The Feast 3: Bring Out the Lightsabers!

So Wednesday started as most days at the Feast did: with me feeling groggy. Which was totally unfair. I mean, the night before, I was always fine when I went to bed. I knew I needed sleep, which was the reason to try and get some, but I never felt liked I needed it. Then the next morning I would feel like I hadn't slept in days. Grr.

Okay, enough about sleep.

That morning Paul didn't feel like eating anything for breakfast save fruit; I didn't feel like eating anything, but I did anyway, 'cuz I knew I'd get hungry later. The pastor and youth leader from the Altamont group stopped by, for some reason expecting us to be with Susan or at least know where she was. ;-) As they walked away, Paul looked groggily after them and said, "Was she wearing a shirt I've seen before?"

Andrew: Um, that... Orange one?

Paul: No, it had some design that was familiar.

Andrew: (Gesturing to my shirt) You mean that?

Paul: (Grins) Yeah! That's the one!

(It seems my Monty Python "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" shirt is a duplicate of one owned by, erm, one of Paul's sisters.)

After breakfast we hung about breifly with some MHers, until many of them had to go off to choir (they kept doing that <_<).

We went to chapel. Then we sat close to the front again for Bender, and Paul and Nat and I stayed in the gym after that to hear Klemet Preus give an in-depth sectional on vocation. It was great, not surprising considering the speaker. At one point he asked for examples of vocation, and Paul mentioned "Pickle shelving!", to the amusement of most present (including Pastor Preus). After that, Paul brought said vocation into the proceedings at every oppurtunity. Afterwards we talked to Pr. Prues breifly, and he said to Paul, "Thanks for keeping it interesting."

Then was lunch. I don't remember much about that particular lunch, but I will say that just eating lunch with MHers etc. was very nice. Makes lunch at home seem rather dull in comparison. ;-)

Then I went to a sectional on the church's response to homosexuality, which was very good, by a pastor that I am very baaaaad and can't remember his name.

Next was evening in-depth (at 1:15 PM, teehee). I would like to note here that some of the most quotable things at the Feast came out of this sectional, such as:

Pastor B: Us keeping the law is like me bird-hunting.

Pastor B: ...And we like to think of the New Testament God as a kind God, a loving God, with a sheperd on his shoulder.

Pastor B: Aaron, if I gave you control of the Higher Things webpage for one day, what would you do?
Aaron: Copy it onto my hard drive.

Pastor B: You are worth TONS of dead birds.

And of course:

Pastor B (Illustrating, I think, our reaction to the Gospel, someone correct me on this): lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala!!!!!!! (With hands over ears, Pastor B runs around the room, still saying thus, runs out the door, closes the door.) lalalalalala! (Pastor B comes back in, goes back to the center of the room, and looks slightly embarassed.) I wonder if Fehrman heard that. 'The purpose of Lutheran missions is...' lalalalalalalala!"

Ahem.

After that was Moseman's sectional, then Vespers. I beleive this was the one where Andrew and I (maybe Paul, but I think he was somewhere else) arrived later than usual, and MOST of the seats were filled, so we sat in one of the forgotten corners and had no hymn book for half the service. Of course this was the place where the kids who don't really care, and are just there beacause their youth group is, hang out. (There are not many of these kids at HT conferences, I've noticed, but a few do slip through the cracks.)

So after that we met up with Heidi and Tarja and Aaron and Nathan, and all hung out for a little while. People were loading on both charter buses and their groups' own transportation to go to Garden of the Gods. Heidi and Tarja soon had to go off with their group to go to the Garden, and Paul and Andrew and Susan went with a Wisconsin group, but Aaron and Nathan and I kind of opted not to go anywhere.

So the three of us wandered around the CC campus for a time. We didn't really have anybody to go anywhere with, unless we went on a charter bus, but we might have had to sign up so we didn't feel like wrangling with that; and the WI bus only had two seats left, and there were three of us. So we were still wandering, kind of wondering what we'd do to fill up two hours, when we came across the Canadian group. One of us (probably Aaron, but I can't remember) asked something like, "Have you got room for a couple more?" And the drivers in Heidi's group were kind and generous and took us in. (And I must give special thanks to Pr. James (?) for driving both that day and the next. It takes a special kind of person to drive with Aaron in the vehicle and not spontaneously go off the road.)

