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NHL Draft Lottery: a Race to the Bottom

micahrt Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year when hockey fans have nothing better to do but decide who will win the Stanley cup based on zero games played, wait to hear what other meaningless hiring’s the Toronto maple leafs will make in order to appear like they are addressing issues, and discuss rule changes for the next year.

For those unfamiliar with how the draft order is selected, the 14 teams that do not make the playoffs are seeded in reverse order of how many points they earned in the regular season with the worst team picking first and the best picking last. In this situation you win by losing as the worst team would have the opportunity to draft a possible franchise player who could step into an NHL role sooner rather than later.

Simple enough? That’s just the beginning. The 14 teams are then entered into a lottery, with the worse teams having better chances of winning the lottery. Before the lockout, the winner of the lottery moved up four places in the draft with all the teams that it leap-frogged moving back one position. After the lockout, the winner automatically moved to the first draft position.

But why complicate things? Many say that the best solution is the most elegant one, the worst team should pick first, end of story. They need it don’t they? The issue is that would encourage teams to tank in order to draft higher (see Mario Lemieux) and no franchises audience wants to watch a race to the bottom. It’s bad for competition and it’s bad for the NHL. This is especially necessary this coming year with Connor McDavid, who has been heralded as the next greatest hockey human, almost assured to be the first overall pick. It is easy to imagine teams losing in order to get this kid.

That is why it is no surprise that the NHL recently adjusted the draft lottery odds, lowering the odd’s of the worst four teams while raising the odd’s of the better ten. If you are the worst team in the league, you still only have 20% of a chance of getting Connor McDavid.

Below are the draft lottery odds

Non-Playoff Team
(Fewest Pts. to Most)		 New Draft Lottery Odds Odds Under Former Allocation
1 20.0% 25.0%
2 13.5% 18.8%
3 11.5% 14.2%
4 9.5% 10.7%
5 8.5% 8.1%
6 7.5% 6.2%
7 6.5% 4.7%
8 6.0% 3.6%
9 5.0% 2.7%
10 3.5% 2.1%
11 3.0% 1.5%
12 2.5% 1.1%
13 2.0% 0.8%
14 1.0% 0.5%

Graph provided by NHL.com

But that’s OK, this Eichel kid is supposed to be another extraordinary player, the sabers would at least get him if someone else leapfrogs them in the standings, right? Well actually, the league also announced that there would be a lottery for the top three overall spots rather than just the first. So you can be monumentally awful and only pick fourth overall.

But is it enough? If the team that just comes up short of being the worst in the league in 2014-15 (NY Islanders) wins the first overall pick in the lottery, the odds that the worst team (Buffalo) wins the lottery for second pick increase. It is highly unlikely that they continue to fall.

I think there is a simpler solution that encourages teams to try to win while also giving an edge to the worse teams to win the lottery. You have 14 teams, the one with the best record should get one entry into the draft, the second best would then get two entries, and so on and so forth. This would leave the worst team with fourteen entries and a much lower advantage over its closest competition. The lottery should not be just for the first overall pick, or an arbitrarily assigned number of picks like three, but for every pick. This would make it much more risky to tank in a season, incentivizing teams to compete every year, while also giving a slight competitive advantage to legitimately bad teams.

Lorde – “Royals”

smathos Leave a comment

Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, or simply Lorde, is probably the most interesting female pop singer to grace the genre since the American power duo of Gaga/Perry in 2008.  Lorde burst onto the music scene in mid 2013 with her international megahit, “Royals”, originally released on Love Club EP (which she self-released on Sound Cloud) and produced by Joel Little.  “Royals” skyrocketed to the number one spot on the US Billboard Hot 100, and thrived there for nine consecutive weeks before going six times platinum.

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I don’t usually get pop songs stuck in my head for more than a few days, but “Royals” itched at my mind for several weeks- a feat usually only accomplished by great rock music.  I didn’t really begin to understand what Lorde was all about until I started watching her live performances online.  Her stage presence has a kind of primal rawness that I’ve never seen from a pop star.  She almost never opens her eyes when she sings, as if too overcome by her own music.  She doesn’t really dance, instead succumbing to seizure-like moments while clawing the air as if exorcising some kind of demon from within (probably the same demon plaguing Anthony Keidis).  She contorts violently in sync with the heavy kicks that pervade most of her music, as if constantly being electrocuted.  Her live performance is perpetually strained and frustrated.  She comes off as erotic, pissed off, and fascinating all at the same time.

Complimenting her enigmatic stage presence, and far more importantly, is her brilliant songwriting ability.  Throughout “Royals”, Lorde smartly transitions between two narrators:  a naïve child lusting for the glitz and glamour of fame, and a cynical realist who accepts her mundanely average lot in life.  The song establishes itself with a pretty basic tribal-sounding beat.  While technically simple, the sound of the drums/snaps is grandiose (just the perfect amount of reverb)- and in keeping with the song’s title.    Lorde begins by singing,

I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies.  I immediately think to myself, what the hell kind of sixteen year-old girl thinks like that?!  Normally cutting your teeth is a phrase reserved for street hustlers or battle-hardened war vets, not teeny boppers watching Romcoms.   Brilliant lyric.

