Halloween

Halloween is my wife's favorite holiday. She loves the decorations, the pumpkin carving, the candy, the movies, the tv shows, anything Halloween. She talks about Halloween all year and she looks forward to it all the time. She has already described in specific detail how our house will be decorated on Halloween for the kids to come Trick or Treating (right now we live in a condo on the second floor). We are going to be the Chevy Chase house of Halloween. Thus, today she was bubbling over with excitement.

She is also an amazing pumpkin carver (I think). I, on the other hand, lack minute motor skills. I could never do models, my two-year old nephews both have better handwriting than me, and I could never do anything crafty. Thus, it amazes me that she can envision a pumpkin face, draw the outline, and carve it out. In the past, she's done a Demon Deacon and the Tennessee Titan logo. I tried to no avail to a request of a Chief Wahoo pumpkin granted(she said she would do Chief Wahoo next year if the Indians did better. She's also sassy.).

This year, she decided on Hello Kitty. Some background: she has lamented the fact numerous times that she never had any Hello Kitty school supplies when she was little. She would beg and beg her mom to get a Hello Kitty eraser or a Hello Kitty lunchbox. She was eternally denied. Thus, through laborious effort, I am proud to present my wife's very first piece of Hello Kitty merchandise:

In other Halloween news, I was the only person from my office to dress up and go to work. My costume consisted of a Travis Hafner jersey and my Cleveland Indians baseball hat along with my baseball mitt. I got a reese's cup and a blow pop from two co-workers. I was also made fun of about [800] times. Whatever, [people at my next job will appreciate Halloween more and make it a fun day at the office]. [Just kidding, boss].

Since I have made it four entire paragraphs with out continuing my torrid love affair with lists, here are my top 5 horror/Halloween movies of all time:

5. Blair Witch Project. Yes, I know it's terrible. The last 15 seconds, however, make the movie. When she goes down in the cellar and sees the guy standing in the corner and gets knocked over, and the camera cuts off. The reason it's so terrifying is that I can think of half a million things that knocked her over which are infinitely more scary than anything Hollywood suits can dream up.

4. The Omen. Kids are scary. Kids in suits are scary. Kids who don't talk are scary. Combine them all and you have one messed up movie. Especially since the movie is somewhat ambiguous as to whether Damien is the Anti-Christ or whether everyone was delusional. That Satanic Nanny also freaks me out.

3. Candyman. I have a friend who can do a perfect Candyman impression. Every now and then he'll just go "I hear you're looking for Candyman, bitch." It's half funny, half-terrifying. I've never been able to watch Tony Todd in any other movie and not think of him in that movie. Also, the entire scene in the parking garage is scary because in general, parking garages are scary. There is a new movie about a girl who gets trapped in a parking garage and gets terrorized. [Can't wait].

2. Halloween. Have you ever watched a movie that is so slow you start getting bored and right as you reach for the remote to turn it off, something so completely awesome happens that do a 180 and are so grateful for the slow pacing because it made the climax all the more better? This is how I feel about Halloween. For 86 minutes the movie drags on and on and on and on and we get Michael Meyers killing random people and Dr. Loomis arguing with a small town sheriff on a stake out. Then, Jamie Lee Curtis discovers the dead bodies, Meyers pops out and comes after her and she runs out of the house. The music starts going and all of the sudden you are wishing to return to the saftey of the slow pacing because for the next 10 minutes, it's non-stop intensity.

1. When a Stranger Calls/When a Stranger Calls Back. To this day, when I am at my parent's house alone and the phone rings, I still think there is someone upstairs calling from inside the house. 14 years later, and the original and the sequel still scare me half to death. The sequel deserves to be up there because of the babysitter in the beginning and because of the ending. I won't spoil it, but man, it makes your heart skip a beat.

You know what movie doesn't scare me? The Exorcist. I don't know, I don't get scared by that movie. If anything, I think it's too tame in its treatment of what a demon would be like. I also didn't see it until I was past impressionable age (I was 19 I think) so maybe I had steeled myself by then. Or maybe it's just not scary.

