Mistaken identities are no new game for me. After all, I have a background (however slight!) in acting, and even more substantial experience with roleplaying games and LARPs (go ahead and judge me...I think it's funny, too!), so assuming alter egos is something I'm comfortable with. What's slightly more unusual is when someone else is mistaken for me, or when I'm mistaken for someone I most decidedly am not! A friend thought she saw me over the weekend, but it turned out to be a doppelganger in a different-colored car. Another friend thought she saw me at the school I work at, but it was the same story all over again! (I haven't been able to corroborate those stories yet to see if it might have been the same guy or not).
Once, at a Renaissance Faire, I was mistaken for a vendor while perusing a costume shop, and the customer tried to haggle with me over a very nice overcoat until I was able to convince him I was just a typical "playtron". In college, it took nearly 2 weeks to convince one of my friends and classmates that I was not a fellow English major...I just had a soft spot for Shakespeare and a penchant for vandalizing classic poetry.
But now...things have risen to a new level.
After returning home from work today, I checked the mail and had a fairly substantial package in the mailbox from Emory University. I was a little surprised, but it wasn't entirely unexpected - I get occasional mailings from them because I participated in their YTI summer program back in 2004. I opened the package and was a little perplexed to find that it contained an informational poster and a catalog from the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. Also included was a cover letter which reads, in part:
"Dear Colleagues,
I take the liberty of writing to ask for your help in alerting your students to the work of our Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University and encouraging them to apply to one of our advanced degree programs.
... ... ...
I would be most grateful if you display the enclosed poster and publication catalog for your pre-law and pre-seminary students. ..."
Colleague. Your students. More specifically, your pre-law and pre-seminary students.
Somehow, I seem to have managed to acquire a terminal degree (or two!) and lead a successful (possibly tenured?) professorial career, without even realizing it! And at such a young age, too! I have friends who occasionally remind me that I underestimate myself, and other friends who are quick to tell me I'm an over-achiever, but I didn't realize I was that committed! It's true that in the past I've considered both JD and MDiv as possible degree paths...but I didn't realize I'd already achieved them.
Or maybe this letter is from the future, and is a portent of a nascent career waiting to unfold? I'm sure someone with a background in law and religion, and with a good sense of humor, could find the loopholes in dogmatic law that would allow for time travel, right? ;)
All light-hearted jesting aside, Emory University is a good school, and while I may have received this package in error (even though it was addressed specifically to me), I am happy to pass along the information contained therein.
AND SO...if you have an interest in learning more about Emory's Center for Study of Law and Religion, please check out their website at http://cslr.law.emory.edu/
If you're local, and would look over the information I was sent in person, contact me and we can set up a time to meet and peruse the catalog and visit for a while.
Be well!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Writer's Bloc
There are a lot of reasons (excuses) I give myself not to write, but there's one that stands out as an extension not only of the trouble I have thinking of stories, but also an issue I find myself considering (in various aspects) on a regular basis.
The main purpose of a fictional work, in a traditional sense, is to tell a story about a character, typically focusing on a single character more closely than others even in a story with a stable of protagonists. (I know this is a generalization, and that there are specific examples that break this trend, but I'm making no attempt to cover those specific cases - in my mind I'm addressing literature in general)
The "problem" I run into is that for a story to catch the attention of the readers, the character about with the story is written must be interesting in some way - exceptional in ability, motive, or circumstance...in short, a character who is expressed as an individual, rather than as a thread in a collective narrative.
The collective narrative is the "background" of a story that we, as readers, share with each other and with the characters of that story as being a common set of assumptions about the way the constructed reality of the story works. In general, these assumptions are causal and ubiquitous - in a story set in the modern day, the collective narrative tells us that (barring exceptional circumstances) turning a key in the ignition of a car will cause it to start. Flipping a switch will turn on a lightbulb. Educated people, white people, males, and urban/suburban-dwelling people typically enjoy certain privileges less likely to be shared by their less-educated, non-white, female, and rural counterparts. In a historical setting, the collective narrative might suggest different ethical norms, or different styles of dress. In a fantasy setting, the collective narrative might suggest that—so long as the prescribed formulae are observed—magic works, or that dragons eat peasants. The collective narrative provides the framework (often drawn from tropes already present in the genre, or normative cultural memes) through which the author, the characters, and the reader can come together and create a common understanding of the world the story exists in.
