID-19 caused the cancellation of the live Origins game festival, Black Lives Matter protestors demanded that the corporation running the gaming convention make a public statement in support of their position or face a boycott, which shut down efforts to launch an online convention.  #344:  Is It O.K. Not to Make a Statement? attacks this divisive and destructive policy as a blow against the constitutional right not to speak about something.
  46. A frustrated musician asked the question on a Christian music Facebook group, and I offered an answer in #352:  Why No One Cares About Your Songs, which I think might be a must-read for those who aspire to any creative endeavor.
  47. In the discussion of the polarization of America, I suggest in #375:  Fixing the Focus that many Christians have our eyes on the wrong things.
  48. The old economic principle derived from sheep grazing on common land finds a new and problematic application in the world of online retailing, elucidated in #377:  A New Tragedy of the Common.
  49. Normally I link reviews, but this one was sent to me privately, and was the first review I saw of my book Why I Believe, so I feel I would be remiss if I failed to mention my reprinting of it in #386:  An Unsolicited Private Review.
  50. A popular song, a friend’s pregnancy, and the recollection of a spoiled surprise party prompted me to write #394:  Unplanned, suggesting that there aren’t really any accidents, and, again, talking about abortion.
  51. The question was asked, specifically in relation to worship, and I offered an answer in that context which extends beyond it, explaining #396:  Why Music Matters.
  52. #406:  Internet Racism gives reasons for rejecting the call (in Great Britain) that those who post racial slurs against the poor performance of black athletes should be brought up on criminal charges.
  53. I was personally asked to respond to a long article giving ten reasons why the Biblical account of the exodus was untrue, so I wrote an eleven-part miniseries.  It concluded with #425:  Do Similarities Between the Accounts of Moses’ Birth and Certain Myths Make Him a Fictional Character?, which also links and briefly summarizes the ten previous articles.
  54. One of my patrons asked me for #426:  A Christian View of Horror, which suggests that to some degree it can be embraced, but ultimately there is one insurmountable problem.
  55. #429:  Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts speaks of the legacy of a small school whose campus has been almost completely obliterated by time.
  56. A couple decades back, the respected Australian role playing e-zine Places to Go, People to Be launched a French edition, and asked my permission to translate articles I had written for them to release in another language, and subsequently to do so with articles I had published through other sites.  Late in 2021 I finally got around to compiling a linked list of what was was then twenty-six translated articles, in #431:  Mark Joseph Young En Français.
  57. #434:  Foolish Wisemen draws a lesson about celebrating Christmas versus the rest of the story from the account of these visitors.
  58. #444:  Ability versus Popularity discusses contests in which the public is asked to vote for the best, and contestants encourage friends who know nothing of the competitors to vote for a friend.
  59. I had recently seen the argument that laws restricting abortion were an impingement on the religious practice of Jewish women, and since I had heard the same argument decades before in Senate hearings I wrote #446:  The Religious Freedom Abortion Argument, and decided to include it here.
  60. #449:  Cruel and Unusual is not exactly about the death penalty and expresses no opinion on it, but does find fault with the protest that opposes it by attempting to make it more painful.
  61. #459:  Publication Anticipation provided a list of my books recently published in 2021-2 plus my expectations for 2023 and beyond.  Those mentioned there which have been published since are listed in the 2023 review article mentioned at the top of this page.
  62. I’m listing #469:  Church History because it was an answer to the last question I was asked by my long-time friend John Mastick which I answered in a web log post before he died.  His question was about what distinguished Calvinists, Pentecostals, and Charismatics from each other, and I threw in Catholics, Lutherans, and Evangelicals for clarity.  He had previously prompted #413:  The Abomination of Desolation and #465:  Believing in Ghosts.
  63. The issue arose in our study of the Gospel According to Mark in the Christian Gamers Guild’s Chaplain’s Bible Study, leading to an expanded exploration of it in #475:  The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter, which I contend is the woman cured of bleeding in the healing nested in the middle of that miracle account.

#490: Looking Back

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #490, on the subject of Looking Back.

Once again, as we did last year in web log post #461:  2022 in Review and in previous years linked successively back from there, we are recapping everything published in the past year–sort of.

I say “sort of” because once again some material is being omitted.  There have been a few hundred posts to the Christian Gamers Guild Bible Study which can be accessed there but aren’t really fully indexed anywhere.  Meanwhile, the dozen articles in the Faith in Play series and the similar dozen in the RPG-ology series were just indexed on the Christian Gamers Guild site in 2023 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, and won’t be repeated here.  The RPG-ology and Faith in Play series were both released in book form this year, along with two other books, RPG Theory 101 and Other Essays in Role Playing Games and An Analytical Commentary on The Book of Romans.  These are all available in paperback and Kindle format; follow the links for more information about them.

I also posted several days a week on my Patreon web log, which announces almost everything I publish elsewhere on the same day it’s published, but again omitting the Bible study posts.  There is also a bi-monthly review of my work at Goodreads under the title The Ides of Mark, now at sixty-two installments, which does include some information about those Bible Study materials.

This year saw the last of the web log song posts, at least as an ongoing series.  These included:

I continued posting the ninth Multiverser novel Con Verse Lea, featuring Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam, from chapter 27 to the end (chapter 85), which are indexed there along with several behind-the-writings posts about it, and after posting a few character papers to the support site I continued with the tenth novel, In Version, featuring Robert Slade, James Beam, Joseph Kondor, and Derek Brown, through chapter 91.  Behind-the-writings posts on these two books included web log posts:

Collaborator Eric R. Ashley and I have managed to finish the twelfth novel, A Dozen Verses, and the thirteenth, Multiverser:  The Thirteenth Story, and are working on one called Verse a Tile.  Separately, I picked up the horror book I dropped, Corpoises, and wrote a bit more, and will probably finish it shortly.  I’m also continuing setup work on the analytical commentary series.

