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.

Dear Jesus

I'm here, confused as always and just hoping to find grace after such a long struggle.

Words are all I have and they are so cheap.

How do I begin to even speak sincerely after all the lies, the doubts, the fears, the hate, the lusts, the pride and all the self destructive wastes of time?

I will never be able to look you in the eye because of how much shame I feel...not just for surviving or being alive...but knowing how I relentlessly turn away from those you send to me...and I just want to hide with me and never see the light again.

But, why and how...you love me?
Not just narcissistic me.
But...this world, those hurting and broken...knowing they can't do this life alone and need love just as desperately as me.

All this aching, all this pining, worry and stress...

What matters?
What truly matters?

Is there anything besides love?
You are so just, so loving, caring, so much more than I can scarcely dare to dream...

Thank you.
Thank you for a new day to live and smile.
Thank you for my loved ones...friends and family who carry me when I am too weak to continue in this broken body.

Such beauty, such wonder.
Infinite splendor
and the priceless pearl
in this broken world of dirtiness.
Thank you now and forever.

Fear!

Loathing!

Excitement!

Yes Nanowrimo!

=D

I am starting to have second thoughts about being a mentor...I already have four victi-er...charges I have agreed to help make it through to the 50k finish line.

Oh dear.

This shall be interesting. ^_^

Internet rage over pie and plagiarism:

I'm just trying to imagine how different this would have been if a cat would have been in danger and 4Chan got pulled into all of this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=131091599&sc=fb&cc=fp

So it turns out loud eating is one of my biggest pet peeves.
I swear I am going to have a bloody aneurysm before all is said and done.

I can't believe I just spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to spell "icicle".

-_-

You know...despite me tendency towards the negative...

It really isn't all so bad.
Just so much to do...so little time.
It is far too easy to become overwhelmed...to be needlessly lost on things that never will matter.

I'm feeling so disconnected.
The harder I try the worse it all gets.
I am so tired of being sick.
How long will this existence bathed in twilight will last?

Sometimes it just doesn't even seem worth it...to even ask why.

Then there are moments that without a doubt divine...like in Drama Production yesterday afternoon. With all the hell building up in my life...that was such an unexpected movement of prayer.

What is the point?
I feel so...
How do I trust anyone?
Will the questions ever fade?

I don't want to let anyone close, I do not want to let anyone with the name of Christian near me because I have been betrayed and turned on by almost all of them.

It is almost as if none of them are aware of the irony of wearing the name of Christ and yet being nothing more than baseless animals beneath the shined up and polished exterior.


But the thing is...I can't point the finger.
I am guilty of the same sins and more.

It's like all I am qualified to really do is hypocrisy.

Maybe...I will one day be able to slide out of this impossibly think cynical skin and be able to act as though I am in my mid twenties and not my eighties.
Being ahead of the curve is only good if it leads to something positive....being perpetually exhausted, burned out and seemingly on the verge of collapse helps no one...

It's just...

I think I just felt my mind explode. #_#