No postcode envy – I wanted to believe Lorde was referencing some deep existential observation on culture or something (Post-Code Envy?), but then I realized that’s just what people outside the U.S. call zipcodes…whatever, cool lyric nonetheless!

Then the hip hop pre-chorus kicks in with the hi-hats on the sixteenths as Lorde starts name dropping brands and imagery associated with the rich.  Our naïve narrator takes us into the chorus as she abruptly snaps out of her silly daydreaming with the lyric; we’re not caught up in your love affair, and we’ll never be royals.

It is in the chorus that Lorde reveals her true lyrical genius.  This new narrator guides us through a bittersweet catharsis in which she accepts her mediocre place in the world.

It don’t run in our blood.  That kinda luxe just ain’t for us, we crave a different kind of buzz  – Whether intentional or not, some clever wordplay with the use of poor grammar, perhaps a blue collar reference?  The narrator begins to wake up and realize that what she really needs is what she already has- friends, family, spirituality, meaningful interpersonal relationships.  Life’s simplest, though sometimes most elusive pleasures.

Let me be your ruler.  You can call me Queen Bee.  And baby we’ll rule, and we’ll live that fantasy – The new narrator reaches full maturity as she redefines her new worldview.  Instead of allowing herself to get depressed over unattainable dreams, she optimistically decides to take ownership, or should I say Lordeship, over her lame reality.

My friends and I – we’ve cracked the code.

We count our dollars on the train to the party.

And everyone who knows us knows that we’re fine with this, we didn’t come from money.

This reinvented and reinvigorated narrator takes us into the second verse, confidently accepting her new kingdom of ordinary reality.  The music subtly builds with a really lovely vocal harmony and a cool reverse-synth line on the “and” of the beat.  The song’s drum ‘n bass minimalism is fantastic, and reminiscent of the Bristol sound of the early Nineties.  The song ends with a brief relapse into daydreaming with the pre-chorus, but we wake up, realizing once again that “we’ll never be royals”.

I highly recommend watching the music video in order to fully understand the genius of the song.  Directed by Joel Kefali, it’s a bizarrely simple montage of an ordinary middle class white dude doing ordinary middle class white dude things (minus a boxing match in the living room).  Sure it’s boring, but that’s exactly the kind of kingdom being referenced in the song.

Lorde’s universal message crosses all boundaries- if we cannot rule the world, we can always rule ourselves (echoing the genius of her Tears for Fears forebears).  When our vain, shallow quests for fame and fortune fail, we can at least be rulers of our own domains, no matter how uninteresting they are.  In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if “Royals” is secretly an indictment of our own narcissistic tendencies as a culture.  Perhaps Lorde is just making fun of all of us who elate in our disposable social media empires of food pictures, buzzfeed shares, and status updates at the gym.

It’s utterly mind-blowing Lorde wrote this when she was sixteen.  She is clearly wise beyond her years.  She’s a complicated chick and it shows.  Unlike her contemporaries such as Iggy Izaelea or Charlie XCX, Lorde processes her newfound fame in a far more intellectual and cynical way rather than merely celebrating it.  With the exception of maybe Aerosmith’s “Eat the Rich”, Lorde’s “Royals” is the most intriguing and powerful slam of not only the rich and famous, but of us all.

Tom and Justin Do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

Tom Mitsos Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you’ve certainly heard about the ice bucket challenge. Basically, pour some ice water on yourself and nominate other people to do the same to raise awareness for ALS.

The rules state if you are nominated and do not complete the challenge within 24 hours, you must donate $100. I plan on donating anyway despite doing the challenge, but I encourage everyone to do the same.

My good friend Justin Tiemeyer did the challenge with me, and we relived the 2014 Winter Classic by donning the jerseys of both teams and experiencing the cold we felt on that day.

If you’d like to donate, you can visit the ALS Association website.

Anthony Mantha and the Project Karamazov Missed Opportunity

Tom Mitsos Leave a comment

Like fellow The Longest Wind contributor Stephan Mathos, I too had an opportunity to help Justin Tiemeyer in his #ProjectKarmazov quest. While Stephan’s story ended up being a bit of bad luck, mine was more of a missed opportunity and an unfortunate circumstance.

On July 4, I had been tasked with covering the Detroit Red Wings development camp in Traverse City for Michigan Hockey Magazine. At the development camp, Red Wings’ recent draft picks and young prospects come to Traverse City for a week of drills, workouts and scrimmages, as they prepare for the next step in their hockey careers.

About half of the participants were Red Wings draft picks and signees, and the other half were junior players who were not eligible to be drafted yet, but the Red Wings had their eye on them. So, guys like Dylan Larkin, Dominic Turgeon, Tomas Nosek and coach Mike Babcock’s son Michael Babcock would all be attending the camp.

Credit: NHL.com

My future BFF. Credit: NHL.com

However, the player I was most looking forward to meeting was Anthony Mantha. Anthony absolutely tore it up in one of the Canadian junior leagues this year scoring around a goal-per-game pace. He’s the most highly touted prospect the Red Wings have had in a long time, mostly due to the fact the Red Wings have made the playoffs for the past 23 years and don’t usually get the luxury of high draft picks. The sick thing was Anthony fell all the way to 20th when the Red Wings snagged him in 2013.