What makes most stories interesting, however, is that the central characters exist beyond the collective narrative - the characters, and consequently the stories, that we enjoy the most are decidedly non-normative. The stories we are drawn to are the stories of characters who defy normativity and pursue, either voluntarily or by necessity, goals that exist outside the realm of their typical experience.
Let's imagine the renown Lord of the Rings trilogy. Would Tolkien's famous story have been nearly as compelling if Frodo had remained in the Shire and pursued the normative goals of his hobbit community, rather than embarking on an adventure that would become a world-saving quest? I suspect most readers would say "hell no!" to this.
And yet, for me, this is one of the hardest parts of writing. Partly by upbringing, and partly by scholastic training (I studied sociology as an undergraduate), I have a strong tendency to seek out and identify institutions and cultural norms, and to try and intuit how they operate individually and collectively. I've developed certain schemata to a level of sophistication so that when a person mentions a certain action in a certain context, my mind immediately begins to identify cultural and institutional factors that would come to play, and probably series of events that would result from the interaction of the person' action, and the collective response to that action. In short, these institutions and norms create a sort of system that informs the collective narrative (in this case, the narrative being real life). And in most instances, the major purpose of the collective narrative is to preserve and iterate itself, to ensure the longevity of the society it reinforces.
With this in mind, every fictional story (and a great deal of non-fiction as well!) becomes, in addition to everything else it is, a story dealing directly with the role of an exceptional individual in a society with a self-defensive resistance to exception. It automatically becomes a narrative relating the conflict of the individual against the collective. By their roles and their actions, the central characters of a story challenge some of the basic assumptions of the collective narrative they exist in.
What still causes a great deal of dissonance to me is that so very often, the central characters of these stories are successful in their endeavors. This doesn't equate with either the schemata I've constructed about the way a collective narrative works, or my own personal experience. And so although I find myself continually returning to written word as a means of expression, and discover powerful ideas locked in my imagination, I have a great deal of trouble committing them to paper because the motion of individual achievement is in conflict with my expectation of a collective narrative that represses individualism in the interest of self-preservation.
Now I want to make it clear that I do not have any objection to exceptionalism, or to individual achievement either in real life or in literature. I get just as invested in stories of triumph against overwhelming odds as do most readers. Rather, as I was thinking about writing and storytelling, I began to realize one of the major reasons I have trouble writing stories that I find satisfying...or finishing stories that I do. Every story contains at least two seeds - the story of individual achievement, and the story of the collective narrative. In my mind, I tend to automatically assume the collective narrative carries more weight than the individual achievement, and so I arbitrarily limit myself not to what the central characters can do, but rather what they could do.
When writing, it's important to keep in mind that the collective narrative is a cohesive system, but it's not a closed system. There is no reason that a character can't challenge a very basic assumption of that narrative through the course of a story, and do so successfully. Interesting characters are liberated from the collective narrative, and given freedom to ignore, break, or even change the "rules" that govern them. Don't let anything limit your imagination! Just be careful about how you handle it - an incomplete narrative can destroy verisimilitude, interrupt the natural flow of a story, and potentially confuse and frustrate readers. If readers can't extrapolate the rules of the collective narrative from your story, then they'll be less able to appreciate when your central characters break those rules.
The main purpose of a fictional work, in a traditional sense, is to tell a story about a character, typically focusing on a single character more closely than others even in a story with a stable of protagonists. (I know this is a generalization, and that there are specific examples that break this trend, but I'm making no attempt to cover those specific cases - in my mind I'm addressing literature in general)
The "problem" I run into is that for a story to catch the attention of the readers, the character about with the story is written must be interesting in some way - exceptional in ability, motive, or circumstance...in short, a character who is expressed as an individual, rather than as a thread in a collective narrative.
The collective narrative is the "background" of a story that we, as readers, share with each other and with the characters of that story as being a common set of assumptions about the way the constructed reality of the story works. In general, these assumptions are causal and ubiquitous - in a story set in the modern day, the collective narrative tells us that (barring exceptional circumstances) turning a key in the ignition of a car will cause it to start. Flipping a switch will turn on a lightbulb. Educated people, white people, males, and urban/suburban-dwelling people typically enjoy certain privileges less likely to be shared by their less-educated, non-white, female, and rural counterparts. In a historical setting, the collective narrative might suggest different ethical norms, or different styles of dress. In a fantasy setting, the collective narrative might suggest that—so long as the prescribed formulae are observed—magic works, or that dragons eat peasants. The collective narrative provides the framework (often drawn from tropes already present in the genre, or normative cultural memes) through which the author, the characters, and the reader can come together and create a common understanding of the world the story exists in.