Actually, let me retract that statement. When I as 19, I saw the original version. Not scary. But it is a good movie. So when DVDs first came out, I bought The Exorcist: The Version You've Never Seen. The director did little to change the movie except splice subliminal faces of the demon in between scenes. And it's scary as hell.

-G

First Post

Welcome to my blog, Alien Righteousness. Since this is my first post, I'd thought I'd introduce myself to the blogosphere:

Hi, I'm Greg.

Hi, Greg. Welcome to our addiction group.

Now that that's out of the way, why am I here? I am switching to blogger.com instead of my MySpace blog for two reasons:

1. I am getting a little fed up with the antognist attitude the MySpace software is taking with me. I've had about 8 blogs deleted.

2. It seems that a lot of my friends are using this site, so I figured I might as well throw my hat into the ring and blog where they blog. I already shop where they shop and they made me drink because cool people do it, so they might as well lead me to the next big thing. And yes, if they jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, I would, too.

If you want to catch up on my blog posts, check out, http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendID=145148687

I can sum it up for you if you don't want to read them or if MySpace is blocked from your office (get back to work, slacker):

1. I am a Christian. I majored in Religion and minored in Ancient Greek at Wake Forest Univeristy (WFU), and I harbor a lingering desire to return to that path of study. Most of my free time spent in thought focuses on issues relating to the New Testament, Christian Theology, and Church History. My blog periodically serves as an outlet for me to express these thoughts.

2. I like sports. The teams I root for in decreasing order: Cleveland Indians (Major League Baseball), Tennessee Titans (National Football League), WFU Demon Deacons (College sports), Brentwood Academy Eagles (High School Alma Mater), Arkansas School for the Deaf Leopards (most awesome school name of all time).

2.a. I like fantasy football and baseball.

3. I like movies. In another life, I would have been a film critic. As it is, I am an attorney. Go figure.

3.a. I like quoting movies and tv shows. In fact, I've had entire conversations with people that consisted nothing except fantasy sports and quoting movies.

4. I like lists. I was re-reading some old blog posts and I do the number thing a lot. Or the "Top 10" thing a lot. I've already used lists twice in this post.

5. I enjoy watching TV.

6. I like puzzles, video games, puzzle games, puzzle video games, video puzzle games, games puzzle video, and Dr. Pepper.

7. I am very dry, sarcastic, satricial, sardonic, and facetious. About seven years ago, a friend on IM angrily told me "You really need to start putting sarcastic IM/e-mail comments in brackets so people know when you're kidding." I'll try and do that here. For example, [I think The Hills is the greatest show on television and I've seen every episode.] See?

8. I [hate] a lot of things. I use the word liberally. Most of the time it doesn't mean I harbor a deep resentment that a mature person would get over in a second. Some times it does. Hate is most often used when talking about topic 2. For example, I hate the Boston Red Sox. I [hate] Wake Forest Basketball. See the difference?

9. Many people are idiots. No, I did not forget brackets. (just kidding, I did). I use this word liberally, too. Once again, most often used when talking about topic 2.

10. You probably could have read all my old blog posts by now.

11. I am not a grammar or spelling snob. I'll try to make it presentable; but if I wanted to proof read my writing, I'd pull out my high school English papers.

12. Moving on, my blogs consists mainly of these three things, in no order: Christianity/Religion, Sports, Movies/TV/Books. Maybe I should have put this at the beginning.

So far, Blogger.com seems to be a much better interface than MySpace. My only hope is that [random girls send me private messages promising nude pictures if I visit their website, which probably contains a virus.] That is hands down the [greatest] thing about MySpace.

