This Season

Pagan birth;
The date and the tree.
Christian birth;
What matters to me.
Presents and packages,
Ribbons and bows,
Show little concern
For little freezing toes.
The children want Santa,
The parents want rest.
Selfishness covers
How much we’ve been blessed.
Love without cost,
He came to give.
New directions and purposes
For how we live.
Consumerist attitudes
Cover all bases;
Loving through action
Corrupted to baseness.

We speak of Him
In memoriam,
Each time the day is spoken.
Yet the state calls
A consortium
Each time our silence is broken.

Yet with each of its probes,
The state’s fear grows
That a giant will rise
To counter its blows.

Time was rocked with this baby’s birth.
Each day of our lives proves this baby’s worth.
Until the day of His return
Consumerist wiles we’ll continue to spurn,
To prove that love’s the reason
For this newly-selfish season.

Palin vs. Obama

I was asked the following question earlier:
"If Sarah Palin runs against Barack Obama in 2012, who would you vote for?"

My couch.

My couch has never lied to me, never tried to make me believe it was a recliner.
It has never stopped being comfy just because I didn't sit on it for awhile.
It hasn't advocated that its look and feel are the IDEAL look and feel for couches.
It has never claimed that its position in the living room is the only right position, and that all couches everywhere should be so positioned.
My couch has never tried to convince me that because other couches don't look the same, aren't made of the same materials, or aren't made in the same country as mine they are somehow inferior.
It has never told me to go sit on the ottoman because the ottoman never gets sat on and its feelings are being hurt.

So yeah. I'll vote for my couch.

Judge Not!

Something's been bugging me all day, hearing about more Westboro BS.

Didn't Jesus basically say that if we judge others, we shall be judged according to the same standard?

I dunno about anyone else, but I fail to do the good I know to do (and fail to refrain from doing the bad I know not to do) as often as the worst "sinner."
I don't judge people because I know I would fail if measured by the same stick.

However, there is a difference between judging people and acknowledging that their actions do not measure up to our personal moral standard (even as we acknowledge that OUR actions do not measure up).

This is the difference between saying "You lied. Lying is bad." and "You are the sort of person who lies."
In the former instance, we are stating that an individual action is immoral.
In the latter, we are stating that a PERSON is immoral, that everything which makes them who they are is flawed, degenerate, etc.

We are called to do the former, in love, acknowledging that while the action is immoral, the person who did the action has the capacity to, with God's help, rise above the tendency to commit immoral actions.

We are forbidden to do the latter, especially online (yeah, I know).
God alone knows the heart, God alone knows each and every one of us in the totality of our being.

Hate the sin: acknowledge the failure to live up to divine standards.
Love the sinner: embrace each and every person as a child of God, and allow His love to move through you to make a difference in their lives.

Video Games...

It amazes me how much the video game "debate" (which isn't even really on the radar anymore) brings out the worst in grown-ups, in the same way the comic book scare in the 1950's did.

Just to lay it out there:
The video game medium is not the sole cause of any acts of violence or crime, just as comic books weren't the sole cause of juvenile delinquency in the 50's.
If video games bring out some psychotic tendency within a person, that tendency was ALREADY THERE. Playing Grand Theft Auto didn't somehow implant the desire to beat up old ladies with a baseball bat (though within the game it's FUUUN!).
It is in no way the game designer's or marketer's fault if their games bring out impulses in players, regardless of age.

Parents who blame video games for their child's behavior are merely refusing to take their responsibility AS PARENTS, preferring (like so many others) to push the fault on something outside the home AND hoping to push responsibility on the government so they can continue to live as children themselves, instead of placing their offspring on a higher priority than their own whims.

Video games are simply a relatively new medium of entertainment marketed solely to children and teens, which narrow-minded adults (being something other than the party marketed to) want to either destroy or regulate into oblivion simply because their children's tastes are not matching their own (again like comic books in the 50's).

God forbid our children have their own opinions.


Also, it amazes me how many hardcore conservatives (who typically scream bloody murder against bigger government) want video games regulated into the ground.

Double standard much?
Or is it just because this is a "moral" issue ("We have to protect our children!") that regulation (and by it destruction) is so vehemently sought?

Spring 2011

I've either just signed my GPA's death warrant, or I've locked myself in to have my most difficult semester ever.

Or I've locked myself in to have my SECOND most difficult semester ever, behind my first semester as an English Major attempting to take American and World Literatures at the same time, plus other classes.

General Bio
Intro to Chem
Intro to Chem Lab
World Lit II.

Yeah. Say a little prayer for me.

Of course, the obvious benefit to cramming these all into one semester is that if I somehow survive, the beginning of Summer Vacation will mark the end of my "general education" (horrible term for horrible things) requirements AND my major core class requirements.

All that'll be left are those nifty Creative Studies electives which for 3 hours of course credit require your body and soul as collateral.
Don't get me wrong. They're awesome classes.

But I'll have FIVE left to take, and I predict trying to take more than ONE per semester would be like trying to grow a second head just to have two conversations at once.
Man wasn't meant to possess that power.

They are offering them during Summer and Winter intersessions, so if I jumped in next summer I might be able to graduate by...the end of summer 2012, if we all live that long.

