Sunday A’La Carte – October 12, 2014

What a week, what a week. Outside of the usual daily grind of work-eat-sleep-repeat, I’ve been listening to a lot of Demon Hunter. One of the few modern metal bands I actually enjoy on a frequent basis, really. In this case, I’ve been feeling a rather odd mix of misanthropic loathing and deeply introspective melancholy, and the style of \,,/METAL\,,/ that Demon Hunter, I’ve found, complements this psychological dichotomy of mine perfectly, hence using them as a soundtrack throughout the week. I’m listening to them right now, as I pound this out on my lappy-top. The new one, Extremist, as a matter of fact. Not too bad, really. On to other things, then…

I’ve started transcribing the (de)composition notebook that I’ve been jotting down my unplugged brain droppings into, aptly titled Death Is The Only Happy Ending. I’m thinking, as I gather the entirety of 2014’s journal entries in the various forms they’ve taken, I will stick with that as the title. It’s been a rather rough year, as I’ve mentioned many, many times so far. And I see no reason to change the title, really. It fits not only with my disposition and where I find myself at this point of my journey, but it reflects perfectly my mantra as a Christian as well. It’s not easy having me as a fellow believer and humble servant of Christ Jesus. But, there we are.

On Wednesday evening, I spoke a bit to my youth group about my journey so far as a Christian, touching on my own bit of psychological affliction (for lack of a better word, really…I’ve found I can have some fun with it as well). One of the things I iterated to the group was that, despite everything they may be going through, or will be going through, I understand what it is to find the simple act of living as painful and crushing for no reason whatsoever. Such is the nature of depression. Then I find this particular blog post, by way of The Church Of No People, and I really should have pointed this out as well. Oh, well. But it bears repeating: My mental affliction is not what defines me. To rip off Fight Club, I am not my depression. I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. I get that. It’s just that, some days I’d rather sit in the dark and not go outside and play with others. This year, more so.

Speaking of other blog posts that I discovered via The Church Of No People (you should really check that blog out, it’s pretty cool): This one that points out that saying things like, “Love God, Love People” can be misconstrued by Christians far too often, and comes off as particularly pointless to outsiders, and this one from The American Jesus that points out the glaringly obvious irony of the doctrines of Fundamentalist churches. I’ve personally been rather fortunate to never to have gotten involved in a straight-on Fundamentalist church, but I have attended more than a few that had some Fundamentalist tendencies. And not the positive qualities, either. And yes, I am letting on that I think there are some positives to be gleaned from Fundamental church bodies, no matter how wacky they may be.

This morning at church, as I was waiting for the Sanctified Hipster Band to get on stage and do the weekly morning Pep Rally for Jesus, the pre-show music mix (I don’t know if they were just using someone’s pre-loaded media player or what) of mediocre and non-threatening Alternative Contemporary had a song that started off with a drum lead that made me think, “Hey, that sounds suspiciously like they lifted that from Megadeth’s ‘Wake Up Dead’!” Yep, I’m a \,,/METAL\,,/ head. And in case you have no idea of what I’m speaking of, here you go. You’re welcome.

Alternatively, it’s been put forth that, perhaps my moodiness has something to do with the planet Mercury. Personally, I think it may has more to do with the fact that THEY KILLED SWEETS ON BONES. Jerks.

Also, while I’m on that rabbit trail for this second, the new (and from what I understand, final) season of Supernatural started this last week. Caught up with the episode on Friday night. Dark, yes, but quite frankly it’s nothing I haven’t been through with the Winchester boys–or the angels, for that matter–so many times these past five years. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it many more times: They could have just stopped at the end of Season Five, and it would have been a very satisfying end to the series. Though, from another podcast I listened to over the weekend, I agree that they should bring back the “Third Winchester” as the orchestrator of all of the past couple of seasons. That would be a ballsy twist, indeed.

STUFF I’VE WRITTEN: I listened to and reviewed the recent Flyleaf album, and reposted an album review by Drottnar, and third and fourth full-length releases by Disciple. In this week’s HALLOWEEN’ING series I’ve managed to keep going without petering out thus far, I wrote about the movie Trick R’ Treat, my love of H. P. Lovecraft‘s stories, the curious confections that are Halloween Peeps, the television special classic Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, the first Halloween episode from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, when and where I picked up my obsession with telling ghost stories (and writing in general, it seems), and shared this lovely YouTube video of a guy’s brilliant Alien-themed prank in fast food drive-thrus.

That’s it for this week. Hope you all have a decent week coming up. Hopefully, I’ll be able to hit a haunted house or two, seeing as how my knee is finally feeling better. This past week, I was feeling the fluoride sting of that little football injury of mine back in 1991. Anyway, I leave you with another YouTube video that was shared with me by one of my youth group kids. Cheers, all.

::END TRANSMISSION::