The adventures of a young man who has fallen madly in love with a beautiful woman and closes down his life in Hollywood to live in Middle Asia.
Here are some shots of a video game I've been making. That's why there haven't been blog entries lately. The game has some pretty good AI now: non-player characters have line-of-sight, memory, and navigation. Without revealing too much about the nature of the game, it's a Christian game, based on the practical application of scripture. The shareware version should be ready by Christmas, 2005.
I'm writing a screenplay that has a lot of myth in it. Kazakhstan is full of fresh ideas. This first picture is their national symbol--a unicorn. It's found on their official state seal, their money, and on the side of this lottery kiosk. What struck me was that the unicorn horn angles backward, which makes a lot more sense physiologically than having a horn protruding out of the front of an equine skull. There are, in fact, goats, whose horns twirl together to form one horn. So, the unicorn may not have been so mythical after all. Most of our western ideas about the unicorn come from Greek myth, but the Kazakhs' culture comes from the Persians, who came before the Greeks. So, this central asian rendition of the mythical creature is completely free from Greek influence. Coincidence? The second picture is of the Golden Prince, who may have actually been a princess. It is interesting that this spiritual warrior from the sky comes riding in on a winged leopard. Psalms 18:10 says, "And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind."
...in just a few short days. We went last weekend to the mountains to get away. The cabin we stayed at had a Russian sauna, which is very much like an American sauna, except you cover your body in honey and beat it with a cluster of oak leaves, called a "vainic." It felt great. It felt great to get out, too. I guess you're suppossed to run--according to Russian tradition--to the nearest cold body of water and jump headlong in. The place we were at had a private pool and it was surrounded by lush vegitation and beautiful flowers. As we were heading from the sauna to the pool, I found out that hornets like flowers, and there were lots of hornets busily buzzing about. Apparently hornets like honey better than flowers and it wasn't long before they were buzzing about me. Well, long story short, I stayed in the sauna.
I have the best wife ever. Here is a picture of me and my birthday present. My dad bought me my first guitar at 6. I was very sad when I had to sell it to make ends meet, while living in LA. I really didn't pursue getting another one, and I don't know why. But today, I'm very happy because my wife surprised me with this beautifully-made German acoustic. Rock on!
Last weekend, Natasha and I went to see Shark Boy and Lava. It was her first 3d experience. We both liked the movie, and hope that we can see something in 3d with a little more grown-up plot. You even get a pair of free glasses with your movie ticket. I was pretty excited about the whole experience, so we grabbed our camera and took off to the park to capture Almaty in 3d.
Last week, we had our two-month anniversary of being married. When we had the first-month anniversary, that's when I found out we were observing our anniversary month-by-month. Thank goodness I've got a great wife, because I didn't get in trouble too much. But I did get a little stuffed dog as a gift to put by my computer to remind me of my wonderful wife and also that I forgot my first-month anniversary. After awhile, the little dog's guilt-inducing stare got to me, so he no longer resides on the computer, but with his friends: a gorrila, two bears and a blue poodle. Anyway, these are pictures of our wedding. The photographer was amazing because he was running video footage and taking pictures at the same time. (This is a very Russian thing to do.) I don't know how he did it, but the video footage and the pictures turned out very well. The group photo is full of people from a town called Ust-Kamenogorsk. During the cold war, Ust-K was the town where all the nuclear scientists hung out. So nothing in that town refers to Ust-K, and every building has the name of a different city, to prevent espianage or something. My friends there in that town who came to our wedding are very nice, and it was a great time. No one danced the Russian squatting-dance thing, though.
If you live in between the Rockies and the Mississippi, then you can appreciate the similarity of these shots of Kazakhstan, taken from a train. Miles and miles of fenced plains, and badlands, strips of road and telephone poles. There's also the occassional gravel pit and cemetary. But the cemetaries on this side of the world are Muslim.
