A BOOK REVIEW

CHION

 

As most of you know, I have a special place in my heart for independent fiction.  I had wanted to read Darryl Sloan’s YA thriller for awhile.  I’ve listened to all of the MP3 files that he has placed on his website and know just how talented he is.  And Chion wasn’t a disappointment.

 

(WARNING:  SPOILERS AHEAD)

 

The story centers on Jamie, a boy with a dark secret who is plunged into a nightmare about snow.  Yes, you read that correctly.  A snowfall has taken place in Ireland that makes super glue seem like kindergarten paste and anyone who goes outside is stuck fast.  The book follows Jamie’s point of view-mostly-with regards to what is going on with the students at Clounagh Junior High School during this ordeal.  Eventually, he decides to make a break for it, taking his girlfriend, Tara.  Roughly the last half of the book details their trials as they follow his escape plan.

 

The book does set up some disturbing images.  It shows how a major disaster like this would affect society.  We see people killing one another over food.  We see a man murdered in front of his small children.  We see a child held at gunpoint by a teacher who has decided that “survival of the fittest” means that the teachers should live and the students should starve.  Sloan didn’t put these things in for shock value.  Indeed, the bloodshed is not detailed very much at all.  This is not a boiled-down thriller.  We see a sense of realism that shows that even our society’s innocents would be harmed in these events.

 

On a side note, Jamie’s “secret” has caused him to rethink his relationship with God.  He prays and finds himself putting Tara first, time and again.  We see a young man who, through trials and tribulations, has come closer to God, rather than pushing Him away.

 

With a bittersweet ending, this is a story that you simply mustn’t miss.

I’m starting to get irritated with how poorly some people park.  Okay, one neighbor in particular.  A person who has a gray Ford, extended cab, full-size pickup and has North Carolina plates TSJ-XXXX (I replaced the numbers w/Xs for legal reasons) lives in our building and has, at least five times since I’ve lived here, parked ON THE LINE right next to my car.  As with the other four times, I actually had to climb into my car this morning through the passenger’s side, then maneuver over the console in order to get out of my space.  Some people get angry about bad drivers.  I get angry about bad parkers, especially if the person has done it more than once.

 

I have pneumonia and the flu.  This “odd couple” of illnesses was compounded by the fact that my daughter was also sick while she was here.  Honestly, taking care of her made me feel better.  It wasn’t until after I’d taken her home (her fever broke on Tuesday), that I’ve realized just how poorly that I feel.  To make matters worse, I forgot to leave her car seat with her mother, so I just had to wire money to her to buy a new one.

 

The last two weeks with my daughter were wonderful.  As happens each time that I take her back to her mother’s house, I spend the following day moping, missing her bright smile and energetic laugh, not to mention her love of giving hugs for no reason.

 

It’s going to be an affection-free two weeks.  And I’m not looking forward to it.

Some Updates

 

DRAGONLANCE

 

As a junior in high school, I borrowed my first Dungeons & Dragons novel from my buddy, Evan.  It was Dragons of Autumn Twilight and I was blown away by just how awesome a read it was.  The book made the rounds and friend after friend loved it.  Now, after fifteen years, they’ve made an animated movie.  And it stacks up to the book fairly well.  Obviously, they had to cut out a great deal of things.  Gone is the giant slug.  Gone is the banshee.  But, the movie is still very good.  Michael Rosenblaum does a top notch job as Tanis Half-elven.  Lucy Lawless is the best choice as Goldmoon.  Keifer Sutherland is a great Raistlin Majere, at least until he casts a spell.  The way he speaks the incantations sounds more like he’s growling them, rather than chanting a complex series of mystical words.

 

I also had a problem with the animation.  Though drawn well, they made the decision to make all of the reptilian monsters computer animated, while drawing all other characters and backgrounds in cell animation.  Not only did the two forms not go well together, it spoiled the surprise of an attack that came from a group of “monks” who were really villainous draconians, since the monks were computer animated.