I think the rest of everything is a bit miscellaneous and disorganized, but here’s what I find.

Mark Joseph “young” web log post #465:  Believing in Ghosts considers whether ghosts exist and what attitude Christians should have about them.  It was an answer to a question from a friend.

Another question from the same friend led to post #469:  Church History, rather narrowly focused on distinguishing Reformation Protestants from later Evangelicals and both from Pentecostals and Charismatics.

Responding to a question from a time travel fan, #474:  Preliminary Temporal Thoughts on Paper Girls looked at the description of a television series and the time travel implications.

In our Christian Gamers Guild Chaplain’s Bible Study the accout of the healings of Jairus’ daughter and the woman who touched the hem of his garment arose, and when I suggested the woman was the girl’s mother I was asked why I thought this.  That seemed too big a question for the Bible study, so it became web log post #475:  The Mother of Jairus’ Daughter.

A few years ago someone had written to ask me what I knew about Bernice Wurst, an artist who was a friend of my mother who gave me two of her paintings.  I had featured one of them in an article in the Game Ideas Unlimited series.  It bothered me that when I looked for information about her on the web, there wasn’t much, so I decided to record the few reminiscences I could recall in post #486:  Bernice Wurst:  Impressions of an Impressionist.

In other news, I made it to AnimeNEXT this year, and expect to be invited coming up in June once again; I edited and subsequently reviewed two books for a friend–the BeautyAndTheBell trilogy–and expect to start on the third soon; and I posted a few recipes and some other images to Instagram.

I think that summarizes the year; the new year has already gotten started, but you can keep up by following my social media sites including Patreon.  I’ve already started something new this year, but maybe I’ll tell you about it next year once I see how it goes.

#439: Corpoises: Toward a Story

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #439, on the subject of Corpoises:  Toward a Story.

It was partly a joke, partly serious, in the way that some Dungeons & Dragons monsters are real monsters in the game world but in some way a joke.  I posted it on my Facebook page, and got a couple of likes:

Corpises [COR’-piss-ez] (n, pl):

Undead marine mammals.

However, in addition to a couple likes, I got a request from a publisher that I “Please write this novel,” so I decided to explore the possibilities.

I think the first point to address is a critical aspect of the setting.  If we have undead dolphins and such, to whom or what are they a threat?  Most humans have very little contact with marine mammals, and although we could have them close the beaches, I think people in Nebraska aren’t in any danger, and seriously, telling people they can’t swim in the ocean because there are monsters that might kill them will sufficiently deter enough people that there wouldn’t be a story.  So if it’s people, it has to be something like primitive fishermen, people who live in island villages and rely on small boat fishing for survival.  That definitely limits other aspects of the story.  Of course, the corpoises could be one of many undead creatures, but that reduces their significance, and I feel like this is supposed to be about them.

On the other hand, it’s already fantasy if it includes anything undead, so perhaps I should explore the development of a nation of merpeople, human-like creatures living under the ocean on the continental shelves.  That’s a lot of work in itself, but if we’re talking about writing a novel, that’s not more work than we should expect; it’s only a question of creating something interesting.

We could split the difference and create human undersea colonies that raise some kind of food on the sea floor, which means people would have to go outside the protective domes to do the farming.  That’s another kind of setting to develop, although it would involve fewer unique aspects, being very much a science fiction habitat like others I have done.

Perhaps finally, the porpoise community itself could be the intelligent race threatened by the undead.  It’s worth considering, but then, it might be too alien, Walt Disney meets Stephen King.

My second issue is what kind of undead are we considering, and that’s closely tied to whether there is a theme here.  Traditionally undead creatures are the magical results of necromancy, or sometimes, as with the Revenant, of gross injustice demanding correction.  In modern stories the undead aren’t actually dead but are somehow biologically altered, and that gives a couple options–toxic chemical spills giving us an environmental backdrop, radioactive waste giving us an anti-nuclear substory, or some kind of genetic accident warning against the dangers of genetic engineering.  Currently I’m working on a story for James Beam in which the undead are infected with a brain parasite, and I have not yet decided whether the organism evolved or was created by human action, and might not have to do so, but that’s an option here.  There are other ways to create undead creatures, but they’re generally more intentional, that someone is doing it with a purpose and has some control over the monsters.

My next concern is whether this is horror.  I mean, you would think that if it involves zombies or undead of some sort, it must be horror–but I don’t always feel comfortable with horror.  Oh, I’ve written it.  I frequently mention the beginning of the Derek Brown stories in Old Verses New, in which he visits several horror worlds, but it occurs to me that before that I had written a story based on The Quest for the Vorgo, for Joe Kondor in Verse Three, Chapter One, and I’ve written at least a couple horror scenarios for Multiverser game play apart from those.  Also, my thoughts on the genre in web log post #132:  Writing Horror were apparently valuable enough that they got translated for the Places to Go, People to Be French edition, Maîtriser l’Horreur, so I apparently do know something about it.  On the other hand, as I recently shared in web log post #426:  A Christian View of Horror, genuine horror is at best difficult for a Christian, because in horror hope fails in despair, and for believers hope wins.  That doesn’t mean I can’t write the story; it means I have to give serious thought to what it’s about.

And that is the next question:  what is it about?  Great horror stories are usually about something important.  Frankenstein is about man overreaching to try to create life.  Jurassic Park has a similar theme.  I’ve already mentioned themes about environmental issues and genetic engineering–but do I care enough about these to create a good story from them?  I can see a concept of undead arising from a rejection of God, but seriously, among porpoises?  This is a very difficult aspect of the concept.

Most of that is, of course, setting material.  The last part gives some shape to the plot, but there is no story there.  For that, I’m going to have to create some characters who fit the setting, create some relationships, perhaps a romance, perhaps a family.  I might have to think about who is going to die, and when and how that happens.  I don’t really have a book here at this point.