Of course I may just have to man-up and take two at once just to get my bachelor's before my 30th birthday.

It's a weird feeling knowing how little I really have left of college.
Been in it for so long (and yes, my year off counts as "in it") that thinking about the end, and after, is kinda scary.

I've been motivated by this big, grandiose idea of "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOUR DEGREE IS IN, AS LONG AS YOU LOVE WHAT YOU'RE DOING", which has been very beneficial, but now I can't help but wonder if it's all a load of BS compared to just trying to get bills paid.

Of course once I'm done, my wife will be able to jump back on her bachelor's (I predict a dance degree in her future...just so she doesn't have to take any more Music Theory), and it'll be fun watching her find new motivation to kick ass and take names.

But we'll see about where I end up.

I've never had aspirations for a particular job...my life's been more focused on making and improving the various arts to which I've set my hands and heart.
If I could find a way to use it to pay the bills it'd be amazing, but it seems all careers in the arts either involve teaching someone else [to do what you'd rather be doing yourself], or a crapshoot that could take you soaring with the eagles or dragged through the muck with the worms...or both, depending on the day.

Election Blah Blah

So a lot of people have been getting their panties in a wad about the elections this week, from Congress down to assistant spitoon boy.

Seems like almost everyone's got a reason to be angry, afraid, or deliriously happy.


Especially angry at anyone who would dare NOT FREAKING CARE about the election outcomes.

I've lost track of the number of politic-nicks I've had to endure beratement from, in the process of (sometimes for the tenth time) explaining to them that I USED to be all up in arms to (at first) keep those damn Democrats from winning, or (then later) keep those nazi Republicans from winning.

Fact is, neither side is really that different.
They're all overstuffed, overwealthy, power-hungry bastards constantly trying to grab more money and power for themselves and keep it out of the hands of everyone else, ESPECIALLY EACH OTHER.

The day we see a middle-class, third party candidate show up with more than a halfway decent chance of winning MIGHT be the day I show up at the polls.

But our elitist overseers would never let that happen, unless the dude (or dudette) had alreay been bought, paid for, and stored snuggly in the pockets of those already in power to use as their poster-child.

So, till then, I'll refrain from wasting time and energy taking part in a corrupt, flawed system, and enjoy a Smirnoff Ice and some teryaki beef jerky while watching cartoons at home on "ELECTION DAY".

Gays in the Military

I keep hearing about how Don't Ask, Don't Tell is somehow unconstitutional.
Like you'd be able to pick the gay guys out of a squad of actual Marines because the gay ones are somehow more feminine....even though they're still frickin MARINES.

Personally, I wouldn't mind having my butt covered by a guy who thinks my butt's pretty cute.
Maybe it'd motivate him to fight for more than just country.

Of course, given my lack of self-discipline, the gay guy in my foxhole would probably be more fit, a better shot, stronger, and a better hand-to-hand combatant than me.

A better wingman there is none.

It seems that many people are underestimating our soldiers' ability to keep their priorities straight, in the barracks or on the battlefield.
Either that, or maybe our soldiers aren't the finely honed battlefield geniuses they're made out to be?

I'd rather be optimistic, and say that the vast majority of our soldiers, no matter their orientation, would actually be (gasp!) PROFESSIONAL regarding their treatment of each other as fellow soldiers.

That may mean regulations to keep ALL on-duty fraternization prohibited or to a minimum, and enforcing that policy.

In the meantime, we should trust the men and women we send to die for us to be professionals when on-duty or deployed, and stay the hell out of their business the rest of the time.

I think that no sane individual is 100% at either end of the political spectrum.

It tends to be an issue-by-issue arrangement.

The problems start when extremist members of one group start trying to define the opposition's position FOR THEM....as we see in the left- or right-leaning media, who spend more time talking about what they think the other guys want than about what THEY want.

Prime example I've seen many times in many variations online:
"You believe abortion should be okay, so how can you think the death penalty isn't?"
Horrible generality trying to basically tell someone what they "really" think.

Opposing groups (in any realm, not just politics) generally feel the NEED for conflict, because if they didn't they'd have to sit down and LISTEN TO EACH OTHER, and probably find they're more alike than their argumentative selves would ever admit.

Language also comes into play, in our era of catchphrase and soundbite.
Sensationalists know connotations all too well, and use them against one another to sway the general public into a panic based around the possibility of "those guys" ever getting into a position of power.

Metaphors are also used ad nauseum, and generally even when they FAIL are held onto dogmatically.


...all this I learned in the process of transforming from an argument addict into a listener.



For myself, these are some issues I take one "side" or the other regarding, but each is too complex to boil down to just "conservative" or "liberal," in my opinion:

"Conservative" - I believe the federal government has become bloated in power and responsibility, and that the American citizenry has become conditioned to look to the federal government to solve our problems and find us jobs and help us all retire, with a disgusting sense of entitlement.

"Conservative" - I believe arming the citizenry can aid in crime reduction, as long as the constabulary remains at a higher level of armament in order to retain the visible position of holding higher authority to enforce laws than the average citizen.

"Conservative" - I believe municipal governments are not given nearly enough credit for the massive amount of person-to-person work they hold responsibility for, and that local government holds by its nature less aptitude for corruption than state and federal governments.

