Canon vs. Rulebook. If you lurk in the caches of player boards and other online councils, you'll see there are some carefully crafted divides. RPG players see choices as the future of their media, they create ever escalating asymmetrical choices to continue the media's true unspoken goal: problem solving, and MMORPG's like World of Warcraft try to simulate the near infinity of outcome. The story can have no end. No one character remains so central their death ends all connections (deaths that ends all connections in film: Neo's, Emperor Palpatine's). The idea of canon is opposite, novels, comics and film celebrate canon, which employ fewer characters that have limited range in behavior. Subtle shifts mutate story and characteristics but not the meaning (Burton versus Nolan's Batman). The difference between playing an elf versus playing Luke Sywalker seems pretty obvious, the elf has no inherent narrative, Luke IS the narrative. The confusion of watching a linear Prince of Persia to an audience of gamers seems lost on a studio executive but to even the casual gamer that plays POP it must be an extreme disconnect. What they used to inhabit and control now is under the control of a predetermined outcome, completely antithetical to the medium he emerged from. A devolution in storytelling. Watch out Hollywood.

Denise Low's comparative review of two translations of the extensive Mayan creation mythistory from the journal SAIL. An excellent background for comprehending 2000 Years of Mayan Literature. Scroll down once in the link, the article is mid-point.

In the Popol Vuh: The Maya thought we were first made by gods from clay, those built crumbled once dried, then they attempted wood, and were living but possessed no long-term memory, then they used masa, the corn seed, and we sprang into present form.

Alexis Arguello, fought in both ring and battlefield, was Super Lightweight/Featherweight World Champion 3 times as well as a Contra in the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua. Recently he entered politics as an FALN (joining his former enemy Daniel Ortega's party) and was elected Mayor of Managua. On July 1st he unexpectedly committed suicide with a shot to his heart. Rumors abound he was about to depart corruption riddled FALN for higher ground.