But I might.  I just have to start finding answers to those questions.

Any reader who has thoughts about such a book is encouraged to respond, in the comments below or on one of my social media pages.

#435: Hindsight is 2021

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #435, on the subject of Hindsight is 2021.

Once again, as we did last year in web log post #371:  The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty and in previous years linked successively back from there, we are recapping everything published in the past year–sort of.

I say “sort of” because once again some material is being omitted.  There have been a few hundred posts to the Christian Gamers Guild Bible Study which can be accessed there but aren’t really fully indexed anywhere.  Meanwhile, the dozen articles in the Faith in Play series and the similar dozen in the RPG-ology series were just indexed yesterday on the Christian Gamers Guild site, along with everything else published there this year, in 2021 At the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, and won’t be repeated here.  The RPG-ology series began recovering articles from Game Ideas Unlimited, the lost four-year weekly series at Gaming Outpost, so I republished its debut article as web log post #384:  Game Ideas Unlimited Introduction, for the sake of completeness. 

I also posted several days a week on my Patreon web log, which announces almost everything I publish elsewhere on the same day it’s published, but again omitting the Bible study posts.

Similarly, we finished posting the novel Re Verse All, featuring Lauren Hastings, Tomiko Takano, and James Beam, from chapter 58 to the end (chapter 156), which are indexed there along with the several behind-the-writings posts on it:

  1. #373:  Nervous Characters covering chapters 55 through 60;
  2. #376:  Characters Arrive covering chapters 61 through 66;
  3. #379:  Character Conundrums covering chapters 67 through 72;
  4. #381:  World Complications covering chapters 73 through 78;
  5. #383:  Character Departures covering chapters 79 through 84;
  6. #385:  Characters Ascend covering chapters 85 through 90;
  7. #388:  Versers Climb covering chapters 91 through 96;
  8. #390:  World Facilities covering chapters 97 through 102;
  9. #392:  Characters Resting covering chapters 103 through 108;
  10. #395:  Character Obstacles covering chapters 109 through 114;
  11. #397:  Verser Challenges covering chapters 115 through 120;
  12. #401:  Characters Hiking covering chapters 121 through 126;
  13. #403:  Versers Innovating covering chapters 127 through 132;
  14. #405:  Versers Converge covering chapters 133 through 138;
  15. #407:  Versers Integrate covering chapters 139 through 144;
  16. #409:  Characters Cooperate covering chapters 145 through 150;
  17. #411:  Quest Concludes covering chapters 151 through 156.

Then there were several related character papers in the Multiverser Novel Support Site, and we then began posting In Verse Proportion, bringing back Joseph Kondor in fantasy Arabia, Bob Slade in industrial age bird world, and Derek Brown on a lost colony spaceship, at this point having reached chapter 39.  It included one behind-the-writings web log post, #432:  Whole New Worlds, covering the first twenty-one chapters.

Yet there was quite a bit more.

Forgive me for burying the lead, as it were, but just as Why I Believe came out late last year, it was followed this year by the release of The Essential Guide to Time Travel:  Temporal Anomalies & Replacement Theory, the long-awaited book on the subject, at the end of June.  This summarizing of much of the information on the Temporal Anomalies web site includes updated analyses of four films and a comprehensive presentation of time travel theory.  Dimensionfold Publishing interviewed me about it by e-mail, which they published here.

Related to that, a reader sent a letter with comments on Why I Believe, which I edited a bit (removing personal references) and posted as web log post #386:  An Unsolicited Private Review.

Now, getting back to other publications, there were another dozen songs published this year:

  1. Web log post #372:  The Song “Heavenly Kingdom”, inspired by the verse about cutting off your hand;
  2. Web log post #378:  The Song “A Song of Joy”, a frenetic bit of musical excitement;
  3. Web log post #382:  The Song “Not Going to Notice”, a bit of serious eschatological humor;
  4. Web log post #387:  The Song “Our God Is Good”, with political overtones;
  5. Web log post #393:  The Song “Why”, one of my rare worship songs;
  6. Web log post #399:  The Song “Look Around You”, an old evangelistic song;
  7. Web log post #404:  The Song “Love’s the Only Command, one of the generally early ones;
  8. Web log post #408:  The Song “Given You My Name”, written for my wife;
  9. Web log post #412:  The Song “When I Think”, which I hope will play at my funeral;
  10. Web log post #414:  The Song “You Should Have Thanked Me”, the title self-explanatory;
  11. Web log post #428:  The Song “To the Victor”, another rare worship song;
  12. Web log post #433:  The Song “From Job”, calling believers to repentance.

And there will be another song published today, but since that’s 2022, we’ll not say more about it yet.

I touched on Christian music otherwise in web log post #374:  Christian Instrumental Music, where I raise the question of how to recognize it.  My series on contemporary and rock Christian music in the 80s also continued briefly with web log posts #389:  Brother John Michael Talbot and #391:  Pat Terry.  A question asked on a Christian musicians group on Facebook prompted the writing of web log post #396:  Why Music Matters.

It was a not insignificant election year in New Jersey, but my first political post, #375:  Fixing the Focus, took a more general view, suggesting that Christians need to get our eyes off politics and on faith.  Closely following that, #377:  A New Tragedy of the Common looked at how online shopping was impacting brick & mortar retail.  Another political post with religious connections was #394:  Unplanned, about pregnancies.  With rules related to COVID in flux, in the late spring I posted web log post #398:  New 2021 Face Mask Rules in New Jersey to help a few of my readers.  The really political stuff began with #400:  New Jersey 2021 Primary and #402:  New Jersey 2021 Primary Results, but before the election an issue across the pond in England called for a response in #406:  Internet Racism, asking whether online social media criticism of black athletes should be criminal.

