Some time ago I realized that many of the debates in our society reduce rather simply to two sides: the "Weak" side and the "Strong" side. The Weak side consists of those people who desire to be protected from something, while the Strong side are those who believe they can handle it and wish to be allowed to pursue that something to their heart's content.

A quick example of this is wearing a helmet while bicycling. A Weak person feels the need to protect themselves in case something bad happens, and is most worried about the risk. A Strong person feels that the helmet represses them from truly enjoying the bicycling experience and adds extra weight.

It's fascinating to see how many political arguments disintegrate into Weak/Strong debates:
Should we give aid to Africa?
Should abortion be legal?
Who should be allowed to own guns, and what kinds?
What about parental controls?
Should the right to marry be restricted?
Does a person have the right to take their own life or let others take it for them?
Are unions necessary to protect workers?
Should immigration be restricted?
Should drugs be legalized? what about prostitution?

It's even more interesting how these arguments do not fit well into the area of one political party. Some Strong-side arguments are Republican; others are Democrat. Neither is one person usually all weak and all strong. Oh, you may argue that a Libertarian Party member tends towards the Strong side, but even that isn't a perfect fit.

The question is, what do we do about such debates? Should we always protect the Weak first and restrain the Strong? But what do we do when the habits of the Strong have negative effects on the Weak? And even the Strong often misjudge what they are actually able to handle or try to oppress the Weak. Another problem is that people tend to lie or glamorize what their true identification (Weak or Strong) is. For whatever reason, people often try to pick a side because they think it's more respectable. There's nothing necessarily more glamorous about being Strong, nor more prudent about being Weak. It is what it is, to a certain extent. For example, many people who were once Strong in their youth become Weak as they age and have children of their own.

So how can we resolve these consistent debates about the Strong and the Weak? We have had several versions of this debate come up in Xanga arguments, in fact. How can people who hold such different views coexist? Answers next time, but let me hear your opinions first and see how wrong/right I am. Here's a question for you now:

This is Episode 5 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. Episode 4 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

I was cheerfully stalking both Carly Lee's and Kylie's profiles on a regular basis, waiting for Kylie's profile to be pulled down. I could taste victory, and congratulated myself for being so clever to enlist Carly Lee's assistance in getting the profile removed. Then, I read a comment posted on Carly Lee's blog...by Reverend Creep, using the Kylie profile! He was watching Carly Lee's profile too! (Language slightly prettied up for my audience).

"You pervert, trying to pretend you are really me. I'm the REAL Kylie! You're just some creep sitting in your basement wearing your Grandma's panties, getting a high off pretending to me. No one will believe you!" --Kylie.

Um...wow! Now Reverend Creep was actively threatening poor Carly Lee, and I was responsible. (I also suspect Reverend Creep was describing his own behavior in that message, which is amusing now, but certainly wasn't then!). I sent Carly Lee a message where I finally detailed who the Reverend Creep was and what his full name and real profile was. She was suspicious of me by now, and who could blame her?

I had no choice at this point because of what I had put her through. I revealed my real self and some of the details of why I wanted Kylie gone. That was the last time I ever heard from her. A day later, the Kylie profile was gone. I had already anonymously warned two or three people who seemed to be falling in love with the Kylie profile. Now the rest were also free from Reverend Creep. So the story ends there.

But I still have unanswered questions. Why did the Reverend Creep pick Carly Lee's pictures? Did he somehow know her in real life? Or did he find her pictures somewhere, develop a bizarre crush on her, and then write a story around her pictures? Oh well, it doesn't matter now.

As for the three of us involved in this story?

The Reverend Creep is still preaching up a storm at a new church about 90 minutes from my church. The irony is, his Reverend profile sounds honest, soulful, and good. I suppose we could have been friends if he, you know, wasn't a creep. I should drive out to his church and offer him a knuckle sandwich sometime, but I've learned that the rewards of vigilante justice are less than what I had hoped for.

As for me, I'd like to think this episode made me more wary of falling in love on the Internet or guarding my heart when life is tough in the real world. Sorry, Xangans, but this story probably held me back from establishing deeper friendships on here, at least for the year after it happened.