But enough of me gushing over the next great Red Wing. After a two-and-a-half hour drive, I arrived in Traverse City early on the Fourth of July excited for the opportunity to speak with future Red Wings. When I told Justin I was covering the development camp and who would be there, he told me this would be a perfect #ProjectKarmazov opportunity. Most die-hard and even some casual fans know who Anthony is, and for those who don’t, they certainly will once he makes it to the NHL.

I told Justin I couldn’t make any promises. I was there, after all, to do an assignment. I wasn’t going to Traverse City on my own accord. I was there representing Michigan Hockey Magazine and needed to act accordingly. I didn’t know what the itinerary of the camp would be — if there was going to be one-on-one time with the players, how many other media members would be there or if Red Wings PR would be watching my every move making sure these kids don’t say anything they aren’t supposed to. I wanted to help Justin, but to make a personal request when I was there to do another job was the unfortunate circumstance I spoke of earlier.

Anthony was in the group of prospects that took to the ice first for drills, so his group would be the first the other media members would talk to afterward. As the players started to file off the ice, we made our way down to the locker room area. Once I entered the locker room, that familiar stench of sweaty pads filled my nostrils, the same it did when I covered my first professional hockey game just two months earlier.

I quickly found Anthony. I knew what he looked like from pictures, but it wasn’t hard to find him on this day. All of the members of the media quickly formed a half circle around Anthony and his locker room spot. He was, of course, the most highly touted Red Wings draft pick in some time, and it was a no-brainer all members of the media would want to speak with him first.

I knew this was not my time to fulfill Justin’s request. Surrounded by other members of the media who also have jobs to do, it was not my place to waste their time asking Anthony to read lines from a book. I finished my interview with Anthony and went on to the next prospect. I promised myself I would make my way back to Anthony under two circumstances 1) He was no longer talking to any other member of the media and 2) I had finished talking to everyone else I wanted to interview.

I remember speaking with Tomas, a recent signee from the Czech Republic. Like many foreign players, his English wasn’t the best, but it was a lot better than my Czech. I remember looking over to where Anthony’s locker was and saw him undressing by himself. No media members, no PR members, nobody.

This was my chance.

I told myself as soon as I was done interviewing Tomas, I would head over to Anthony’s locker and ask him to help my friend. Unfortunately, it was a struggle because Tomas didn’t understand half of what I was asking him.

I finished up my interview with Tomas, and quickly headed over to Anthony’s locker, but he was no longer there. He had either started to shower or had already gone upstairs to begin the off-ice workouts the team had planned for his group. But either way, my opportunity was gone. I would have felt weird asking a PR member to get him for me as I no longer needed him for hockey-related reasons. I had an opportunity, and I missed it.

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to interview another professional athlete in former World Series champion Steve Edlefsen. I didn’t tell Justin about this one until after it happened, and didn’t even think about it when I was interviewing Steve. This one would have worked perfectly, because there were no other members of the media there. I had one-on-one time with Steve, but it completely slipped my mind. I had another opportunity and missed it.

One of these days, I will help Justin. One of these days.

Project Karamazov: Dirk Manning

Justin Tiemeyer 1 Comment
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Dirk Manning. Credit: Dirk Manning.

One of my most exciting experiences from the year I lived in New York City was attending the 2008 New York Comic Con at Javits Center in Hell’s Kitchen. I got the autographs of several highly influential creators – including those of highly influential X-Men scribe Chris Claremont and infamous novelist Orson Scott Card – attended panels for Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Frank Miller’s The Spirit, and on Sunday I even bumped into The Daily Show‘s host Jon Stewart, who’d toted his kids along for children’s day. I showed up to let my geek flag fly, but I was also a man with a mission – to break into the comic writing business. The climax of my journey was when I mustered up the courage to walk over to then Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada and say, “Hello. My name is Justin Tiemeyer and I’d like to write for Marvel Comics.” Quesada’s response was priceless – he looked up, sighed, and said, “You have to go through the submission process just like everybody else.”

Writer Dirk Manning has had his own fair share of comic con run-ins with big names from the comic book publishing industry as described in Write or Wrong: A Writer’s Guide to Creating Comics, his autobiographical how-to guide for aspiring writers in the comic book medium. His conclusion: Don’t do it just like everybody else, because everybody else is not a paid comic writer. Most successful writers are successful only because they published their own independent comics long before Marvel or DC ever knew who they were. Manning cites Robert Kirkman’s Battle Pope, Brian Michael Bendis’s Lili, Garth Ennis’s Troubled Souls, Grant Morrison’s Zenith, and Alan Moore’s Maxwell the Magic Cat as examples (36). For Manning, it is not about spending your time mired down by the submission process of the Big Two (DC and Marvel) as Mr. Quesada suggested. In fact, he goes so far as to note that these editors cannot legally review unsolicited submissions due to intellectual property concerns (34). Manning’s key to success is making fully realized comics today. After all, what better proof could you provide an editor who wants to know if you can plot and script comics on the company’s dime than a finished comic produced on your own?

