Because It's Never Too Early to Prepare for Halloween

Starting with a new link on the right!

Halloween is without a doubt my favorite holiday. Yes, I love Christmas, and watching people open gifts, enjoying the company of family and friends, and trying to maintain an optimistic outlook on humanity. Those who know me will immediately recognize how hard it is for me to accomplish the last one in that list!

But while Christmas and the other holidays are fun. Nothing beats Halloween.

No, it's not the candy. Nor is it, as comedian Jim Gaffigan so elequently put it, "because all you women like to dress up as prostitutes!" Rather, I love Halloween because it's an ancient holiday (predating Christianity by milennia), and in many ways I can get in touch with that cultural memory. The ancient Celts and Germanic tribes believed that it was the time of the year when the veil between the land of the living and that of the dead was at its thinnest, and an air of uncertainty and the uncanny was omnipresent. It's the time of the year when what Dr. Volney Gay terms "Occult Thinking" (connecting an event to a completely unrelated event and tossing in religious or superstitious flavoring, then mixing until well blended)in his book Understanding the Occult: Fragmentation and Repair of the Self is not only allowed, but encouraged.

In other words, at Haloween, anything can and often does happen, in our minds at least. And unlike Christmas, the results are not always to our liking. Which is why horror movies and books are so popular, and their creators often have such a loyal following. Readers and viewers don't know whether or not the good guys are going to win. They don't know if sanity will prevail, or if life for the characters will return to "normal." In other words, once a good work of horror is read or viewed, all bets are off. And I love it.

Note I said that referring to "good works of horror," so obviously we're talking about opinions and subjective views. What one person considers great horror, others might consider boring or dull. The chaplain down the hall loves the Saw movies, due to the issues of justice and punishment involved. I consider them to be "torture porn" and lump it together with the likes of Hostel, Touristas, Wolf Creek and other films where the plot and character development is almost non-existent and the emphasis is on gore and depicting violence in as many different ways as possible. But that's just my opinion.

My tastes run towards the classic "Gothic" horror of the late 19th, early 20th century. Obviously you know of my fondness for Lovecraft and his contemporaries, but I also like horror movies set in that time period, such as In Hell, and Sleepy Hollow. Yes, there is some gore there, but the emphasis is on plot, characters, and the environment in which the stories play out.

Not all Gothic horror is good, of course, and I have been impressed with many of the films that have come out of Japan recently, as well as the books they were based on. The first two Ring movies I thought were very good, as was Pulse (see the Japanese version and avoid the American remake at all costs!). All were very unnerving, in their use of ordinary objects (a videotape or modern technology) as threats to the characters.

So, I've added a new link to the right - The Literary Gothic. It's a reference site, and not a blog, that lists hundreds and hundreds of authors, including Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, and other favorites of mine. Enjoy.

I've also begun my annual search for - in my opinion - good horror movies to watch this season. If any really surprise me, I'll put them up here. And if I can find any that tie in pirates and horror, you can bet that all kinds of information will find its way here!

Peace.

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Just to Prove ...

... that this blog isn't all pirates and Disney stuff:

Muppets!

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End of the Day Insanity

Well, it seems insane, at least. There has been very little to do since I last posted, though I have been able to stay occupied looking for random bits of trivia regarding horror movies, Lovecraft memorabilia (more on that later), and Disney stuff (One month!).

Still, though, the day drags.

Most of what I'm interested in is blocked by the evil minions of the I.T. department. Not surprising, though I am convinced that they spend their day watching porn while denying the rest of us access to YouTube and Facebook! I've met a few of them - they have the pasty white skin, paunchy bellies, squinty eyes, and hunched shoulders consistant with those who shun sunlight and / or still live in their parents' basement, all the while hunched over computers denying people the right to have fun.

No, I'm not bitter.