What makes most stories interesting, however, is that the central characters exist beyond the collective narrative - the characters, and consequently the stories, that we enjoy the most are decidedly non-normative. The stories we are drawn to are the stories of characters who defy normativity and pursue, either voluntarily or by necessity, goals that exist outside the realm of their typical experience.
Let's imagine the renown Lord of the Rings trilogy. Would Tolkien's famous story have been nearly as compelling if Frodo had remained in the Shire and pursued the normative goals of his hobbit community, rather than embarking on an adventure that would become a world-saving quest? I suspect most readers would say "hell no!" to this.
And yet, for me, this is one of the hardest parts of writing. Partly by upbringing, and partly by scholastic training (I studied sociology as an undergraduate), I have a strong tendency to seek out and identify institutions and cultural norms, and to try and intuit how they operate individually and collectively. I've developed certain schemata to a level of sophistication so that when a person mentions a certain action in a certain context, my mind immediately begins to identify cultural and institutional factors that would come to play, and probably series of events that would result from the interaction of the person' action, and the collective response to that action. In short, these institutions and norms create a sort of system that informs the collective narrative (in this case, the narrative being real life). And in most instances, the major purpose of the collective narrative is to preserve and iterate itself, to ensure the longevity of the society it reinforces.
With this in mind, every fictional story (and a great deal of non-fiction as well!) becomes, in addition to everything else it is, a story dealing directly with the role of an exceptional individual in a society with a self-defensive resistance to exception. It automatically becomes a narrative relating the conflict of the individual against the collective. By their roles and their actions, the central characters of a story challenge some of the basic assumptions of the collective narrative they exist in.
What still causes a great deal of dissonance to me is that so very often, the central characters of these stories are successful in their endeavors. This doesn't equate with either the schemata I've constructed about the way a collective narrative works, or my own personal experience. And so although I find myself continually returning to written word as a means of expression, and discover powerful ideas locked in my imagination, I have a great deal of trouble committing them to paper because the motion of individual achievement is in conflict with my expectation of a collective narrative that represses individualism in the interest of self-preservation.
Now I want to make it clear that I do not have any objection to exceptionalism, or to individual achievement either in real life or in literature. I get just as invested in stories of triumph against overwhelming odds as do most readers. Rather, as I was thinking about writing and storytelling, I began to realize one of the major reasons I have trouble writing stories that I find satisfying...or finishing stories that I do. Every story contains at least two seeds - the story of individual achievement, and the story of the collective narrative. In my mind, I tend to automatically assume the collective narrative carries more weight than the individual achievement, and so I arbitrarily limit myself not to what the central characters can do, but rather what they could do.
When writing, it's important to keep in mind that the collective narrative is a cohesive system, but it's not a closed system. There is no reason that a character can't challenge a very basic assumption of that narrative through the course of a story, and do so successfully. Interesting characters are liberated from the collective narrative, and given freedom to ignore, break, or even change the "rules" that govern them. Don't let anything limit your imagination! Just be careful about how you handle it - an incomplete narrative can destroy verisimilitude, interrupt the natural flow of a story, and potentially confuse and frustrate readers. If readers can't extrapolate the rules of the collective narrative from your story, then they'll be less able to appreciate when your central characters break those rules.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
"If your life had a face, I would punch it"
I saw Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World this week. I loved it.
There, movie review aside, now I can get into what I'm really thinking about.
One of the most interesting elements of the movie to me was the character of Scott Pilgrim himself. In both the movie and the graphic novels upon which they're based, Scott is portrayed generally as a loser, with a serious disconnect from reality. Rather than interacting with his environment directly the way his friends, band members, antagonists, and even his major love interest do (albeit some of them in exceptionally skewed ways - I mean, in addition to being burned pretty bad, you'd also have to be a bit touched to devote the most substantial energies of your life to pursuing revenge against someone who broke your heart), he is consistently portrayed as once-removed from real life - only filtering his experiences through a schema constructed from the debris of classic-era video games.
