80,053 words. 29,947 to go.

Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, I end up getting stuck because the words wander into a dead-end, or onto a path that the book doesn't want to follow. That happened to me last week, and it took me several days to regroup.

Sometimes, when I don't know how a scene goes or what it's doing, and I keep writing, after some blundering through the underbrush, I come out onto the path, and it's the right path, the place where the book wants to go. That happened to me tonight.

Trouble is, you can never tell which one it's going to be until afterwards.

I feel like I've become increasingly worse at conjuring up worthwhile LJ entries.  LJ entries with some sense of cohesiveness or some sort of central thought.  But, then, I reminded myself that the LJ is all about the random and seemingly mundane thoughts that randomly pop into my head, eh?  So, here are some random thoughts to share just before the end of the year 2009 and the end of the first decade of the new millennium.

I drove Aunt Gail's car today from my cousin's home in New Canaan back to Milford, CT.  My first time driving in over four months.  This on a busy Connecticut highway full of those punk East Coast drivers.  Fun times.  Fortunately for me, my aunt's car is far less ghetto than the good ol' Grand Am that I'm so used to lugging around.

I saw Avatar with my aunt, my cousin, her husband, and her son James.  Such an excellent, excellent movie.  Not the deepest plot in the world, but definitely one of those awesome sci-fi movies that truly immerses you in a whole new world full of exciting adventure!

My family here gave me lots of warm things for Christmas!  Now, I don't have to freeze to death quite so tragically up in Montreal.  I have a new coat, new scarves, new undergarments, new gloves, new hats, the whole nine yards!  This in addition to my scarves and gloves I just bought before coming down to Connecticut.  Yay for cute, new, WARM clothes!

I'm always rediscovering family.  I got to see my cousin Nicole for the first time in at least 12 years or so!  It is crazy.  But, I love my family here so much.  They have so many little similarities to me that I just love.  It's almost like we're related or something...  haha!

I haven't written about politics in a long time.  It frustrates me.  Being quasi-Canadian now, it's so much easier nowadays to just detach myself from it all.  The widening rift between parties.  The growing influence of the extreme left and the extreme right.  The screwing over of moderates who simply want nothing more than a competent, efficient government WITHOUT all the partisan rancor and blind ideologies.  Half-ass solutions based more on appeasement than on what actually needs to be done.  The dwindling of expectations.  There is no ambition in Washington.  Despite the so-called mandate of the 2008 election and the resulting Democratic President and Congress, what has been done so far?  Spending more money just to stay afloat - instead of spending money on exciting, new projects.  You want to stimulate the economy?  Let's build something ambitious already - like that high-speed rail system - instead of just spending billions of dollars on more economic band-aids.  And, don't get me started on Sarah Palin and these teabaggers.  None of the conservatives have yet discovered the folly and hypocrisy of social conservativism...

Canada has its problems.  The Alberta oil sands, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Canada's version of George W. Bush), etc.  But, at least, it is an efficient country.  Its population is pretty well distributed among a small group of cities that are transport- and environmentally-friendly.  It has an abundance of land and natural resources that haven't all yet been cleared out for shopping malls, cookie-cutter housing developments, and highways.  It has the decentralized central government that I've always advocated for in the US - with social programs being managed provincially.  I haven't heard of any terrorist plots in Canada recently.  Overall, it's not a bad place.  It just makes me wish America could wise up someday and learn some things from its friendly neighbor - without feeling this stubborn sense of insult about it.

A big difference between Canada and the US is that Americans are constantly taught to always distrust the government.  It makes sense if you consider the differences in their formations.  The US broke away from Britain to escape the tyranny of big government, whereas Canada was able to negotiate their separation a bit more peacefully.  Americans are, by nature, skeptical of the government, which helps explain why it is always so difficult to ever initiate a large-scale ambitious national project - like healthcare or comprehensive public transportation.

In other news, I am heading back to New York City on Tuesday and staying through New Years'.  Sad to say this, but I think that this week has been the longest time that I've gone without going out and drinking myself into a major shitshow night.

On a side note, my hair has looked like shit lately.  Methinks I need different product.

I am now back home -- and glad of it. I doubt I will go back next year.

Koch, H. W. The Hitler Youth: Origins and Development 1922-1945. New York: Dorset Press, 1975.

---

In a nutshell, this book is about the way in which Hitler and the NSDAP exploited--and betrayed--the energy and idealism of German youth for their own benefit. Koch was himself a Hitler Youth--and a survivor of the Volkssturm--and his occasional, bitterly sarcastic, personal comments are some of the book's most enlightening moments on the thoughts and experience of the boys themselves. (I wish he had brought himself to talk a little more about his own experience, but that wasn't the book he was writing, and I respect that.) He shows very clearly how National Socialism, both vehemently anti-intellectual and lacking an ideology that was even coherent, much less capable of standing up to debate, substituted physical activity for thought. Although Koch never says so explicitly, it's clear that Führer-worship (which Kershaw showed to be endemic and pervasive in German culture under the Third Reich) made up the deficit. And although Koch argues that the Nazis' ideological programming of the Hitler Youth was less than successful, he does not omit the evidence that children absorbed the "correct" attitudes towards, for instance, Jews and Poles. And toward the necessity of fighting to the last "man."