Annoying Coworker has become more active this afternoon, which is proving irritating as usual. Still, it could be worse. A lot worse. He didn't decide to move into my office. Not that there was an offer made, but I've caught him a couple of times when he's unlocked the door and crashed in one of the chairs. Don't know why he does that, but it gets irritating. Anyway, he didn't do that today, so I don't have to worry about what the hospital policy regarding office squatters rights is!

But I digress ...

I failed to mention that One Ring and I have been going out to lunch every Sunday with a couple from church. Nice people. Both are professors at local universities, and about our age. Kinda geeky, too, but not in an annoying way. So we have been enjoying our weekly outings.

Anyway, the couple (I'm working on nicknames) invited us to their new house for a housewarming party. We brought dinner. During the conversation, the wife mentioned her love for H.P. Lovecraft, which caused me to just about fall out of my chair. Later the husband showed me her framed envelope signed with H.P.L.'s return address and bearing his signature. That did cause me to fall out of my chair; or would have had I not been already standing up.

So as a gag gift, I found a diploma from Miskatonic University - the fictional school set in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts where many of Lovecraft's stories take place - in a .pdf format. I took it, put in the wife's name and made her a "Doctor of Theoretical Realities." Looks pretty cool. Further Google searches have revealed that lots of people have had fun along those lines, and Cafe Press is filled with alumni mugs, sweatshirts, license plate frames, and the like, all bearing the name of the fake school.

I'm lending the husband a copy of dvd of Dune - the Sci-Fi channel mini-series, not the de Laurentis massacre of the awesome Frank Herbert novel - as well, as the non-Lovecraft portion of the conversation that I had with him seemed to revolve around that series of books and movies.

Like I said, they're geeky, but nice. Just like me.

28 minutes. I'm suspecting that there's a reason why time slows right before quitting time, then accelerates exponentially during my non-working hours. Unfortunately, I do not know any quantum physicists who would be able to solve this connundrum. Sad.

Okay, I'm gone. I can barely stay awake, and my work is done. See you Monday. Unless something really cool happens over the weekend and I don't feel like waiting to write about it.

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It's Friday!

And I'm beat. We had a thunderstorm roll through last night, which upset Barney the not so brave Beagle. Took us a while to calm him down and even after that I had a little bit of difficulty in falling back asleep. So today I'm dragging. No biggie, considering that the doctor is taking the day off, as is Drink Man, so I'm alone with no work. Annoying Coworker is busy with his appointments, so he's leaving me alone as well - thanks be to God!

All of which leaves me to blog and find things to do. Not that I'm complaining. It's just an odd occurance around here to have absolutely nothing to do. Really it's just a matter of looking busy and entertaining myself. Oh, it might help to remember that these are your tax dollars at work!

Last night, long before the storm started, One Ring and I went to the Opry Mills mall to walk and get out of the house. One Ring's studies keep her cooped up quite a bit, and sometimes her cabin fever spreads over to me, even though I work outside of the house and am sometimes tired when I get home. Anyway, Opry Mills has a Disney outlet store and I needed to replace a coffee mug that had broken, so off we went.

Even though the store had a Pirates of the Caribbean mug, I elected to go with a mug bearing the grinning face of the Cheshire Cat. So why did I go with that character and not keep to the whole pirate theme?

Well, throughout my life, especially in my post-graduate school days, there have been times when I related very strongly to certain characters in literature. Coincidently, most of these have been appropriated and reimaged by Disney over the years, but all started out as independent works, with one or two exceptions.