"Conservative" - I believe America has become so dependent on other nations, that our national pride is misplaced. We basically act like we don't need anyone, yet most of the products we use are manufactured overseas. Ironically, our unwillingness to pay a little more for domestic products is the result of our own capitalistic obsession with "getting our money's worth", no matter how dependent on China, Japan, etc. we become.

"Liberal" - I believe it immoral and illegal to deploy military personnel without the explicit permission of Congress in a formal declaration of war, and that without said declaration, any initiated or extended deployment is a crime amounting to high treason, for which the chief executive and the joint chiefs should be held responsible.

"Liberal" - I believe the U.S. has become a fat cat holding a big gun among the nations of the world, especially in our deployment of military bases throughout the world. If any other nation wished to build a base on our soil, we would call it an act of war, yet we expect our allies to tolerate our armed presence on THEIR soil without complaint. I believe these bases have and are draining the federal budget, require far too many of our troops which could be either discharged or assigned post at home, and contribute to international hatred of the U.S.

"Liberal" - I believe we, as a nation, due to the above sense of entitlement and fat-caterry, have completely disregarded our natural resources and their conservation, keeping our National Parks open strictly to be tourist attractions to gain revenue. As such, we continue to lay waste to our last untouched wilderness, and to turn our cities into giant trash heaps.

"Liberal" - I believe our nation was a bought and paid for decades ago by big business and the wealthy, and that any and all "political" decisions we of the un-wealthy can make are merely illusions to make us THINK we have a say in the matter of what happens to our country, especially in the matters of poverty, class and racial stratification, and class mobility.


A brief smattering, to be sure.

October 6, 2006

Crazy how time can fly.

Four years ago today, I drove 80 miles to meet a stranger from the Internet.
We'd exchanged pictures, chatted on Instant Messenger (dunno if anyone uses those anymore outside of Facebook), and gradually gotten to know each other, at least in the context of frozen faces on screens.

We'd heard each other's voices via microphones, and even latched onto each other's penchant for music by singing little songs to each other via our computers.

It kinda faded in and out for awhile.

But after my relationship crumbled, I looked again to the long-haired cop daughter, and felt a swelling of attraction.
I asked if I could come see her.

I think she was shocked, pointing out that 80 miles lay between us.
"Honey, I'm from Texas. I grew up 80 miles from the nearest Braum's."

So I ventured into the unknown, not sure what I would find, and she not sure if this man coming her way was really whom he had claimed to be in the much-decieved world of the Internet.

A first kiss (in a piano practice room), a first date (to see 300), and many happy moments later, we were joined at the hip.
Three years, fighting through her mother's final heavyweight bout with cancer, and a million joyous moments later, we were joined at the hip and at the left-hand ring finger.

If someone were to ask me if God exists, I could point to my marriage as prime evidence to the affirmative.
Had I not indicated X-city as my location, had she not been looking at that EXACT time, we would never have found each other.

Plus...up until we met I was an arrogant, selfish bastard pretty much all the time.
Starting arguments, procrastinating (especially in school), mooching off family, etc.

But once we were together, making sacrifices came second-nature to me, especially as the ordeal with her mother's health began and continued.
She's asked me many times what kept me around during those years, especially given that I was the boyfriend...not bound by familial obligation to stay or help or do anything.

The short answer?
I felt like it would have just been the height of douchbaggery to ditch when the going got tough.

The real answer is deeper.
The divine presence of God and the amazing presence of my wife are the only things which could transform me from selfish and arrogant to selfless within the course of just a few months.

For that, and for all she has given me in the intervening moments, I will always treasure her.

More Rants...yay...

Facebook statuses provide an amazing medium in which to rant.

Moreso than on message boards, because Facebook does not allow anonymity (as much as we might pray for it).


The families of victims and survivors of 9/11 are SPLIT DOWN THE MIDDLE on the issue of the mosque, so it's not as black and white as some would have us believe.

As much as we might idealize "separation of church and state," politicians can still sway the masses by using emotionally charged religious language, just as religious authorities can sway their congregations by using emotionally charged political language.

But when all you have is emotion, you're basically running this way and that screaming about the thing-to-be-angry-about of the day like a chicken with its head cut off, and REASON never has a chance to enter the equation.

Thus the reason I don't follow politics anymore.
It's impossible to be HAPPY when your happiness hinges on flawed human beings whom you have never met, whose decisions are beyond your control, and whom your fellow politico-addicts are telling you to hate one day and love another.

As for the mosque itself, let the people of New York City vote on the issue.
The mosque won't be in anyone else's back yard, so let the local government decide, and then let the rest of us ACCEPT THEIR DECISION.

Some claim that letting the mosque be built is somehow an insult to our military.
But this claim ignores the fact that just about everything the American military has been forced to do since 9/11 has been either idiotic or illegal.

Idiotic in "declaring war" against an ideology..we've seen how well that's worked in the "war on drugs."

Illegal (by our own standards) in that we've invaded two countries without a single declaration of war.
Congress is supposed to have sole authority in deploying our military against other nations, but because it's been labeled a "war on terror," the presidents have basically skipped over that little check on the Executive branch in order to throw American lives wherever.