And as for Carly Lee, the not-so-well-known model? Well, she went on to other things (PG-13). But  as you can guess, I have no affection for Carly Lee the model after all this...I've never watched the entire video.

This is Episode 4 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. Episode 2 is here. Episode 3 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

The story so far is that I found out that "Kylie", the Internet woman whose profile and blog seemed so attractive, was really a creation of the "Reverend Creep", a married pastor with far too much time on his hands. I found out that the real "Kylie" pictured in the profile had pictures elsewhere. The question was, who was she? And how could I get rid of the "Kylie" profile forever, before perhaps the Reverend Creep would lure some unsuspecting person into a face-to-face meeting or worse?

Anyway, all I had to go on was "Carly Lee" as possibly being the name of the person in those pictures. And I knew I didn't have enough information to go to the social networking webmaster with any accusation. See, they would only take down a profile for inappropriate content, or for being an imposter. And as I had said, I had lost the proof that "Reverend Creep" and "Kylie" were the same person.

I googled my little heart out, and after skipping Carly Lee the 5th grader and Carly Lee the adult entertainment star, I finally hit pay dirt by googling "Carly Lee model". It was her!

I found her modeling work on display. Carly Lee's pictures had been stolen to create "Kylie", there was no doubt about it. I then found her personal web-site based on a link. It wasn't that popular; Kylie/Carly Sue was still a mostly unknown model, which was why none of the people who befriended her had recognized her. (Reverend Creep was sneaky, I guess). But I still had no contact info. So I dug a little deeper and found a link to her site on the same social networking site.

I created another profile, and sent her the following message (paraphrased)

"Hi Carly Lee, I noticed this person is pretending to be you, and I don't think it's right that they are getting all these friends by stealing your pictures. I can't get (site name) to stop them unless you complain. Can you write them a note?"

You'll note that I did not identify myself, and I did not identify Reverend Creep. I felt bad to admit that someone of the Christian faith was so creepy, and I still was not sure to what extent Reverend Creep was a creep. By the way, Carly Lee was a materialistic model, and I found out that yes, it was much more about the person instead of the pics. I wasn't attracted to her, but that also could have been because the fake profile made me so mad.

She responded by putting a warning on her myspace that Kylie was impersonating her, and sending the info to the web-site folk. I then started to relax. I had launched an anonymous counterattack using a perfect argument. How could the webmaster not shut down Kylie's profile when the very model whose pics Kylie stole was complaining? And this way no one would know about each other. Kylie would never know about Reverend Creep. Reverend Creep would have his profile shut down, but not know who turned him in. He probably had just stolen those pics off a web-site anyway, right? And neither would know about me. Talk about a fool-proof plan! Well...it wasn't.

Episode 5, Aftermath, concludes the story tomorrow. I'll then also tell you who the Web celebrity is in the story.

This is Episode 3 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. and Episode 2 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

About 9? months later, I came back to the "Kylie" profile, expecting to see the profile shut down now that Reverend Creep had been exposed. However, to my surprise, I found that the profile was there and had more friends than ever! It appears that Reverend Creep had started to search for friends in his local area that he could add by way of using Kylie. And nearly everyone was saying yes.

What changed my apathy to anger was how reverential everyone was being. You would think this profile of a fake hot girl was the Pope's profile! Pretty girls were thanking Kylie profusely for the friend request. Handsome men were falling all over themselves to construct prose paragraphs praising Kylie's looks. It sickened me, and scared me a little when I saw just how enslaved our culture is to sexy women. Just one friend request from a beautiful woman seemed to have such an impact on people's lives!

Now I wanted revenge, badly. I wanted to wipe Kylie off the social networking map, and drive to Reverend Creep's home and punch the smile off of his face. The worst part was I knew Reverend Creep's location, his wife's myspace, what church he pastored now (he had been promoted in the meantime!), everything! But, what good was fighting fire with fire? Being a vigilante always sounds good in theory, but what if sending anonymous threats to "Kylie" revealed my own identity to Reverend Creep?

And still, I could not really discern RC's motives. As far as I could tell, he hadn't engaged in criminal behavior. There was no valid reason to ask the huge social networking site to shut down his profile. And he had erased the comment that revealed his e-mail address, so I could no longer provide real evidence that this Kylie profile was a fake. It would be my word against his, and no bored computer administrator would care.

