News, Good and Random

French the llama, is it only 4 (almost only 3) days until Christmas!!!??!!!??!?!?!

(For an explanation about the "french the llama" thing, visit this video. It's nothing bad, I promise.)

Okay, so, some good news.

Darling Dearest is doing great. She's gained significant movement back in her left side since last I saw her. She has a slight case of "word salad", which, in case you don't know, means that sometimes she gets the words she means confused with a different word. However, it's much better than it was when she first woke up.

On the down side, she's very, very angry, but that's also understandable. She hates relying on other people, so I totally expected her to be pissed off at the nurses and such when she can't do what she wants.

They're going to start physical therapy with her soon, and she'll probably really like that. She's been trying to crawl out of the bed for a while anyway.

I'm doing good, myself. I've upgraded from crutches to a walker, and hopefully I'll be upgraded to a cane before I head back to college. It'll be hard to get to room on the second floor with a walker.

My Christmas shopping is done, I believe. I just got the last thing today. It's a great present for my mom.

Also, I've been very interested at cryptograms. They're very interesting and fun...but I'm rubbish at them. So...hopefully I'll improve. Also, I'm trying my hand at crossword puzzles. I'm rubbish at those too.

I've found myself not writing like I should be. I'll want to, I'll get on the computer...and then start surfing the net instead. I've been trying to make myself. Gotta get that discipline ready for next year.

I participated in an amazingly awesome project a few days ago. John Green, YA author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns, is also known for his video-blog project The Vlogbrothers, which he does with his environmentalist/musician brother Hank Green. They're both very funny, and both promote ideals that I hold very dear myself, including green technology, reducing your carbon footprint, and promoting to charities.

Every year the brothers Green head up a project -- which they have dubbed the Project for Awesome. It's a great project where all of their viewers (dubbed "nerdfighters") get together to take over YouTube. You make a video promoting a charity that you really like. Then everyone spams the crap out of the comment sections, rates the videos, and favorites them, so that most popular, most discussed, and most viewed pages are all Project for Awesome videos. This is meant to raise awareness about charities to the average YouTube viewer, instead of them watching videos about water-skiing squirrels.

I participated in it--a 48 hour event--and I am proud to say that not only were all but two of the videos on the most discussed page Project for Awesome videos, but on Twitter, Project for Awesome trended above everything, including the movie Avatar, which made it's debut during the project for Awesome. John Green's goal was to trump Avatar, because it cost $250,000,000 to make, and, as John said, the Project for Awesome is free.

Anyway, so that's what I did with my weekend. It was fantastic. I was very proud to do it. John also auctioned off a pair of what he called his "nerd glasses"--the proceeds went to charity. In addition he's donating $1000 to his favorite charity from the list.

On a tiny sidenote, should you want to help with a charity, but have no money to do so, go to freerice.com. There's a vocab quiz there, and for every question you get right, they donate rice to starving nations. Totally free, and totally helpful in "decreasing world-suck," as the Brothers Green put it.

Anyway, that's all I've got for right now. Tomorrow my brother will be putting up Christmas lights and our tree. I'll be there for moral support mostly. And then we're going to see Darling Dearest before coming back for Christmas Eve with mi familia. Then it's back up to the hospital the next day to spend Christmas with Darling Dearest--because we will have our first Christmas together, dammit!

I hope you and yours are having a very Merry Christmas, a very happy Hanuka, a very happy Kwanza, or whatever it is you celebrate. As long as you're a live and you've got people to celebrate with, then you've got the world.

Happy Holidays all and Best Wishes!

Happy NaNoWriMo!

Today is November 3rd, which means that NaNoWriMo has begun. Even such writers as John Green knows that it exists, and I really wish I could partake this year. Someday...ah...someday.

Anyway, so I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween weekend. I sure did. I went to a masquerade ball a couple of days before -- with a mask I made myself. It looked pretty damn good, too, if I say so myself. The best thing about it -- and really the best thing about being in college surrounded by fellow nerds -- was all the Star Wars themed costumes. At one point a Sith Lord and Luke Skywalker got into an epic lightsaber battle before Luke had disarmed the Sith Lord of his two lightsabers and thrust his lightsaber into the Sith Lord's chest. Ah...nerd-dom!

The only thing better than a Sci-Fi movie based costume is a literary nerd costume! Someone came dressed as the Ghost of Christmas Past!!! I wanted them to win the costume contest so bad, but the winner was someone who came dressed as an urban gangster...yawn.