Then as the election loomed I offered #427:  The New Jersey 2021 Ballot, including a quick look at the public questions, followed a few days later by #430:  New Jersey 2021 Tentative Election Results.

I was given a book for Christmas, which I read and reviewed at Goodreads, God Is Disappointed In You, by comic book creator Mark Russell.

Then early in May someone (and I don’t remember who, how, or why) persuaded me to register as a Goodreads author; or maybe I did that earlier, but it was in May that I was persuaded by Goodreads to launch yet another web log, this one entitled The Ides of Mark because it appropriately posted at the middle and end of each month, updating readers on what I had published during that period.  In that sense, it is somewhat redundant, as the aforementioned Patreon web log covers that as it happens, and this annual review recaps it all eventually.  However, Ides also covers postings in the Bible Study and omits a lot of the personal detail about what I’m doing besides writing which the Patreon blog includes, and gives less information about what I am writing that has not yet been published.  This year’s entries have included:

  1. #1:  New Beginnings, May first through fifteenth, launching and explaining the series;
  2. #2:  Establishing Patterns, May sixteenth through thirty-first, featuring several web log posts;
  3. #3:  The Charm, June first through fifteenth, around the primary election;
  4. #4:  About Time, June sixteenth through thirtieth, announcing the publication of the aforementioned time travel book;
  5. #5:  Going Somewhen, July first through fifteenth, citing an Amazon review;
  6. #6:  The First Quarter, July sixteenth through thirty-first, with a scattered batch of articles;
  7. #7:  Getting Noticed, August first through fifteenth, citing evidence that the blog was being read by someone;
  8. #8:  Ends and Starts, August sixteenth through thirty-first, with the end of Re Verse All;
  9. #9:  Quiet on the Surface, September first through fifteenth, including character sheet posts;
  10. #10:  Before the Storm, September sixteenth through thirtieth, with the remaining character sheets;
  11. #11:  Looking Busy, October first through fifteenth, with the launch of In Verse Proportion and the beginning of the series on Exodus, listed below;
  12. #12:  A Frightening Output, October sixteenth through thirty-first, finishing the Exodus series;
  13. #13:  Slowing Down, November first through fifteenth, including the index of the articles in French translation mentioned below;
  14. #14:  Holiday Season, November sixteenth through thirtieth, as activity winds down;
  15. #15:  Not Much Said, December first through fifteenth, continuing the quiet;
  16. #16:  Years Go By, December sixteenth through thirty-first, with my post-Christmas post.

Not all of that is repeated here, but the bulk of it is.  I also answered ten questions there, which you can find here.

Half a decade ago I wrote about those musicians who influenced me; this year it occurred to me to do the same of writers, and so posted #380:  Authorial Influences exploring that.

Quite a few Bible questions came up and were answered, beginning with web log post #410:  When to Pray, followed by a somewhat technical question about a passage in Matthew, #413:  The Abomination of Desolation.  Then another reader asked me to address a long and complicated collection of issues in an article that claimed the Exodus, as reported in the book of that name, never happened, and I produced an eleven-part miniseries of web log posts in response:

  1. The introductory article was #415:  Can the Exodus Story Be True?
  2. It was followed by an answer to the first objection, #416:  Does Archaeological Silence Disprove the Exodus?
  3. Turning to the second objection about whether such a departure could be organized, we offered #417:  Is the Beginning of the Exodus Account Implausible?
  4. The third objection was that given the number of escaping Israelites the line this would have created would have been too long to outrun Pharaoh’s chariots, to which we offered #418:  Are There Too Many People Escaping in Exodus?
  5. The fourth objection was summarized and answered in #419:  When Escaping in Exodus, Did the Israelites Have Too Much Luggage?
  6. In response to the fifth objection we wrote #420: Were the Hygiene Requirements in Exodus Impossible to Observe?
  7. The sixth objection asked and answered #421: Did Moses Write the Torah?
  8. For the seventh objection, we addressed the issue of anachronisms, and particularly those related to place names, in #422:  Are There Anachronisms in the Torah that Invalidate It?
  9. The absurdity of the eighth objection is displayed in #423:  What Kind of Infrastructure Did the Wandering Israelites Need?
  10. We looked at the penultimate objection in #424:  Did the Earth Really Stop Turning?
  11. Finally, the point was raised that there were similarities between the life of Moses and earlier accounts of Sargon, which led to the conclusion Do Similarities Between the Accounts of Moses Birth and Certain Myths Make Him a Fictional Character?, which also addresses a few final points.

After that, a Patreon patron asked about horror, so I produced #426:  A Christian View of Horror.  Comments on a Facebook group page related to one of my colleges concerning the fact that the campus is almost completely obliterated led to the writing of #429:  Luther College of the Bible and Liberal Arts, about the legacy such a place has without any memorial markers for the site.  I also finished the year last week with a post-Christmas post, #434:  Foolish Wisemen, something of a pre-epiphany epiphany.

Finally, I’ve had a long-standing relationship with the people at the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, under which they have translated and republished quite a few of my articles.  I finally took the time to organize these into an index in English, at least for my own reference, which I made available as web log post #431:  Mark Joseph Young En Français, with links to such English versions as are available.

The writing of course continues, with more articles already in the queue, more work being done on the next novel, and more posted every week.  Thank you for reading, and particularly to those of you who have encouraged me through posts and reposts and likes, and who have supported me through Patreon or PayPal.me and the purchase of my books.

#431: Mark Joseph Young En Français

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #431, on the subject of Mark Joseph Young En Français.

Over two decades ago, the respected Australian role playing game e-zine Places to Go, People to Be asked if they could translate an article series I had written for them, three parts under the title Law and Enforcement in Imaginary realms, to republish in their then-new French edition.  This was the beginning of a long and continuing relationship during which they continued translating my work into French for release to a wider audience.  Recently I received word that they were releasing the twenty-sixth such article, and I had often realized that I had not been keeping track of what they had published and ought to do that, at least for my own sake, but also for yours.