We haven't played by our own rules (i.e, the CONSTITUTION), yet we expect other countries to play by our rules? Stupidity at its most basic level.

I'm just waiting for the inevitable backlash against our "Team America: World Police" nonsensical foreign policy. With our current delusional mindset of indestructibility, and the pattern we've set, eventually we'll go up against a country willing and fully able to blast us back to the stone age (Russia, China,...the list is building as we wallow in our ignorance).

There IS NO MORALITY in this situation. The presence of a mosque is not causing American Muslims to take up arms against anyone, and if it causes American "Christians" to do so, it is on the heads of those "Christians," not those who built or worship at the mosque.
The situation is amoral.
Personal bias for or against does not equate morality.

So, give NYC the power to decide, and then LET THE ISSUE GO, regardless of their decision.

"Turning Back to God"

Yay for Glenn Beck giving me a great reason to rant.

Basically, the whole country's ranting/complaining/praising whatever version of God they believe in that Beck is holding a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...supposedly to ring in America's return to "christian" morals and values in the political realm.

...when in reality (something Beck refuses to believe in) Christian morals and values (however you define that) don't EXIST in the political realm.


We should probably stop the contradictory notion that we are a "christian nation" AND YET are so sinful that Sodom and Gomorrah demand a note of apology.

...in addition to completely throwing out the idea of a "Christian nation" anyway. Read... the Treaty of Tripoli for a lesson in what our government (and, in reality, the constitution) thinks we should be.

Nations aren't Christian. Individuals are Christians. We can't throw spiritual bombs and assume everyone caught in the blast radius is going to instantly toss their old selves and start believing in/following Christ.
Our responsibility as individual Christians is to those in our circle, whom we influence and interact with on a daily basis, NOT any of the groups we try to box others into in order to feel superior to them.

Glenn Beck and his ilk, in addition to being power-hungry warmongers, maintain a good-old-days delusion, that at some point American WASN'T dealing with the spiritual issues which it faces today.
The only difference now is that we are more free as a nation to BRING THOSE ISSUES TO LIGHT, not sweep them under the rug by order of the Church's traditions.

Those who maintain that delusion don't want to have to remain intellectually present in the spiritual and political realms. They are addicted to a black-and-white world of "absolutes" (read: catchphraes/soundbites) which has NEVER existed except in name, and NOW is fading away even in name.

If anything, it is time for America to step up as a nation and throw off the shackles of black-and-white blanket thinking, and admit that the spiritual and political issues with which we each struggle daily do NOT have easy solutions or clear-cut answers, and finding some sort of resolution to them requires contributions from EACH OF US, each bringing his or her own experiences and reasoning ability to the table.

Random God thoughts...

TRADITION.

Simply "we've always done it this way, so this is the way it should be."

'Tis the source of many Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox doctrines and practices which may or may not have any scriptural basis.

Does that make them essentially satanic? By no means.

However, we should all recognize that many of the things we profess to believe do not come from a single source, and thus we should not use a single source for discernment regarding which we should continue professing.

Tradition -> we stand on the shoulders of spiritual giants and learned men who oftentimes have already delved into the areas we seek to understand. We should seek to add to the accumulated wisdom, even as we acknowledge and rely on our forbears' contributions.

Reason -> God-given ability to think. Drawing lines of logical progression between church practices, doctrines, even terminology, OR seeing that no such logical progression exists.

Experience -> Our testimony. What God has already done in our lives. Does it match what we claim to believe about God, the church, or ourselves?

Scripture -> Multiple translations, multiple interpretations, multiple collections. Many times a bundle of paradoxes, but still a tool for ours and God's use. Does our personal interpretation of the Bible match our circumstances, our beliefs, our relationships?

These four are our primary sources for discernment, and each must be used carefully, even as we find connections among them.

An individual's belief should be the current conclusion of the combined filtering through tradition, reason, experience, and scripture.
I say current, because it is an ongoing process.
God is not dead, and always has more to show us.

God has not changed in the two millennia since the end of events described in the Bible.

Our understanding and perception of Him, however, which influenced the creation of Levitican and Mosaic law and how humanity reacted to the person of Christ, has changed DRASTICALLY, to the point that we must be constantly vigilant in discerning what Biblical principles came from God, and which came from man.

For anyone to say "I HAVE FOUND THE ONLY WAY" until that MOMENT, demonstrates extreme arrogance, the likes of which have not been seen Satan offered Christ the whole world if He would only bow down.

Our discernment will not end until we see God's face and the complete truth, unknowable to us in this life, will be revealed.

My Faith Story

I was raised in a Christian home, attended church all the time, fortunately didn't attend "Christian" secondary school due to the fact that the local "Christian" school basically housed all the kids who couldn't function in normal school (mostly due to drug use, gang violence, etc.)

For most of my public school years, I was rank-in-file with my parents, even though they encouraged me to look beyond them and our church to form my own beliefs, especially since we attended a very loving Baptist church, and my parents didn't believe in once-saved-always-saved.

I attended a "Christian" college for three years, mainly because it is my parents'/aunts'/uncles'/grandparents' alma mater.
I did grow in my faith during that time, especially in the area of identifying and forming adequate questions, but monetarily it was a waste. I sluffed off the last two semesters, even getting straight 0's on my transcript during the last one.

