Monday, June 27, 2005

The View From Chewin in the Chung

Michael: There is a lot of religious tolerance in Taiwan. This is a good thing.

Karl: Dude! That is so totally true! In Taiwan, your religion is like, your business and not anybody else's business. That rocks.

Maoman: All this tolerance is the result of a lack of understanding about religion, and not enough religious education.

[Karl stares at Maoman, then looks questioningly at Michael. Michael shrugs.]

Karl: So in order to promote religious tolerance, we should... discourage religious education? Man, that can't be right.

Maoman: No no no! You see, in Taiwan, religion is more like an appeal to spiritual providence than any serious consideration of sin, redemption, good and evil.

Michael: So in addition to burning down a few Sunday schools, we need to divorce religion from the concept of good and evil, in order to more effectively promote religious tolerance?

Karl: I have kerosene!

Maoman: But the Taiwanese don't even understand their indigenous faiths deeply!

Michael: Maoman, the Taiwanese approach to religion is syncretistic. Now that is a very excellent word, and I bet you'd never guess I had to learn it from Karl. But you see, when it comes to faith, a Jack-of-all-trades, Master-of-none approach is demonstrably preferrable to specialism.

Karl: You misspelled 'preferable'.

Michael: Yeah? How'd you do against Malv last Saturday in Axis & Allies?

Karl: I saw Crome Relic last Saturday night at 89k. They totally rocked. I don't know anything about Axis & Allies.

Michael: You can say that again.

9 comments:

Red A said...

I still think you are just not running into any religious types.

Ask Barbara about her aunt.

Chaon said...

Unrepresentative sample. Barbara's Aunt is one person. I can instantly count off ten people in Tampa who take their religion waaay too seriously, and I haven't even lived there in a decade.

Robin said...

Axis and Allies?

Sheesh. Last weekend, I played this game with a buddy. Great game, I won as Japanese but that didn't count too much as we were learning the game system.

Chaon said...

From the Empire of the Sun Sneak Peak:
"Due to the fact that the Japanese have 19 factors (5 air times 3, plus 4 for the CL Tenyru) versus 1 for the US, they have sufficient air and naval control to conduct ground combat. The Japanese 4th SNLF adds 2 to its die roll because it is the only side with naval units in the hex, but does not get the additional air modifier because of the presence of VMF 211."

Yep, sounds like tons of fun to me. I am still not clear as to when the defender has to do a tequila shot as he apportions his casualties.

Red A said...

Dood, move to California. We don't seem to have all those religious folks.

Would it be possible that your interactions with people back in Tampa would be more varied than here?

After all, in school or the military you can't choose the wacko next to you, but as adults we can choose friends.

The place you'd meet the wackos would be at work, and there's just not the social time there.

Chaon said...

"The place you'd meet the wackos would be at work, and there's just not the social time there."

I'm glad I don't work in your office.

Robin said...

California is nothing but whackos.

Robin said...

Karl, any Mark Herman game is great fun. He's a genius.

Red A said...

We wouldn't hire you because we work in dark caves with low ceilings.