 

MARVEL HAS DONE IT AGAIN

 

I used to love Spiderman.  I really did.  They’d mess him up, but eventually fix anything that they screwed up.  I stopped reading the comics totally when they made him announce his secret identity to the world.  I waited patiently for them to find some world-shattering way of making the entire Marvel Universe forget that Peter Parker is Spiderman.  But, not even having fixed the last mess-up, they’ve made the worst mistake ever-they’ve had Peter and Mary Jane make a deal with A DEMON for the life of Peter’s aunt.  And the cost of the deal is the wiping of their marriage from history.  Yep.  They’ve destroyed an institution from the comics that has lasted for half of Spidey’s career.  And they used a demon to do it.

 

I really can’t say what I want about the writers of the Spiderman comics, considering the fact that I’m a Christian.  Just suffice it to say that Marvel will never see another dime of my money.  I’ll see no more of their movies or purchase anymore of their merchandise.  And I’ll never buy another one of their comics.

PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN

 

After so long, the liberal, activist judge’s blocking of Bush’s partial-birth abortion ban has finally been overturned. Those of us who believe in the sanctity of human life can take comfort in the fact that a fully formed baby can no longer be pulled out of its mother’s womb and its brain sucked out of its head.

 

I don’t mean to describe the process in such crude terms, but such a crude process deserves nothing better.

 

Until next time, God Bless!

CHILD OF THE ‘80S

 

I was born in 1975 and spent the majority of my childhood in the 1980s. I like how that decade has started to become retro in recent years. I’ve purchased the “Top Ten” episodes of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe on DVD. I’ve purchased the first eight Friday the 13^th movies on DVD. I’ve started collecting new Transformers.

 

The He-Man DVD has my two favorite episodes, Teela’s Quest and To Save Skeletor, on it. It also includes commentary from the writers and producers of each episode. I found out, for instance, that one of the writers from the series also wrote the screenplay for Friday the 13^th the Final Chapter.

 

The Jason Vorhees set was a trip down memory lane. Okay, I’ll admit that the movies are definitely not family friendly, but it is interesting to note just how much the MPAA has changed in what it finds acceptable for an “R” rating. Compared to the horror films of today, these were mostly tame. Also, some pretty famous people were in some of the films, including Kevin Bacon (Part One), Corey Feldman (Part Four), Tony Goldwyn (Part Six), Kelly Hu (Part Eight) and even Left Behind’s Gordon Curry (Part Eight).

 

Of all of the things that I remember fondly from the 1980s, my favorite was definitely “the Transformers.” At one time, I had over one hundred of the first generation toys. Though my collection has slowly dwindled, I had not opted to buy any of the newer, gimmicky sets. But now, there is the “Classics” set, which looks more like modern versions of the cartoon characters. I’m collecting this new set and, so far, have Starscream, Rodimus (formerly Hot Rod), Grimlock, Bumblebee, and a set with both Optimus Prime and Megatron. I’m also waiting in anticipation for the release of the live action movie.

 

BEREAN UPDATE

 

I took my final exam for “The Prison Epistles” yesterday. I got a 90%. I’m really enjoying these classes. I never really understood just how little I knew about the Bible before now. The next class is “Introduction to Pentecostal Doctrine.” I’ll be going to pick up my texts at Global University today.

LIBERALS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE “TOLERANT?”

 

Since I first put up my MySpace page, I’ve looked around on the site for people who have many of the same interests (Jesus, writing, politics, independent film, etc.) that I have. I’ve asked many people to let me add them to my “friends” list. Until this past week, everyone had given an affirmative.

 

I found a girl who had an interest in writing and who said on her page that she was a “Christian-Other.” She denied my invitation. In fact, she was quick to point out that her reason was “guilt by association.” She didn’t like that I had an Ann Coulter fan site as a “friend.” She didn’t like the fact that one of my friends had left a comment that compared Democrats to terrorists. I guess it’s a good thing that she never read any of my political rants on my site, or she’d have been ready to throw me to the firing squad.

