No Fear

So. It has been a tumultuous couple weeks. I don't know why I've been so down about it, but hopefully I can recuperate this weekend and be ready to live the last two weeks of Halloween to the fullest.

Bored to Death

The last week or so has been strange. I've continued to have problems with my insurance/loan situation. Once again I called my loan company only to find out that they still haven't received any sort of payment from the insurance company.

I've decided also that I won't be attending the CAMWS (Classical Association of the Midwest and South) conference next month.

CAMWS invited me to read my paper "Ripped Up By The Roots: Sophocles' Antigone and The Fall of the House of Oedipus" at their 2008 convention, but because of this car situation and every other blow Colorado has dealt me I don't feel confident enough about my school work or my finances to take off a couple days and attend the convention in Asheville. Also, the fact that G-mail marked a month's worth of CAMWS communication as Spam didn't help either.

I've also decided that if I can get back into blogging I'm at least going to give myself one day off per week, beginning in November. As it stands I owe you all way too many posts about Halloween to cut myself any slack before the end of the month.

I got back to RCIA (basically adult confirmation classes for the Catholic Church) this week after missing two weeks in row. I'm still not overly pleased at how painfully elementary the class is and how much time we spend sharing our "feelings," but I guess I just have to bite the bullet, unless I can find a more ambitious class in town.

Today is devoted to catching up on grading and reading Dracula. I've finished the second and third books in the Eragon series only to find that there's a fourth, and I'm none too pleased about it. While the books are good, and if my 8th graders are all reading them I don't think it's a waste of time if I do to, I can't help but cringe when I see the Christopher Paolini is in league with Phillip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) whose entire purpose in writing children's books is to undermine the theory of fantasy and fairy stories developed by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein.

Well, this has been scattered, but at least I'm blogging.

Let me know how you've been and remind me if I owe you a phone call.

Your Halloween video for the day:


P.S. If you've never seen the musical episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer you can't consider yourself cultured. The same holds true for the musical episode of Scrubs.

Pray to St. Dracula for a musical episode of Heroes.

A Rush of Blood to The Head

"There seemed a strange stillness over everything; but aas I listened I hearad asa if from down below in the valley the howling of wolves. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said: ---
'Listen to them - the children of the night. What music they make!'"

- Dracula, Bram Stroker

Vampires, Werewolves and Zombies, Oh My!

There has been a thick fog over Colorado Springs for the last 48 hours or so. It has been rainy and miserable and before this morning I hadn't seen the mountains in 3 days due to lack of visibility. But when the sun rose this morning I could see that Pike's Peak was blanketed with snow all the way down to the tree line.

I finished the second book in the Inheritance Trilogy (the first of which is the novel Eragon) in my ongoing endeavor to read the books my students are reading. In that same vein I got permission last week to start a book club for my 8th graders.

This book club would meet for two lunches at the end of the month. At the first we will discuss a book of the 8th grader's choosing and at the second I will provide lunch and we will discuss a book of my choosing. For the month of October the books are:

8th graders: Twilight, the first book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers
Mr. Good: Dracula, by Bram Stoker

I'm about 100 pages into Dracula and it's really starting to get good. Evidently, this book is not only the original vampire novel, but also the original werewolf novel, and the original... oh, what do you call people who like comsuming other creatures merely because they are destroying a life? People who would eat flies and spiders, or would feed flies to spiders so that when they ate the spiders the would be comsuming a dozen lives rather than just one? Anybody know? ...well, it's got one of those too.

At this point all these creatures are sort of converging on London and preparing to begin feeding off the innocent populous. Good stuff.

Well, I'm off to church. Have a spooky Sabbath.

Also, since there's a Halloween dance coming up at my school and of course I'm chaperoning I need your suggestions on:

1. What I should make for our Dracula book club lunch.
2. What I should choose for our November book.
3. What I should dress up as when I chaperone the upcoming Halloween dance. Keep in mind Ms. Brogan's dress code prevents me from displaying "weapons or gang signs."

Your Halloween clip: Jonathan Harker first encounter's Count Dracula

Bad Moon Rising

I was thinking as I drove home from work on Friday, that even if cars end up eating the ozone layer and baking us all to a crisp, in some way, God has sanctioned their existence in the pleasure that a dog experiences when he sticks his head out the window.

Mallory responded to this thought by asking why it is that dogs love sticking their heads out the window of a moving vehicle, but they hate it if you blow in their faces....

What Has Jesus to do With Halloween

Every Sunday the bulletin at Divine Redeemer makes me smile. This week, among other things, it advertised a church sponsored haunted house. That's right, not a Fall Festival, not Trunk-or-Treat, but an honest to goodness, scare the pants off you, vampires and werewolves, haunted house.

One of the many thing I love about the church is that they take humanity as it is and go from there. They don't start with the assumption that if we know Jesus we're perfect already and just need to be kept that way.