When I was dating One Ring, Eeyore the chronically depressed donkey was my main image. I was attempting to cope with my yet to be diagnosed bipolar disorder, and found myself swinging from brief periods of hypomania to long spells of depression. Not fun at all. To alleviate some of the stress, I took to doing imitations of Eeyore whenever people would ask me how I was doing. "Still got my tail ..." was one that I still use on occasion. Of course, Disney later revamped his character when they went through the "smiling Eeyore" phase, painting a goofy grin as he gazed at butterflies, flowers, and what-have-you. I referred to these images as "Eeyore on Prozac," with disdain and felt I had the right to since by this period I was pretty heavily medicated myself. Absolutely hated them. Fortunately, Eeyore seems to have returned to his gloomy visaged self. Unfortunately, Disney has apparently decided that all Eeyore products must be marketed towards women. So I have been unable to buy Eeyore stuff, as I look lousy in lavender. I did have a ton of Eeyore stuffed animals, statues, pins, and even have an Eeyore letter style winter coat that I wear on occasion. And when I proposed to One Ring over ten years ago, I did so by tying the engagement ring around the neck of a small figurine of the depressed donkey. I thought it appropriate at the time.

The next character I really connected with came during a quasi gothic phase that I continue to slip in and out of. That would be Jack Skellington. Why Jack? I think Jack fit in with my feelings of inauthenticity while I worked in the church. In the movie Nightmare before Christmas, Jack is hating his role as the Pumpkin King, and really wants to take a turn at bringing joy to people's lives rather than scaring them half to death. When I was working in the church, I felt I was unable to express my interests and be the person who I really was because of the beliefs of those around me. As one minister friend of mine who is continuing to fight the same issue said, "I'm tired of being a projection screen for everyone else's beliefs." In other words, I got tired of people thinking I agreed with whatever they held to be true religiously or even politically. Of course, whereas Jack came to terms with who he was and returned to being the leader of Halloween Town, I came to terms with who I was and decided to leave the church and move on to a more authentic life.

Which brings us to today. While I could spend time on the whole pirate thing that I have going, I will instead refer you to something I wrote at the beginning of last month and leave it at that. Pirates, of course, are a group of people, not a single character, so they wouldn't qualify for this discussion anyway. So let's just keep going to the character that currently fits my mood and outlook.

Suprisingly, the character is from Alice in Wonderland. Yes, it's a children's book, just like the 100 Acre Woods adventures from which Eeyore sprang. And, if you want to say that The Nightmare Before Christmas is a children's movie, I won't argue either. But children's stories tend to contain archetypes, I've found, elements that lend themselves well to being symbolic for deep meaning and relavance. Which is why when I read Alice in Wonderland, saw one of the adaptations, and met the Cheshire Cat, I knew we had a lot in common. Especially now that I work in the mental health field. Take this exchange between Alice and the Cat:

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

`In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

When I first started working at this hospital, my then-supervisor remarked, "The thing you need to remember is that this is primarily a mental hospital, so the question you need to keep asking yourself is not, 'Is this person crazy?' rather, it's, 'What kind of crazy is this guy?'"

It wasn't long before I discovered he was talking about the staff just as much as he was referring to the patients! Not only was there the usual odd behavior by patients who are suffering from psychotic issues, schizophrenia, and the like, but sometimes members of the staff seem gripped by a sort of Folie a Deux, which brings about some very odd events indeed. Not that it's all bad, or any of it's bad, it's just different, and the Cheshire Cat's statement that "We're all mad here" rings true.

Plus, as I've gone through the last ten years, I've come to terms with my own mental illness, minor though it may be compared to others. After having friends and family (and sometimes coworkers and strangers) half-seriously tell me that I'm crazy, I'm finally okay with it. Yeah, I may be weird. I have weird interests and weird hobbies and weird friends and my life is occasionly insane. But that's okay. In fact, I like it this way. And this is probably the first time in a very long time where I can say that. So I can really relate to a character who essentially says, "You know what? This is all nuts. The world is crazy. We're all quite mad here. Deal with it."

And that, people, is why I didn't buy a pirate themed coffee mug and instead went with the Cheshire Cat. And you probably didn't even care! : )

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The Anniversary was a Few Days Ago ...

... but I felt this needed to be said despite my being late. Props to whomever put it up on LOL News.

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In Case the Government is Watching ...

Let me formally say that I do not condone or encourage piracy of copyright materials, no matter the size of the profit margins of the corporations that produce said materials. Nor do I condone or encourage piracy of the type currently going on off the coast of Somalia, no matter the size of the profit margins of the corporations that are currently overfishing and dumping toxic wastes into those waters.