 

Let me note here that her page had liberal propaganda (“Obama’08’?” *Shudder!*). I still invited her. I think that this goes to show something about liberals. They’re all about “tolerance” and “open-mindedness,” until it conflicts with their beliefs.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

A TOMB IN JERUSALEM

 

Okay, so this “documentary” came on THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL last Sunday night and everybody’s talking about it.  Atheists and pagans alike claim that it proves that Jesus wasn’t the Son of God.  Here are my two cents worth:

 

1. In those times, people were buried in their home towns.  Jesus’s family lived in Nazareth, not Jerusalem.
2. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were among some of the most common names of that time.  Maybe this is why Mary Magdalene and Jesus’s earthly mother shared the same first name.
3. Joseph was a carpenter, for crying out loud!  He wouldn’t have been able to afford a family tomb!

 

This is one of those types of documentaries that does nothing more than bolster one side, while the other side picks out holes that are large enough to pilot a 747 through . . . kind of like a Michael Moore documentary.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

THE COST OF OUR MEMORIES

 

I stopped by the grocery store this morning and discovered that they were selling blackberries . . . at almost four bucks a pint.  I couldn’t believe the price of a fruit that used to be so readily available to me in the summer.  I remember spending the warm, summer days of my childhood carrying a paper bag and gathering the wildly-growing fruit.  Of course, the fruit would have filled the bag more quickly if I hadn’t eaten two for every one that I collected.

 

My grandmother would take the berries that we had picked and make cobbler out of them.  I loved blackberry cobbler.  Just thinking about it makes me long for all of the things that I remember so fondly from my childhood-homemade pickles, wild strawberries, my maternal grandmother’s chocolate roll (she’s in her late eighties and bed-ridden now)-so many things that the children of the current generation won’t have.

 

It kind of makes me wonder what my daughter is going to long for when she’s my age.

TODAY’S UPDATE

 

Not much has been happening around here lately.  I got a couple of manuscripts back from my editor and we’re going to meet next week, during my vacation from work, to discuss her views on some of the red marks.  As usual, she has pointed out things in the story that need further clarification.  I’m looking forward to the meeting.

 

My PS2 is on the fritz.  Since I, as a man with a family to help support, don’t have any intention of slapping down $500+ for a PS3, I’m going to try to drop my current system off at a local used game store to see if it is fixable.

 

Until next time, God Bless.

ANXIETY

 

Over the course of the past six months, I’ve lost four relatives.  First, my father died in September.  Then my Uncle Bill from California died.  After that, my Uncle Howard (“Junior”) died.  Most recently, my Uncle Patrick died.  I mourn them all, as I was, at one time or another, close to each of them.  But I still mourn my Dad daily.  I think about how he could do such amazing things with cars and I can barely check my own oil.  I remember that he could fix anything—like for example, a clogged sink.  I can at least read the directions on the bottle of Liquid Plumber.  I think about how he worked hard because he considered his family more important than anything else.

 

I have felt my heart filled with an unexplainable anxiety as of late.  My heart was beating with a fear that I just could not understand.  In Philippians 4:6-7, Paul tells us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (NIV)

 

God has revealed to me that, in my attempts to forget about this fear, I have been ignoring my family.  And I have been.  I’ve been away from home at least two nights a week.  One of those days has been on Sundays, which had always been our family day.  So I am going to be making some important changes from this point forward.  After church, Sundays will belong to only my family.  No exceptions or excuses.  I am not going to be away from home gaming on Wednesday nights anymore.  I am scrapping the RPG that did not involve my wife in it.  I am going to do everything to make sure that my wife and daughter are at the top of my life, right under Jesus.

 

LABOR

 

My friend, Bobby, is currently at the hospital with his wife, who is in labor.  We know that they are having a little girl and my prayers are with them.  When my wife and daughter get home this evening, we will be going up there to see them.

 

Until next time, God Bless.