In the spirit of the day:

Happy All-Hallow's, everybody!

And here is another nifty link. (Rhiannon, if you're reading this...you'll like this one. hehe)

Can we ignore that last post? 'Cause I screwed it up somehow. So we'll try again. Go here

Cool posted by Sara @ 4:01 PM  

Reasons it is good to have more than one name. hehe.

(As I type this, Devil's Advocate is on tv again. So I get to see it from the beginning. And, being done with more than half of my silly history paper, I deserve a treat. Right? hehe)

Watched Buffy rerun tonight. So much geekiness. See, we had Malcolm Reed (from Enterprise) and Daedelus (from Kindred: the Embraced) both guest starring as vampires. Hehehe...vampire Malcolm...I'm going to giggle at Star Trek this week...

Impressions gained from watching the last half of The Devil's Advocate:

• Al Pacino playing the Devil...what a wonderful, wonderful idea.
  
• If you surround Keanu Reeves with a reasonably good movie, he doesn't always suck too terribly bad. (ex. The Matrix, Devil's Advocate, The Watcher...well, I liked The Watcher...)
  
• It's a bad thing that I'm rooting for the Devil and not the human characters, isn't it...
  
• The Devil should smile like Al Pacino
  
• You know that wall frieze/painting/sculpture thing in Milton's apartment? The one that moves and changes and looks at you? That thing would freak me out so bad...
  
• "I have so many names." Yes, and my brain goes, "Let's see how many I can list right off the top of my head - Satan, Lucifer, Samael, Nick, Beelzebub, Mephistopholes, Old Scratch, the Morningstar..." This is probably also a bad thing.
  
• Throughout the entire last confrontation/temptation scene - "I'm not the Father. I'm the Friend." Thank you, Mrs Ferguson, for making us read J.B.
  
• I like the idea of the Devil as a family man.
  
• Frighteningly, I also like the Devil singing Frank Sinatra. (But then, I like the angel Islington singing Irving Berlin songs, so there you go.)
  
• The ending really tries very hard to be a cop out but it's ok because (ha!) the Devil still wins. hehe.
  
• I really should see this from the beginning. And read Paradise Lost.
  

Far too much thinking about the Devil for me. It can't be a good thing, really.

(I like making lists. Can you tell?)

Things I have learned from the 1941 Spencer Tracey version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde:

• Spencer Tracey is not really the ideal Dr. Jekyll
  
• Spencer Tracey is not really the ideal Mr. Hyde (but at least he isn't made up to look reminiscent of a wolf, an ape or - God help us - a tarantula. Thank you, John Barrymore.) And I kinda sorta not really but maybe like his voice for Mr. Hyde. He doesn't growl so much. It makes me happy.
  
• Spencer Tracey is not British. And doesn't try to be.
  
• Ingrid Bergman should not try to be British. Really.
  

This announcement brought to you by People who Watch Movies that You Have Never Heard of but Don't Really Want to Watch Anyway.

So, realization: I am only ashamed of liking David Bowie around other people. (That are real. The people in my head don't seem to mind.) This is somewhat unusual. Usually, when my obsessions are shameful, I'm ashamed of them in the privacy of my own head as well as around other people. Witness the shame that is liking The Lost Boys. Or the Sword of Truth series. (Gods, the issues Terry Goodkind has! Such major issues!) But, if I'm alone in my room, I can sing Lady Stardust or Suffragette City loudly with no shame at all. (As my suitemates could probably atest, if they ever turned the volume down on their drunken friends. hehe)

Now all we have to do is work on the not being ashamed around people. With my dad, I'm afraid that there is no hope. (I love you, Dad.) And with my friends, it is probably a result of having watched Labyrinth with them far too many times. So, to guard against this, in my head, I shall loudly think "Ethan" instead of "I'm not looking, I'm so very muchly not looking!" which is the general reaction to the horror that is Jareth's pants.

Because I like David Bowie. Or, at least, I like The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (which is, quite possibly, the coolest album title ever) because I have not yet ventured away from that CD. And this is weird, because it is so very not real and usually I like there to be some sort of reality to my music. Witness my running toward Bruce Springsteen and away from boybands and much popular country. But Ziggy Stardust has a different sort of unreality. It's not fake or false - there is unfeigned emotion there. It's more like the unreality that exists in a dream or a fairy tale, like a castle of spun sugar. (Damned English languages with it's not having a word that means what I want. So we shall use Dachier instead. Ha!) His music's bloody cheno (not that that means anything to you) and I like that. And Renfield likes it too. So that's good. Yeah.

(So very much with the need for sleep...yet I cannot seem to leave the computer...help...)

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)

(Renfield - There. They said their bit. Now get off the computer and go to sleep. Else you'll probably do something truly horrid to me.)

Things I have learned from my Universal Religions class:

• Shiva is very cool
  
• Kali is also very cool
  
• Some people take religion classes to fill requirements and not because they are interested in religions. (these people ask silly questions)
  
• Meditation is harder than one would think
  
• Thinking about religions too much does bad things to my brain (reading too much Neil Gaiman does not help in this respect...)
  