Manning’s heftiest contribution to the canon of recent literature is Nightmare World, a series of 52 horror comics originally published online at the Image Comics online imprint Shadowline, Ink. The anthology covers a variety of horror subgenres, from deals with demons (“For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”) to delinquent artificial intelligence (“Extraordinary Machine”) to hitch-hiking murderers (“Movin’ Up”), all of which contribute to a grand unified story arc combining Lovecraftian mythology with Biblical imagery focused through Dante’s Inferno and traversing the apocalypse, the rapture, and all that follows. A couple of my favorite stories are “Knee Deep in the Dead” – a comedic critique of slasher films (and particularly slasher sequels!) from Friday the 13th to Halloween – and “Hungry Like The Wolf” – a stick figure werewolf tale and also one of the more brilliant pieces in the collection due to its creative use of pictures as a substitute for speech and inner monologue. A large portion of the Nightmare World series has been published in three volumes by Image Comics which are available for purchase on Amazon.com.

In a previous draft of this post, I went into a lengthy description of how Manning is the unicorn of comic writers – a unique type of individual that few will ever encounter and that those who have encountered are not likely to encounter ever again. This is because Manning was raised on novels, novellas, and short stories, not comic books and graphic novels. In an interview with Newsarama, Manning listed some of his favorite authors as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Edgar Allen Poe, Franz Kafka and George Orwell. Furthermore, with the exception of The Jovian in Nightmare World, Manning has no desire to write superhero stories. In this sense, Manning and I are different. My dream of being a comic book writer has always included writing big stories about my favorite comic book heroes. For Marvel, I wanted to write a post-Avengers vs. X-Men story about Cyclops abducting one-time friend Henry McCoy and travelling across space in search of Phoenix relics from other civilizations with the hope of finally reuniting with the great love of his youth, Jean Grey. I also had a pitch for Batman that I called “The Last Alfred Pennyworth Story.” It should be pretty clear that I am more of a horse than a unicorn. I want what every other aspiring comic writer wants – to have a cushy work-for-hire gig with Marvel or DC with the opportunity of developing your favorite characters for five or ten years. Manning is unique because he is repelled by that possible future and the likelihood of his creativity being stifled by excessive editorial oversight. For Manning, the greatest thing you could do is own your characters, develop them how they are meant to be developed, and make every sacrifice in making certain that your individuality is represented in the sovereignty of your own stories.

There’s more to Dirk Manning than just Write or Wrong and Nightmare World. There’s the noteworthy spiritual successor to Nightmare World titled Tales of Mr. Rhee, an unfinished web comic titled Farseeker, and several other stories for such titles as Dia de los Muertos and Critter. For more information on Manning, feel free to visit the writer’s web site DirkManning.com, and for all the latest news follow Manning on Twitter @DirkManning.

 

ZEROBOUND

One of the main things I hoped to accomplish with #ProjectKaramazov was to distance the project from critiques that it is an egoistic and self-serving journey where I bask in the delight of interacting with my favorite celebrities regarding my favorite book by including information about organizations that help bring about measurable good in the world. When I asked Dirk Manning if he had a favorite charity, non-profit, or other philanthropic organization that he’d like to promote, he spoke of the charity of “paying it forward.” If Manning had his way, we would all hold this one axiom in our hearts: “Do one unsolicited act of goodness for someone every day.”

Though Manning himself did not hip me to Zerobound, I thought this organization might be worthy of looking into as a means of accomplishing Manning’s ideal of a daily dose of goodness. Founders Sabrina Norrie and Kelli Space tasked themselves with finding a creative way to give students a path out of loan debt. Space had made headlines years ago when she started a web site called Two Hundred Thou where she sought out public donations in order to conquer the $200,000 in student loan debt she acquired while attending Northeastern University. Following Space’s example, Zerobound is a crowd-funding platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo where student debtors pledge to do volunteer work at local charities and nonprofits in exchange for financial pledges from their community that are directly applied to the student’s loan debt.

If you find yourself with the ability to make a contribution toward a better future for college graduates, head over to Zerobound and make a pledge to a current campaign. If you find yourself overburdened by the yoke of excessive student loan debt and strongly inclined toward volunteerism, follow the same link and start your own campaign. Comic writer Dirk Manning was able to get the first volume of his series Tales of Mr. Rhee into comic book stores with the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign. With somewhere near 70% of the population of the United States suffocating under the force of debt, Zerobound hopes to kick start a few lives, and perhaps a struggling economy in the process, by helping graduates help themselves get out of debt.

We should all be inspired by the imperative to do a good deed daily. It should serve as an excuse to get creative in helping those around us. Norrie and Space were following this moral rule, whether they intended to or not, when they founded Zerobound. I don’t want to do anything to stifle your ability to creatively help those in need in your community, but if you’re looking for a resource to bring your giving to a new level, you could find much worse places to go than Zerobound.

Since I’ve Been Loving You 360 – Original Studio Version

smathos Leave a comment

I present to you the original studio version from Led Zeppelin III (Atlantic, 1970). The song sounds almost out of place on what is largely an acoustic oriented record. How Page and Plant could conceive a greasy 7 minute working-class blues jam whilst peacefully tucked away in Bron-Yr-Aur cottage still remains a great mystery to me. Despite the serenity of the English countryside, Zeppelin still somehow found the requisite angst to record a fairly pissed off blues rocker.