I met my future wife during my last year there, and during the following year off from college, God worked amazing things in my life through her, especially in teaching me true selflessness.
I also made my first atheist friends during that year, and God taught me the importance of LISTENING, and to value PEOPLE more than doctrines or dogma.

As my future-wife and I plowed through the struggles of her mother's lung and eventual brain cancer, I returned to school at a community college, meeting more diverse people than I ever would have at the "Christian" university, again spending more time listening than speaking, and speaking only in love and understanding.

I gradually stopped attending church during that time, mainly due to my Sunday School teacher's complete inability to do anything other than lecture us (and come on, we were in COLLEGE...we didn't need ANOTHER lecture every week!).

My then-girlfriend hadn't been raised in church, so it wasn't a big deal for us to to treat Sunday as a much-needed rest day, and nothing else.
We did end up finding a community which reached out to us, and we were eventually married in that church.

During the struggles with her mother's health, my girlfriend asked me many times why I didn't just pack up and walk away, since it wasn't really my fight, so to speak.
I know now it was God's influence that kept me around, but at the time it just seemed like it would be a jerky (for lack of a better non-censored word) move to just walk out when the going got tough.
Her mother eventually died as a result of uncontrollable brain tumors which began as a single malignancy which had metastasized from her lung, three months before our wedding.

As it stands now, I can look back and see God's hand in all of the major changes I have gone through, and feel Him still at work in my life as I try to be the best husband I can be with His help.
But I don't feel the same personal sense of His constant presence that my elders describe.

Maybe it's just because I have too many distractions right now, as a husband, college student, and employee trying to also be a church keyboardist.

Wife vs. God

I've been a husband for a grand total of 10 months, 14 days.
My wife and I have been together for about 4 years total.

In that time, God has worked amazing changes in me through her, keeping me close to her as she suffered through her mother's lung and brain cancer, and death last May at the age of 46.

I didn't know that I could achieve real selflessness until God brought us together (via the Internet, no less).

As a result, my identity is so deeply wrapped up in her, and was looong before our marriage, when I finally was able to loudly proclaim it as such.

This of course is contradictory to what most marital counseling advises.
But, then again, they seem to be more interested in preparing couples for divorce right off the bat rather than for lifelong commitment these days.

Anyway, we're both Christians, but we come from completely different backgrounds.
My parents had me in church every time the door was open.
Her parents were cops, so Sunday was a welcome rest day, especially when they'd get home around 5 AM the night before.


Basically, the problem I'm finding is that my marriage matters more to me than my relationship with God.
I find my wife to be much more forgiving of my inadequacies (we both feel the other got the short end of the stick) and eager to move on than I've ever felt with God.

Of course, this could just be due to my wife being physically present, her voice clear and unclouded by the other voices in my head, and her embrace real and comforting, not metaphorical.

I don't feel at a loss when I don't feel God's presence, but my wife's absence from home makes all activity, especially hobbies and even reading, seem pointless and boring.
Even both of us are engrossed and don't speak a word to each other for hours, merely her presence fills me with comfort and an assurance I didn't realize existed until she got a job which required her to work all day and sometimes into the wee hours.

Thusly do I sit at this moment, devoid of her presence and thus any meaning in anything I do.

Isn't that how I'm supposed to feel about God?

Iron Man 2...

Tops the first film in every way, if that's possible.
Deeper interactions between the good guys, a more passionate and complex villain....and we get to see Scarlet Johansen beat the living crap out of a small army.

Yeah...Scarlet's the real star of this movie, as far as the "action film" part of it goes.

The best word to sum up this movie as compared to the first: DEEPER.
Everything, every character, even the random SHIELD agent from the first movie, the villains, plus the little extra after the credits (it's a good thing that was worth the wait...after almost 3 hours I had to PEE).


Since this is a blog, I don't give a crap about spoiling it for people.

There's less humor in 2 than in 1, but that's mainly because Tony spends the first half of this movie DYING.
Yeah.

There's a scene where he gets drunk while wearing the suit, and a fight with Rhoadie (also suited) ensuits...er--ensues.

Don Cheadle owns the part of Rhoadie in ways that make Terrence Howard look like an amateur.

Yeah...War Machine...looks awesome, kicks ass...and even provides a little comic relief.

Of course the movie wouldn't be complete without Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vankov, possible the deadliest SANE supervillain yet to appear in a comic book film.
Electric whips, mastery of robotics technology, and the biggest axe to grind outside of Sakaar.

Blacklash + Crimson Dynamo = Ivan Vankov in Iron Man 2.
And what a sweet love child it is.


My one and only complaint:
Whoever let Sam Rockwell play Justin Hammer needs to be shot and speared and castrated with a red-hot spork.

Seriously.

If they were worried that audiences would be too stupid to see a difference between Obadiah Stane and Justin Hammer, they seriously didn't know their freakin' audience.

The audience that showed up tonight in thousand-dollar Iron Man and War Machine and Thor and Captain America and Wasp (shout out to the big girl at Q. Springs!) costumes, and quite possibly knows the characters better than anyone who's never worked for Marvel.

