good*night

So many things just happened, I don't know what to do.  So I'm going to blog about it.  This will either be a fun departure from the usual premeditated/educated entries, or a disorienting waste of (y)our time.  Preferably both.

Okay. Here's how it started. I came home from a meeting, considered conforming to adult midweek tradition and watching a sitcom (I classify myself as a 45 year old "life stage wise" sometimes in case you're wondering what I'm talking about), but opted to have a "ponder shower" instead (because really I'm not that old and resigned to it yet), which usually entails really good story ideas that I forget half of before I make it to a pen and paper. Tonight's ponderings instead included first, reminiscing fondly about a song I really like and about dreams and friends and names; second, blowing my own mind by realizing something super obvious that I never really thought about before; and third, racking my brain trying to remember a character from Jurassic Park's first name...Don Arnold?...Tom Arnold? (uh definitely not)...Sam Arnold?........ JOHN Arnold!! 

Then I decided I felt like sharing this song I keep replaying in my mind, maybe via Facebook....or a blog if I felt ambitious & like tying it into the other stuff I'd been thinking about... so enter Internet, link to YouTube to find the song... and WHAT to my wondering eyes should appear but a suggested link on the YouTube homepage to something called "Jesus Christ in Jurassic Park." 

I don't even care what the original this adaptation/dub is based on is -- (okay I did look it up and the audio is snatched from a typical pointless YouTube vid of some guy chasing/yelling at a dog that's chasing some deer or something, I don't know, I didn't finish watching it) -- you can mix anything with Jurassic Park and strike gold.  Add Jesus Christ to Jurassic Park, and well folks, roll credits because that was the Meaning of Life.  (I don't really mean a crazy man screaming "Jesus Christ" .. in case you aren't reading into this .. I mean Actual Jesus Christ.)   You might feel like I'm spending more time than I should talking about this, but if you do, you clearly don't know that probably the things I think most about in life are a) Jesus Christ and b) Jurassic Park.   I often wonder "how would this situation be different if there were veloceraptors in it?"  I'm not even making that up to sound interesting.  I really think that regularly.

What if Jesus was really hoping that like...for the Triumphal Entry his Dad would let him ride a T-rex in instead of the donkey?  Obviously he's a pretty confident guy and knew he didn't need to pimp his ride, so that's respectable.  But I really would love someday for him to sidle up on me and semi-secretly say "the T-rex thing..I totally thought 'if things were different...'"   The Jesus I know I think would for sure have thought of it laughingly in one of his private moments.  Maybe during a ponder shower. 


Anyways -- here's the song I sought :

Greg Laswell falls in the same category as William Fitzsimmons with me.  Well..not the melancholic albums-about-painful-divorces-that-make-me-content-for-some-reason category from the other post (actually pretty sure one of his albums falls into that category too now that I think of it), but more the I-can-listen-to-all-his-songs-for-years-over-and-over-and-never-tire-of-them category.  So lovely.  Go get them all and love them too.

The Question of the Day a couple days ago with Chay & Brodie at the cafe was something -- waaait! this actually ties into the Book Blog too!  It was a stolen "Hyperthetical" from Chuck Klosterman!  This keeps getting more and more enmeshed.  So good.  So yeah it was to the effect of "If someone offered you the power to watch your dreams the next day like a movie, but the catch was that you had to bring everyone you know (family, friends) to the viewing -- would you opt to do it, or turn down the offer?"   I would totally want to, and for sure want everyone to come, because my dreams are always exceptionally vivid and detailed and long and complex, and often better than movies -- I could totally charge admission and they would be huge, I often wish I can rewatch them.  Not to brag or anything.  But my unconscious brain is like 98% more amazing than most people's conscious ones.  (Including my own hahah.)   But yeah I very often dream about my good friends and it feels the next day like we got to hang out and it's so great.  Once I even dreamed about someone who was my best friend, except when I woke up I realized it wasn't an actual person, it was just someone imaginary who didn't even have a name, but I missed him that whole day like my best friend just died.  It was really rough!  hahah.  

This is where I was pondering -- while I was pondering dreams and friends and names earlier -- how part of why I love this song a lot is because it's so brief and fleeting and very much like a dream, or a dear friend whose visit always seems to be not long enough..  or something you can't quite put your finger on, something inside and around you that you can't nail down...  and how I couldn't remember the name of the song even though it feels like it's an inextricable part of me, and how I love mysterious, unnamable, unownable things..  and I can name all my dear friends that I dream of, so while their "presence" may be fleeting, their memory is lasting.  Except I guess for one, that one who never was.  And maybe one other one -- my dearest friend -- (and this is the part that blew my mind in all its hidden obviousness) -- did you ever think about how God doesn't have a name?