This is in roughly the sequence in which the articles were originally translated and posted.

  1. La Loi et l’Ordre dans les Mondes Imaginaires – 1re Partie : Les sources de la Loi, written for and still published at the Australian version back in perhaps 1998 and translated shortly thereafter, was entitled Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms Part I:  The Source of Law, and dealt with how legal systems develop from primitive tribal structures to modern governmental systems, and how we derive laws from that.
  2. La Loi et l’Ordre dans les Mondes Imaginaires – 2e partie : la procédure judiciaire was the second part, Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms:  The Course of Law, presenting the issues of who executes the law and how is it executed, including what rights people might or might not have.
  3. La Loi et l’ordre dans les mondes imaginaires – 3e partie : Les Forces de l’Ordre finishes the series with Law & Enforcement in Imaginary Realms:  The Force of Law, dealing with matters of how and why we punish criminals.
  4. Des pièces de monnaie invisibles was originally a Game Ideas Unlimited article (at Gaming Outpost), more recently republished by the Christian Gamers Guild as RPG-ology #34:  Invisible Coins, about an illusionist technique and referee control of play.
  5. Gauche ou droite ? was again from Game Ideas Unlimited, again republished as RPG-ology #47:  Left or Right?, one of my personal favorites and another illusionist technique.
  6. Dans l’esprit de la radio is an article I wrote for the Winter 2004 edition of the e-zine Daedalus, entitled In the Spirit of Radio, and no longer available in English on the web.  Fortuitously I downloaded that issue, so I have a copy, and although it was not easy to convert PDF into HTML I expect it to post in the RPG-ology series next spring.
  7. La Sagesse dans les jeux de rôles, originally published as Game Ideas Unlimited:  Wisdom about how to play a character said to be wiser than the player, but only partially preserved on the web in English, it is my hope to reconstruct this eventually.
  8. LNS : de la théorie à l’application is a translation of an article originally published at The Forge and still available there as of last look, as Applied Theory, discussing how to apply concepts of gamism, narrativism, and simulationism to game design.
  9. Théorie 101 – 1re partie : le système et l’espace imaginaire commun is a significant piece.  Some years after I had written the Law and Enforcement series for the Australian e-zine, their editors put out a general call for someone to summarize the main features of role playing game theory as it was then being expounded at The Forge.  Being at that time involved in that work, I offered to compose something, and this, Theory 101:  System and the Shared Imagined Space, was the first of three parts.  It explains the concepts system, credibility, authority, and other aspects of how games work “under the hood” as it were that enable the creations of a shared world.  This article was later republished by Gaming Outpost, and the three-article translation was compacted and published in the French print magazine Joie de Role.
  10. Théorie 101 – 2e partie : Le Truc Impossible Avant Le Petit Déj’ is the second of the three parts, Theory 101:  The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast, discussing referee styles and how they resolve the conflict between the statement that the referee controls the story and the fact that the players control all the actions of its main characters.
  11. Théorie 101 – 3e partie : Les propositions créatives is the third part of the series, originally Theory 101:  Creative Agenda, discussing what is popularly called “GNS” or gamism, narrativism, and simulationism, the three primary approaches to player play, and what makes games fun for different people.
  12. Étreintes was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Embraces, and is scheduled to be reposted as RPG-ology #48:  Embraces on November 16 (2021); it deals with romance in role playing games.
  13. Valeurs was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Value, discussing what makes anything valuable or cheap.  It is on the list to be republished as an RPG-ology piece, but not yet scheduled.
  14. Récompenses was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Rewards, dealing with in-game reward systems, no longer available in English but on the list for eventually republication.
  15. Création de perso was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Chargen, about different ways of creating characters.  The English version only exists as a partial article, but eventually I hope to reconstruct it from the translation and republish it in RPG-ology.
  16. Du cash was originally Game Ideas Unlimited:  Cash, addressing the development of systems of exchange from barter through the invention of money in various forms to the future of electronic credit.  An English version exists, and will eventually be republished as an RPG-ology piece.
  17. Points négatifs was originally published as Game Ideas Unlimited:  Negative Points, a further discussion of character generation extolling the virtues of stronger and weaker characters.
  18. Maîtriser l’Horreur comes from closer to home, a translation of mark Joseph “young” web log post #132:  Writing Horror, about some of the elements that create a good horror story, whether for a book or for a game session.
  19. Moralité et conséquences : les fondamentaux oubliés. recovers the first article I wrote for someone else’s web site, Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Roleplay Essentials, originally published among the earliest articles at Gaming Outpost around 1997 and restored as mark Joseph “young” web log post #237:  Morality and Consequences:  Overlooked Roleplay Essentials in 2018.
  20. Les Pactes avec le Diable is a translation of Faith and Gaming:  Deals, from the Christian Gamers Guild, about the Christian value in roleplaying deals with the devil.
  21. Le festin de Javan is again from the Christian Gamers Guild, Faith in Play #3:  Javan’s Feast, about an act of charity that rocked the game and impacted the players at the table.
  22. Histoire des Points de Vie was RPG-ology #3:  History of Hit Points, discussing the origin, development, and value of a fundamental mechanic in many games.
  23. Sentience was another Game Ideas Unlimited article, not spelled differently in English, and dealing with the elements of intelligence as a groundwork for creating alien minds.  It is scheduled for RPG-ology early next year.
  24. Funérailles reproduces another from Game Ideas Unlimited, this one republished recently as RPG-ology #46:  Deceased, asking why we don’t have funerals in our role playing games.
  25. Blessures is translated from Game Ideas Unlimited:  Wounds, addressing how events from adventures should impact character personality thereafter, which eventually should wind up in the RPG-ology series.
  26. Vous avez le droit de garder le silence… was more simply Game Ideas Unlimited:  Silence, about the relatively modern right against self-incrimination and how legal systems were different without it.  It, too, is slated for inclusion in the RPG-ology series.

