Bittersweet Holidays

I figured I should put up a Christmas post for anyone out there who watches this without leaving any sort of trace.
So it's Christmas Eve, and it's turned out to be a white one, despite my earnest hopes to the contrary. Oh, well, that's what I get for living...well, you don't need to know where.
The whole thing seems just a tad surreal after waiting for it for so long. Like when I saw Star Wars Episode 3 in the theater for the first time, but not quite as intense. The feeling has been following me around lately, maybe it's that this'll be my last Christmas as a minor. I just can't shake the dread of my childhood slipping through my fingers like the fine sand of an hourglass. I'm still not used to being a senior in High School, and I'll be turning eighteen in June. It's just such a weird concept, growing up.
We're doing ten minute, one act plays in my theatre class. My group is doing one called Labor Day, which is about such a concept, about how time seems to get away from us. About the denial of time's slow descent towards an encroaching doom to all that is innocent. I try my best to preserve my optimism, my joy at the very idea of life, but I sometimes feel like I'm fighting a battle I can't win.
*sigh*
I wonder what I'm getting.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Here's a Batman picture:

Everything is so NEW!

Listening To: The Point of No Return, The Phantom of The Opera Movie Soundtrack
Holiday Engine: Revved
Mood: Content

We're almost through our December performances in choir! *hallelujah!*
Our last performance is on Saturday, but before that we have our major winter concert tomorrow, and a major day full of shows on Friday.
The finish line is in sight.
On the recommendation of a friend, I've started reading Mistborn, and I gotta say, it's fantastic. I'm only about a third of the way through the first book, and I'm really enjoying it. It's just the kind of book I like, with interesting characters, clever magic system and elaborate world setup. It has great action scenes, and I've been told that I haven't seen anything yet.
Very exciting.
I played Racquetball for the first time tonight with my youth group. An interesting experience, and definitely something I'd be willing to repeat. Though it's all about the people you're playing with. Being the physically inept guy that I am, having a bunch of guys who are very forgiving of your shortcomings is very helpful.
Chick-Fil-A. First time today, and I found it very satisfying. Great chicken... And that's all I have to say about it. Really.
I've been to read more fan fics lately, and, being cautious and going through TV Tropes for my recommendations, I think I've found some real gems. Very good stuff. I found Morphic, a rather dark pokemon fic about half-breeds between pokemon and humans, to be excellent, and, while there is quite a bit of foul language, most of it is fairly deserved. But, as a warning, it touches on a few very sensitive topics, including religion, abortion, and death, but handles them quite realistically and maturely in my opinion.
I finished my 10K word story challenge, and was fairly pleased with the result. I got a 195 out of 200, which I'm very excited about. Now, I didn't finish the story, but I think I left it hanging on a rather nice cliffhanger. I started the story off with the mindset of a superhero story about a citizen of a city whose entire population has superpowers. But where my plot took me follows more of the style of an action thriller, but with the same superpower twist. I think it turned out rather well.

An Obituary

Today had a moment that will probably stand out in my memory for the rest of my life.
I haven't mentioned it here, but I grew up on legos, specifically, the Bionicle line. These things have been an obsession of mine since I was eight years old. In the last year or so, though, my interest has began to slacken when it comes to the current events of the series. When I logged into a community site dedicated to the series, BZPower, for the first time in a while, it came as a blow to the chest when the news page displayed articles referencing the end of the line.
My pulse quickening and my head fuzzy, I looked over the back articles to find a letter from the Lego Group to BZPower, detailing that they would be discontinuing the toy line after a release in January...
I gave ten years to these toys. No one who has not gone through a similar experience can't imagine the specific sense of loss that I've felt.
Goodbye, Bioncle, we had a good run.









2001-2010
RIP

Wake Up Call

As I've said: sporadic posting.
It's been more than two weeks since my last post, which I admit is quite a bit. Not that you care...*glare*
My Xbox 360 has been racking up games pretty quick over the last couple weeks due to a sudden rush by my 15 year old brother to purchase as many games as he can before our parents make us not buy anything until Christmas after Thanksgiving. I've pitched in a few bucks here and there, but mainly my stand on this is to let him get as much as he wants for MY Xbox. So as he puts in lots of work, in the end, the fruits of this labor will become mine. Of course, by the time this deviously concocted plan plays out the 360 may become obsolete. Oh, well, I'm getting Modern Warfare out the deal, so the joke's on him.
South Pacific is over FINALLY. And we did fantastically, our very critical director was left speechless on several occasions and we managed to break his rating scale, scoring two 10.5s and 12 on closing night. Our school's theme for this year is "Leave A Legacy", which I think we've done pretty well.
I've been taking a Creative Writing class this semester, and our big project for the month of November is to write a short novel in class. This reminded me of the marathon writing project that my mother is currently involved in. Shortly after I thought this, our teacher pulled up the website in the previous link on his projector...WOW. He was already a pretty cool guy, but this scores him about 500 awesome points.
Now that the musical is over, Madrigal rehearsals are being scaled up quite a bit in order to prep for the craziness that is December for our choir. 6 am rehearsals three days a week, and intense feelings of nervousness have been highly prevalent. Especially since our very first performance is for an extremely prominent group of people...as in WORLD RENOWNED.