Championing Halloween shouldn't just be the job of the Catholic Church though, Christianity in general should realize what a perfect opportunity for evangelism it is when, for a month out of the year, everyone in America acknowledges the existence of a spiritual reality.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather talk to a pantheist or the pagan about Christianity than an agnostic or an atheist. At least the devil-worshipper is working with all the same dimensions of reality as the Christian. They acknowledge that a spiritual world exists and that it interacts with the physical world in a meaningful way.

Every child, unless otherwise guided, by the age of 12 will have a fully developed set of pantheistic beliefs. They'll see God in nature, in music, in their friends and family. They'll see evil in the destroying power of divorce and family strife, in ignorance and hatred, in alcohol and even in the fact that the more they know, the less sun-shiny their world seems. Everyone feels the transcendent in music, in physical exertion, in the fuzzy feelings of a first love, the rush of the wind and a warm summer rain. It is only our teenage years or an earlier and more unnatural introduction to materialism that will either make us cling to our false gods or throw them, along with our stuffed animals and LEGOs into an attic, only to be held from that point forward with nostalgia rather than a truly spiritual fascination.

There is something so hard-hearted about not believing in any spiritual reality of any sort, and something ignorant about a Christianity that doesn't realize the real spiritual good that Harry Potter, Eragon, and Halloween are doing.

Christians should be able to embrace Halloween as the only time the most people will acknowledge that a spiritual reality exists at all.

It's amazing how much the shadow tells us about the light and how ineffectual a battle we would be fighting if we set out to conquer rap music, immodest clothing and fast food without allowing Christians and non-Christians alike to see that our battle "is not against enemies of flesh and blood...but against the spiritual forces of darkness of this present age."

Also, the bulletin announced that the Colorado Springs Catholic Young Adult Group would have their monthly "Theology on Tap" meeting at Jack Quinn's at 7pm on Wednesday. Nothing like a Bible study at an Irish pub. Seriously. These people really know what's up.

Your Halloween video:

My Own Worst Enemy

Yesterday was:

• A trip to the Garden of the Gods, where we found out that cute little bunnies, like the one below, have the plague. (click to enlarge)
• A visit to Manitou Springs for Mallory's first taste of Manitou water and a look in at the local cult scene
• Bacon cheeseburgers and some much needed encouragement from Bob and Virginia at the Corner Cafe
• Searching the newspaper for cars and kittens
• Finding out there there are actually no pets at Petsmart
  
• Nearly taking advantage of the Border's 25% teacher discount
• Nearly adopting a kitten from the Humane Society
• Great food and great wine (homemade chicken alfredo and a German Riesling)
• A walk downtown to find a local brewery
• One beer turning into two beers and a couple games of pool (after finding out there was a $10 minimum on credit cards
• Two beers and pool turning into several beers and singing along to a cover band that played exclusively 90's alternative rock (a-mazing)
• Fighting a rabid weresquirrel on our walk back to my house
  
• Sleeping long and well before church

And your Halloween video of the day:

In The Shadows

Real quick - there was no internet to be found at my house yesterday so I'm going to do my best to double-post today.

5 Good Reasons to be Scared Today

1. When I got in my car today, eating a piece of cold pizza slathered in roasted garlic, I thought the Vue was greeting me with a Halloween message, but really I had just mistaken "Odometer" for "October".

2. A kid, with the most sincere expression and tone, excused his absence on Wednesday by saying that his family had spent Rosh Hashanah at home preparing for the End Times. Seriously, the kid spent the day reading Revelation and trying to tie Nostradamus prophesies to current events. So.... if this kid's dad "feels a rapture coming on" is he going to miss more class? On the bright side I really didn't see Sarah Palin as the Whore of Babylon, but it does kind of make sense and now I can be prepared. Why else would a woman only own red suits?

3. Cardinal John Henry Newman has been disinterred and is to be kept in a church on Halloween and All Saint's Day in preparation of a mass honoring him and promoting his cause for sainthood. Read about it here.

4. Perhaps they are digging up ol' Newmie in hopes of finding that he is incorruptible. What's incorruptible? Why I thought you'd never ask: 10 Incorruptible Saints. Check out especially St. Bernadette who died in 1879 and as of a really 80's looking photograph still looks like she's just sleeping.

5. This is my favorite Sesame Street segment of all time:

October

"This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams becoming more fervent and vivid." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

It is officially the Halloween season. I slept with a bag of candy corn under my pillow and when I woke up at 1:17 I nibbled on a handful of the waxy kernels before continuing to dream of Heroes.

Words, Words, Words

Last night I played the closest game of Scrabble that I have ever witnessed. I compliment Eva, my opponent, and admit that I underestimated her abilities.

Our scores were within 20 points the entire game, we both easily broke 300 points, and the final four words played were "one" (on a triple word score), "furl," "jeer," and "oven." I ended up winning (after the adding and subtracting of Eva's final letters) by 1 point. Wow. A good omen for the coming month.

Mallory arrives tomorrow, which means a week of insanity for all parties involved. Expect pictures. Expect it to be good.

