Freak's X-Mas Loot

In case you were wondering, I got -
Presents:
Ninja uniform
Kendo Gear: Shinai, Keikogi, Hakama and bags
Bodhran (traditional Irish drum) with case and book
Amazon Women on the Moon DVD
Totoro t-shirt
money
Sting (Frodo's sword from Lord of the Rings)

Stocking -
G-Taste figurine
gummi sushi candies
light-up sushi keychain
spring loaded chopsticks
book placeholder
stuffed Black Death/Plague virus
magazine holder
sunglass cleaner with keychain pouch
wind-up Japanese goldfish toy

Also, it snowed and everything iced over, which I wasn't expecting in south Louisiana...and apparently neither was anyone else, as much of the highway was closed due to ice. I was ALMOST stranded at work, but everything worked out and I got to be home with my girl for christmas. Thanks to all for the gifts, and Happy Holidays!

Tales of the Unseen World, and Happy Holidays

I really like modern fantasy stories.

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull was awesome. Anything I have read so far by Charles De Lint is great. See, I like stories where subtle things happen in the 'real world' - ghosts, faeries, werewolves, occaisionally vampires - but only barely. The main character goes through their normal everyday stuff and sometimes has to deal with something odd. It seems so much more real that way.

Ghost stories I have found are usually better in short story form. Usually they entail a dead person trying to finsh something they left undone in life, be it revenge or just getting a message to someone. There is only so long that can go on before the eerieness stops working and it becomes an adventure tale or a mystery, which by itself is fine but I like that creepy/eerie feeling. Games can pull this off well, Fatal Frame and Kuon (which I am playing now, it FINALLY came out) do a great job of this.

Hellboy tales are wonderful too. Often horror, but it seems just as often it is a creature from an old legend still doing the same stuff in the modern day as it used to in the old days when people actually remembered it was there and couldn't explain it away with some random scientific theory.

And I love crossovers. A fey changeling has to deal with a ghost, or a werewolf deals with things from native american folklore. These things draw me into the story so much I forget for a short while that I am reading a book and not watching a good movie or being involved in it myself. Not in a drop acid and think you are really living the tale while trudging through the sewers kind of way, just in a forget that it more than likely wouldn't happen to you ever kind of way. Most of the stories I am talking about in this blog entry do that to me.

I just felt like going off about the kind of stories I like. If you havent read anything like this, you should if it interests you at all. There is some REALLY good stuff out there.

I never did end up going to the fetish gig, but had a good birthday nonetheless.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, all that good stuff. Hope you all spend time doing what you like, whether it is with family, friends, or if you prefer by yourself. Get some good loot too, I'll tell you mine once I have opened them tomorrow. If you are like me and working for the holidays, have a good one anyways. Put some Baileys in the coffee or something...not that I would do that, but I fully condone you doing it...unless I am your boss, in which case BAD. Naughty you. Enjoy, just don't tell me about it.

Guests, Sushi, the Christmas Zombie, and Pain

So the last week has been busy. Due to the holidays I have a sweet work schedule of three days on and six days off, which was very fortunate since a couple of the M-Trons friends - Amanda and Brian - came down to visit. We wandered around Bourbon St., watched some movies the next day, and then headed back to Nola. First we hit the Contemporary Arts Center for an exhibit called the FBI Files. Basically a guy was followed by the feds back in the 50's and 60's for suspected communism, then got his files through the Freedom of Information Act and made art out of them. Also there was an exhibit of womanhood involving casts of various body parts, including a table full of breasts, and art from homeless people, including childrens drawings and photo's from homeless adults. I'll hook you up with pics from this and our other adventures later, when I have some more time.

Next we wandered to the Riverwalk mall. I got Final Fantasy I & II Dawn Of Souls, which is loads of fun, some christmas presents, and we had lunch. I was amazed there was an Oakley store there as it rarely gets cold enough for that sort of winter gear down here, plus a complete lack of places to snowboard or ski, and most of their stock was snowboarding and skiing gear. Then it was off to the French Quarter, where I picked up a new hat and we hit the Horinoya Sushi Bar on Poydras. This place was awesome. We had Rainbow rolls, Real Snow Crab rolls, California rolls, some roll with eel in it, and I think a Louisiana roll. I ordered a Kirin Ichiban (my favorite Japanese beer), which turned out to be the HUGE bottle, not quite a 40oz but close. The interior looked really cool and the preparer of sushi bowed to us when we thanked him on the way out.

Then it was off to the car, and back to Morgan City for a day of rest and a day of going to Houma with Wolf Shaman followed by drinking and shooting pool and darts. Saturday we went for one last romp through the French Quarter for souveniers, then had to say goodbye at the Bus Station. On the one hand it is relaxing to have only two people in my apartment again (it's not the biggest place), but at the same time I miss doing stuff with them...good peeps.

It's several days later now and I have an odd pain in the left side of my face, sort of behind my eye. I hope I am not coming down with something. I hate these pains...it feels like I had a facehugger from the Aliens movies impregnate my face instead of my stomach and now an alien is trying to pop out of my eye. Well, at least I imaging it would feel a bit like this at first, I wouldn't really know, as I have never had an alien burst out of me.

My birthday is Friday and there is a fetish club thing going on in Nola that night, called Elise's Playground. I kinda want to go, but I have driven to New Orleans three times in the last week and I don't know if I want to make the drive again. Either way it would be fun, but it'll come around again before I leave probably. I'll let you know how it goes, if I go.

M and I got a christmas tree, a little fake number about 3 feet tall. I wanted a real tree, smaller but real, but I ceded to M's idea of having a fake one so we would not need to go shopping for trees again for a few years. At the top of the tree there was a bunch of extra room with no branches under the star, so I tied a zombie to it with tinsel. Now there is an undead guy reaching hungrily for any 'food' (read: people) that happens to walk by from the top of my Christmas tree.

Anyway I'm gonna go back to reading Battle Royale now, which I HIGHLY recommend...sort of a Japanese Lord of the Flies. My goal is to finish the book before the movies show up, which I ordered the other day. I'm reading the novel, not the manga based on it...and honestly I am not sure how the manga or the movie could get all the stuff that is going on in the book down in such a short medium, but I have heard good things about the film and I think I will enjoy seeing a lot of what goes on in the story on the screen. Besides, we all know most book to movie transfers arent exact anyway. I don't really expect movies to stick to the book anymore, just to see a similar version that will entertain me for 1.5 to 2 hours. It should at least have that effect

'Til next time...