A little backstory: My first exposure to the studio version was on a pair of small laptop speakers in a hotel room in Roswell, New Mexico. It was early 2010 and my Navy flight training required me to detach to Roswell for a few weeks. My good friends Justin Tiemeyer, Adam Friedli, and Tom Mitsos came to visit me and we made a spring break out of it. It had been only two or three months since my initial discovery of Led Zeppelin, and it was Justin who introduced me to the studio version on his mixtape Bottomless.  Where better a place to explore Led Zeppelin than the deserts of the American Southwest? I really liked this version, but I didn’t fully understand it. Having been wildly addicted to the incendiary Song Remains the Same live version, I was a little confused by how quiet and subdued the studio version sounded- but like a fine wines, cigars or Radiohead albums, the greatness took time to grasp.

The song kicks off with that unmistakable 4 note blues riff (which Page actually borrowed from Jeff Beck on The Yardbirds “New York City Blues”). Page continues to play a very mellow and cautious intro (likely on the neck tone pickup) up until about 0:48 when he unleashes that signature hammer-on fireball riff just to let you know he means business.

The dominant cracks of Bonham’s drums provide a necessary weight to an otherwise quiet track. Plant’s airy vocals begin unassumingly, and provide the track with an almost meditative calmness. The chorus bursts in, driven by John Paul Jones’ honky organ playing- which is actually wilder and more pronounced here than on The Song Remains the Same. By the second verse, Plant lights the fire in his voice which presents a welcome contrast to the timidity of the first verse.

Page’s solo begins with a ferocious torrent of hammer-ons down the pentatonic scale (a phrase occasionally used by David Gilmour, but at a fraction of the tempo). Page’s solo is a constant battle between sloppy shreds and cleanly executed blues riffs. The sloppy/clean thing Page does on the solo sounds carefully rehearsed, however I was impressed to discover that Page actually recorded the entire solo in one take! The solo ends with a very staccato rendition of that timeless Chuck Berry riff and then a moment of silence to let the flames die out.

Plant cuts in and takes the song to its darkest and most desperate moment when he sings “make-a-life a draaag!” at 6:06. How a rock singer can both growl and sing at the same time is anyone’s guess. Page cooly arpeggiates over alternating Cm and Fm shapes while being guided by Bonham and Jones’ rhythm machine. The song ends after Plant pleads for “just one mo!” before he loses his worried mind for the first of many, many more times.

The Song Remains the Same version is heavy and sloppy, whereas the studio version is cool, precise, and has a brilliant sense of space. This one breathes, whereas the former is one long exhalation of fire and venom.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Since I’ve Been Loving You 360 when I explore a lesser known live version from How The West Was Won (Atlantic, 1972).

Campaign Stories: Wiliken 20

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

Wiliken wiped sweat from his brow as he reached the top of the hill. It was a sunny day and the sun had sapped a great deal of his strength out of him, but they were almost there.

Jean-Baptiste had already begun his descent down the hill before either Ugarth or Grace had managed to reach the top. Wiliken felt a certain level of freedom when he traveled away from the city. Whenever he felt that Douglas wasn’t watching him, he felt that he could breathe easily. There was a part of the githzerai that felt anxious that the bard had not followed them. This mission was normally Douglas’s sort of adventure, and yet he had stayed behind in the city. It was curious.

As they approached, Wiliken felt a moment of uncertainty. There were two towering she-bears standing with tensed muscles and their backs turned to the adventurers. Wiliken didn’t know what was more disturbing – the fact that the bears didn’t seem to notice the party approaching or the fact that the party had decided to sneak up on a pair of battle-ready she-bears. The bears were transfixed on a point in front of them, a point that Jean-Baptiste had summoned them in order to guard, a tiny tear in reality.

When Jean-Baptiste had arrived the previous night, he’d wanted to lead a party back out into the wilderness that very evening. Jenkins had convinced him to rest and wait out the storm.

“The she-bears can handle guard duty until morning,” Jenkins had said.

“I suppose you’re right,” Jean-Baptiste had responded. “And if they are overrun, I will know.”

It was clear that Jean-Baptiste was unhappy, so Jenkins had called a council on the matter in the middle of the night. Jean-Baptiste recounted his story of being deep in meditation when he’d heard a deep rubbing sound. He’d felt the anomaly before he’d even seen it, a small gash in space much like a knife wound in flesh. Out of it had popped a small creature the size of a house cat which immediately began to devour any living plant, insect or small rodent nearby. Jean-Baptiste had killed the beast immediately, for the creature had disgusted his natural senses just as the gash in the open air had. The creature was no longer a threat, but Jean-Baptiste could see that the tiny gash was growing. He told the group that he had first attempted to close the portal. When he couldn’t he cast a ritual that would slow its growth and decided that he may need help.

The she-bears parted as they walked by. When everyone was present Jean-Baptiste touched the nose of each sentinel gently and released them from their duty. They bounded off into the forest, never to be seen again.

When Jean-Baptiste had originally described the creature, the others had speculated as to its origin. Ugarth had remained silent. As he approached the creature, he became clearly disturbed. His composure fell apart immediately and in a fit of rage he began stomping the dead animal with the heel of his foot before collapsing onto the ground in despair.