And you can throw all the Yahweh and Adonai and Elohim you want on the table, but if we're goin' Old Testament on this, I'll see your tetragrammaton and raise you an I AM.  I don't think you can get less-named than introducing yourself as I AM.  (or "I am that I am" or whatever extrapolation you want to use here)   ...what a guy.  (oh and in case you're saying "Shaina. You are obviously super immune to the obvious -- you actually SAID 'God' in the same sentence you marvelled at Him not having a name in," the thing about that is "God" is not actually a name -- it's just a denoting of Him as THE God -- in a sea of gods -- but I'm not here to teach that lesson tonight so we'll leave it be.) 

So yeah.  I love Jurassic Park, I love Jesus Christ, I love Greg Laswell, I love dreams, I love my friends, I love clever mysteries, and I'm going to bed because it's 10:15 and I'm an old person. 


sweet dreams * *

Christian Porn

...it opens with Katherine Heigl reclining romantically in a field of grass, the exchange of a few sweet sunkissed nothings and the casual quoting of scripture, finally a kiss that actually defies the laws of physics -- I'm pretty sure they were both lying on their backs and the only parts of their bodies that touched were their lips. (okay, I exaggerated that last part. But not by much: he was partially on his side..but I scrutinized it and am confident I can state only their lips touched. Junior high dance chaperones would LOVE this movie.)

* la la laaaah cue the sound of sweeping vistas and long, layered pioneer garb fluttering in the wind *

~ Love's Enduring Promise ~  

Oh -- hang on -- a weinery guy with a lot of swanky gizmos who looks like he wouldn't know which end of a hammer to hit stuff with has entered the plotline... brb, just gotta fall in love for a sec... 

Okay, back. So anyways, I know you're already feverishly adding it to your "must see" list, so I won't ruin the whole thing for you.  But for those of you who're like me and rarely actually get around to seeing your "must see's," I'll give you a brief synopsis for blog's sake:

*SPOILER ALERT!*

...so it's basically your classic girl meets older guy who offers her asylum via marriage when her age-appropriate husband is randomly killed in a freak pioneer accident / guy almost chops his leg off  while cutting wood and spends 3/4 of a movie on the brink of death / mysterious stranger saves guy and his farm and his family and woos his conveniently aged daughter who I'm pretty sure goes from being 11 years younger than Katherine Heigl to 3 years younger than her in the span of ... wait. oh.   This is where you find out that I'm actually summarizing two movies -- and that I've seen this one before and am watching it a second time, on purpose.  

I've taken to blaming Sandra Bullock for things this week, and I'm pretty sure this one is on her too.  (You may have been privy last week to the "Generation Boomerang" Facebook thread that was borne of my sentiments on adult-children -- after that gregarious evening of being an ambassador to Manhood, I decided I needed a "girl day" on the weekend to balance my gender identity back out -- enter: snazzy sleep-in hair, devil-may-care wardrobe [blankets are clothes, right?] and mid-90s Sandra Bullock romcom's) 

Anyways, I forgot I started this with a scandalous title, so I should probably explain that before I forget:

I can't remember for sure, but I feel quite certain that this phrase comes from my pal Hannah (Halloween Hannah if you recall her from previous namedrops) -- she works at the library (which I kind of am jealous of) and sees all kinds of atrocious things there.  And yes.  Christian porn is one of these things.  Only what she means by that (or now means via this scenario I'm inventing if I'm totally remembering things that never happened) is literally these exact movies -- it's a whole series apparently -- a Hallmark cheesefest of based-on-books "Christian Romance" that they offer on dvd via your local literature trove.  (Who wants to come over for a marathon?  Bring your best Snuggie and a bottle of merlot!  And don't forget your kleenex and shame!)  hahah oooh okay maybe that was mean.  There are a few redeeming moments in them.  Or something.  Maybe I just like farms and jarring musical cues that tell me exactly what to feel.    In any case -- I'm pretty positive Hannah and her handy vlogging skillz are to be credited.  (I considered googling the term to see if credit was due elsewhere but I thankfully realized what a mistake that would be.) 

And get ready to have your socks knocked off, as per usual, because YES -- 9 paragraphs in -- this does have something to do with the current (and almost only ever) book this book blog has been about. hahah.  (But look at this: 2 entire related entries in 1 week!  Progress!  Note this, Taylor -- and bring it up at work so I feel compelled to finally finish this book and move on to a new one.  Remind me that one of the next chapters is about my husband, Zack Morris.)   The next chapter of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs on the roster is actually simply entitled "Porn."  I was considering skipping it and moving straight to the Cereal chapter (yes, at long last the cereal reference will be explained!)  ... because most of the perspectives I have on porn are better "in the moment" discussions than blog fare ... but it all kind of came together in the perfect storm tonight, care of Hallmark and Britney Spears.

Britney Spears even makes a cameo in this entry, you ask?  Naturally.  Of all things/people/forces in this world, I feel Britney is the one I would be least surprised to see turn up in any given context.  This is a power not many humans possess -- and I can't tell if it's a power we should avoid tampering with or aspire to...

So, to recap:  Christians, porn, and Omnipresent Britney. 
Keep all your limbs inside the trolley, because I have no idea what's about to happen. 

"Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives...However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are clearly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were all these people fifteen years ago?" (p.110) 

[ reminder: this book was published in 2003 -- date accordingly ]

[ sidenote: I read this book while in California a couple springs ago -- then a while later I saw a rerun of The OC where Seth was reading it...in California.  I like things like this. ] [ also: I miss Seth and The OC ]


We are presently living in a culture where seeing Britney Spears at the local 7-11 probably wouldn't shock many of us -- and where seeing your third cousin from Nowhere, AB next to naked in casual Craven Facebook tags is an annual occurrance. 

What kind of massive sneaky neutralization is this, I wonder?  It's even stealthier than global warming.  Waaay stealthier.  Probably not as dangerous -- I doubt blurring the lines between celebrity and regular folk is going to cause massive global repercussions for mankind.  OR IS IT? 

Hahah okay those caps were silly ones, not super serious ones. 
But so as not to leave you feeling like I led you down an anticlimactic descent into madness here, I will substantiate the caps to some extent:

"In less than a decade, millions of Americans went from (1) not knowing what the Internet was, to (2) knowing what it was but not using it, to (3) having an e-mail address, to (4) using e-mail pretty much every day, to (5) being unable to exist professionally or socially without it," (p.114) 

Once, long long ago, in order to be a pinup girl (or a crooner, or a movie star, or anyone culturally noteworthy or "known") you had to have that middleman -- the machine -- of celebrity.  It was more of a verb.  Now, it's a noun.  An insta-designation.  The middleman has been unwittingly mowed down by tweens joyriding down the Information Superhighway, weilding more technology than they've been advised or educated enough to know what to do with, and EVERYONE is a walking editor-free tabloid. 

So if we're all VIP celeb's, it would follow that we should aspire to the lifestyle, right?  Minus Middleman, the charmed, branded, upgraded, softcore shower scened, bulletproofed Britney'n'Clyde status update is what's awaiting all of us in life!  Hooray!  Dear government, I'd like my Lexus in gunmetal, and if you could pre-program all my fave movies (you can find them in my FB profile) into the interior theatre system, that'd be greeeat.    

I touched on this earlier in the "series" so I won't be redundant or draw this out much longer -- but I really am concerned with my generation's perception of their reality. 

I see people in my hometown trying to live like they're inhabiting a Britney video and I am genuinely afraid for their children.  Not just on a financial level, but on a familial level, a psychological level, and a spiritual level.   I have a hard time, just from maybe overexposure to it, sometimes taking scripture literally and at face value -- but when it tags money as a tricky master to be avoided, there are leagues of wisdom beneath it.  Stress where there should be peace, shame and debt where there should be stewardship and charity, time and space wasted on storage and accumulation where there should be time and space spent on family and community.  How much we forfeit to the almightly dollar. 

And not only am I concerned for these, but for the ones trying to live like they're inhabiting a Hallmark movie -- the aspiring Christian porn stars.  Alas.  They who might burn with me against the sacrifice of a family's life on the altar of Britney may first be required to remove the Katherine Heigl shaped planks from their own eyes...

Life is not a movie, of any genre.  Okay maybe it's one movie.  

( musical interlude )

I often throw an old William Fitzsimmons track or two on the shop mix and it hits me like a wave of outer space peace at an unexpected moment of a ridiculous day.  Is it weird to be comforted and calmed by a depressing song?  One of my best friends once told me I have a melancholic personality.  I never studied that strand of Personality Typing so to this day I'm not for sure sure what she was telling me -- (I should look that up) -- but I always remember it when I'm richly encountering a sad song or an Anglican flavoured church service in a minor key or a bleak landscape or a grey day...  

My last entry was about crossing paths with things in dark places that you probably don't want to... but I think there's a lot of treasure to find in "dark" places as well.  Some of my best spoils have been procured in voids and chasms many would dread to enter; ones some of me wants to forget -- expeditions gone awry... several I had no choice in taking.  

I don't think it's bad to be kindred spirits with melancholy pieces of this world.  They're some of the most honest things you'll meet. 



for those who have ears to hear

Paranormal Activities

I work in a building that some people think is haunted.  It's an old building, was a Masonic meeting place at one point, and it sits on top of underground tunnels that have an unsavoury (but super lucrative) 'history.'  I always thought I would NEVER ever do something like that -- make a "haunted" place a daily part of my life -- but most of the time I actually forget about it.  I don't think anyone's actually confirmed it to be "haunted." It's not like there's crazy poltergeist activity going on.  Or anything much really.  One time when I was alone late at night I heard a guy laugh behind me, and another night thought I could hear a girl talking from a spot that other people have said they heard/felt weird things when alone.  A different night I was listening to a song called A Vespertine Haunting, and twice, when the lyric that said "ghost" played, the whole sound system would shut itself down and restart -- on that same song.  Oh and then there was the time that I had to get something out of the basement (aka: part of the tunnels) before the staff down there was in for the day...had no idea where the lightswitch was...so literally it was like opening a maintenance hatch to the CATACOMBs and having to run in in the pitch black to get to the one light switch I knew was in the other room -- probably one of the worst feelings ever hahah -- luckily nothing happened.  That I noticed.  

I used to looove scary movies, and scaring people who were watching them with me.  If you know me and haven't heard the tales of "The Pants" or "The Balcony," ask for a re-enactment sometime, they're GREAT.  I also recently basked in the nostalgia that was the Scream reboot and a Halloween viewing of Halloween alongside my pal Hannah, who was just as stoked as I on these pieces of pop culture.  But I haven't really been on board much with scary movies for the past decade or so -- the turn "horror" and "suspense" took after the Freddie Prinze Junior-supersaturation of the early 2000's was just waaaay too gory and offensive (tips hat to Eli Roth & James Wan).  I mean, I'll watch an episode of Criminal Minds...and even be interested in the psychological/sociological drive behind a film -- but I think there's something just straightup sociopathic about voluntarily watching a movie that indulges in the perspective of someone who makes people rip themselves/each other apart.   But as the era of the Saw franchise has come to a close (according to me and the current limits of a viable fad, anyways), a clever new kid in town showed up at the theatre.

The new kid kinda turned up in second hand clothes, and was pretty unconventional, and even made an impression that would have you either loving or hating him.  That kid was Cloverfield.  I know, you thought I was going to say Paranormal Activity, right?  Well I am going to -- but I had to give a nod to its predecessor first, a movie that I really liked but that a load of people hated.  I super loved the perspective though, and the experience of watching that movie "in first person."  It, alongside Universal Studios' 4D experience movies (which are like..cute Shrek ones) inspired the idea in me of one-upping 3D movies (*rubs eyes*) with 4D movies -- how creepy would it be to be "walking" with the cast through a dank drippy tunnel and have drops of water falling from the roof of the theatre on you...to have surround sound speaker seats so when someone whispers suddenly over your shoulder...they are actually whispering over your shoulder...(it was at the point of considering mechanical hands waiting under seats to grab people's ankles that I admitted it would be a foolish investment, as people would have to sign waivers on their lives and anticipate potential heart attacks or leg injuries).   I have not seen any of the Paranormal Activity movies, but I feel like they probably achieve a lot of these same effect on a waaaay lower budget.

My Facebook was blowing up with all the kids from my past posting about going to it a couple weeks ago -- and I was cringeing every time.  Not because I'm a stodgy old person or a weiner, I'm sure if I was 18 year old me I would be ALL over that.  But because I have friends who have had experiences with this stuff in real life.  I've had a creepy nighttime incident or two myself -- not fun!  Not something I want to hand a personal invitation to in the form of opening a theatre-screen-sized front door for.  And not to say simply watching a fictional depiction of supernatural/demonic activity is a sure way to lay out a welcome mat for unseen forces that may be out trick-or-treating during the witching hour or something -- but I mean it's kind of basic science -- open a door, things find their way in.  

One of my favourite recent examples of this is hilarious to me, because it's probably way worse to watch than a fake movie about it, but there's a show called Ghost Adventures -- and it's these three guys who travel to super "haunted" places (eg: closed down mental hospitals, prisons, tunnel systems of vaults 4 stories below ground, all kinds of charming locales), literally have the owners of the places LOCK THEM IN overnight, and wander around in the pitch dark with handheld night vision cameras, telling off "ghosts" they think are being bullies to the living, PROVOKING and inviting the "malevolent ghosts" to prove themselves.   Seriously mental.  And they SPLIT UP too, and perch themselves in the most "active" spots where they sit alone in the dark waiting for scary crap to happen.  Again, describing this, I can't believe I participate in it.  One of the guys actually had the others lock him in the drawer thing in the morgue of the mental hospital alone for an hour.  Sooo not okay.  And they do catch creepy stuff that is undeniably there, some of it seriously shocking.  Since I know my mom is reading this, I'll spare her and let you look it up on your own if you're intersted in finding out exactly what (I recommend the episodes where they are at the abandoned psychiatric hospital, Bobby Mackey's Music World, the prison, the Riddle House, or vaults under Edinburgh for some creepy solid instances you will see on camera as they happen.)  

So speaking of my mom (hi mom, if you've made it this far hahah), she is not a fan of any of this stuff, even the super cheesy contrived versions of it such as the Halloween episode of CSI:Miami my dad and I watched when I was home visiting and there was utterly nothing else to watch and escape the horror that is Horatio.   It was an episode loosely mirroring the Twilight book franchise/vampire obsession, and at some point my dad put on my favourite face of his, where he looks kind of hassled and tired but also interested and curious about a social phenomenon, and said something along the lines of "so what is this obsession with vampires about?  what's making people get so into it?"  Which I thought was a fantastic question that I guess I'd considered on a semi-conscious or subconscious level as it's been swirling aroung more prominently  in pop culture the past few years.  (I had this same discussion the next day with Halloween Hannah, and I appreciated that she pointed out the whole Anne Rice league and the further annals of human intrigue with the undead -- the recent "influx" or "normalization" kind of reminds me of the similar road Hardcore music has taken over the past few decades -- I remember one summer being the weird one for listening to it and the next summer everyone and their little sister watching its grandchildren playing house on Much Music) ...

Anyways, I don't remember exactly what I answered dear ol' dad, but I think it had something to do with my generation and the next one, particularly here in North America, being so devoid of any supernatural integration into our identities/worldviews/experiences, that those who have had little or no instruction or encounter with the supernatural (be that God, prayer, demonic forces, supersensory experiences, infinite concepts, the "afterlife," etc) cannot help but crave and desire it, and are finding it in Pop Culture Sacraments.  An undeniable facet of the Human Condition is to be preoccupied with either one's mortality -- or immortality.  Those who do not subscribe to the possibility of immortality will inescapably serve mortal causes, and those who believe in it will serve both.  So everyone is susceptible in some way to a mortal urge to connect to the supernatural -- be it the temporal, mortal forces of morality and justice and health and death that none may escape and that mimic the non-temporal forces the immortals see as spanning beyond Time and Space, or the Named and revealed forces in their full form.  We are created to experience revelations of immortal love and to be bound in eternal relationship, so why wouldn't thousands of half-loved, if that, teenagers (and adults, let's face it) flock to a mysterious, ageless and neverending pillar of exclusively inclusive consuming love that promises them Forever?     Hmmmmm...

"This is why men need to become obsessed with things...We are able to study something that defines who we are; therefore, we are able to study ourselves," (p.102) 

I know -- you thought this was a sidetrack not tying into the Book Blog, didn't you?  Admittedly, I've pulled this from a bland chapter in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs about team sports that I'll spare us all from.  But I think it's an interesting note on all of this.  And whether it's vampires or "ghosts" or even just a flickering conscience or peculiar feeling that can't be explained, I don't think any of us are exempt from the curiosities that dwell quietly in and around us. 

"[North] Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we're simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don't know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they're out there," (p.98). 


For better words than mine on some of these things, and a great expansion on pieces of the last quote here, check out C.S. Lewis' short science ficion story, The Great Divorce.   One of my faves.