christmas loot

i made a pretty good haul this christmas. in fact, this list isn't even finished. there are at least three gifts missing. and don't worry, there's still time to get me a gift--epiphany isn't 'till january 6th.

books
1. night by elie wiesel
2. east of eden by john steinbeck
3. how to mow the lawn by sam martin
4. parallel bible (nasb + the message)
5. one year of the bible (new living translation)
6. wild at heart by john eldredge
candles
1. sugar almond
2. vanilla
3. mulberry wine
clothes
1. a stylish black shirt
2. a hoodie
3. tube socks
4. dress shoes
5. two pairs of pajama pants
foods
1. christmas cookies
2. wasabi mustard
3. clotted cream
4. strawberry jam
5. strappleberry gum
6. chai tea mix
gadgets
1. cordless headphones
2. small ipod dock with speakers
music
1. piano bench
2. muse sheet music
3. kazoo
other
1. two wallets
2. deoderant
3. framed picture of a potter

good news. my friends and family seemed to have reached a consensus about my tastes. they have determined that andrew is a stylish fellow that likes to read, smell good, eat well, and immerse himself in music.


beth the s.o. "avocados & chili, but it was too early for saint nick" gregg lake, alberta.

i finished christmas shopping!

in lieu of a proper blog posting, i'm trying a new font. and in addition to tinkering with the 17 point scale text type, i also finished my christmas shopping and started don delillo's white noise. beth recommended it to me during our gre studies. she said something like "it's a strange, post-modern classic; i think you might like it,"and because beth has a surprisingly keen sense of what others like, i thought something like "okay." and now here i am reading white noise and experimenting with blog fonts [p.s., it turns out that the new font is invisible. what a waste. oh, well, ain't life grand?]


unknown. "flipbook potential" shekinah, saskatchewan. (i spent about five minutes studying these pictures. during that time i discovered great, earth-shaking truths and was bemused by the animate nature of my hands, cup, and expression [and by 'my' i'm referring to me, the guy in the stripes], especially in contrast to beth's motionless expression of mock gravity.)

christmas list

1. piano sheet music - absolution/muse
2. piano sheet music - amelie soundtrack/yann tierson
3. piano sheet music - play/moby
4. piano sheet music - drunkard's prayer/over the rhine
5. six mighty floodlights that run with very low battery power and are easily portable (to play soccer in the dark)
6. a dark colored fleece or a hoody (i.e., black, dark brown)
7. one of those ipod docks that includes good speakers (so i can outblast my roommate in his basement music studio)
8. a parallel bible that includes the rsv and eugene peterson's the message
9. something that will teach me how to use f-stops and my tripod and help me catch danny on istock
10. the 18-200ish lens that danny's buying himself
11. a gift certificate to have my camera cleaned by some camera cleaners
12. some sugary treats
13. a puffy coat
14. a pack of expensive root beer
15. a yummy smelling candle
16. a really good book that will make me think, scribble funny things in the margin, and cry
17. a roundtrip ticket to belize


andrew david. "last year's loot" seattle, wa.

the road (continued)

i'm not sure how much i can trust my statcounter, but it appears that some of you are afraid to click on the imageupdate link (or any link for that matter). therefore, i've decided to include the blurb here. there's a chance that the managing editor of imageupdate may force me to remove it, so read quickly--it may disappear at any moment:

Nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like Cormac McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road. And we mean that. The Road offers a dark, apocalyptic vision of the future, of a charred, useless land, wasted by an unnamed catastrophe and “peopled with refugees [in] masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators.” McCarthy’s characteristically spare dialogue forges a world that is chilling and austere. And into this “crushing black vacuum of the universe” he thrusts a frightened father and son. They push a battered shopping cart south through the ash-choked air, hoping to escape the winter cold, hoping to find food. In this desolation, language and meaning deteriorate, “the names of things slowly following those things into oblivion… the names of things one believed to be true.” The father walks the road with a pistol tucked in his belt—in this savage land, he is no longer free to do right, only to stay alive. But there may be hope in McCarthy’s darkness, perhaps even a sense of the Incarnation, an inkling of Advent. Despite the desperation of their journey, the son walks in empathy. With an innocence foreign to the blighted earth, this boy cares passionately about right and wrong. At times the father “raise[s] his weeping eyes” to see his son “standing there in the road looking back at him from some unimaginable future, glowing in that waste like a tabernacle.” This child, born into a world gone mad, shines with some greater fire. And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown (David par. 2).

the road

ah, yes. i'm proud to report that i've published yet another blurb in imageupdate.* and in some respects, the paragraph is even a bit christmasy! if nothing else it's one of a kind; when i googled "advent" or "christmas" in conjunction with cormac mccarthy's recently published the road, i got fewer than one relevant hit. perhaps that's because the road is the darkest, most harrowing book that i've read in the last year. perhaps that's because the only mention of christmas in the novel is when the main character points to a fireplace mantle and shows his son a patchwork of pinholes, explaining that holiday stockings once hung from those holes. in any case, read the road. it's worth the tears. and if nothing else, you can look forward to arguing with me about the presence of a christ-child in mccarthy's post-apocalypse.


andrew david. "the road" mt baker, wa.

