A bedraggled man, driven to the point of exhaustion, clothes torn, hair tangled and knotted, falling on his knees before an altar and weeping, crying out between sobs, "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?!?" He stares up at the face behind the altar, and sees someone or something he does not expect. Shocked out of his crying, he rises to his feet, turns and stumbles off, wandering aimlessly in a stuporous daze.

This Christmas has been kind of wierd for me. Christmas is a new beginning, a fresh start for the new year, but it's also a significant end. As the song goes, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end", but that doesn't mean it's not still painful. It's been interesting, coming to grips with the endings while rejoicing in the beginnings, and I'm feeling it more now than ever before. But, it's time for me to concentrate on happy things, as tonight I get to go see some local boys I've been trying to see for two-odd years now. ^_^ Merry Christmas to all of you, and I will leave with words of wisdom: "Fate is just what you call it when you don't know the name of the person screwing you over".

Tunes: "The First Noel (I Like Christmas)", Eve 6; "Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You", SR-71; "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight)", The Ramones; "I Won't Be Home For Christmas", Blink-182.

We salute you! A friend pointed me to the site of someone who has way too much time on his hands. It takes true geekdom to write a witty crossover between the Buffy The Vampire Slayer musical, Once More With Feeling, and the classic tome, Fellowship Of The Ring. w00t.

I don't really approve of myself when I use only song lyrics for a blog post, it feels like a kind of cheap cop-out. Well, maybe it is this time, but that song really does click with how I've felt lately, and besides, I'm kind of written out from a short that I'm working on. So there.

P.S. Many kudos to my old friend Faon, who just got accepted to Harvard! ^_^

This is my December this is my time of the year
This is my December this is all so clear
This is my December this is my snow covered home
This is my December this is me alone

And I
Just wish that I didn't feel like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things I said to make you feel like that
And I
Just wish that I didn't feel like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things I said to you

And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

This is my December these are my snow covered dreams
This is me pretending this is all I need

And I
Just wish that I didn't feel like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things I said to make you feel like that
And I
Just wish that I didn't feel like there was something I missed
And I
Take back all the things I said to you

And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

This is my December this is my time of the year
This is my December this is all so clear

And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

And I give it all away
Just to have somewhere to go to
Give it all away
To have someone to come home to

"My December", Linkin Park.

I was one of the crazies who went to see Return of the King at one minute past midnight last night/this morning. I was so crazy, I came to wait in line four hours before start time. So, with a friend and two complete strangers, I whiled away the hours with poker, hearts, and speed, until our other friends showed up. Once they let us in, and we landed the best seats in the house. Now, I'm not going to say anything specific about the movie, but I there was one thing that peeved me mightily, a discrepancy between the movie and the book, that left my hands itching for Peter Jackson's neck. Aside from that one flaw, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Enjoyed it enough, anywy, to see it again this afternoon,and again Friday. ^_^

"Life. Don't talk to me about life." Marvin's disgusted statement in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy sums up pretty well how I've felt lately. There've been good things going on, balanced by an oppresive blanket of disappointment and frustration. I'll have some fun experiences, and then slump back down to a depressed low, then relax and meditate (there's a really good mp3 of a guided meditation on forgiveness on Noah Levine's Dharma Punx site) so that I feel good before bed, and the cycle continues. Ah well. I'm trying to live in the now, and right now it's snowing, and it looks just plain gorgeous.

Tunes: "Boxing", Ben Folds Five; "Luka", Suzanne Vega; "Demons", Fatboy Slim

Just feeling down today. The weather is probably a factor (grey and half-rainy, lots of fog), plus I'm also facing debris in my life that I'd put on hold last week. Bleh.

Finally, one of the longest weeks of my life is over. This past week was tech week for my production of You Can't Take It With You, and I've been working my behind off. Opening night was Friday, closing night was Saturday. I can't thank enough the people who came to see me, and especially my fellow cast members and crew. It was "Hell and bliss and all that soars between it", to misquote a favorite song. And so today, far from being a day of rest, was spent at church, singing for morning eucharist and evening lessons and carols services. Needless to say, a full day at church is exhausting, physically and emotionally, and I'm just as happy to be curling up in bed with my script for our next performance, The Crucible.

Tunes: "Down Under", Men At Work; "Kiss Me, I'm ****faced", Dropkick Murphys; "So Long", Undefined. (These guys are really great, check them out! ^_^)

I was sitting in my room reading What Nietzsche Really Said, and I got to the part where it talked about Nietzsche's connection with Hitler (or lack thereof). It got me thinking: it's generally accepted that Hitler went to hell. Especially in entertainment media, Hitler is a fixture in hell. In Little Nicky, Hitler is portrayed as the Devil's favorite sadistic plaything. And it probably gives a sense of security, that the Bad Guys go to hell and the Good Guys go to heaven. But it's just not that simple. Didn't Jesus take on the sins of humanity so that we wouldn't HAVE to endure hell? Hitler conceived of himself as a Christian, and indeed thought that what he did was right in God's eyes, as he says in Mein Kampf: "Hence today I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the Lord." As such, wouldn't one expect him, at the Judgment, to atone for his sins, to beg for forgiveness, and to accept Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Light? Hitler didn't bring about the Holocaust because he thought "Hey, what's the most evil thing I can do?", he thought he was doing the right thing, and he did it well. He was a brilliant man. Horrifically misguided, but brilliant. But the winners write the history books, and since the Allies won WWII (inasmuch anyone can be said to have won), Hitler was condemned in the public eye to the worst possible scenario (granted that he was already dead), which, in the predominantly Christian American and British eye, was hell. Eternal torment for one fairly directly responsible for several million people's deaths and torture. Sounds like a fair deal, right? Well, maybe, apart from two key points: one, we are not the ones to make that decision, and two, God's forgiveness is available to ALL who seek it, including those with bad P.R. Just as we can be forgiven for our own (somewhat smaller-scale, I hope) sins and offenses, so can Hitler and others who have committed various atrocities, if they and we simply ask.