Back to the Star Wars stuff, though. At one point, Luke walked up to a girl dressed in white and asked, "Are you Leah?" She responded with, "No. Padme." He responded, "Sweet." The flirting was pretty obvious, and I almost shouted "Incest! Incest!" but I didn't want to be that guy.

Halloween night I watched a couple of horror movies -- really good, cheesey ones, including Zombie Strippers (yes, that is a real movie, no, it's not a porn, and no, you shouldn't watch it if you're easily disturbed. I thought it was funny as hell, though.), and Trick or Treat (a movie featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons about the evil spirit of Rock, so you know it had to be freakin' funny) -- and played Apples to Apples with a couple of friends that came up from my hometown and Darling Dearest. She beat me...of course.

Now we have three gigantic bowls of candy and only me and my Dearest to eat it all. I wanted to give a lot away, and she almost strangled me for suggesting it.

So, it's after Halloween, and you know what that means...

WE GET TO FORGET THAT THANKSGIVING EXISTS AND JUMP STRAIGHT TO CHRISTMAS!!!!!

I may have already done most of my Christmas shopping... I love it that much. Darling Dearest will love her presents, and I really can't wait for all of my friends to get their gifts. I love giving gifts.

I also may be hinting heavily for several books in the near future (including the most recent addition to the Hitchhiker's Guide series).

Speaking of gifts, one of my good friends was nice enough to purchase the Rent movie soundtrack, a rare find indeed. I have yet to find it in any music store. My friend heard me lamenting about my lack of funds, and soon he was insisting to buy it for me. I am now a very happy fellow.

Sorry for the sporatic nature of this update. I've had many essays to write, many books to read, many poems to create, and not a lot of freetime. Hopefully things will slow down soon, although I doubt it. It's creeping up on the end of the semester, things will only get more hectic from here.

Anyway, good luck to those who decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. I'll be rooting you on from the sidelines.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas

Strange Dreams and a Merry Christmas Wish

Here's something weird. I hardly ever dream, but I've been having some weird ones over the past couple of weeks. One from the other night had me punch the wall in my sleep. This one was the one I had the night before last:

The village was in an uproar. Mothers grabbed their children and turned them away, others weeped uncontrollably. Men stood still and hard, keeping a brave front for their families, but their fears shone in their eyes like tiny suns. Some began to panic, they were unsure of what this could mean. What would cause someone to do this? It was begging to be punished by the gods.
Attanak thundered into the area on his mare, it's beautiful black mane blowing in the breeze, looking both fierce and lovely. The horse seemed to have been made from the black clouds that had been covering the village for the past few hours. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and both accented the horror of the day.

Attanak was immediately put off by the crowd. Something felt wrong; he could feel it in the marrow of his bones. He dismounted and noticed a stray peddler walking with his hat in his hands, wringing it absentmindedly and muttering to himself as he walked. He looked half mad, but Attanak needed answers.

“You there,” he said, trying to keep his voice casual and curious. He thought he did pretty well, he thought he hid the terror that was gripping his balls pretty well. “What's happened?”

The man was very short, and his large ears pointed sideways from his head almost like tiny wings. The rain that soaked his hair poured down his head and splashed behind his ears, making it look like two tiny waterfalls were on the sides of his head. His eyes were wide with horror, so wide that his red veins were easily viewable. He bit at his lower lip while scanning with his eyes, as if searching for an answer.

“I never seen nothing like it, and I thinks I never wills again. Things is gonna start happening, guardsman. Bad things, and I isn't gonna be one to stick around for them to happen to, no sir. No sir, I isn't.” With that, he wandered off, repeating that same thing over and over again, while continuing to shake his head and wring his hat in his hands.

Attanak walk forward, terrified to see what could scare the villagers so. He heard women, housewives, whispering to each other, gossiping already, but few were doing that. Most were being held by their husbands, or they were holding their own children and consoling them.
“What could make them do such a thing?” Attanak heard on lady say. Another to his left said, “What would make them choose eternal damnation. The gods have surely forsaken them now.”
Attanak paused, his eyes closed as he took deep breaths to calm himself and hopefully loosen the vice-like grip that his fear had on his stomach.

The town looked drenched and dreadful already, and seemed to have thrown off the happy, healthy look that had been there only yesterday, on the last day of the Celebration of Waning Nights. The whole week people had been eating and drinking and playing music and dancing. Now the village had taken on a cold and deadly feel, as if whatever had happened had frightened not just the villagers, but the very trees themselves seemed to be drooped with fear. Lighting crashed again, and in the distance, a wild cat's woman-like scream sent chills through Attanak's spine.