“What is wrong with the orc?” Wiliken asked.

“These creatures,” said Grace. “I believe they may be the same beasts that killed Ugarth’s people. He was once the king of the orcs, you know?”

Grace went on to explain that some of the people in the party had been there during the fall of Ugarth’s kingdom. They had been uncertain where the creatures had come from, but they had assumed that it was an Iuzian attack, some sort of biological warfare.

“But these portals aren’t Iuzian,” Wiliken suggested. “They’re far too primal, too asymmetrical. They almost look like they were created on accident. Far too crude for an empire with advanced teleportation capabilities.”

“I believe you’re right,” Grace said.

Shortly after they’d arrived, the portal popped shut, leaving no evidence of its previous existence. The party returned to the Felshore knowing nothing more than they had the previous evening, but Jenkins held another council just the same. When they explained what they had seen, Jenkins said, “If there are other such portals, I believe I can track them down. I will need the help of our githzerai friend.”

“You will have it,” Wiliken said.

Ugarth, Grace and Jean-Baptiste pledged their support as well in the search for the next portal.

“Would you care to join us, Douglas?” Wiliken asked. The human stood next to Jenkins with his arms crossed. He considered for a moment before saying, “I have more pressing things to do here in town.”

The others parted to make preparations for their departure, but Wiliken lingered behind.

“Can you give us some privacy, please?” Jenkins asked Douglas. Douglas looked at the wizard angrily before stomping off.

“How may I be of service?” Wiliken asked.

“You have been developing some uncanny abilities lately, it seems,” Jenkins said. “Heightened powers of the mind, one might call them. Don’t be frightened. Any wizard of a high enough caliber can sense these things. What I want from you is to meditate on the portal you saw today. From your description, I will pinpoint our location and send the party out to investigate.”

“I wish to join the investigation party,” Wiliken said.

“That can be arranged,” Jenkins said. “I suppose you’ll want some time to prepare as well.”

Wiliken had been dismissed, but he lingered behind for a moment uncertainly.

“Is there something else you would like to talk about?”

“I fear that my son has become too powerful for us to track,” Wiliken said.

“That is disappointing.”

“But I think there is a way to find him,” Wiliken said. “I believe that if I were to travel back in time I could stop him before he becomes a threat, and I believe that you are the only wizard in the world who has the power to send me back.”

“I will have to think on that,” Jenkins said. “At the moment I am drained. I don’t believe I could even send you ten minutes into the past.” Jenkins looked Wiliken over. “I will need a few items. Perhaps when you return from this mission we can discuss acquiring these things.”

Jenkins might have known about Wiliken’s newly developed powers, but the githzerai felt certain that the wizard didn’t know everything he’d seen in his visions. And he didn’t need to know either. Wiliken had no concern at that moment for tracking down his son. That was only a means to a higher level of trust in the Felshore. What he really wanted was to save his wife, to bring her back to the land of the living, and to do so he would need Jenkins’ time magics.

Campaign Stories is continued in Wiliken 21.

Genesis 7: Watching TV

Justin Tiemeyer 2 Comments

Seven. I only got seven chapters in before Genesis broke me.

When I was in seminary I learned that Genesis is a tricky book. After all, the book begins with two competing creation stories each featuring a different order of events. My way of dealing with that, for the purposes of blogging, was to suggest that the order was poetic. The two accounts were a pair of literary methods that each emphasized the importance of humankind in different ways.

For six chapters I’ve worked to package Genesis into a unified narrative; on the seventh chapter, I rested.

The original goal I set for my contributions to #TroubletheWaters (which is by no means a requirement for other contributors) was to approach the text honestly and courageously, letting the words speak to me without the noise of my own prior knowledge and the teachings of others. I had been doing pretty well at this endeavor, but then, like I said earlier, Genesis broke me.

It’s not like I’m saying me and Genesis are done forever. I actually harbor quite a deep love for the Hebrew scriptures. When I say that Genesis 7 broke me, I mean that I am no longer able to read the Bible as one continuous and consistent drama. In other words, I am no longer attempting to see a meta-narrative in this text, one story that binds all of the other stories into a logical, cohesive whole. The unavoidable truth that we find in the book of Genesis, as in many other books of scripture, is that multiple voices are found therein and they each speak a different tale for a different purpose, and what they are saying is quite often logically inconsistent.

Genesis reads like my mom and dad’s arguments while watching TV. At my parents’ house there is invariably some sort of CSI or Law and Order playing on the screen in their living room, and my dad will be certain that a guest actor is the same person he remembers from some earlier show like Columbo, Perry Mason, or Rockford Files. My mom will chime in claiming that the actor my father has in mind died two years ago and that my dad is really thinking of so-and-so from Murphy Brown. After that, they just go at it. The last time I witnessed such a dispute I actually looked into the actor’s history using IMDB (internet movie database). When I settled things, I expected my parents to be happy, but in actuality they seemed far more annoyed than relieved. What I had perceived (perhaps wishfully) as a collective pursuit for the sake of understanding was for them a competitive sport, a sport that I had just ruined.

