• Mood: sick
• Music: The Arrogant Worms - Christmas Turkey

Will's Early Christmas Morning Paper Blog

I should be writing that screenplay for Mike now. Well, I'll get back to it. I did. Unfortunately, my priority for the next few days will be to photograph the Christmas lights in the Restoration. Also done, although between that and the CPA Reunion I have a new disgust about taking pictures in sight of others. Will elaborate in a future post. Every building has been adorned with beautiful white lights - it's almost worth the drive here just to see that. (Sherbrooke lies roughly 200km east of Halifax, and this distance is only slightly covered by 100-series highway, namely the 107 extending 40km to Musquidobit Harbour. And you have to knock traffic lights on the 7 just to get to that. But it's a pretty drive nonetheless. However, if mainland Nova Scotia can be said to have a last frontier, this is it.)

Speaking of, I couldn't say less for the internet here. This is what my IE looks like:

- Page title: This Page Cannot Be Displayed
and by moving my mouse over the Back and Forward buttons, I am presented with two other options:
- Go Back to Sympatico
- Go Forward to Cannot Find Server

Hence the paper blog. It is really that bad. Like you'd envy rainegirl or zephyrcrow for their internet. I've never seen anything worse. Ostensibly it is "56K" (which might get you 5.0K/sec on a really good day), but download speeds rarely exceed 1.0k/sec.

Not that I'm complaining. I love it here! I went to the Christmas Eve service earlier tonight and met all kinds of people I haven't seen in years. Everyone was saying how great I looked, which was cool. Yeah, there were a few years there (12-18) that were not particularly kind to me looks-wise. I just kind of grew out of it and grew up. I also used to be really oblivious to other people, which didn't help.

I'm certainly not the religious type, but I really enjoyed the service. In place of the sermon, we had an interactive reading of Ray Buckley's "The Give-Away" (which looks like it's not available online, otherwise I'd throw up a link), a Christmas story that blends First Nations spiritual traditions with Christian ones. (While I'm skeptical that this is a good idea, it is a nice story.)

I used to go to that church all the time when I was a child. I have so many great memories from there. It's all but officially my home church. And yes, I am an athiest, but I do like to participate in religious services for social reasons. Life's too short to worry about disagreeing with other people's systems of thought. I attended a Polish Mass in Sexsmith, Alberta while I was on the exchange and didn't understand a word of it, but I had no trouble going through the motions (except the actual mass of the mass, which is only open to Catholics - although Catholics are allowed to participate in Protestant ceremonies. I'm a huge denominationalism freak. I love to obsess about all the differences between the various churches. Most Christians like to take a more holistic look at it, but I'm facinated by the idea of Henry VIII royally pissing off (OMG PUN LOL) all the catholics and setting up a church of the state. Isn't the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Privy Council? That is SO cool.)

I'd better stop before I start pissing people off. You can't even say Merry Christmas to some people without them saying, "No, thank you." In all fairness to my friend who does this, I went back and read the whole entry and now I understand where he's coming from, though I certainly wouldn't dare take up such a practice myself. Then again, I grew up with this stuff, and people don't come up to me and wish me a Happy Hanukkah or Respectful Ramadan. Actually, I wish they would. I'd thank them for that. For the sake of others, I sometimes wish they wouldn't pipe the grocery stores full of Christmas music all December long - I suppose people of other religions in North America learn to tolerate it fairly quickly as a matter of survival, though. =)

I had a big rant here about what I mean when I say "Merry Christmas," but it's completely unnecessary now, though I'll leave this part intact:

Plus I'm a pansy without the mental fortitude to disavow religion publicly because it would offend my relatives. I think they know anyway, but they leave me alone, so I'll leave them alone.

Er, I'm starting to get sentimental. For the sake of my regular readers, I should go back to bitching about my daily social struggles. =) But I'll save that for when I have a keyboard.

* * *

I love people. I just love people sometimes.

I've got a Christmas Cold again this year. Oh man... I think I picked it up on the bus to the Palace or at the Palace. Both were gross.

The more I think back on the reunion, the more I wish those jerks weren't there. But then again, why am I allowing their jerkitude to bother me still?

* * *

Watched the Star Wars Holiday Special earlier today (see also: an everything2 node on the subject). It's as bad as people say it is. =) In fact, it is so bad it's worth watching. My cousin Dave (opera_angel's brother) made me a copy.

Most of the reason it is bad happens on a conceptual level. The acting is actually pretty good, but this comes off like Tom Hanks playing with dialouge written by preschoolers. Actually, he could probably make it work, because he's quite the versatile guy! But most people couldn't.

Also, about 50% of the special is shot at Chewbacca's house where his family is waiting for him to come home for Life Day. You have these extended dialouge scenes that consist of Mala, Itchy and Lumpy growling at each other incoherently for minutes on end. It would have been funny if C-3P0 was there. (He actually has a few lines that are almost funny.) But he wasn't. Anyway, the scenes become almost tolerable when the trader shows up, but his lines and wares and gizmos and whole situation are so thinly plausible that is is still painful to watch.

Anyway, I sat through it all. I probably shook my head about 10,000 times. This is more than I can say about my cousin Alex watching it with me, who left about halfway through, saying that he "(couldn't) watch another minute."

But I have a high tolerance for bad things. Actually, this isn't bad, it's awful. But you get the idea.

Well, there's a lot of snow around here today - this will probably complicate my plans with rainegirl tomorrow. Plus we're both sick. Aiee! Not to mention all the shovelling that will need to be done. I'd better go to bed early so I can get a good crack at it well before noon.

If you've read all this, I must offer my condole - I mean, my thanks. Thank you. =)

Writing Mood: recumbent
Writing Music: The Beatles - The Beatles