There's a part of me that wants to say, "What the hell, Scot Pilgrim? What the hell?" This mindset seems like a textbook display of dissociation and anomie (or is that a little strong?) adopted by someone who feels largely alienated by the world they exist in. This coupled with Scott's initial lack of meaningful personal relationships, personal property, his naivety (whether real or affected), and uncommonly bad memory (played mostly for comic effect, but also potentially indicative of greater psychosocial concerns) seem to indicate a personality who has surrendered all existential agency. The recurring videogame metaphor also serves to reinforce this interpretation by implying that Scott, like the reader or viewer, is also part of the audience - an observer of his own life.
From here, it's tempting to go into a blistering tirade about how Scott needs to break through these self-imposed illusions and face life directly, and to critique his path toward maturation across the 6 volumes of the graphic novel or the 2 hours of the movie (although this journey is less obvious on the big screen; I guess that's partly a result of the limitations of transposing a story between media!). But I have to take a breath and pause before I dive into that and remind myself that I do the precise same thing.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that while I enjoy videogames, I didn't get into them until late in my youth, so they never had an extremely high impact on the development of my personal schema. Music and sci-fi/fantasy novels were always more my thing. I should also say that Scott Pilgrim exists as an exceptional case - because of his status as a fictional character, Scott exists as an uncommonly extensive and well-crystallized example of the mindset I'm referring to. However, the fact remains that I, as a young male adult in my early-to-mid 20s, find myself commonly viewing my experiences through a lens cobbled together from themes, tropes, and symbolic constructs of the media with which I most familiar.
In many ways, this is a natural reaction - the enormous complexity of social relationships makes them overwhelming to face without some form of interpretive schema in place - the ages-old concepts of "family", "race", "nation", and "religion" are good examples of interpretive schemata people have used to make social realities into comprehensible, describable units. However, after reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and watching the movie, and then taking a look at my own experiences, I realize that in some instances these schemata become so comprehensive they can be used by the naive or disillusioned as substitutes for experienced reality; i.e., rather than Scott's experiences being compared to a videogame his life becomes a videogame, at least in his own mind.
What I wonder about is the scale and prevalence of these interpretive schemata. To be willing to accept a sufficiently complex schema as a substitute for experienced reality suggests an "experiential fluidity" stemming either from a disillusionment with the importance of one's experienced reality on one's life, or an intentional willingness to accept known fictions as equally (or nearly equally) valid as real events. Perhaps this is due to the explosion of telecommunications networks over the past 20 years, and the proliferation of easy-access news media - on a daily basis, many of us are exposed to a relentless barrage of stories we are expected to accept as true, but which fall largely outside our realm of experience (I remember how difficult it was to fathom the enormity of the Russian wildfires that have been burning through the summer until I was able to relate it to a fire-based experience from my own life, and then extrapolate outward).
Is there a generational component to this mindset? I'm in my early-to-mid 20s, as is Scott. Bryan Lee O'Malley, the author of the Scott Pilgrim series is less than 10 years removed from his protagonist. All three of us have grown up in the media environment I alluded to in the previous paragraph. However, the similarity in ages also points out the necessity for an external reference. Has this pattern of blurring the experience/interpretation line occurred in the past, and we're simply at a new iteration? This seems likely, but what social or cultural circumstances cause it to occur? Compared to past blurrings how does this iteration compare in terms of scale, or proliferation?
Speaking of proliferation, is this mindset prolific at all? There's certainly a personality type that is more likely to adopt this mindset - I think it's a safe argument to make that videogames, music, movies and television, art, and literature provides a more stimulating account than most real-life experiences (especially when you factor in special effects!), and this appeals strongly to imaginative and curious people, as well as those with high sensation-seeking tendencies. Is Scott one of those people? Am I? Is this tendency limited to people expressing those traits, or is it truly spreading throughout our culture as media outlets regularly expose broad audiences to visions of life that, even when mundane, far exceed the sensationalism of most people's experiences?