Then, one day, I was on a date-n-rate site. I did a double take when I saw that the next picture was...Kylie! I had found the real identity of Kylie at last! But the site didn't give me a real last name to go with the pictures! All I had to work with was "Carly Lee", which probably wasn't even the real name of the person whose pictures were shown. And even if I found out who "Carly Lee" was, all it meant was that I could answer for myself whether I was more attracted by the pictures or the profile details. The question was academic at this point, wasn't it? But I love mysteries, and I was angry, so I dug deeper...

Episode 4: Attack will be posted sometime this week. As always, feel free to guess in the comments as to what happens next. And I haven't even said who the web celebrity is yet! Trust me, you have probably heard of them...

This is Episode 2 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. Episode 1 is here. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

The object of my Web affections, who I'll call Kylie, had just posted a warning about a man named Fred. Kylie claimed that Fred had sexually harassed her and posted a link to his web site. However, Kylie had made the mistake of not moderating comments, and this paraphrased comment was posted:

"Joe, I know this is you! I put your e-mail, joespoolhall@aol.com, into the site search and this site turned up under your e-mail! You're just mad because Fred kicked you off his site for being such an idiot. I can't believe you're trying something like this!"

I nervously typed in the e-mail that the commenter had left, wishing desperately that I had misinterpreted the comment. It was true. Kylie was not a hot young Christian businesswoman. Instead, Kylie was the creation of a man who had few friends of his own. That was why Kylie had seemed so knowledgeable of sports and other guy topics. But it got worse.

The man was OLDER than me, training to be a MINISTER, and was MARRIED. You would think that ONE of the three factors would have been enough for him to realize that pretending to be a woman was wrong. But I guess the lure of having many friends due to impersonating a hot woman was too much for him. I shall call him "Reverend Creepy", or RC for short.

In fact, I dug deeper and found out that RC had also created a Kylie profile for Xanga, but no one had commented on his blogs here. This was before Xanga allowed lots of profile pics, and so his hot pics weren't of much use to him here in drawing in gullible males and females.

To be honest, I wasn't that angry when I found all this out. Perhaps I was too stunned to be angry, or felt too stupid at being fooled. Also, I felt free, because the great dilemma was solved. I didn't have to wonder if I should try to fix Kylie, because Kylie did not exist! And I had escaped a very creepy situation, because I had never contacted Kylie. So I left the site alone, convinced that "Kylie" had been exposed.

Still, there were several mysteries remaining. Was there a real Kylie whose profile RC hacked, or did RC invent the story and then add the pictures of some random hottie? And why did RC create such a profile? There was a Kylie post in which she called RC a friend and asked people to add him. Was the entire Kylie profile just a cry for help or friends? But I didn't care at the time--I was free! Story ends here, right?

Episode 3, Anger, will be posted Wednesday or Thursday. You are free to guess what will happen next in the comments.

After all the enthusiasm I've displayed for Xanga meet-ups, I feel like I also need to admit to the dark side of the web. In May 2008, I posted a series about an experience I had in 2005? or so. I think I have enough new readers and that the subject matter is important enough to run it again, unedited. I'll run one episode each day and have a concluding post on Friday about how I feel now about it all.

This is Episode 1 in a multi-part story of how I crossed paths with a Web celebrity. I will be updating this story throughout the week with new episodes. It's a dark, depressing story, but I think it's time to share it in the hope of teaching others. You can read more of how I feel about each Episode in retrospect by perusing the comment section. Minor details may have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

It was a cold winter day many years ago, and I was sitting at home realizing that my friends had departed with the good weather. I had recently switched responsibilities at my job, and my best friend was busy working on a dissertation. So I sat down with my computer and started looking for new friends.

Yes, you heard me right. I had recently joined a social networking site and had carefully noted its search function. I could use it to search for people by age, location, gender, and religion. So after playing around with the search function, I decided to use it for the grandest possible purpose...finding some Protestant princesses aged 20-25 in a nearby town to build my Network of Hotness. (That sentence right there should tell you we're headed for EPIC FAIL).