Also, expect October to rock your socks with:
1. Daily quotations from Frankenstein, Dracula, or the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
2. A YouTube video every day, increasing in spookiness and nearness to my heart as the month goes on.
3. Either a new decoration in my house or a new element on the blog in preparation for my 100th posts on November 1st (All Saint's Day).
4. Good reasons why you should never dress your kid as a princess or a cowboy.
5. A simple, progressive explanation of why Jesus loves Halloween just as much as Christmas or Easter. And finally...
6. The absolute denegration of every secular Christmas song and tradition.

Today I just want to ease you into the season with a short video from National Geographic on the history of Halloween. Enjoy.

Sundown

It is the eve of the day that begins the month which culminates with my favorite holiday: Halloween.

As I watch the sun throw up it's last pitifully unanswered cries for help, while the mountains obscure it's grizzly fate - drowned in the cruel pacific - I focus every fiber of my being on the self-restraint it will take to refrain from the sugary sweet goodness of candy corn for another four hours. How can a simple mixture of sugar, corn syrup, egg whites, honey, soy protein, salt, artificial flavors, confectioner's glaze, carnauba wax, and artificial dyes including red 7, yellow 5, and yellow 3 taste so good?

Did You Ever Think When a Hearse Goes By...

Today after work I stopped by Experts Only Collision to pay my final respects to Gretchen and to search her mangled corpse for valuables.

All told she held: a bottle of laundry detergent, my other hobo-glove (whose mate is my favorite pot-holder), three dirty socks, Chaucer's Canturbury Tales, four quarters, and about 643 pens.

It's funny how little I mourn the passing of the lesbian in my life when I consider how attached I was to my Oldsmobile in high school. Maybe it's because the times spent in Gretchen weren't nearly as good as those spent in the Olds, but I should feel some gratitude towards her for getting me through three years of Hillsdale and the move to Colorado.

She's carted more than her share of odiferous highschoolers to and from Young Life, she's been borrowed and battered by nearly everyone I know. She's driven to Chicago without me. She's crossed the Missippi and climbed mountains while bearing my only wordly possessions. And now, like my bike, my savings, my dignity and my will to live, Colorado has taken her from me.

Rest in peace Gretch. May the spirit of Henry Ford, from whom all cars come and to whom they must all return, take kindlier to homosexuals than the God of Abraham and Isaac.



Also, the Fantasy Book Store on Platte does not have The Hobbit. Really they don't have any of the sort of books you're looking for. Really, it isn't that kind of fantasy book store.

Freedom 90

St. Dracula (the patron saint of Halloween that I made up today) has sent me numerous blessings in preparation for the fast-approaching season.

Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead

1. Mallory is coming. I'll have a great friend from home in the Springs for a week beginning this Thursday (just in time to start Halloween right).

2. I've received a standing invitation to watch Heroes and, much like St. Dracula hisself, I can't go anywhere without being explicitly invited (I also don't like mirrors, though I love garlic... hmm...).

3. Gretchen is dead. That's right my woman-loving car is totalled. It took a month for the verdict to come down, but it has been made and she's gone. Hot stuff. The settlement will pay off Gretchen and give me money left over for a down payment and trip to Boston. Turns out this whole thing was serendipitous after all.

Prepare yourselves for my favorite month. It's going to rock the flesh off from your bones.

Only 48 more hours remain in my candy corn fast, then the blood hits the fan (like in the movie Carrie) and I force you, once again, to love everything I do, or to be bored out of your mind for an extended period of time - speaking of which, tonight is Heroes which means tomorrow will be an all-Heroes post. Eat my ectoplasm.

Love Halloween like I do? Let me know what your reason for the season is and how you'll be spending it - disembowelling your loved ones, I hope.

Happiness Is...

Five Good Reasons To Be (Almost) Catholic

1. Yesterday was “Chili and Margarita” day at Divine Redeemer, which meant that I went directly from mass to eating homemade chili and enjoying mixed drinks in Fellowship Hall, and they were tall and unusually strong. Those old ladies know how to whip up a margarita. Only in the Catholic Church would you have hospitality volunteers signing up to bring “12 large bottles of tequila.”

2. Flannery O’Connor is Catholic. I bought a copy of A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Short Stories at a used bookstore on Saturday for $3.50. I was three stories in before reading the back cover and discovering that not only was O’Connor Catholic, but her expressed purpose in writing these stories was “to reveal the mystery of God’s grace in everyday life.”

3. I also started reading Dracula in preparation for Halloween. it’s interesting to note that Dracula is sort of built around the liturgical year, beginning on St. George’s day and culminating on Halloween, or All Hallows Eve. My plan is to set the mood in the month of October by reading Dracula, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein. Who’s with me?

4. Today in our bulletin I found the following announcement under the heading Annual Blessing of Pets: "On Monday, October 6th, in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, we will be blessing family pets. You may bring your pet to Divine Redeemer for a special blessing of good health and, hopefully, good obedience. All pets are welcome.”

5. And finally: