giftmas christs

As you may have heard, there's an on-going blizzard in the Great Plains area.  12 inches of blowing snow so far.  This after many years of non-white Christmases.  So, Christmas dinner has been postponed until tomorrow night.  Oh boy!  As Pippin says, "I don't want to be in a battle.  But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse." 

That said, I got some pretty good loot today:

• Pancha Tantra, Walton Ford.  (this was my mother's big splurge, and I still can't believe she bought it...)
• Phantom, ed. Paul Tremblay.
• Under the Dome, Stephen King.
• Apocalypse Now, the DVD!  (my favorite movie, so I needed this)

Also a couple baking books and a jewelry stand, because apparently I am a girl.

"the novel," etc.

I've decided to start working on the novel again.  This is a big step for me, but I imagine it means nothing to most, haha.  "The novel" in this case refers to a saga/story I came up with about freshman year of college, after I had finished up the seven-book-series I spent middle school and high school writing.  "The novel" is the first of one of those dreaded trilogies, and I got halfway through the second book before I got tired of it, mainly because I realized I didn't know where the hell I was going.  This is why you worldbuild and outline, boys and girls.  Anyway I feel strongly about "the novel," and giving up on it entirely was never an option. 

The seven-book-series will never see the light of day because it has all the problems you'd expect a 15-year-old's stories to have, but it's always interesting when I see themes from that series arise again in "the novel."  And I mean, I realize these similarities like years after the fact.  It's good, though.  It means I'm thinking about "the novel" as a story and not just my accumulated babbles!

1.  I've never seen the movie Stigmata, but I feel like I should, because I have a real Stigmata thing going on.  
2.  The "religious right."  Although my feelings in re: this issue are pretty much summed up by the X-Files episode "Signs and Wonders."  
3.  Frowned-upon marriages.
4.  Social exile.  Class issues.  Communities that eat their own.
5.  Militarism.  Military leaders.  Law enforcement.  Abuse of power (by all characters).
6.  (Negative) Self-fulfilling prophecies.
7.  Competing definitions of what makes a "man."  The role of violence.
8.  Revenge.  Lots and lots of it.  I'm pretty sure this is a reason I like Sons of Anarchy; I'm all about the revanchism, mothafucka.
9.  Guilt, Revenge's ugly sister.

And I am doing this issues differently - more nuanced, I hope, and expanded in different directions - but I guess these are recurring themes for me.