Pointlessly stupid angry rage.
Yay.

Where did I leave my sarcasm button?

Quote of the Day:

"Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back."
-Anne Lamott

Thank you Jesus, thank you for my friends who are acting as anchors and propping me up because of how hard it is to move at times from the pain, how hard it is to function and just for helping me retain my sense of humor in the storms.

The paradox is that when I am in the worst pain...you find me here and carry me, letting the prayers of all those who came before...this family of saints that all of these ones who mean so much to me are in...with divisions, pain and trials...we are closer than human blood...we're bound by the blood of you my Love, my Lord.

I really could do without the whole pain thing for a day or two...

It is sort of amazing how some people are so proficient at casting others to the side.

I wonder how often I have done that without realizing...hurt people, hurt their feelings, made them feel rejected, made them feel worthless...

So much is going on so often and there is so little time in which to act or try to decide what the right thing to do is...

Quote of the Day:

"There's no point being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes."
-The Doctor

Is finally, finally breaking the 12k word mark and only need around 7k more to catch up and be on schedule. He has no idea how the end product will be but is rather proud of how some of the plot and characters are turning out. This is definitely PG-13 bordering R rated material which is very much new territory for him to be working in...scary yet refreshing in ways that only novel writing can be.

Yay for third person.

I forget how much other Christians can make my head hurt.

I just do not see a point for going overboard with "praise" this and "praise that"...I know it's not all insincere...in fact I would dare say the majority of it IS sincere...it is just "Christianese" that drives me mad.

What is the point of talking about faith when it never goes beyond a theory or a group of words loosely used to describe how a person wastes a perfectly good Sunday morning because it is nothing more than status or a feel good pat on their back?

I know letting other people's actions and thoughts interfere and control how I respond is not just unhealthy but stupid.

The good thing is that we're all on equal footing before God...we're all sinners, all broken and all in need of healing, acceptance and love...it's just learning to live those qualities out is so hard.

So tired, so far from home...far from any sense of relation.
I feel like a stranger.
An alien.
Disconnected from those who do not know of what I speak or what I have seen.

How can one begin to divulge the experience of feeling eternity flow through oneself?

So much more...

It is basic yet so deep, simple and yet so profound...God's love.

I have been browsing Deviantart trying to find pictures to inspire my writing for Nanowrimo and I keep getting drawn back to this picture. The guy looks a lot like how I envision my main character Jace looks like and of course he spends 95% of his time running from Eldritch abominations. ^_^

http://nintene.deviantart.com/favourites/#/d1d9j22

Quote of the Day:

"You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat."
-Neil Gaiman

On Lambs and Muses

Snow flakes falling,
building a castle to the sky
a tower to see from
watching as the world
flits and moving,
burning the roads and I know
it's just that I try
and find the means to fail.

I miss you.
I don't know who will listen
or know what it is like
to write a eulogy
and not know if you are heard.

What does it matter if any of these hear
when the only person I want to know
is on the other side of eternity?

Sometimes life feels like a sick joke,
everything we try
and the circles we run
when all I want to do is follow
and maybe see the one's I've lost.

My faith is so tired,
weary and needs rest,
the only kind
that may be found
in the meek lamb.

Little lamb
who called out to me
beckoning me to follow
when I was just a child,
fifteen years ago
you spoke
and I heard.
Ten years ago
you asked for the rest of me
and I complied.

Have we really been walking that long?
You have held me,
been so faithful
when I am so quick to despair and angst.

I just am worn down to my endings
just wanting to breath
and release all the pain,
all the tragedy
that has been held for so long.

Resolutions for questions
and things you will never tell me
but I still must ask,
Why?
Why the pain?
Why must we hurt?
How long,
how long until you come again
and end the pain?

Will I always walk alone,
being in a large crowd
but always isolated?

I miss you.
I don't know how to say it
and my clarity
feels just like lies.

I can't trust myself
and I am so quick to turn,
pointing fingers
and riding this pain
dragging it out
as long as I might.