The original French index on their site is here, for those more facile in French than I.  They expect to continue adding my material to their collection in the future, so I expect there may be a sequel to this article eventually.  My contributions are a drop in the ocean of excellent material they have gathered from a wealth of well-respected writers whom I will not begin to name for fear of omitting someone who ought to be mentioned.

#386: An Unsolicited Private Review

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #386, on the subject of An Unsolicited Private Review.

Sunday morning (3/14/2021) I received a private message from a new Patron (from the United Kingdom) on my Patreon page.  He had read Why I Believe, and wrote to thank me.  I wanted to share his comments with you, without exposing his identity; some personal notes have been expunged in what follows, and I’ve done a bit of formatting.

I just finished reading Why I Believe and I am grateful for having been given your name (you may remember our recent correspondence as to how your name came to me–quite mysteriously) and for working through your book.  It was worth the effort.  I feel as though I have attended a masterclass on the subject–not thinking, beforehand, that I had met the criteria needed to be enrolled….[T]his is a humourous comment–anyone with an enquiring mind can read and understand the book if they give it a chance.  I have learned something (things, actually) from you, of great value and importance in my life….I have just taken out a patronage which I will keep going for as long as I can….Before I continue into what could be a major ramble, I just wanted to say ‘thanks’ for offering to me an intelligent and extremely well explained reasoning as to why I do believe that which until some months ago I had only ever suspected, i.e., His existence and His purpose.

My best wishes to you, personally, and for your continuing and growing success and recognition.

[Name omitted for privacy] (UK)

I am very pleased and encouraged by these comments, the first independent and unsolicited response I have received to the book, and I hope that more of you are finding the book valuable.  Please feel free to share your thoughts with me, and of course with others who might benefit from reading it.

#377: A New Tragedy of the Common

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #377, on the subject of A New Tragedy of the Common.

In the early nineteenth century an economic principle was recognized which would later become known as The Tragedy of the Common.  It has many applications, particularly in relation to modern environmental concerns, but I’d like to call attention to a new one emerging.

The concept is really rather simple.  In medieval and post-medieval villages there was an area of grassland that was available for general public use, the common or commons.  People would graze their sheep on it, as most did not have enough private land to support sheep raising.  What was noticed is that the number of sheep being grazed on such shared land was usually more than the land could adequately support, and so the sheep fared poorly.  The complication, though, was that although for the benefit of the community as a whole the total number of sheep should be reduced to a level sustainable by the land, for any one farmer the way to maximize his own return was to increase the size of his own flock.  Although this reduced his return per sheep, it increased his total return–unless the system collapsed and the sheep died.

We can see this in application in many situations–the overfishing of our fisheries, poor forestry practices, the destruction of our jungles, the pollution of our rivers.  Each individual benefits by destroying a bit more of the shared world.  I, however, want to address a much more recent economic phenomenon.

It was joked not too many years ago that a particular retail distributor had become the internet’s electronics showroom:  people interested in high-end electronics such as televisions and home entertainment systems and computers would visit their stores, examine the available products, then return home and order what they wanted more cheaply over the internet.  The concept has spread far beyond electronics:  reportedly many local game stores have been closing because customers browse in the store and then purchase what they want online.  The pandemic of the past year has intensified this problem, because people were either prevented from or afraid of visiting retail stores, and so a great deal of purchasing shifted to online sources.  Retailers of all stripes are struggling; customers are dwindling.  Those of us who were driving during the pre-Christmas weeks noticed how sparse the traffic was compared to previous years, and not all of that was due to reduced disposable income.  The number of the new Amazon delivery trucks on the road is stunning.

It struck me, first, that the issue really is whether we generally, individually, are willing to pay a little more for the things we want and need in order to keep the convenience of having local retail stores.  After all, if the stores make no sales they cease to exist, and they will struggle even if they make a few sales.  The disappearance of retailers will be a major shift in our economies, as many people are dependent on jobs in those industries.  Additionally, even if you can get next day delivery on products from some online retailers, that’s not always fast enough, and having a local brick-and-mortar store that carries what we need means we can get it today, possibly even tonight if it’s open twenty-four hours.  Although it is a disadvantage to us to have to pay a bit more, the advantages of having retail stores might be worth it.

But then I saw the tragedy.  It is perhaps an inverse of the example, but in this case it is to every individual’s advantage to buy more cheaply online, but a disadvantage to the community to lose retail outlets.  Further, because of this it is likely that individuals will in greater numbers move their purchases online until support for local retailers is inadequate and they are forced to close their doors.  It thus becomes disadvantageous for anyone to support local retailers, as these are probably doomed by the force of the economic situation, and once they close those who tried to patronize them to support them will have spent that money with no way to recover it and no benefit to show for it, while those who abandoned the local shops sooner will have saved money in the process.

Is there a viable solution to this?  Probably not–but it is part of a larger problem, that automation is reducing our need for a work force.  There will continue to be fewer jobs for people, and particularly for unskilled workers, who will become an increasing burden on the welfare systems, unless we can devise a different economic system for the future.

I don’t see it, yet.

#371: The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #371, on the subject of The Twenty-Twenty Twenty/Twenty.

I believe the correct greeting is Happy New Year, as we enter 2021.  That means it is time for us to look back at everything that we published in 2020.

The big deal is the book, in paperback and Kindle format, Why I Believe, a compilation of evidence on the basis of which intelligent people believe in God and in Jesus Christ.  I’m told the hardcover version is out, joining the paperback and Kindle versions, but haven’t seen it yet.