Turn around. Just turn around, pack your things, rent the soonest ship you can, and move to an island where to the south where you can escape all this. Duty, responsibility, danger, you don't need any of those things in your life, he thought to himself, but as he thought it, he knew he was lying to himself. He parted the people before him sternly, swallowing the lump in his throat and looked.

“No...” and that's all he could say.

Attanak stared up the tall tower, the Holy Tower of Western Light, that marked where the sun set and the god of Light conceded his power to the god of Darkness. In the night's darkness and the ferocity of the storm, the turrets looked twisted and perverted, a horrid black hand clawing for the sky, like a corpse crawling its way from its grave. Attanak's heart stopped, and he felt nausea and horror course through ever vessel of his body. His legs gave way and he vomited until he was empty and continued to retch. People tried to help him, but he threw them off. They didn't understand. No one could understand what this meant, the ignorant fools. No one, save for him. He had to get the warning out. He had to spread the word.

He climbed to his feet, falling several times before enough strength returned for the task. He rushed to his horse, clambered into the saddle, and reached in his saddle bag for his wine skin. He took a deep, long draft from it before replacing it.

One of the villagers approached him, a portly man wearing a white apron. He was the butcher, Lesmiof. A once, fierce looking man, he looked like a small petrified child behind his big, bushy mustache, and rolls of fat.

“Hey, what do we do?” he called to Attanak.

Attanak turned and raised an eyebrow grimly. “What?”

“You're supposed to protect us and give us advice. What does this mean? What do we do?”
Attanak laughed coldly and the smile that he bore reminded the villagers of the grins skeletons wore. He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, there was no light, no humor, no fear, nothing. Only emptiness.

“Pray,” he said, and kicked the horse into an instant gallop. It gave a startled yelp and began charging through the town as fast as Attanak could force it to go. At the edge of the town, Attanak couldn't help but look back at the horrible sight. The wind whipped and blew the bodies of the five priests who used to reside in the tower as they hung from crude, self-made nooses. Attanak wiped his rain soaked hair from his eyes, and rode off with the Tarranian Bells' Death Tolls following him out of town.

Thunder exploded again, and all knew that doom was approaching.


Pretty weird, eh?

That might be all for me for a while. I might be back on once more before Christmas, but if not, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and a absolutely great New Year.

When You Don't Know What You're Doing...

I've been trying my hand at writing a bit over the past couple of days. Not much, but a little. It feels good to get back into writing again, although it feels strange. I make a lot more typing errors than I used to for some reason, and it takes me a little bit to get started. Today, however, I wrote a scene I'm very happy with, based on a dream I had last night. I rarely ever have dreams so when I do, it's usually pretty vivid. The last time I had a very vivid dream was when I worked at Sonic and I dreamed that tiny demonic clowns and zombies were attacking me.

These scenes have mostly just been practice so that I can eventually write something. I may or may not decide to post these little snippit scenes on here. I'm still thinking about it, and I'm not sure anyone would be interested in my random little scribblings as I try to get back into the swing of writing. Anyway, it's something I'll think on over the next couple of days.

Christmas time is in full swing here at the house. We got the tree up, the lights up, and all the presents wrapped and put under the tree. Now I'm just counting the days, the agonizing...waiting...until...the best...day...ever...the clock...ticking...IT'S MOCKING ME!! ...sorry... Anyway, we've been making cookies and drinking cocoa and listening to my new Christmas cd I bought, "Let It Snow, Baby, Let It Reindeer" by Relient K. Good stuff, and one of the only Christmas cd's I can find in the Alternative Rock genre.

Also, I've been reading a lot. I finished Holly Lisle's Secret Text trilogy (two words: Freakin' Awesome!) and now I'm reading Sherman Oak and the Magic Potato by S. William Shaw and The Husband by Dean Koontz. Once I'm done with those two I'll start on Vincalic the Agitator by Holly Lisle, cause the world of Matrin is just awesome, and it will keep me occupied until Hawkspar comes out.

And, because I haven't scared you guys with enough odd ramblings yet, I've been watching an anime called Death Note. It's absolutely fantastic. It's about a boy who finds a Death Note, which is what Shinigami (japanese "death gods") use to kill humans. Because he found it, it now belongs to him, but he also gets to basically keep the Shinigami who originally owned it, as a pet...sorta. Anyway, the boy, Light, decides to kill all the evil people of the world and create a perfect world where he will rule as a god, while evading a detective aliased L who is just as smart and freaky as Light. It's a very exciting and intriguing series, and it makes you ask yourself, if you had the ability to kill anyone you wanted just by writing it down in a book would you? If you did, who would you kill and why? Very dark, but very interesting.