I have no choice
and not a word
that can be spent on saying.

I have to live.
I'm needed
and when I can rest
is after going home.

But it doesn't ease the pain,
the pain of distance
the pain of loss
and how I always wonder
and my mind wanders
how thou doth fair?

But it is what it is,
so much confusion.
Beauty and pain
but every day renewed.

"a fool's devotion
swallowed up in empty space
the tears of regret
frozen to the side of his face

the smell of sunshine
I remember sometimes

I've done all I can do
could I please come with you?
sweet smell of sunshine
I remember sometimes"

I'm just not sure why I trust certain people.
Inevitability.
There is just...

I know I will be back stabbed or if I am lucky just ignored.
It happens, has happened...

Will happen.

It's annoying and depressing...

But I can try to enjoy the ride as best as I can, being a real man and a brother who watches out for and is there to protect his friends and his sisters.

Is it better to be ignored or reviled and rejected?
So tired.
So convoluted and just...I do not know.
I do not know.

I wish I could hide away and then no more...no more of this pain no more of these pointless and ridiculous circles I have to run in just to escape from...the further circles, and more senseless pain.

What is honor?
What is trust?
What is devotion?

So many broken friendships and forgotten times.
I just don't have the energy to care.


I had coffee and a night time drive, listening and being a wall of support and defense. Watching the orange lights spill across the roads, breaking shadows and across our words and songs.

Seeing the lights reflect off the bay and just enjoy the comfortable silence of someone I can trust...

But I still worry.
I know it will end.
Everything has to.
It's the nature of life.

So tired.

There is at least good that has happened...
Maybe more can before it ends.

So much to do so little time.

-Novel
-Notes for class
-Parts and rehearsal for Christmas Spectacular
-Learning lines from Hamlet and blocking the scene for class
-Lying on my desk in despair
-Drinking tea
-Going to World Market to get more tea
-Having more despair
-Laying on the ground twitching
-Writing plot for running another session of Deadlands
-Trying to eat the stuff the school calls "food"
-Doctor Who
-Poems
-Despair
-Sleep?
-Exercise
-Trying to thank God for tolerating my ever increasing boughts of stupidity

This managed to remind me how much I miss Conan O'Brian.
And for some reason I keep craving diet coke every time I watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baa-dGj2LhQ

Quote of the Day:

"Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”
-Oscar Wilde

Things That go Bump in the Night

I have always had an interest in the dark and horror.

I believe the first movie with horror elements I saw that I latched onto was "Aliens" by James Cameron which was a sequel to the classic Ridley Scott film "Alien". Unlike the God-awful "Alien versus Predator" franchise which I believe is almost as bad if not actually worse than "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man", "Alien" explored the isolation of space, the horror of a parasitic alien that not just feeds off of humans but uses us as a means for incubating their young and had one of the few strong female roles in sci-fi that isn't overly sexual in Ellen Ripley (which also launched Sigourney Weaver's career into the limelight).

The movie "Aliens" took the premise established and introduced a large contingent of egotistical space marines who upheld the popular myth that everything can be fixed with technology and superior firepower just to have almost all of them systematically slaughtered by creatures who merely operated on basic instinct.

It is weird to think that something as simple as those ideas became a multi million dollar franchise that practically any self-respecting geek is at least somewhat familiar with.

Besides the idea of hostile aliens and government conspiracies (that love was grown by the likes of TV shows such as "The X-Files", "Torchwood" and the like)my next big love in the horror genre came about with my exposure to George A. Romero's "Dead" series. "Night of the Living Dead" both the 1968 and 1990 and "Dawn of the Dead" were instrumental in establishing my love of scathing social commentary with dark plots that captured your imagination and showed that no matter what the circumstances that humans themselves are indeed the worst monsters to inhabit this planet.

