The problem with blasphemy isn’t that it’s unholy,
nor that it makes the baby Jesus cry
or that your poor grandmother, five years gone,
certainly sheds a tear from beyond the grave
every time you utter one – no,
it’s that it’s so goddamned funny,
it’s fun to use the Lord’s name in vain
for something as mundane as a parking ticket
or to call down the Almighty’s holy wrath
when the pizza place runs out of mushrooms
and the mental imagery of the only son of God
bouncing happily along on a goddamn pogo stick
is enough to make even the most die-hard atheist
chuckle just a little if she really, really
thought about it.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