I have some suspicions on this topic, but mostly I have a handful of observations and another handful of questions. Scott Pilgrim is a character that could be given an interesting treatment from a sociological, psychological, or existential perspective (any senior English majors looking for a thesis project? =P), but that's not my intention with this post. I simply wanted to note how the Scott Pilgrim series revolves around a protagonist who's experience of reality has been replaced, in whole or in part, by an interpretive schema constructed primarily from elements of a fictional medium.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go defeat some Sandwich Gremlins so I can eat lunch!
There, movie review aside, now I can get into what I'm really thinking about.
One of the most interesting elements of the movie to me was the character of Scott Pilgrim himself. In both the movie and the graphic novels upon which they're based, Scott is portrayed generally as a loser, with a serious disconnect from reality. Rather than interacting with his environment directly the way his friends, band members, antagonists, and even his major love interest do (albeit some of them in exceptionally skewed ways - I mean, in addition to being burned pretty bad, you'd also have to be a bit touched to devote the most substantial energies of your life to pursuing revenge against someone who broke your heart), he is consistently portrayed as once-removed from real life - only filtering his experiences through a schema constructed from the debris of classic-era video games.
There's a part of me that wants to say, "What the hell, Scot Pilgrim? What the hell?" This mindset seems like a textbook display of dissociation and anomie (or is that a little strong?) adopted by someone who feels largely alienated by the world they exist in. This coupled with Scott's initial lack of meaningful personal relationships, personal property, his naivety (whether real or affected), and uncommonly bad memory (played mostly for comic effect, but also potentially indicative of greater psychosocial concerns) seem to indicate a personality who has surrendered all existential agency. The recurring videogame metaphor also serves to reinforce this interpretation by implying that Scott, like the reader or viewer, is also part of the audience - an observer of his own life.
From here, it's tempting to go into a blistering tirade about how Scott needs to break through these self-imposed illusions and face life directly, and to critique his path toward maturation across the 6 volumes of the graphic novel or the 2 hours of the movie (although this journey is less obvious on the big screen; I guess that's partly a result of the limitations of transposing a story between media!). But I have to take a breath and pause before I dive into that and remind myself that I do the precise same thing.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that while I enjoy videogames, I didn't get into them until late in my youth, so they never had an extremely high impact on the development of my personal schema. Music and sci-fi/fantasy novels were always more my thing. I should also say that Scott Pilgrim exists as an exceptional case - because of his status as a fictional character, Scott exists as an uncommonly extensive and well-crystallized example of the mindset I'm referring to. However, the fact remains that I, as a young male adult in my early-to-mid 20s, find myself commonly viewing my experiences through a lens cobbled together from themes, tropes, and symbolic constructs of the media with which I most familiar.
In many ways, this is a natural reaction - the enormous complexity of social relationships makes them overwhelming to face without some form of interpretive schema in place - the ages-old concepts of "family", "race", "nation", and "religion" are good examples of interpretive schemata people have used to make social realities into comprehensible, describable units. However, after reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels and watching the movie, and then taking a look at my own experiences, I realize that in some instances these schemata become so comprehensive they can be used by the naive or disillusioned as substitutes for experienced reality; i.e., rather than Scott's experiences being compared to a videogame his life becomes a videogame, at least in his own mind.
What I wonder about is the scale and prevalence of these interpretive schemata. To be willing to accept a sufficiently complex schema as a substitute for experienced reality suggests an "experiential fluidity" stemming either from a disillusionment with the importance of one's experienced reality on one's life, or an intentional willingness to accept known fictions as equally (or nearly equally) valid as real events. Perhaps this is due to the explosion of telecommunications networks over the past 20 years, and the proliferation of easy-access news media - on a daily basis, many of us are exposed to a relentless barrage of stories we are expected to accept as true, but which fall largely outside our realm of experience (I remember how difficult it was to fathom the enormity of the Russian wildfires that have been burning through the summer until I was able to relate it to a fire-based experience from my own life, and then extrapolate outward).
Is there a generational component to this mindset? I'm in my early-to-mid 20s, as is Scott. Bryan Lee O'Malley, the author of the Scott Pilgrim series is less than 10 years removed from his protagonist. All three of us have grown up in the media environment I alluded to in the previous paragraph. However, the similarity in ages also points out the necessity for an external reference. Has this pattern of blurring the experience/interpretation line occurred in the past, and we're simply at a new iteration? This seems likely, but what social or cultural circumstances cause it to occur? Compared to past blurrings how does this iteration compare in terms of scale, or proliferation?