As I hit "search" and viewed results, I came across a profile of a beautiful young woman who lived a few hours away from me. She was beautiful and intelligent. She was a businesswoman and had gone to Bible school. She had traveled the world extensively and liked sports. I could go on, but suffice it to say that the combination of a girly-girl who liked guy things went straight to my heart (or, um, a little lower, perhaps) and got my attention.

But, I am not paranoid for nothing. As I started reading her blogs, and looked at her photo albums, I became concerned. Here was a woman who claimed to be a Christian...yet she also unabashedly shared her love of sex and had pictures of herself in less-than-full attire. Thus, she was not living a truly Christian lifestyle as I understand the Christian faith. And yet, everything else was perfect, and she said she was looking to talk to interesting people. What now?

I spent months wondering if I should say anything, hanging around her profile but never commenting. I'm a persuasive guy. Couldn't I convince her that her views on sexuality were unworthy of a Christian, and then reap the benefits of a reformed soul? Or, it's not as if I have zero skeletons in my closet. Was I judging too harshly? Perhaps I should just talk to her first and gradually attempt to fix her later. I even considered sending her a note when I was going to pass by her town, and resisted with difficulty. I told some of my friends of my dilemma as a way to hold myself accountable, and waited. The months passed, the snow melted, and I wondered if I should just get this over with.

Then, one day, she put up a message that a fellow named Fred was harassing her and many of her friends. A damsel in distress?! Sounded like a perfect time to intervene. Yet, a comment on that message changed my view on the situation...

Episode 2, Awareness, will be posted tomorrow. You are free to guess what will happen next in the comments.

As schools are opened across the country, I decided to launch a new Xanga series. I realized recently that when I was younger, planning life was relatively easy. When  I was in high school, I knew to get good grades and get involved in a wide range of activities to become more well-rounded. College was more of the same for me as I prepared for my chosen career. But then I turned 22, graduated college...and realized that suddenly, good advice was nowhere to be found.

Yes, I still believe our country doesn't know what do with single people who no longer live with their birth families. Not only is there no plan for us, but there are not even many materials to help us know where to start. Take sexuality/dating/marriage, for example. Are we supposed to be dating as many people as possible to find out what we like? I have yet to date a Lithunian-Indonesian artist, so how in the world can I be sure that my current date is the best I can get? (Yes, I'm being a little sarcastic).

What about our careers? Should we major in what we love or what makes us wealthy? Does anyone really get to do both? 

What about religion? How should our 20's help us attain spiritual peace and comfort?

And what about finances--who is this "401K" fellow who I should be giving my money to? How much should I give, and do I ever get any back? 

Because people are afraid of offending, or perhaps because they don't know themselves, I have never received less feedback in my life than I have since turning 22. I have invited several of my favorite Xanga writers to help me in sharing with you some ideas for managing your single life. Many of you may never reach the altar (and we have an article about that you'll want to read). Others are simply temporarily single and may already be engaged coming out of college. But I liked the title, because singles truly find themselves in transition between places. There's the friends of our youth and the new friends we make when we move for the first (second, third, 50th...) time after college. There's the values of our family and culture, and the new information we receive by coming in contact with different ways of life. I could go on and on, but it's tough to put down roots as a single person. But I believe that unless we do put down some roots and make some firm decisions, we'll never be able to grow and make the most out of this period of life. More on this topic tomorrow before I turn the blog over to my guests.

So believe it or not, I haven't quit this series yet (and I have something to say about The Church and I series, too, some other time). I've just done more commenting on sites lately rather than writing posts. It's an irritating struggle for me; if I comment on sites too much, my posts suffer. Otherwise, however, I lose contact with friends. Grumble, grumble.

See the first one on commitment here: http://www.xanga.com/GreekPhysique/624070196/genesis-1-4-commitment.html or just follow the tags.

After looking at Genesis 1-4, I'm fascinated by how deep the root of Authority is in the Bible. Like many of you, I struggle with passages such as Romans 13 (which advocates extreme submission to rulers, at least by our Western standards) and, to a much lesser extent, the OT genocides (i.e. leave no Canaanites alive, not even animals). But look at chapter 1, before sin has even entered the world (vs 26):

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

Subdue? Rule? Fill the earth? Those words reek of colonialistic imperialism! What about the native plants and fishes that were there first, and the delightful baskets they wove during their festivals! (Wait, I'm mixing metaphors here, ignore the baskets).