Now, a more serious topic. Since this is my "first" blog, I thought I would explain the origins of the title. I tried creating this blog this morning before work got going. I got stuck at the title. I had to name my Blog. I absolutely suck at naming things. Every video game character/online identity where I had to provide a name (e.g. Final Fantasy, any RPG or online game with an avatar, even IM and Yahoo names) I always either:

1. Named it Greg.

2. Named it after a character in a book or another video game (no, I do not have a World of Warcraft character named Legolas. FYI, my Warcraft character is named Danael (my attempt at Hebrewizing (it's not a real word) Daniel from the Old Testament. Rather than actually googling it or, *gasp*, walking three feet to pull my Hebrew dictionary off the shelf, I failed miserably in my attempt to do so.) I have another WoW character named Melkior, which I copied from the SNES game Chrono Trigger.). Am I a complete dork? Yes.

3. Named it something stupid. Example: In some incarnation of Final Fantasy, I named my character Afaggot. Thus, every time some NPC in the game spoke to me, he or she would say "You must be Afaggot!" "I have been waiting for Afaggot to come along and here he is!" "I need Afaggot to help me!" "Just the other day I was looking for Afaggot." Immature? Yes. Hilarious? Yes. A one-time thing? Most certainly not. Did my college roommate and I laugh hysterically at this non-stop? Absolutely.

Regardless, perhaps you can understand my conundrum. Here I was, faced with another naming situation. I had to name my blog and it took me all day. I finally settled on the aforementioned "Alien Righteousness."

So the five W's on Alien Righteousness [Man, I am having a love affair with these lists]:

1. Who coined it? Martin Luther, as far as I know (See? I just copy stuff.)

2. When? Apparently in 1519, in his "Sermon on Threefold Righteousness."

3. Where? Probably somewhere in Germany.

4. What is it? Short version: It is Luther's explanation regarding how God's grace works. To quote Rick Downs (I'll write a lot about him later): "Oridnary righteousness is what you get when you do the right thing consistently, but such has shown to be insufficient for God. Extra-ordinary righteousness is given to the sinner by God as a gift on the basis of Jesus' atoning death. It's what Martin Luther calls 'an Alien Righteousness.'"

5. Why? I finally settled on this (and it was a tough call between this and Chief Wahoo 4eva) because I realized I had been thinking about this concept consistently for a little under a year. Additionally, my worries, my woes, my anxieties are lifted when I find myself thinking about this. It is a source of nourishment and refreshment. I find myself thinking about this often. And I wanted to share it. Plus, [Chief Wahoo 4eva was already taken]. And I felt a little guilty about choosing the Cleveland Indians over something relating to God. But it WAS close and I didn't feel THAT guilty.

So there you have it, I named a blog. It only took 15 hours. This first post was also waaaaaayyyy longer than I thought it was going to be. Why? My wife is watching The Hills and there was two episodes to catch up on. Every guy on that show is a total douche (by the way, I'm also judgmental, but then again, so are you) (come on, that was funny).

For your information, yes, my wife and I have talked about naming our kids? My suggestions so far?

1. Greg, Jr.

2. A Biblical name (I told you, I like to copy books).

3. Something funny when said in a sentence. And on that note, here is a quote from Bill Cosby:

It was because of my father that from the ages of seven to fifteen, I thought that my name was Jesus Christ and my brother, Russell, thought that his name was Dammit. "Dammit, will you stop all that noise?" And, "Jesus Christ, sit down!" One day, I'm out playing in the rain, and my father yelled, "Dammit will you get back in here!" I said, "Dad, I'm Jesus Christ!"

Comedy Gold. My wife has revoked me of child-naming privileges (we're not pregnant). (The previous parenthetical was addressed to the female family members reading this and freaking out. Many of them probably called me after "my wife and I have talked about naming our kids.").

Now comes another problem, how do I "sign off?" (and does the question mark go inside or outside the quotes?)

Do I do use something preachy (God Bless), witty (Blog ya later) (wow, that was lame), cliche (I can't think of one) (oh come on, that was hilarious), or do I just do nothing and end abruptly?

I'm open to any suggestions. For other things too: movies, books, magazines, tv shows, websites, etc.

For now, I'll just make it short and sweet.

-G