So we went to Garden of the Gods and messed around in the gift shop for a while. It was threatening to thunder and lightning, but we went out to the hiking trail area anyway and messed around there for a while. Aaron and I had our lightsabers of course, which made us, heh, popular. (Actually, he and I and Heidi had them all day, and there were intermitent duels at certain oppurtunities, such as between classes, at lunch, in the car, etc.)

The Garden itself is a beautiful place, all that red rock sprawled around you; it's kind of indescribable.

After the Garden we went to the Flying W Ranch, for an old-fashioned cowboy meal and a Western show. We arrived and filed into their mess hall, making for the corner tables near the window along the back wall. (Ventilation-- it was hot.) The meal was the best I'd had all week; the show, well, parts of it were alright. Parts of it *coughthegospelsongscough* not so much. During the show Agent Delta came over and passed the message, "Lightsaber fight outside of Worner after we get back tonight."

So after we had finished eating, a bunch of people were out back there, hanging out on a strip of pavement, leaning against the western-style fence, watching the show through the window and talking. And playing with lightsabers. hehe. At one point, Aaron and I and some girls (sorry I don't know who all, exactly) were all leaning against the fence. Aaron was leaning on a support sticking out of the ground, and I was to his left. Suddenly he started away from the fence, and the group of girls to his right went over backward with a screaaam!, and brought that section of fence (a felled tree, I think) down with them. Acoording to one report, "Half the place heard them." I investigated this later and find this claim suspicious at best.

It was shortly after this that a cowboy-dressed guy came back and talked to those of us back there, asking that we keep it down, and saying that people were complaining. teehee. (I think the fence was alright, and no real damage was done, except maybe to some egos. :-D)

The Canadian/North Dakotan group we were with left a little early, to beat the rush back to CC. A group eventually congregated outside of Worner; Aaron had his lightsaber, I had mine, Heidi had hers, and Rachel D brought four or five.

There was a huge lightsaber duel.

Copious amounts of damage was done to the campus grounds. Limbs were chopped off, to lie untouched in the moonlight. Alliances were made and broken. The screams and cries were heard throughout the campus (by morning we were famous). I fought mostly on the side of whoever was outnumbered, since I had one of the two longer sabers. I fought many individual duels as well, and participated in many, er, backstabbings.

It was great fun.

After lightsaber fighting, we went to a birthday party for the Rachels and a friend of theirs named Ellen. We ate globs of frosting, and performed strange experiments with Sweet-N-Low, and played games, etc. We sang happy birthday and included Aaron as well, since his birthday was also a week or so away (happy birthday EllenAaronRachelRachel, happy birthday to you. :-D)

Next we made Aaron go to the wrong Compline again, and I bumbled my way back to our dorm, turned on the old radio shows again, and was soon out like a light. Thus ended Wednesday.

PS.: Thanks to Rachel D for supplying Ellen's name. Ethan's mind not so good. ;-)

Patience, My Children!

Greetings, Ladies and Germs (by which I mean Colin).

I have recieved some slightly, hem, impatient feed back wondering when the next Feast post will be up. In truth, I planned to post The Feast 3 soon after posting the two below. But then I acquired a nasty virus which knocked me out for several days. I am nearly fully recovered now, but I haven't had a chance to post much. I don't have time to write the whole Feast post now, but I just wanted to post an update and say this.

Oh and btw, my Links section is almost fully updated! Yay!

Ethan
(Exit, pursued by a bear)

PS. The Post Title was in the style of Bob, 'cuz I felt like it. :D

My Brother is on Beggars All!

What is the world coming to?

Update and Nigel Burch (And My Faulkner Theory)

Have you ever read anything by William Faulkner? Neither have I. Yet I have decided that he is nothing but a rip-off on Shakespeare. You know the type-- The ones who rip off GOOD authors and sell said rip-offs to the ignorant masses who have neither read the good authors nor care to read them.

"But sir," says the imaginary You. "Surely Faulkner IS one of the good authors."

"But sir," says another You. "I have studied Faulkner in college."