Speaking of proliferation, is this mindset prolific at all? There's certainly a personality type that is more likely to adopt this mindset - I think it's a safe argument to make that videogames, music, movies and television, art, and literature provides a more stimulating account than most real-life experiences (especially when you factor in special effects!), and this appeals strongly to imaginative and curious people, as well as those with high sensation-seeking tendencies. Is Scott one of those people? Am I? Is this tendency limited to people expressing those traits, or is it truly spreading throughout our culture as media outlets regularly expose broad audiences to visions of life that, even when mundane, far exceed the sensationalism of most people's experiences?
I have some suspicions on this topic, but mostly I have a handful of observations and another handful of questions. Scott Pilgrim is a character that could be given an interesting treatment from a sociological, psychological, or existential perspective (any senior English majors looking for a thesis project? =P), but that's not my intention with this post. I simply wanted to note how the Scott Pilgrim series revolves around a protagonist who's experience of reality has been replaced, in whole or in part, by an interpretive schema constructed primarily from elements of a fictional medium.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go defeat some Sandwich Gremlins so I can eat lunch!
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
"Is this the party to whom I am speaking?"
Once in a while, I get a little snarky while I'm on the phone. Here are a couple of novelty greetings I've used in the past few months (don't worry - only on people I know!):
"Down-home Bait Shop and Fish Fry - you hook 'em and we cook 'em. How may I help you?"
"Roadside Bakery and Game Shop - we roll dough while you roll dice. This is Alan speaking."
(And just one more along those lines!) "Deep Blue Jewelers and Exotic Shark Aquarium - we make watches while you watch makos."
"I'm sorry, we're closed."
"This is 1534 - how may'st I help thee?"
What's the cleverest phone greeting you've ever said or heard?
"Down-home Bait Shop and Fish Fry - you hook 'em and we cook 'em. How may I help you?"
"Roadside Bakery and Game Shop - we roll dough while you roll dice. This is Alan speaking."
(And just one more along those lines!) "Deep Blue Jewelers and Exotic Shark Aquarium - we make watches while you watch makos."
"I'm sorry, we're closed."
"This is 1534 - how may'st I help thee?"
What's the cleverest phone greeting you've ever said or heard?
Friday, August 6, 2010
Ian Beckett Sutfield
"Any socialite can tell you that the art of interaction is a performative one. Like any actor, one must commit without investment or else be overwhelmed by the weight of expectation from the others. A relationship, by contrast, is quite the opposite. The pursuit of relationship demands investment with no guarantee—only the hope—of commitment. In a world of isolation perhaps we could all find contentment within ourselves, but as we live necessarily in the company of others, we must consider carefully how we choose to balance performance against affection - self-defense against selfishness. It is in the perfect tension between these two forces that allow us to transcend our own concerns and have any lasting impact on the world."
- -Ian Beckett Sutfield
- -Ian Beckett Sutfield
Thursday, August 5, 2010
My life would make an interesting "Syfy" original movie
Yesterday I ran into someone I am almost certain I went to school with about 10 years ago. A check of my 7th grade yearbook confirmed my suspicion (and means that I'm not just imagining the person!)...but aside from that, I haven't been able to find any record of this person at all - it's almost like they don't exist!
If this were a movie, over the weekend that person would probably find a way to get in touch with me through unexpected channels, and reveal themselves to be a spy, an agent for a clandestine organization with mysterious motives, or a space alien. This would in turn result in a tense, action-packed adventure (involving lots of chase scenes and explosions!) that would involve me in some convoluted plot to protect a diplomat's wife, a nation, or the entire world. Since this is real life, though, I guess it just means my search is at an end, and the mystery remains in place.
Oh well - the world needs some good (non-threatening) mysteries in it!
If this were a movie, over the weekend that person would probably find a way to get in touch with me through unexpected channels, and reveal themselves to be a spy, an agent for a clandestine organization with mysterious motives, or a space alien. This would in turn result in a tense, action-packed adventure (involving lots of chase scenes and explosions!) that would involve me in some convoluted plot to protect a diplomat's wife, a nation, or the entire world. Since this is real life, though, I guess it just means my search is at an end, and the mystery remains in place.
Oh well - the world needs some good (non-threatening) mysteries in it!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)