I also wish that the BDM (Bund Deutscher Mädchen) and the experience of girls were not as clearly an afterthought to Koch's book as he admits they were to the Nazi regime. More reasons to try to find the (very few) books written about women in the Third Reich.

And I shall end with a Nazi word problem, as cited by Koch:

"A mentally-handicapped person costs the public 4 Reichsmark per day, a cripple 5.50 Reichsmark and a convicted criminal 3 Reichsmark. Cautious estimates state that within the boundaries of the German Reich 300,000 persons are being cared for in public mental institutions. How many marriage loans at 1,000 Reichsmark per couple could annually be financed from the funds allocated to institutions?" (A. Dorner, ed., Mathematik im Dienst der nationalpolitischen Erziehung, Frankfurt 1936)
(Koch 174)

The Third Reich, in all its creepy anti-glory.

The Battle of Pelennor Fields in candy.
(link found via panjianlien)

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It just does not get easier. Christmas is past for this year, and the time with my family was no easier than it has been in the past. I am not sure why I agreed to come.

I arrived last night and joined everyone for dinner at my nephew's. I honestly tried to feel comfortable, but in honesty, I never did. Dinner was nice and my nephew and his wife tried, but it really did not feel natural to me. It felt contrived -- as if the were disapponted that I actually came.

Today was no better. I went back to my nephew's for the Christmas tree -- and immediately felt guilty. I arrived at 9:30, the time they told me to arrive, and discovered everyone else was already there and the kids had not been allowed to open their Christmas presents until the entire family was there. That was also my grandfather's rule and I still remember how much I resented my aunt who never arrived before 10:00 or 11:00; today I was that aunt.

I hung around most of the day, tryoing to feel like I belonged, but it never happened. I finally left this afternoon and found some Chinese take-out.

Next year I will go to the Bahamas.

• 19:06 @MissHell23 Had a dream you were pregnant. And refused to eat anything but airline food. You are so weird! #
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My inter-season episode, "On Faith," is live at Shadow Unit. It's a standalone story, so if you've been wanting to check out Shadow Unit, it might be a good place to start. And if you're already reading Shadow Unit, well, I hope you like it.

What a lovely Christmas so far!  To give a quick update, I have traveled to New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.  I hung out with Thomas and Russell in NYC for a few days (and drunken shitshow nights), saw my friend Christopher from Connecticut who I met from my Disney thingy, and am now spending Christmas Eve with my aunt and cousins.  Though I did not get to send out all the cards and gifts that I originally set out to, I have had the opportunity to spend these holidays with some of the loveliest people I know.

I hope that, no matter what kinds of fun gizmos you get this Christmas, and no matter how many drunken shitshows you partake in during these days of rest and relaxation, I hope that each of you finds yourself with a loving family to spend Christmas with.  I think that now, more than ever, I feel the most thankful for those who I've been fortunate enough to encounter throughout my life.

Merry Christmas, friends!  :-D

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...and there goes the furniture!

can't believe I fell so fast.
love or lust? this feels different.
so much of life has been forced...so many questions are unanswered,
but i hope that you'll answer them with me
i hope

deep blue
and sometimes i can't breathe
i don't see your face in my thoughts (although your face is the most beautiful i've ever seen)
i just feel you

i am confused
things have seemed important before
and some still do, but others seem worthless...
seems like you've changed my perspective
impossible. it must be lust.
i just don't know...

uncertainty is exciting.

What has happened to our country? Years ago, we used to be able to disagree with one another and keep things civil. I remember being in college, when most of my fraternity brothers were conservative Republicans and I was (and am) a liberal Democrat. we got along and respected one another.

Now, as a nation, we seem incapable of doing that.

Earlier this week, Senator Tom Coburn (Publican from Oklahoma) publiclly called for conservatives to pray for a senator to being unable to participate in the vote over health care, presumably praying either for the illness or death of a colleague.

This morning, on C-SPAN, the following was called in:

CALLER: Yeah doctor. Our small tea bag group here in Waycross, we got our vigil together and took Dr. Coburn’s instructions and prayed real hard that Sen. Byrd would either die or couldn’t show up at the vote the other night.

How hard did you pray because I see one of our members was missing this morning. Did it backfire on us? One of our members died? How hard did you pray senator? Did you pray hard enough?

HOST: Senator Barasso, he was referring to Senator Inhofe, who was not part of the round of voting this morning.

BARASSO: The votes today, they needed 60 votes in favor of the bill. Senator Inhofe is opposed to the bill, and whether he was there or not didn’t make any difference. There was no way that Jim Inhofe was going to vote for the bill, the senator from Oklahoma. So that’s why he wasn’t there this morning.

Seriously? Someone calls into a national televasion show to report that they actually prayed for a U.S. Senator to die? Is this what we have become? Are we really so irreparably divided that we urge God to kill our opponents rather than respect divergence of opinion and accept that elections are about setting a direction for the government?

Is this what the "Christian" right supports? Because if it is OK to pray for the death of those with whom we disagree, it is a short step to saying it is OK to actually take out a gun and kill them -- arguing that the act is God's will and that therefore they cannot be punished by man. Is this the nation we want?

God help us.

Another AU Felix & Mildmay dream last night, this one claiming to be an animated series which might aptly be summed up as: "He's a gay wizard with a dark past; he's a cat burglar with a price on his head. Together, they fight crime!"