Raising the Jolly Roger and going after aforementioned booty would be bad, m'kay?

Now, that being said, I did find that the Pirate Party that won a couple of seats in the EU Parlimentary elections does, in fact, have a branch in the United States. They can be found here. Though from the sounds of things, it doesn't look like they're having much luck in developing a groundswell of popular support.

Don't know why, but I just felt the need to put the occasional disclaimer up in case there was any confusion as to where my sympathies lie.

In other news, I just received some very disappointing news regarding my pay. So I'm going to close here and head home for the day.

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Catching My Breath

and dreaming of vacation.

Yesterday found me very angry at Annoying Coworker, hence my lack of posts. I could vent on how he left here and dumped all his work on top of my work - and this after I had done his job the day before! - but such rants would only get me worked up again. I've complained as much as can be done to the people who care (or don't; I haven't determined this for certain yet) about such things, so it's pretty much over. Save for the headache that developed yesterday and continues to spring up between my temples every now and then.

But now let's get some business out of the way with some pirate-y news:

From the Duh! files, the BBC reports that people who receive warnings from there internet provider that they need to stop pirating only ceased and desisted 33% of the time. The rest were "disinclined to acquiesce to their request." Only when internet service was completely cut off did the individuals stop pirating copyrighted material.

Kinda hard to pirate if you don't have an internet link, eh?

And from the If you can't beat 'em files, a group that campaigned solely on issues of the exchange of copyrighted material won one, if not two seats in the Swedish delegation to the European Union. They received roughly 200,000 votes. Here's the whole story.

So that's what's new in that world. In my life things continue as normal. Guitar lessons are going great, but I'm having trouble changing into and out of the B minor chord, so that's holding up learning a song for One Ring. It's not a big problem, just a frustrating one. My instructor said that time (and lots of practice) would take care of that, so I'm going to trust those words and keep at it. Apparently the transition from beginner to rock god takes longer than I had orginally planned!

Still looking for a new car to replace the aging Doom Buggy. Right now it seems to be a toss up between the Kia Soul (I got Soul! I'm superbad! - sorry, couldn't resist!) and the Toyota Yaris. Though I would immediately have to get a new label / emblem that changed the name to Yaarrrris! Yes, bad joke, I know. Sorry about that.

In fact the dealership just called me. Guess I set off some alarm bells when I used Costco's buyer program to look at their inventory. Now I'll have vultures circling me for the next couple of months. Oh, well.

One Ring is booking dinner reservations for a short vacation we're taking with her family in Disney World around labor day. We're not planning on doing anything except for swimming in the pool, sleeping, and eating. Still, all this talk about vacations has me loathing the work day. One month and one week until I'm off on my first vacation, though, so hopefully I can keep my sanity.

And, speaking of work, I have the opportunity to apply for a chaplain job here. Thing is, after looking at the job description, pay, etc., I'm thinking of not doing it, despite the urging of friends and colleagues. Chaplains don't transfer from hospital to hospital here, as opposed to therapists. This will become important when One Ring graduates with her Ph.D. and starts teaching at a seminary or divinity school somewhere. I need to be able to find something nearby. That will be easier by far as a therapist than as a chaplain.

In addition, I'm actually thinking about going back to school for another Masters degree, this time in Psychology. The thought of learning again has sparked some unexpected excitement, and would make me a far better candidate in the field for promotion and changing positions. If I were to return to chaplaincy, not only would I not need this degree, it wouldn't do anything for me even if I had it.

So I'm thinking about tossing the application material and not worrying about it.

Well, that's all that's going on. I need to find a wrist rest thingy for this computer. My wrists are starting to hurt and that's not a good thing, considering the amount of guitar practice I have to put in tonight!

Peace.

P.S. I wonder if the Pirate Party has a branch opening up in the U.S.?

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