(actually, imagine the photo as wayyy more dreary. the picture was taken right outside the lodge that i stayed at during bethany community church's wilderness retreat, and, when in color, it is rather beautiful, so it was rather tough to drain it of it's splendor. just imagine that everything in the photo is dying and covered in ash.)

*the final version will be uploaded thursday morning

what i did tonight

this evening i stayed at home. and wrote a blurb for imageupdate. it was for cormac mccarthy's the road. you should read it. reading the road is kind of like walking in the darkness toward a light, but mostly it's just like walking in the darkness. i want to talk to someone about it. read it.

unfortunately, i didn't do any thinking about christmas gifts. i have to do that soon. really soon. too soon.

andrew david. "be careful, mark! you're walking in the post-apocalypse!" seattle, wa.

a guest christmas blog

i really like christmas, but it's surprising how many things that i associate with christmas. it's colorful yet contemplative, giving and receiving, christmas parties and long lonely drives to see the folks. and i like it all. but i'm not really sentimental about christmas. that is, you probably won't find me reaching into my stocking and pulling out happy christmas anecdotes. so, since i'd hate to deprive you of some christmas blogging, here's a guest post from mari becker (you might know her as the 4th google hit for "blue scholars lyrics"):

"...christmas sweaters. My lovely housemate Beth purchased a lovely Christmas sweater for me with keyboards and musical notes strewn across it. I've had the privilege of wearing it for not one, but two full days now, and let me tell you that there is no better way to spread Xmas cheer than this cozy item. First off, I wore it on the bus going downtown. There was a man kind of talking to himself across the aisle from me, and when he stood to get off the bus, he turned to me and said 'What a great Christmas sweater! I feel better already.'

"Then I wore it to a senior holiday potluck, and the seniors were whispering to themselves only to reassure me 'don't worry about us, we're just discussing your beautiful Christmas sweater. Where did you get it?' I told them Value Village would be a good place. (Side note: Value Village is not a good place! I hope you already have your sweaters b/c Nora and I went there yesterday and there is definitely a not what you would call a plethora of xmas sweaters. It seems they are the hot ticket this holiday season.)

"OK lastly I went to pay for gas in the station I usually frequent. The regular cashier, an Indian immigrant who normally speaks to me in broken English, grinned, pointed to my sweater, and said something very much like 'what an awesome Christmas sweater.' Now Whitney could probably tell us the truth, but I don't think 'christmas sweater' is historically the standard first phrase learned among English language learners. Which points to the rising prominence and importance of these key fashion statements! Please, please, don't take this sweater lightly. There are pullovers, cardigans, even sweater vests, but nothing replaces The Christmas Sweater."

andrew david. "last christmas, my dad preferred hawaiian shirts and vests to christmas sweaters" springfield, or.

mp3 update

i've finished rating my mp3 library, hooray! that means that i've assigned a rating to 4,184 songs. in celebration, i've spent the last 15 minutes listening only to songs that were rated five stars (that's 88 songs on random play) and posting a picture of cake (the next best thing to eating it). i also deleted some of those nasty albums that were wasting precious disk space (about 1 gig to nearly be precise). now, because i know you all love lists, here are the first 11 albums (/artists)to receive the axe:

doolittle/pixies (everyone seems to love the pixies; everyone but me, that is)
frances the mute/the mars volta (intriguing album and band name, but, oh, well)
hoars/16 horsepower
laundry service/shakira
peel slowly/the velvet underground -- i left a few 3 star songs
so jealous/tegan & sara
the best little secrets are kept/louis XIV (it serves them right to have their album deleted; it's title is a lie)
the downward spiral/nine inch nails -- kept "hurt" and "a warm place"
with teeth/nine inch nails -- kept "every day is exactly the same" and "right where it belongs"
the Futureheads/the futureheads -- kept "the city is for you to use"
wet from birth/the faint (it's too bad; i liked their band name)



andrew david. "kayaking down a river of eggless chocolate" shekinah, saskatchewan.

getting burned

i'd really love for this blog to be a space where i sit at my keyboard and spin fantastic webs of light. i'd love for my words to jump off the page and rattle around in some fellow's brain until they bust a hole in his ventromedial prefrontal cortex, short-circuiting his laissez-faire let-it-be morality, shaking him from his apathy, making him high with the possibility of some greater purpose. but i'm neither prophet nor poet. i'm the anti-dillard--i fill space with preposterous commentary, not meaningful echoes of the sublime. truth is a dreamy-eyed hermit who visits me in secret; she rummages through my cupboards, raids the fridge, and occasionally i catch sight of her coat as she runs through the backyard grass and into the trees. yes, these posts are mostly about grammar, sports, and cooking, but perhaps one day i'll stumble upon her yellow plastic hood bobbing in the rain. until then, i'll be that guy with a holeless brain.

(this itsy-bitsy paragraph was loosely inspired by two burned fingers, a few months of richard dahlstrom's preaching, the blue road, and the book of hebrews...i'd say more about that, but i only have one and a half hands to type.)

andrew david. "imagine these yahoos in christmas sweaters--are we sure we want to go caroling?" shekinah, saskatchewan.