Seriously guys, your target audience KNOWS THE CHARACTERS...except when you butcher them in favor of a metrosexual villain!
Then you didn't even give us the pleasure of seeing Hammer sliced in half by one of Ivan's whips! WTH?!
You'd already shown Ivan to be a master hand-to-hand fighter!
Show us Ivan snapping Hammer's neck or something!


Not that I'm ranting or anything.

Waiting Up

It's kinda weird.

My wife spent so much time looking for a job that I got into a rhythm, which involved her always being at home when I was.

Now that she has a job (waitress), she's out late at night (downtown no less)...and I feel lonely for the first time in probably a decade or more.

Today she had to be at work at 11 AM...and 12 1/2 hours later is still working.
In contrast, I had to be at work at noon, and finished at 5 PM.

In the long run it'll be good, both of us bringing in money, and on the financial side could greatly reduce our stress.

But I wonder how much time with each other we'll lose when she's getting home dead tired in the wee hours of the morning night after night, and I sit at home bored, restless, and lonely night after night.

Tonight I'll force myself to stay awake long enough for her to get home, even if that requires a second trip to Wal-Mart and a case of VAULT.


Oh, and just to clarify my moping:
We've been in a two-income situation before, but she worked set hours (kinda hard as a waitress), so we always knew when we'd be able to spend time together.

I hope our marriage doesn't suffer as a result, no matter how much money we earn.

To My Wife

I say I love you, I say I need you
I try so many ways to say how my heart beats for you
I say I'm always thinking about you
There's no way I'd want to face this life without you
And even though these words comes from deep inside me
There's so much more I don't have the words to say

'Cuz what I really want to say
Is what the sun would say to the sky
For giving it a place to come alive
But my words get in the way
Of what I really want to say
Oh what I really want to say

I know that sometimes my words can be as hard as stone
And sometimes my words have left you feeling so alone
So please forgive me and hear the words I'm saying now
I spend my whole life looking for a way somehow
To let you know just how precious you are to me
I'll use the best words I know but I still won't say it all

It's like a tale too great to be told
It's something that my heart can only show
I'm gonna take my whole life
Just to let you know
What I really want to say

-by Steven Curtis Chapman


I love you.

Live and Let Die...

Yeah, have that song stuck in my head AGAIN...


Had to ditch Vamp Kisses....turned out to be waaay too teenager-y for me.

Went back to an old standby: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Yeah. Sweeeeeet.


Currently trying to write a script for a comic book.
Here's some definite characteristics:
-Introspective -> most of the action happens in flashbacks

-Post-Apocalypic -> totally didn't meant for it to be set in P.A. Texas panhandle...but that's what happens sometimes while storytelling.

-All about the protagonist -> okay, some would ask "what literature isn't?"
Reach Charles Dickens. His characters are completely linked (like, to the core) with the settings in which Dickens has placed them.
Oliver Twist is more about the state of the poor in England in Dickens' time than it is about a poor boy going through shitty life experiences.
...even though his life experiences are inexorably linked to the state of his surroundings, and these experiences give us a unique view into the state of his surroundings.

Yeah...completely linked.
My prot. Aleksander is the agent of plot, even when stuff happens TO him rather than him MAKING stuff happen, because we only see it through his eyes.

Anyway, fun time, even though it's beating the crap out of me with a sign that says "YOU'VE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!!!!!!"

Vampire Kisses

Yes, I'm following the vamp lit trend.

Hell no I have not and will not read Twilight.


Now on Vampire Kisses 3: Vampireville.

...this series is pretty much what Twilight should have been:
More about an intelligent teenage girl's reactions to entering a previously unknown supernatural world through her romance with a vampire, than about the supernatural world itself.
Especially since the rest of Raven's 'world' (i.e., Dullsville) puts so much pressure on her to act and look a certain way.

Everything is experienced at Raven-level, so there isn't any temptation to make the series more grandiose or world-encompassing than it needs to be.


That being said, Schreiber takes a too much time describing Raven's goth-ness.
We get it. She's gothic.
Stop telling us the details of her black eyeshadow/lipstick/nail polish application process EVERY TIME she does it.
Same thing with how her room looks.
We KNOW she has an Edward Scissorhands lamp and sleeps with a Hello Batty plush.

Basically, I shouldn't get overwhelmed by her goth-ness in EVERY SINGLE BOOK.
This could have all been done ONCE in the first book, and just left to implication and reader foreknowledge for the rest of the series.




Anyway, still chugging along in school.
I'm starting to think I'm the teacher's pet in Spanish.

I mean come on, when the teacher uses YOUR notes to create test questions, what else can you think?
Same thing with asking me every day "what did we cover last time"?

Just finished Tempted...

Holy crap....

It's an amazing testament to P.C. Cast's ability as a writer when I feel shattered after watching her protagonist experience horrific trauma.

Especially when the trauma involves the death of her rock, the love of her human and vampyre life, the anchor by which she is held to her sense of self...dying as his spirit cries out to reveal the secret to destroying the enemy....

...and we're left not only not knowing whether or not she got the message, but seeing their souls in the afterlife together.

Holy **** on a ****ing sandwich!

I'll probably call this a fairly good day when I get home from work tonight, but at the moment it's all just fuzzy.

