A Christmas Missive

I contributed to my DVD horde today by purchasing some Gilmore Girls (I'm not afraid to admit that I like this show) and the two volumes of Warner Bros. Holiday DVD Collection. My, that's a lot of DVDs in my collection. Anyway, I watched the first disc in Volume 1 of the collction, Boys Town (and on the flip side, Men of Boys Town. What a great movie or two. Both of these spoke to something in my heart, but more of that later.

I started watching A Christmas Carol from 1938 with Reginald Owen as Scrooge. And I got to thinking about our life in America today, what our expectations are about things, and all that kind of thing. In particular, about Christmas. I could go on about how commercialized Christmas has become and how we might just as well call it X-Mas for all we don't think about Christ and His birth. (And yes, I know the "x" really does stand for Christ, but in today's world, it's not understood or generally meant as a substitute for Christ). And to be honest, I've played a bit into this commercialism this year, but I do it out of love rather than obligation. ($200 isn't too much to spend on my mother, but don't let her read that! LOL.)

What is Christmas for beside a celebration of the birth of our Savior? I think spending time with family is important. In the past, I've always looked forward to Christmas. This year, though, with the death of my father, I've been dreading these holidays. When I think about it, that he's gone, it truly brings me to tears. And my poor mother, all alone now. She and my father had made plans, well, not so much plans as enjoying being with each other, and they were looking forward to retirement.

Again, I know I'm not the first person to lose a parent, and I'm blessed that he was around for as long as he was. And still, it hurts more than I can tell. As a friend who has passed this way told me, this is not something you can practice for or really even prepare for. You can expect it, but that's it. I know he's out of his suffering, and still it hurts. I can only trust that God will see us all through.

Existing all the things

I've had so many ideas for blog posts lately, but I haven't done anything about it. I do have a draft about Jesus, but it's not flowing together completely, so I still need to work on it.

Anyway, I get several different emails daily from Google Alerts. (Aside: this is a great service, kind of like an automated Google search delivered right to your inbox every day; you should really check it out. note: this is not a paid advertisement.) Through some of the alerts over time, I've discovered some kind of movie-review 'bot (robot) that's kind of "engrish", except more like "ind-rish".

One particular alert item that came across today was for one of my 50 favorite movies, Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. This is the Hitchcock film that Hitchcock didn't make but wishes he could have. [Editor's Note: While this is one of my favorite movies, it could be a gross inaccuracy to state it is one of my 50 favorite movies. I have not counted, nor have I ranked, movies beyond say my top five.]

This is the quote that showed up in my inbox (when I went to get the quote, I discovered it's for a movie, Wait Until Dark, starring Audrey Hepburn (as a blind woman) and Alan Arkin. Very suspenseful. On with the quote:

Wait Until Dark was grateful! You have to detect this movie! A egregious performance by Audrey Hepburn & Alan Arkin make Wait Until Dark a “have to twig” movie! The eye-opening cast includes Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna,

Doesn't this seem like some kind of Mad-Libs type thing, where someone picked out some adjectives which were selected at random?

Short

The innocent blame themselves.
The guilty blame the innocent.