The year began, appropriately, on January 1st with a look back at the previous year, web log post #325:  The 2019 Recap, doing then what we are doing now, providing a quick look at everything from the previous dozen months.

On the first of the year I also published a song, the first of a dozen continuing from the seven of the previous year:

  1. web log post #326:  The Song “Mountain Mountain”;
  2. web log post #328:  The Song “Still Small Voice”;
  3. web log post #334:  The Song “Convinced”;
  4. web log post #337:  The Song “Selfish Love”;
  5. web log post #340:  The Song “A Man Like Paul”;
  6. web log post #341:  The Song “Joined Together”;
  7. web log post #346:  The Song “If We Don’t Tell Them”;
  8. web log post #349:  The Song “I Can’t Resist Your Love”;
  9. web log post #353:  The Song “I Use to Think”;
  10. web log post #356:  The Song “God Said It Is Good”;
  11. web log post #362:  The Song “My Life to You”; and
  12. web log post #366:  The Song “Sometimes”.

That series continues with another song later today.

On the subject of series, there are several others, including both the Faith in Play and RPG-ology monthly series at the Christian Gamers Guild.  These are both indexed, along with other excellent material from other contributing authors, at 2020 at the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, posted yesterday.  Thanks to the editorial staff of the French edition of Places to Go, People to Be, a large collection of the original Game Ideas Unlimited articles, thought to be lost when Gaming Outpost closed, have been recovered and are now appearing slightly repolished in these series.  (Quite a few of them plus other articles have been translated into French for their site.) We also finished posting the rest of the novel Versers Versus Versers, along with updated character sheets in the Multiverser Novel Support Pages, and started on the seventh, Re Verse All, which will continue well into the new year.  There were quite a few behind-the-writings web log posts connected to those, but they are indexed in the novel table of contents pages so we won’t burden this entry with them.

There was also the continuation of another series, reminiscences on the history of Christian contemporary and rock music from the early 1980s, which picked up with:

  1. web log post #329:  CCM Guys at the Beginning, a conglomerate of artists from Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill through Michael W. Smith;
  2. web log post #332:  The Wish of Scott Wesley Brown;
  3. web log post #335:  Bob Bennett’s First Matters;
  4. web log post #342:  Fireworks Times Five, one of the best rock bands of the era;
  5. web log post #345:  Be Ye Glad, one of the best vocal bands of the era;
  6. web log post #358:  DeGarmo and Key, Not a Country Band, another excellent early rock ensemble.

I should mention for the time travel fans that there is indeed a book in the works, possibly with a sequel, but it’s still in the early stages so that’s on the list for the coming year.  Meanwhile, temporal anomalies were not ignored, as we had several posts and pages.

Among the miscellaneous posts this year is one about the fact that my work appears under several slightly different names–Mark, Mark J., M. Joseph, M. J., and Mark Joseph–and the story behind that is explained in web log post #331:  What’s With the Names?  A musician asked a question on a Facebook group, which I answered in web log post #352:  Why No One Cares About Your Songs.

Giving extra confusion to the year, in February my second grandchild, my first grandson, was born, roughly a decade or so after his half-sister.  That was the beginning of a saga that still is not completely resolved, but it was several months before he came home, in time for Halloween.

My book reading slowed drastically, due largely to the fact that my Kindle was smashed and I’ve been trying to get it repaired, but there are a few book reviews (one of a book on writing) at Goodreads.  Also appearing are two republished book reviews, as web log posts #351:  In re:  Evil Star and #368:  In re:  Cry of the Icemark, recovered from the lost Gaming Outpost archives.

We were quiet on the political front until June, when events related to Black Lives Matter prompted the writing of web log post #344:  Is It O.K. Not to Make a Statement?  Some argued that it was not.  We later explained the mail-in ballot system adopted by our home state in web log post #360:  Voting in 2020 in New Jersey, with a follow-up a couple weeks later in web log post #363:  The 2020 Election in New Jersey.

The year ahead looks promising.  There should be another song posted today, with Faith in Play and RPG-ology articles already queued for publication later this month and well into the year ahead, chapters of the novel Re Verse All with their accompanying behind-the-writings peeks standing by, more CCM history, some time travel movies awaiting my attention, and–well, we’ll have to see what appears.  Meanwhile, this is your opportunity to catch anything you missed or re-read anything you forgot.

I would be remiss if I did not thank those who have supported me through Patreon and PayPal.me, and to invite and encourage others to do so.  The Patreon web log is the first place where all new pages are announced, and the place to go for glimpses of what is to come, and even as little as a dollar a month helps me immensely and gets you that information delivered several times a week.  Thank you.

#325: The 2019 Recap

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #325, on the subject of The 2019 Recap.

Happy New Year to you.  A year ago I continued the tradition of recapitulating in the most sketchy of fashions everything I had published over the previous year, in mark Joseph “young” web log post #278:  The 2018 Recap.  I am back to continue that tradition, as briefly as reasonable, so that if you missed something you can find it, or if you vaguely remember something you want to read again you can hunt it down.  Some of that brevity will be achieved by referencing index pages, other collections of links to articles and installments.

For example, that day also saw the publication of the first Faith in Play article of the year, but all twelve of those plus the dozen RPG-ology series articles are listed, described, and linked in 2019 at the Christian Gamers Guild Reviewed, published yesterday.  There’s some good game stuff there in addition to some good Bible stuff, including links to some articles by other talented gaming writers, and a couple contributions involving me one way or another that were not parts of either series.  Also CGG-related, I finished the Bible study on Revelation and began John in January; we’re still working through John, but thanks to a late-in-the-year problem with Yahoo!Groups that had been hosting us we had to move everything to Groups.IO, and I haven’t managed to fix all the important links yet.