Plus I'm pissed that I have to wait until APRIL 27TH to find out what the hell happens next!!!

Maybe I'll 'finish' my fanfic during the ensuing TWO MONTHS' time.

Might just post it here if ya'll're niiiiiice.


Anyway.
Got a chance to wax (gush) romantic in my Spanish class.
Had to write a 12-15 sentence paragraph about a family member.

So of course, I wrote about my wife.

Mi esposa es muy facil amar, y muy bien a mi.
(My wife is very easy to love, and very good to me)

Yeah.
"AWWWWWWWWWWW"

Yep. Don't say learning another language doesn't have its uses.

Mi esposa es el amor de mi vida!
(My wife is the love of my life!)

More awwwwwww's ensue.

Especially since she's sick at the moment.

Mi esposa está enferma hoy. Lamento que yo no pudiera hacerle todos mejor con un beso.

[My wife is sick today. I wish I could make her all better with a kiss.]

House of Night

Holy crap it's been an amazing ride.

My only complaint regarding House of Night has been the length of each book.
The action and emotions remain so intense that I can't help but speed read, and thus have in just over a month blazed through five of the six books currently out.

Granted, this writing and publishing style was probably designed to directly contrast the long-winded, ten-ton volumes of the Twilight series.

Plus it means the entire House of Night series, all 9 books, the Red Fledgling books, and the Fledgling Guide could potentially fit into one or two mid-sized collections.


The characters are complex, real people.
I have yet to find a caricature or stereotype among them...even as the Casts play around with stereotypes within each character.

One issue I keep running into, and maybe this is just the good little student in me, is that there seems to be a whole chunk of the English language being left out of House of Night, just because the Casts wanted it to sound teenager-ish.

Granted, sounding teenager-ish is preferable in a realistic setting to "I cannot live without you, but I shall not endanger your soul."

...bleh. Twilight. Doble-Bleh.

On that note, it's sad that sooo many people claim to looove Twilight, yet completely HATE its protagonist.

Given that the whole damned thing revolves around Bella, WHY DO YOU KEEP READING IF YOU HATE THE MAIN CHARACTER?
Are you hoping she takes a flying leap and actually dies? (btw it pissed me off in New Moon when she DIDN'T die...so many times...even though Stephanie Meyer probably did that so we wouldn't think Bella was ALREADY dead, and Kristen Stewart's acting undid whatever pitiful effort Meyer made towards making Bella seem lively).

Anyway, you know my opinion of Twilight.
If you'd never read my blog before, now you know.

Then again, the world is full of stupid people.
I get hit with assloads of them every day, whether it's people in Spanish class pronouncing "que" as "QUAY", people cutting me or others off in traffic (don't get me started on driving stuff. My wife's ability to spot traffic violations overshadows Hugh Heffner's ability to spot good cleavage, and it's been rubbing off on me...the spotting traffic and the good cleavage).

It also comes out at work.
You'd think working at a LIBRARY would be a calm, comfortable job in which the work was done at a moderate pace in a relaxing environment, populated by friendly customers and stress-free coworkers.
In the words of Lex Luthor in Superman Returns:
WROOOONG!!!
The majority of customers are idiots, unable to pay for home Internet service AND unable to pay for childcare, so they bring their kids to the LIBRARY, hunker down at a computer for an hour's worth of Facebooking, Tweeting, and...whatever verb you'd associate with MySpace, while leaving the little urchins to do as they please, which usually involves knocking things over, running laps, and screaming their neglected little heads off.

Can't blame the kids when the parents are full of shit.

Oh, and can we all join hands across America to get people to LEAVE when the library is CLOSED?
Good GOD! It makes me pine for a sidearm, a tazer, AND a bottle of pepper spray, just to get the ijjits to LEAVE!
Or for a wrecking ball so that we can have an IN door and an OUT door...and lock the freaking IN door an hour before closing.

Get your inconsiderate ass off the laptop, off the copier, and out of the video aisle.
If you show up at 5 till with 15 kids and ALL of them want videos, grow some parental testicles and say NO.
Do not take up my unpaid time with "oh we'll be just a minute".
Bullshit.

We should have deadly weapons, tear gas, and automatic locks.
Maybe after a few people ran screaming from the library with "flesh wounds" and burning eyes, the word would get out that CLOSED means GET AND STAY THE FUCK OUT.

Something about the sound of thousands of little frigid daggers raining against my window sets the mood for days like today.

The sound isn't as depressing as the feeling of the same minute cutlery lashing against my nylon second-skin, and it is cool after several hours of sleet to look out and see cars which look like Ice Man took a piss on them.

I finished class early, barreled home...at least, barreled cautiously across a solid sheet of ice...and now I find myself tired, yet restless. Energetic, yet unfocused. Plenty of energy, nowhere to go...and no clue what to do with myself.
Yes I have a wife. Yes she has ideas about what to do with all the free time.
But she's on her period, so most of MY ideas for what to do with the time go out the window once cuddling becomes foreplay...and foreplay inevitably becomes teasing once she re-realizes that the store is closed for monthly renovations.