Yet, those words are there. I'm also fascinated by the man naming everything, including the woman; naming is an authoritarian act, at least to me. Yet, before we rush to wonder whether the man had authority over the woman before the fall (I think the answer is "No, but if it were 'yes', that authority did not matter pre-Fall, anyway!"), I want to bring you back to my main point. Authority itself is present, even before sin is in the world. We see authority and hierarchy even in the Godhood, as God definitely seems to have what we would term authority over Jesus and the Holy Spirit (I give you I Corithians 15:20-28, among other passages). Thus I'll gloss over what "rule" means in Genesis 3:16 for another time, lest I detract from my point here. However, I would also wonder out loud; if not for Genesis 3:16, would women live cheery, manless lives while we men begged them to pay attention to us? :-p I'm more amused by the first phrase "Your desire will be for your husband"; were women better able to resist our awkward advances in pre-fall days, until God sabotaged their resistance? :-p

Also, I'd quickly note that from Genesis 4, God seemingly has a pattern of preferring the younger son over the older son. That's another fascinating root in the Bible; why does God prefer the younger son first? Does the answer lie in birth-order--that the firstborn is bound too tightly to the past and tradition, somehow? Or is it God being anti-authoritarian to our authority customs? ha.

Today, the pastor preached on Genesis 12-22; being ADD-ish, I was reading Genesis 1-4. I found some interesting tidbits there, and decided to do a series on it. I will look at commitment first. I'm intrigued by these verses from Chapter 2:

22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib ^[j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

 23 The man said,
       "This is now bone of my bones
       and flesh of my flesh;
       she shall be called 'woman, ^[k] '
       for she was taken out of man."

 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

We'll leave alone for now the intriguing feature that the man names the woman rather than the woman naming herself. More interesting is verse 24. Note the steps in what sounds very much like marriage:

1: It's a man and a woman. Those Christians who advocate committed relationships for Christian gays and lesbians must show how that plan fits against the context of this verse, in my opinion. It seems that there's something deeper at work in a man and woman uniting than just reproduction or reproductive parts.

2. Notice that a man has to be united to his wife after he leaves the father and mother. It's not enough just to leave; there has to be a union subsequent to the exodus from the parents.

3. I don't know about whether or not the Hebrew version of "and" has chronological implications. But I'm intrigued that it says "and they will BECOME one flesh." I think that too often, men and women think they are supposed to become one flesh before the marriage ceremony itself. Although Christians may withhold physical intimacy, many couples are certainly emotionally and spiritually intimate before the wedding ceremony. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. But I would point out, couples BECOME one flesh. You aren't just one flesh as soon as you both don the wedding rings. You must BECOME one flesh; it's a process, not a point in time. Interesting, eh? EDIT: Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that "one flesh" refers to physical union only. I'm pretty sure it means on all levels-spiritual, emotional, etc. END EDIT

There's also an interesting debate in there if verse 24 is pre-fall in origin, or just a parenthetical insertion by the writer living in Jewish times, and why is it the man who must leave his father and mother? Sounds like the man is the weaker of the two, if he is the one told to leave his parents behind. Intriguing! EDIT Zynverwex has an interesting counterpoint; does it mean that the woman is allowed to stay with her original family to some extent, but the man must be independent? It's a possibility. END EDIT

It's been two years, and I've had a lot of changes in subscribers, so I am running it again. I find it interesting that my interpretation of what I wrote back then has changed now as I re-visit the stories. Anyway, tell me what you think. I find that posting stories and poems here is hard for some reason. Partly because I am a better non-fiction prose writer than anything else, partly because it can be an eyeful to sit down and read it all. But I am challenging my reader (hopefully more than one this time) to get through all the parts! Here's the first two; we'll start it off slowly.

http://www.xanga.com/GreekPhysique/195097476/item.html Introduction

http://www.xanga.com/GreekPhysique/195100001/item.html Part 1

http://www.xanga.com/GreekPhysique/196359154/item.html Part 2

Parts 3-5 go up if there is sufficient demand.