At that point we were also about a quarter of the way through the novel Garden of Versers as we posted a Robert Slade chapter that same day, but that entire novel is indexed there, along with links to the web log posts giving background on the writing process.  In October we launched the sixth novel, Versers Versus Versers, which is heating up in three chapters a week, again indexed along with behind-the-writings posts there, and it will continue in the new year.  There are also links to the support pages, character sheets for the major protagonists and a few antagonists in the stories.  Also related to the novels, in October I invited reader input on which characters should be the focus of the seventh, in #318:  Toward a Seventh Multiverser Novel.

I wrote a few book reviews at Goodreads, which you can find there if you’re interested.  More of my earlier articles were translated for publication at the Places to Go, People to Be French edition.

So let’s turn to the web log posts.

The first one after the recap of the previous year was an answer to a personal question asked impersonally on a public forum:  how did I know I was called to writing and composing?  The answer is found in web log post #279:  My Journey to Becoming a Writer.

I had already begun a miniseries on the Christian contemporary and rock music of the seventies and early eighties–the time when I was working at the radio station and what I remembered from before that.  That series continued (and hopefully will continue this year) with:

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it is evident that the music dominated the web log this year.  In May I was invited to a sort of conference/convention in Nashville, which I attended and from which I benefited significantly.  I wrote about that in web log post #297:  An Objective Look at The Extreme Tour Objective Session.  While there I talked to several persons in the Christian music industry, and one of them advised me to found my own publishing company and publish my songs.  After considerable consideration I recognized that I have no skills for business, but I could put the songs out there, and so I began with a sort of song-of-the-month miniseries, the first seven songs posted this year:

  1. #301:  The Song “Holocaust”
  2. #307:  The Song “Time Bomb”
  3. #311:  The Song “Passing Through the Portal”
  4. #314:  The Song “Walkin’ In the Woods”
  5. #317:  The Song “That’s When I’ll Believe”
  6. #320:  The Song “Free”
  7. #322:  The Song “Voices”

I admit that I have to some degree soured on law and politics.  Polarization has gotten so bad that moderates are regarded enemies by the extremists on both sides.  However, I tackled a few Supreme Court cases, some issues in taxes including tariffs, a couple election articles, and a couple of recurring issues:

I was hospitalized more than once this year, but the big one was right near the beginning when the emergency room informed me that that pain was a myocardial infarction–in the vernacular, a heart attack.  Many of you supported me in many ways, and so I offered web log post #285:  An Expression of Gratitude.

Most of the game-related material went to the RPG-ology series mentioned at the beginning of this article, and you should visit that index for those.  I did include one role playing game article here as web log post #303:  A Nightmare Game World, a very strange scenario from a dream.

Finally, I did eventually post some time travel analyses, two movies available on Netflix.  The first was a kind of offbeat not quite a love story, Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies unravels When We First Met; the second a Spike Lee film focused on trying to fix the past, Temporal Anomalies in Time Travel Movies unravels See You Yesterday.  For those wondering, I have not yet figured out how I can get access to the new Marvel movie Endgame, as it appears it will not be airing on Netflix and I do not expect to spring for a Disney subscription despite its appeal, at least, not unless the Patreon account grows significantly.

So that’s pretty much what I wrote this year, not counting the fact that I’m working on the second edition of Multiverser, looking for a publisher for a book entitled Why I Believe, and continuing to produce the material to continue the ongoing series into the new year.  We’ll do this again in a dozen months.

#285: An Expression of Gratitude

This is mark Joseph “young” blog entry #285, on the subject of An Expression of Gratitude.

I need to thank a lot of people.

The complications include that I do not know who you all are, and I’m not sure of the propriety either of naming those whose names I have or contacting you personally.

Thus I am thanking you all, however many of you there are, through this web log post.

This arises from the fact that I recently had a myocardial infarction–a heart attack–which put me in the hospital.  I posted that in this Facebook post, and somewhere about twenty responses down I posted again with news of the Friday and Monday procedures, and my Tuesday discharge and such.

Many of you sent what I guess would be called “good wishes”, that is, comments, messages, whatever, hoping that I would get better.  Thank you.  I have done so to a significant degree, although I am still a bit weak and officially convalescing (and my wife has already scolded me for overworking once she knew how much I did yesterday, the day after my discharge, but someone had to get the boys to work and someone had to pick up my prescriptions, and more often than not I find that someone is me, particularly when she is working a string of night shifts, driving herself for the first time since her broken hip, and needing to sleep during the day).  So I am not fully recovered, but I am back at work.

Many of you prayed, and for this I am particularly grateful.  You have, of course, obligated me to let you know about the answers to your prayers so that many of you can give thanks to God for the grace extended through the prayers of many of you (cf. II Corinthians 1:11).  I have largely done that in the Facebook post.  I am not out of the woods entirely–I have a bag of new medications (and of all things the pharmacy couldn’t fill the “aspirin” prescription (chewable baby aspirin–how could they not have that?), so someone has to go back for it today), and I have two appointments for a cardiac stress test and a followup to decide what the test results mean.  Those are in the second week of March.

At least two of you made a point of spreading the word of my debilitation, and of encouraging people who at least know who I am to support me financially during this time.  That has resulted in a few gifts of significant amounts through my PayPal.me account–the first real activity there since it opened, and enough to pay for this bag of prescriptions and a bit more.  I have not seen any new Patreon patrons yet, but Patreon’s notification system is sometimes wonky so I’m going to include mention of that–because I am grateful to those of you who have made an effort to keep me going, and thankful to God that you are there, to those who contributed and to those who encouraged others to do so.

I’ll extend these thanks to those who have been meaning to send a bit of help my direction and simply haven’t yet done so; I know what that’s like, as there are often times when I have something I need to do soon that goes for days or weeks or even months before I manage it.  So thank you for the prayers and support you are going to send in the future.  You really do make a difference.

As the picture says, thank you.