And to You(s) I say: Poor children. You have become part of the lie that is Faulkner.

But never fear. I am here to expose this lie to the World!

Faulkner's most famous work is the book The Sound and the Fury. This is an obvious take from Shakespeare's MacBeth:

Life is but a walking shadow
A poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more
It is a tale told by an idiot,
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Then there is another work of Faulkner's, called The Hamlet. And guess what? It's set in a small Mississippi town. Sound familiar? eh? Sound anything like a similarly titled work of Shakespeare's set in a small European Kingdom?

And then of course, there's this, which I hardly need to point out:

William Shakespeare
William Faulkner

SAME FIRST NAME!

But (and this is the real clincher) if you write those names again, and rearrange the letters in one of them slightly, you get:

William Shakespeare
William ---ake-----r-
William SHAKESPEARE!

That's right, if you rearrange the letters in Faulkner's name, take out an F, u, l, and n, and add a h, two s's, p, a, and two e's, you get WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE!

I believe I have proven my case.
--

In other news: Nigel Burch sent me an e-mail!

A while ago I posted about how I really liked/couldn't stop listening to the song by Nigel Burch and his Flea Pit Orchestra, "I Used To Be Mad". It's a great song, by a great skiffle/barroom ballad/Irish/rock group. Well, the other day the man himself sent me an email mentioning it and stuff. It bloody well made my day!

See also: www.myspace.com/nigelburch

(I wonder what it says about me that I am more excited about getting an e-mail from Nigel Burch (no offense to Nigel) than I would be about getting one from, say... some American rock band. ;-))

(I also wonder what it says about me that I can't think of ANY popular American rock groups off the top of my head.)

(Footnote for those interested: I DO NOT go on Myspace regularly, because it annoys me, among other reasons. However I go on ONCE IN A WHILE to listen to certain songs by certain bands.)
--

The other day we went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caeser by American Players Theatre, one of the best Shakespeare troups in the country. Paul and Andrew were there, as was Jeremy, which was fun. It was cold and raining the whole time, but the play was great anyway. (They perform in this really cool amphitheatre set high on a hill in the middle of some woods. Outdoors, in case that wasn't clear.) With about twenty-five minutes to go in the last act, the rain really started to pour down. A girl came on stage with a loudspeaker to announce that we should all adjourn to the lobby. We waited under what shelter there was, until another announcement came to announce that we would all move down the hill into a big white tent, where the play would finish. I ducked under an umbrella with Jeremy and some of his family, and we did the penguin-walk partway down the hill. Finally Jeremy and I were kind of like, "Screw it," and ducked from under the umbrella and ran for it, weaving through the crowd and jumping puddles (kind of reminded me of another sprint through cold rain I took once, though this was not so extreme as that one ;-)). When we got to the tent a whole ton of the Public-schoolers had left, but us die-hards (i.e. the homeschoolers) stayed to the bitter end. Quite fun, actually.

Yesterday we went to Bethesda, a HUGE rummage sale (charity benefit for a WELS group, actually). They basically take over the county fairgrounds, and have garage-sale-ish stuff in EVER BLOODY BUILDING! We were there because my mom is an antique dealer and she gets alot of stuff to resell there, and she needed, erm, muscle, to haul stuff around.

They had a really cool book section; I got King Solomon's Mines , an old pulp fantasy book (classic) that has actually been hard to find. I also got the Complete Short Stories and Poems of Poe, and an old Conan book with a cool poster of Conan slaughtering a group of supernatural monsters; and some other stuff.
--

So yeah, just thought I'd take a break from the Feast posts for a (SHORT) while to give an update and get rid of some inane ideas. I haven't been doing too much else worthy of note lately. School started and while I was sad to see summer end, but I guess it had to sometime.

I haven't been writing much, I should probably do something with one of my stories. But I've been reading alot.

So bye bye Laura, no one else could ever take your place
So bye bye Laura, your beauty will never fade
--Laura, Flogging Molly

btw, Flogging Molly's new CD/DVD set is out, it's awesome, especially the documentary, I HIGHLY RECCOMEND IT!



Well, that's all I've got for now. :-D

'Cuz me I used to be mentally ill,

Slainte!
Ethan
(Exit, pursued by a bear)