• More teachers should be storytellers
  
• I could not be a Buddhist. I'm far too optimistic.
  

I wonder how deeply into medieval Christianity we're going to go...hehe.

So, I finished reading the Sinfest archives today. Very cool. And I reached an interesting, if somewhat disturbing, conclusion. The Devil is kinda cool.

No, I don't mean as a spiritual entity who is trying to bring about the destruction and damnation of mankind. For one thing, I don't believe in that and for another, that's not really cool at all. But the Devil as a character is incredibly interesting. I've always been drawn to the evil or antiheroic characters and Lucifer is the ultimate in that. (It doesn't help that I read a lot of Neil Gaiman.) Of course, he's not really that interesting when it's just "I am Evil. Rarh!" (For example, see the last Canto of Dante's Inferno. I had such hopes for that one - Judas and Satan. But alas, I was greatly disappointed.) But when he's Miltonian, when you remember that once he was an angel, once best beloved of the Divine, that he is the Morningstar and that his name means "the bringer of Light"...well, then he's just cool. And then you read Seasons of Mist and Murder Mysteries and you start to think about whether angels fall or whether they get pushed. Because the Plan is ineffable and you've got to have Hell for Heaven to look as pretty as it is and the Devil makes God look so much better. (And did the angels get free will? Nope. Just us measly mortals. Makes you think, doesn't it?)

And maybe it's the fact that in most fiction (as in life), God is so distant and big and awesome (in the most literal sense of the word) that he's hard to identify with. The Devil is so much more personable - he's got ambitions, desires, foibles. He seems more human. There's a wonderful quote in J.B. - the Devil character, Nickles, says, "I'm not the Father. I'm the...Friend." Of course, that is Job, where the Devil wasn't really the source of all evil.

Come to that, where do we really see the Devil in the Bible? He's not in it all that much. (And I mean the Devil. The Dark Prince himself. Not the minor demons.) Right off the top of my head, I can only think of three occasions: 1) Job, where he's basically only doing what God says is ok, 2)the temptation of Christ in the wilderness - kinda bad, but a necessary transition and test for Jesus and 3) the book of Revelation where we get lots of mushroom dreams about the great Beast and the Dragon. (Yea, the apostles on drugs.) Most of what everyone (including me) knows about the Devil (the war in Heaven, the Fall, the Harrowing of Hell, etc) is from what amounts to medieval Biblical fanfiction. Interesting, isn't it?

None of this really has a point, except for me randomly rambling about the Devil. But he remains, to me, one of the most interesting aspects of Judeo-Christian mythology. So I'm going to go find a copy of Paradise Lost and continue to read my Neil Gaiman novels. Bwa haha.

(Also, Sinfest just rocks. If only for the Devil in duckhunting clothes shooting at angels. And the chibi devil. And God's handpuppets. Es sehr kuhl. hehe)

("Circumlocution," said Mr. Croup to Mr. Vandemar. "It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity." Mr. Vandemar nodded. "I wondered," he said.)

target="_blank">

I took the What Mythological Creature Are you? test by peacefulchaos!

I'm one of the Kindly Ones! Niftyness! hehe.

See which Greek Goddess you are.

Villains fear me. Heroes envy me. sara freeman is... The Enraged Wizard

I am a wizzard!! hehe

Another quiz day!


Which ArchAngel are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla
Michael. You're most like the ArchAngel of Defense. You like to hit things, and you like naked people, preferably cute naked people. A real down-to-earth angel who likes frogs and is easily distracted by bright, shiny things.
Eee...shiny things...

Which Recurring Kevin Smith Character Are You? Take the test here

Nifty!







Where's your corner of the Twilight Zone?


Take the Twilight Zone test!

Also, there are updates to my website. For those of you who care. If such people exist. 8)

Which flock do you follow?

this quiz was made by alanna





How random are you?

this quiz was made by alanna


And What Movie Villain are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Umm...cool!

Clowns are good, right? I mean, everybody likes clowns. (Except for those silly people that don't...) And circuses are good. But do you know what's better than even the two of them combined?

CIRCUS CLOWNS ON FIRE!

We went to Cirque de Flambe last night. hehe.

I have a Maltese Falcon desktop theme! (Because the Gashlycrumb Tinies one was being silly...so I went looking for a new one.) And it was obviously created by a Peter Lorre fan. Bwa haha. (Every time it needs to give me an error message, it has Joel Cairo recite something from the movie. hehehe...::manic obsessive laughter:: I also found Invisible Man themes, Hellsing, Reservoir Dogs and many other strange and pathetic things. So if Falcon ever starts to get on my nerves, I have lots of options. hehe.

In other news, you know you've been watching too much Highlander when: You begin to find Adrian Paul strangely attractive. And Stan Kirsch. (Run...run in abject fear.) Oh, well. It makes fanfic all the more fun. And gives me a reason to anticipate Methos' appearance even more...yea, Peter Wingfield and men that are actually attractive, instead of only creepily so. hehe. (As if that should bother me...)