Yeah...
I'd read more of Betrayed, House of Night book #2, but I'm finding the inevitable problem of being a guy reading a book series written by and mostly populated by women.
I haven't had this problem with Cast's previous novels, because the antagonists have always been male, or female but overtly villainous.
When the antagonist is one of the above, the villainy is outright, direct, sometimes brutal...but there's no question who the antagonist is, and generally no question regarding their agenda.

Nuada wanted to rape every human female which came to hand, and kill and eat every human male.
Rhiannon wanted to reign supreme as a spoiled brat, bedding every man available, and doing whatever she damned well pleased to get her way, including killing, drinking blood, stabbing a pregnant woman in the womb....whatever.

Neferet drives me insane as a villainess, which I know P.C. is in the process of revealing her to be, because she's a woman.
Subtlety is the name of the game.
Keeping her cruelty and hatred and rage and...bitchness...in the shadows as Zoey continues to treat her as a trusted mentor and surrogate mother.

I just want to get to the unveiling already! Enough of this sneaking around B.S.!

House of Night - Christianity Critique

Yeah, my addiction to P.C. Cast is seemingly never-ending.

I got 50 pages into Marked before the evil library system (which happens to employ me) had to take it back for all 5000000000 other people waiting to read Ms. and Miss Cast's vampyre series which already makes Twilight look like a sexist, pedantic, misogynist joke.

Well now it's back in my grubby little hands, and I've read over 100 pages in the last two days alone.

...yeah, it's addicting.

Especially considering that the Casts set out to turn the vampire mythos on its head...and NOT by turning vamps into sparkling little fairies who happen to abuse their women.
If anything, Twilight only took the worst plot holes in the vampire myth...and turned the myth into one gigantic plot hole.

House of Night, on the other hand, removes the traditional Dracula-based patriarchy of vamp society, and installs a goddess--Nyx, for those who know world mythology, the goddess of night-- as vamp society's head, turning a fire-in-the-testicles based myth system into a matriarchal society.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg (cue My Heart Will Go On).

However, one of the most interesting features of the Casts' vampyre (damn that's a cool spelling!) world has nothing to do with the vamps themselves. The fictional People of Faith, a protestant denomination which, even as its members eat up vampyre art, music, and other creative products, denounce the vamps and anyone else who doesn't follow their exact belief system as hell-bound, seem to represent popular criticism of Christianity.
Granted, "people of faith" is about as generic as you can get when it comes to naming a fictional religious group, but many of the sentiments expressed by its members (such as Zoey's --le protagonist-- stepfather) seem to radiate ideals of the hardcore conservative 'christians' who get on TV all the time to rant about the decay of America.

Stuff like:
"Scientists are not God. They are not all-knowing."
...so therefore, their observations and conclusions matter NOT compared to the neat little doctrines we've laid out.

I'm actually hoping for The 700 Club to get wind of this, and issue a Harry Potter-esque formal condemnation of House of Night...just to boost sales through the roof and maybe buy the Casts a new house or two.

This actually relates to my reading of The Things They Carried, specifically the story of Tim O'Brien's drafting, "On Rainy River."
Many of the emotions expressed within the story also condemn the conservative side of the political spectrum, such as love-it-or-leave-it platitudes, blind acquiescence of whatever the government tells you, and adherence to religious dogma beyond all reason, logic, or personal experience.

I've been told that during the course of the House of Night series, Zoey and her friends are aided by Catholic nuns against a supernatural foe, so I look forward to differences in the depictions of the People of Faith and the Catholic Church.
If the Catholic Church is depicted as more open-minded and compassionate than the People of Faith, expect sales of the House of Night books to skyrocket.

Religious intolerance hardcore helped Harry Potter, so get on the ball to freak out your conservative parents.
Start reading House of Night book 1, Marked, today!

My ideal Creative Writing class setup

If I ran a university's Creative Writing department, I'd design a curriculum to fit these requirements:

1. No more than 10 students in any CW class.
-The concept of "workshopping" requires a small-group environment, so that everyone can be heard, and adequate time can be allotted for each student to read his/her writing, and have it critiqued.

2. Every CW class will last at least 2 hours per day.
-see above for time allottment. This timeframe will also allow...

3. Multiple in-class exercises to promote character building and setting construction.
-These exercises would be based around off-the-wall objects from which students will design characters and settings to be used in later writings. To accomplish these exercises...

4. Every CW class will take place in a computer lab.
-This prevents common wrist problems from occurring, and ensures every exercise will be legible and able to be saved, to a student's flash drive or online.

5. Introductory CW class will include materials to instruct in critique and revision techniques.
-This allows students who are not familiar with a particular literary form to learn about it, and learn how to give constructive criticism and apply others' criticism in revising their writing.

6. Every CW class will require no more than 4 major writing assignments, each of which will be a different literary type chosen by the student.
-Two writing types should be areas in which he or she is familiar and relatively comfortable, and two should be areas in which he or she has little or no familiarity.

7. Publishing information will be made available to Senior-level CW students, who can prove that the writing they wish to publish has been revised at least twenty times.
-This should help students choose what they wish to publish well in advance, and require them to invest a significant level of effort and ability into their writing.


Yeah, that would be awesome.

Mostly an amalgamation of Clay Randolph's general Creative Writing class at OCCC, and James Dolph's Fundamentals of CW I and II at UCO.