Romero's ability to run counter cultural themes (having strong black males leads as not only heroes but typically the most established and balanced of the characters during the racially divisive 60's and 70's) while creating a monster that is essentially human with no moral restraint, taking and consuming with no notion of "right" or "wrong".

This theme was taken and expanded upon in the classic 'Dawn of the Dead' (the 1978 original, not the 2004 bastardization by Zack Synder) to where the zombie plague was spreading and a group of humans took shelter in a in door mall. The literal and metaphorical references to the growing consumerism that dominated the 80's was readily apparent and Romero managed to mix the grotesque with the profound.

The next step in my progress down this rather morbid, yet fun path is being exposed to the Evil Dead trilogy which introduced me to the amazing team of Sam Rami, Ted Rami, Bruce Campbell and the rest of their Michigan based team which created an awkward yet lovable series of horror films which merged dark humor with the mythos of HP Lovecraft (Necronomicon, anyone?) whose writings I would not read until I was in the midst of my graduate studies.

After these the only real movies to grab my attention in recent years in the same manner has been "Shaun of the Dead", John Carpenter's "The Thing", "Blade Runner" and the rock opera "Repo! The Genetic Opera!". A very diverse group of films mixed with nihilistic dark humor, horror and most important to me - a reminder that humanity is small, very small and even with my faith I think humanity forgets how remarkably fragile we are and how unique life on earth is in comparison to the rest of the known universe.

Once I started reading Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series and exploring the table top games of "Deadlands" and "Call of Cthulhu" I found this strange fascination with how humanity and the horror seem to go hand in hand.

Almost all of the Christian fiction I have had this misfortune to read is horribly dull, very two dimensional and completely sanitized for consumption within the Christian Cultural Bubbles.

This is a shame.
I believe this must come from the overly puritan roots that influenced a lot of churches and theological thought because once one starts actually reading the Bible from the idea that it is an actual historical document set in a particular time and place over thousands of years one starts to see how dark humanity is.

Sort of like Lovecraft and King actually.

You have murder, rape, genocide, horrifying plagues and so much variation just in Genesis alone, so much more over the rest of the time period recorded in the Bible.

Is it because humans are debase that we seek entertainment that reflects this or is it a means of drawing these horrors out of us so we can openly talk about those things we try to hide from?

I think those of faith who try to hide away from the darkness present in fiction, in the imagination, much less the world are doing themselves a disservice. If we have faith in a God who is bigger than us, greater than any force in this world then why do we cower in our rooms from reality?

It is almost like fiction can be used to liberate us from apathy, waking us from the cold slumber that there are genuine problems in this world that need to be addressed.

At least that is the idea I am shooting for.

There really is no point to beat some one over the head with the notion that there is good and bad...and really I would like to think a lot of my efforts are sort of in the vein of Flannery O'Conner.

"The writer who emphasizes spiritual values is very likely to take the darkest view of all of what he sees in this country today. For him, the fact that we are the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world doesn't mean a thing in any positive sense. The sharper the light of faith, the more glaring are apt to be the distortions the writer sees in the life around him... My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable... The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural."

-Flannery O'Connor

6,574 words and I will be back on track.
I can possibly do this.
I think I can.
I would much rather slump over my desk in despair but writing would be a touch more productive.

Oh dear, oh dear.

*withers away*

Such insane nonsensical nightmares.
Everyone...must...has to go away in the end...and yet...

Hope?

*sigh*

Prayer.
Hope.
Faith.
...love?

Oie...so complicated...fear...doubt...so much...

Quote of the Day:

“He sends a cross, but He also sends the strength to bear it.”
-Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

Quote of the Day:

"“May today be peace within. May you trust your highest power that you are exactly where you are meant to be... May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you... May you be content knowing you are a child of God... Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise, and love. It is there for each and every one of you.”
-Mother Theresa

This was actually a very encouraging piece written by Mercedes Lackey:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/3853430

Quote of the Day:

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
-Bill Cosby

Yes.

Sometimes I do in fact surprise myself.