The voices in Genesis compete with one another as well, each claiming to have access to a more true, more compelling version of events than the other. They agree that the subject matter is that of Noah, his wife, their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives – though none of them can seem to remember the names of the female protagonists – how they lived in an age of violence, that God’s hatred of violence is the reason for the flood that will destroy all life on Earth, and that God helps eight humans and a whole mess of animals to escape extinction in an ark. What they don’t agree on is big. Dad thinks no humans live for longer than 120 years, but mom keeps saying that Noah was 600 years old when the flood hit. Uncle Howie says there were two of each animal, but your mom (his sister) corrects him that there were more of the domesticated animals.

“They had to eat,” she shouts.

Uncle Howie shouts louder, “They were vegetarians!”

Your cousin Willy interjects that there were extra birds too.

“Nobody asked you!” everyone else shouts in unison. Because of the power of their conviction Willy doesn’t even raise the question of what happened to all of the fish, but it was certainly on his mind how God intended to drown all the fish.

Some of you may join me in seeing this text as irresponsible. My reasoning is that the argument among the various Biblical sources as to the age of this or the headcount of that is so loud that it covers up any account of the suffering experienced by all the people who weren’t privileged enough to get on the boat, all those “wicked people.”

I don’t claim to know what it was like to be one of these people who drowned because of God’s wrath, but I have lived through a flood. On the day I proposed to Amy, April 19 of 2014, the flood waters began to rise in Lowell. You get used to water pooling in low places when it is raining, and it is not that uncommon in Michigan, as elsewhere, to drive through water that might just be too deep for your car to safely get through. These are common, every day fears. But when the puddles start pooling together and creeping ever so slowly toward you, it is a different story all together. By the time we evacuated, many of the roads we’d normally take had already become impassible, and I was struck with a feeling of terror. If we couldn’t get out of town, what could we do? Drive to the highest point in town and hope that we could wait it all out in our car? And what if the flood waters reached us there…

I have the beginning of an understanding of what the flood might have been like. There are some important differences between my story and the ancient flood story. The Genesis account depicts a time before there were emergency early warning systems or motor vehicles that could spirit you away from the floodplain. Most importantly, those who attempted to escape had nowhere to escape to. I never had cause to give up hope, but when a flood can submerse even the peaks of the highest mountains you are faced with a completely different situation. The only thing these people had to look forward to was an ugly death by drowning.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that there was ever a time when all of humanity deserved to die. I have trouble listening to a story about the corruption of every species on the planet without imagining exceptions, and I’m not talking about Noah and his family. Am I to believe that even out there among the wicked there was not a single soul willing to help a neighbor out from under an overturned oxcart? Is it possible that there was not a single champion of mercy available to carry the injured to a place of relative safety? While we’re talking about Noah and company staying high and dry on a luxury cruise with all the cute little animals, God is murdering humankind. That includes children. That includes babies. And, yes, that includes the unborn in their mothers’ wombs. Perhaps you’re OK with God perpetrating the largest scale mass murderer in the history of everything – we’re told they had it coming, after all – but how does it feel to know that God just aborted every last innocent, ensouled, helpless human fetus in this same fit of rage?

This is not something to turn away from. This is something we need to think about every time we talk about a righteous God delivering a great hero of faith from destruction. This is something not depicted in our pretty children’s picture Bibles, but nonetheless we must consider the human cost of God’s wrath. To do anything less would be pretty darned irresponsible.

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus

Genesis 6: The (First) War to End All Wars

Justin Tiemeyer Leave a comment

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the ever-so-familiar tale told in Genesis 6, I want to take the route of William Shakespeare and begin with a dramatis personae of the factions of intelligent life involved in this story.

First of all, there is God, who is also called Lord [Gen. 2:4 NRSV, etc.], but whose real name is unknown, unpronounceable, and represented by the tetragrammaton “YHWH.” God is the creator of everything that we know, or the one who organized, ordered, and conquered the chaos, depending on your interpretation of Genesis 1. God is composed of spirit (“a mighty wind”), has knowledge of good and evil, and possesses immortality. We know this because after God blessed Adam and Eve with the divine spirit, and directly after they ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God cast humankind from the garden lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever like God and God’s droogs [3:22]. Nobody has called God all-powerful yet – of course, nobody has dared call God weak either – but we know that the creation / organization of the cosmos required a power much greater than that we currently have access to.

Next are the children of God, and I’m not referring to what Sunday School teachers call everybody who goes to your church. These are the beings that have only been referred to by the plural pronoun “us” up to this point [1:26, etc.]. It would seem that these mysterious other divine figures are part of a heavenly court ruled by God. Without much to go on, it would make sense that these beings are similar to God insofar as they are spirit, possess knowledge of good and evil, and have eternal life. As God’s children, it would seem that they derive their power, in some way, from God. These eternal beings may be the gods of other tribes, seen as local governors under the supervision of YHWH. They may be the personified / deified concepts that God created: Day [1:5], Night [1:5], Sky [1:8], Earth [1:10], Sea [1:10], etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if these are the same beings that are later transformed into angels because of codes against idolatry / worshiping other gods. One quality that they seem to exhibit which we haven’t seen God get into yet is the power to take on the flesh and appear as human, because in Genesis 6:2 they begin to breed with the daughters of humankind.

What a great transition, because humankind is the next on our list. I know this just might #TroubletheWaters, but it is beginning to look like there are two different kinds of human on earth. Why don’t we call this a hypothesis? There are children of delight, the garden-born / garden-descended humans (Eden = “delight”) who have had direct experiences of God because they are, in some sense, God’s chosen, the high priests and priestesses chosen to intercede on behalf of humankind. They are composed of flesh, spirit, and knowledge of good and evil, and prior to Genesis 6 the spirit within them allowed them to live to very old age. According to Genesis 5:5, Adam lived to the ripe age of 930 before he died. The rest of the humans may not have been blessed with the spirit and may not have lived very long. The first we learn of the children of wandering is when Cain is cast out into the land of Nod (“wandering”) [4:16], and we must presume that they are present in Genesis 6 as God plans to destroy all of humanity. We could easily call these people others, outsiders, or foreigners. All we know is that they have flesh. Maybe they had knowledge of good and evil. Maybe not.

Finally, there are the Nephilim, a newly introduced race as of Genesis 6 comprised of the offspring resulting from the interbreeding of the children of God and humankind. Genesis 6:4 reads, “These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” Half-divine, half-human, we can assume that they are composed of both flesh and spirit, probably the knowledge of good and evil, but almost certainly not immortality. From my understanding of the heroes of old, the Nephilim appeared to be larger, more powerful versions of normal humans.

Now that the players have entered the field, I can mention that Genesis 6 appears to be yet another chapter emphasizing God’s desire for non-violence. This theme is so prevalent in #TroubletheWaters that you’d think I went into reading scripture with the hopes of converting some ancient words to my cause, but I think it is so obvious in the text that anyone who is willing to do an honest, unencumbered reading will see what I am talking about. If you look only as far as Genesis 6:11-13, it should be clear:

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them…”

In an odd, yet strangely familiar, narrative the humans and the Nephilim have turned their ways to violence, probably engaging in war over land, humans against Nephilim, humans against humans, Nephilim against Nephilim, human / Nephilim armies against human / Nephilim armies. I’m sure that if you look into some of the secondary literature of the time, you’ll find every possible iteration of these combatants and possibly a whole slew of other challengers. God is not happy with this aggression. It is interesting that violence is described as corruption of the flesh, which I presume to mean infection, rot, puss, decay, and maybe even leprosy. If you imagine the weapons that would have been used in these early wars, slings, arrows, crude blades and blunt weapons, you know that there was probably a severe lack of “clean kills” on the battlefield. Rather, many warriors probably crawled into a corner and died hours, days, or weeks later as their wounds festered, their cause of death: sepsis, the corruption of flesh that shuts down a person’s organs. With this understanding we see corruption as not just a metaphor for violence, but also an effect that is brought about by violence.

The reason I think this whole story is familiar is because the comparisons to the Greek epic Homer’s Iliad, among other ancient stories, are screaming out to me. A parent god and pantheon of lesser gods / children of god / godlings interfere in mortal affairs – CHECK! Heroes of great strength who claim lineage from the gods themselves are the warriors of old that are sung about in our songs – CHECK! There are normal people there fighting but you’ll never know their names or sing their songs – CHECK!

In another way, this story is eerily similar to our own recent past. When God revokes the spirit, drastically reducing the lifespan of humankind, and decides to destroy humanity and creation, we see a story comparable to the one that unfolded in World War I. This is the war to end all war. During the first half of the 20th century, the idea was to end German militarism in order to end all war. In Genesis 6, it is to destroy all humanity, all flesh, for flesh leads to violence. The end result is the same: somebody thought that it would be possible to end all violence by enacting the biggest act of violence one could ever dream of.

The dramatic irony is astonishing at this point. If God’s destruction of humankind had been successful in getting rid of violence, would humanity have ever fought World War I, not to mention every war before that and every war since? Would people be talking about gun deaths, domestic violence, or the ever more pervasive problems of abject poverty (which people are not talking about enough!)? No. We know already, at the beginning of Noah’s arc that God fails miserably with his half-cocked plan to rid the world of violence.

I don’t want to get too far ahead of the narrative, but there is a lesson to be learned from God’s failure, and I’m sure we’ll come to it before too long. For now, I want to return to the second half of Genesis 6 where, similar to the genealogical story of Genesis 5, Noah is set up as the new Adam. What is interesting about understanding Noah as the new Adam is that we learn just how impossibly different the humankind that we interact with on a daily basis are from “the first human” with whom we tend to claim kinship. (Are any of us even descended from Adam and Eve, the children of delight, or are we wanderers too?) Adam is blessed with the spirit of God, making him much closer in composition to the Nephilim, the giants and heroes of old, than to us. But Noah is the first human to be denied the spirit of God and live to have a tale told about him, and it is with Noah that we should feel familiarity. Noah’s probably met ancestors of his that were hundreds of years old, and this is what his expectations had been for himself and his children as well, until God got angry, and now Noah would be a lucky man to live past his hundredth birthday. This short life is the doom we all face. The line of Adam ended with Lamech. We are the children of Noah, the children of an early death.

Further Reading:

Letter to a Confused Young Christian at Political Jesus