i hate cleaning. i love a clean house, but i hate being the one responsible for making it happen. i hate it. there. i said it. now, back to my cleaning.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't to forget make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. ~Neil Gaiman

tret and meaghan in London.

Tret's work, originally uploaded by tretsyndrome.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

, originally uploaded by simply victoria.

on Mars, I'm only 18

your age on other worlds

(you could not pay me enough to relive 18. ugh!)

I love this movie

Christmas - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reinde
Uploaded by kimbaltak

Matthew, has a post on a movie currently in production about St.Nicholas of Myra. It looks promising. I haven't seen The Nativity Story, and I'm a little leary. How will they portray Mary? As merely a confused unwed teenaged mother? A passive recipient of things beyond her comprehension? This is what I dread, so I will wait to hear what others think. Go ahead, call me a coward, but the Mother of God is my hero. I hate to see her slighted. Especially in the name of entertainment. (incidentally, I have similar issues with how Jesus is typically portrayed in movies. The Miracle Maker, a claymation movie in which Ralf Fiennes is the voice of Jesus, is my all time favourite portrayal of Christ: vibrant, real, funny, tough. He isn't a sickly looking navel-gazer, as I've seen him portrayed in other movies... but I digress...:)

Stacy posted this excellent article, called "Unprotected", about the typical and unhealthy sexual behaviours of college women, as observed by the campus physician, who chooses to remain anonymous for many reasons. It's horrible the way these women have come to accept perverse behaviours as normal, and cannot even recognize how sick it makes them, physically and spiritually.

why do I find this so funny?

Manufactured Landscapes

"A protracted exploration of the aesthetic, social and spiritual dimensions of industrialization and gloablization." ~The New York Times

"Manufactured Landscapes is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of 'manufactured landscapes' – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as "stunning" or "beautiful," and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them."

"The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera."

trailer

Edward Burtynsky Gallery

"When I come to my evening prayers and try to reckon up the sins of the day, nine times out of ten the most obvious one is some sin against charity; I have sulked or snapped or sneered or snubbed or stormed. And the excuse that immediately springs to my mind is that the provocation was so sudden and unexpected; I was caught off my guard, I had not time to collect myself. Now that may be an extenuating circumstance as regards those particular acts; they would obviously be worse if they had been deliberate and premeditated. On the other hand, surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is? Surely what pops out before the man has time to put on a disguise is the truth?" ~C.S.Lewis Mere Christianity

So much more.

slowdown.mp3 by brett dennen
He's playing in Seattle in December. Oh how I want to go.
There are a few more songs you can listen to on his official site.
He's touring with John Mayer (blech) and Sheryl Crow (cool), right now. The Seattle date is a solo thing.

A remarkable book. I appreciated in the same way as I did "A Fine Balance". It's one of those books you know you should read, because it's an acclaimed classic, and acclaimed classics usually have some merit, n'est-ce pas? So I finally picked up an old copy I found in my school's library (a middle school, I wonder when it was last signed out), and I couldn't put it down. I think I finished it within a couple of days. It follows a family through a generation in pre-industrial China, on the brink of revolution.

the communist party.

the weekly blogroll

There are some real gems out there. Following Phillipa’s lead (lost as she may be in elegent cogitations), this is a short list of delightful blogs I've happened to stumble upon as I have traipsed lately through the binary code...

• Yurag the Illuminated says "I am a curmudgeon, an irascible misanthrope with little use for most of the putative intellect of our race and age, apart from the end of trying to redeem it. I know of only one specimen more wretched than mankind: me. If I can redeem myself, as St Theophan says, then I can save thousands. This blog is to accomplish that end." (His last post had some inspiring thoughts on the relentlessness of troubles for the one who would call himself a christian...)

• Two St.Hermanite expatriates have new blogs too. (here and here)

• the other side of the sun is also enjoyable... it's new, and a good read

• One of the hosts of "Our Life in Christ" has a blog.

• Morning Coffee has decided to tackle the whole "Emergent Church" phenomenon. Thankfully, since I'm curious, but don't have the time (or usually the patience) to sift through this stuff myself.

• Then there's ByzantineDixie (a former Lutheran turned Orthodox), a youth of the apocolypse, and Wittingshire, not orthodox, but lovely nonetheless

• And today's favourite: (because of today's posting of an oh-so-timely poem) GenX: someplace between 40 and death.
  

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,
and in all your creatures -
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.