NO WAY

Brief post, because I simply must spread word of how awesome Bioshock 2 looks!
Multiplayer? Check! New plot? Check! New equipment? Check! Dual wielding a giant drill and a flamethrower plasmid? ...I must buy this game!!!
Don't think so? WATCH THIS.
Back now? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Musical rehearsals are both heating up and slowing down. No more 6ams, but now we have long after school rehearsals EVERY DAY. And now we're mixing in Madrigal 6ams, oh, JOY. [/sarcasm]
Y'know what I've realized about the version of Beauty and the Beast I'm doing? It's so very 80s. I knew that's when it was written, but this is just NUTS. And the music is a bit schizophrenic when it comes to the genre, it can't really seem to decide what it wants to be. Is it a traditional musical, or is it a rock opera? IT DOESN'T KNOW!!!

HMS Frantic Boredom

Well, I missed the concert. Lame. But I'll survive. And now we move on to Christmas music! We have eight songs so far, just about every one is a recognizable song. But most are interesting arrangements, so that's a kind of a bonus.
We've finished off 6 am rehearsals for South Pacific, but now we move into early madrigal rehearsals. *sigh*
Electronic media don't seem as appealing as they used to. It's an interesting turn. I need something new to do. Blogging seems to help a bit, but not by much.
...DAH!
High School Musical. I am simply baffled as to how popular it is. I blame Disney's relentless marketing techniques. My sister is enamored with it, and the music is so dang catchy!
November is NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. The basic is objective is to write a 50,000 word novel over the course of one month... A month. That's almost 2000 words a day! I've attempted this mountain a couple of times and fallen flat on my face on both occasions. I simply don't have time for it! Will I try it again? I don't know.

Not Good In Any Way Whatsoever

Listening To: Nightwish
Health: In the tube
Need To Catch Up On TV: Drastic

Being sick sucks, period.
I've been half dead for about twenty four hours and it is awful. The timing couldn't be worse. We're in the thick of rehearsals for South Pacific and our first choir concert is in two days. And I hate sleeping all day, it makes me feel like a blob. While I do enjoy sleeping in, this is the exact opposite of enjoyment. But this does give me some time to rest up and get my head together before going through another rush of extracurriculars, and to update this blog!
I love webcomics, they are awesome. They don't even have to be the funny kind, dramatic ones are great if done well. Recently, I've been reading comics at snafu-comics.com. Their more prominent artist, Bleedman, has some truly excellent work. He has a pair of comic series that are basically enormous crossovers between popular cartoons injected with a good dose of dark themes and spectacular writing, and they are AWESOME. These are Grim Tales and the PPGD. Truly amazing, though it's probably the geekiest thing I've ever read in my life.
Now for something simply silly!
Star Wars Uncut is a fan recreation of the original Star Wars, but divided into fifteen second clips that anyone can pick up and make. Each is intended to be a reconstruction of the moment in question, but it can be made in any way. Any film style, no matter how low budget/quality, can and will be accepted to the site, and once they have the whole movie done they'll put it together for people to watch. It'll be the most schizo movie ever, but it'll definitely be fun.
My brain is in jumbles from being sick so I'll stop here.

Reformatted

I've decided to add a couple of tags to the start of each of my posts describing my current status.

Listening To: Assorted Soundtracks, A Teens
Most Active Site Of The Moment - snafu-comics.com
Outlook Of The Day - Slogging Through

Ugh, I'm just so tired right now. But this is really the best time for my posting cuz I'm typically brimming with all the stuff in my brain while physically drained. I wonder if there's a reason for that? Kind of like the law of motion, "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction"? Idunno.
This musical is going to kill me, I just know it. I'm way behind on my TV shows and in serious need of some downtime. Only a few more weeks, and once All State is over things'll lighten up.
I like Glee, but it's not exactly the most appropriate city. Kind of a guilty pleasure. But one thing that always bugs me about it is that, being a student of the performing arts, I always think "Dang, this is the most dysfunctional group ever." It's good TV though. :)
I love crossover fanfics, I do, I tend to write them as well. I have a couple of big projects in the works right now, but I'm not gonna tell you about them or else my creative juices will drain faster than oil down a wet drain. That drains quickly right? You'd think so.
But I'll tell you this, they both have more than ten sources, yeah.
Gonna go read more crossover fanfics!

Football and Firefox

Football is not my cup of tea...usually.
The Super Bowl and maybe my school's Homecoming game are about the only times I ever take interest in the sport, but last night my more sports-oriented relatives came to visit and took the male members of my family to a football game. I did not have high hopes for the game. But after about the first quarter I was up singing the fight songs and stomping my feet even more than anyone else in my family. Lets just say I am a very enthusiastic person and leave it at that.
I have a pet peeve. I use Firefox, and I open up a large number of tabs while online. And when I close it down I can save these tabs so I'll get them back when I boot it up the next time I'm on. Sometimes I'll have to go do something else and one of my immediate family members will close it down without saving the tabs. This leaves me to find all the places I was at the next time I'm on.
This drives me up the wall.
I'll probably post more later today.

Sha-clunk

It's been a few days, so an update should help spruce things up!
My throat has been scratchy, sore, and bugging the crap out of me. It hurts.
Weather outside is freezing, weather inside is HOT, neither is comfortable.
I've been reading around on the internet and have confirmed some suspicions I've had for a while:
Harry Potter fans are insane. Don't believe me? Go here for a list of truly mind-boggling instances of off-the-wall craziness.
...Sorry got lost.
Star Wars has a whole lot of music, so much so that it takes up at least a fourth of my Rhapsody playlist than anything else. And my playlist is over 500 songs. No, really. I'm listening to it right now.
I love webcomics, but one of my favorites is based on Dungeons And Dragons. It's called the Order of the Stick, here's the archive. It may be one of the most dorky things you'll ever see, but I love the stuff.