Crafting an Avatar
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Visual Information in Video Games

"Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray uses a concept familiar to most gamers: What you do in the video game affects the reality of your avatar or in-game character. And yet the user is themselves unscathed, free to tell or not the number of chickens they kicked in Fable or prostitutes they beat to death in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In comparison with the player’s default world, the game is a consequence-free environment. Likewise Dorian is allowed a magical, isometric view of his character. His actions are saved onto the image of himself. Video game character skills and abilities evolve according to player choices, usually based on the role-playing game metric of experience points (XP). Visually the XP are small modifications like the changes that come over Dorian’s portrait. Sometimes the transformation is textual; more often than not the change is visual. Visual change in response to player choice in video games is often contiguously embedded into the environment or available in a head-up display. Dorian’s old schoolroom houses his true character, growing old in perpetual childhood."
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Miss Solaris and the Peoples
A work in a progress

Seven human children sat around a large room. Some were on couches and others on chairs. They were all wearing pajamas. Peoples walked around talking to the children and to each other. Tea and cakes were being served in the center of the room and most of the children were happily eating sweets and drinking tea. A particularly fat little boy was sitting near the entrance scarfing down doughnuts. I leaned towards him. "What if the doughnuts are poisoned?" I whispered. "You don't know anything about these Peoples." His eyes grew wide and his mouth, full to the lips with soft half-chewed pastry, fell open. "Disgusting," I said. He shut his mouth and Willem pulled me away from him.

"What did you say to him? Look – he's crying." Willem pointed over to the fat boy. He was indeed crying, and apparently consoling himself with another helping of doughnuts.

"Oh he looks all right, probably just ran out of tea or something," I said.

"Some of you people are so mean," said Willem. He looked a little hurt himself.

"Well we didn't kidnap all these children out their beds, did we?" Willem looked guilty. I knew I had him. "No decent person would leave their house in pajamas willfully."

"It's for a good cause," mumbled Willem. "You'll see." Full Story Pending



Daydreamer
A short story

"Early in the morning (though not if you believe that morning begins at midnight) Lucy woke up from another nightmare. She dreamt that her brothers and sister had locked her out and hung her mother’s dead body from the edge of the roof. She ran sobbing through the house then she was in an open field but instead of grass miles of linen stretched out taut like the surface of a bed until it folded over itself into hills in the distance. Blood began to seep through the fabric underneath her feet. She sunk silently into it."
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Eschatology
A short story

"Her eyes adjusted to the dim light; she looked at her arms. Her flesh was blue and the veins underneath gleamed through, still and immobile. She turned over her arm and gasped in horror. Her bone was visible. She reached into the canyon of rotted flesh, touched it and felt nothing. She inspected the rest of her body, shocked and numb. Around her neck was a small golden cross, and a diamond engagement ring was on her left hand. Her body was slighting rotting and senseless. Neither her fingertips nor her legs imparted any sensation at their meeting."
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The Not So Near Future
A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Story

"When you look back the past always seems inevitable. The population of the Earth began it s exponential growth long before you were born. Farmers fled to the cities, looking for work. The cities pushed out at their seams and grew in straight lines across the farmland and onto the surface of the oceans. The Earth encroached on the Moon. Then Luna Minor was built and ton by ton a livable satellite grew in the sky. Your grandfather spoke about it blooming in orbit; the work lights reflected the pollution of the growing atmosphere, and every year the planet grew brighter."
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Dictations, Darshans, and Spiritual Warriors:
A Comparison of Two Prophets and Their Organizations
And An Examination of Children Raised in a New American Religion

I was raised in the Church Universal and Triumphant. I left the Church when I was 14 and returned when I was 18. While involved with the Summit Lighthouse, I participated in the Youth Program as a summer camp counselor, as a member of the Keepers of the Flame Fraternity, and lastly as the Secretary of the Knights and Ladies of the Flame. I left the Church again in January of 2005 while watching my grandmother die and after becoming immured within the leadership of the Youth Program and the theology of the Church. I still draw extensively upon the mythology of the I AM Movement, Gnosticism, and Theosophy in my art-making and am fascinated by the very American desire to bring together all world religions. I want to eventually make a documentary with my sister, Oregon Public Broadcasting producer Allison Frost, about the experience of being a "Church kid." Writing an anthropological study of Church Universal and Triumphant and the Summit Lighthouse is a first step towards that.
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Soul Retrieval
A Short Film

In the summer of 2005 I wrote a short film, intending to produce it exclusively for the PlayStation Portable, but instead it's languished on my computer for months. I'm still looking for a producer. If you're interested, here's the script.