Samhain greetings

Just a simple greeting to all other pagans celebrating Samhain tonight and tomorrow. For those out of the loop, here is a little background on the holiday. How about some neat art from someone with the holiday's name in her handle? And there is even a Halloween search engine by the same name.

Butterfly Proverbs

I couldn't help but try and Google the butterfly proverb I was thinking of in my previous post from earlier, but I couldn't find it... maybe it was talking about birds instead? The closest one I could find was this one:

Love is like a butterfly, hold it too tight, it'll crush, hold it too loose, it'll fly
--Unknown

These were also quite revelating:

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
--Rabindranath Tagore

You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder.
--Unknown

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.
--Unknown

falling rain

*sigh* Life is never content to sit still. I suppose that's what makes it so interesting. Just when things finally settle down and life is good, the fates go bowling. These past two weeks, I've been nothing but exhausted and frustrated (hence the lack of posting anywhere online).

There have been a few bright spots in the past couple of weeks... Supernatural has been consistently awesome... I seem to be getting an unofficial "promotion" in job duties (hopefully followed soon by a raise and official promotion)... I managed to pull off a few projects at work that were previously thought to be impossible or too difficult... I got to watch episode 4 of Smallville and thoroughly enjoyed the gratuitous wet-Lois-in-bikini shots throughout the episode (I'm sure the ladies out there enjoyed seeing Aquaman's muscles just as much, so cut me a break!).

The rest of the time? Well, it's not as bad as Andrea, having lost her job, had her new car repossessed, and is now being evicted from her apartment. However, due to all of those events, my life has become that much more difficult. I spent many days packing and moving boxes of stuff into storage (which I had to spend $100 of my money on to open) and cleaning out trash from her old place. I lost the use of my bedroom so that she could have a place to stay and sleep, which was not too big of a loss since the room was mostly a storage room for my stuff and clothes, but still is inconvenient. I lost precious hours of work--thank goodness for paid time off and flexible hours--so that she could do her things outside of home, like job interviews (unfortunately, none of which have turned up anything) and my budget is off-kilter now that I have to account for a fourth person food-wise and gas-wise. All of this because I still care about her more than I probably should... we still never had the funds to file the divorce paperwork, so we're still technically married even though she refuses to acknowledge it.

The few hours I manage to sleep between her cat's nighttime antics, her night owl activities, and our noisy neighbors (broken glass and 3AM police visits aren't uncommon) have been fraught with vivid dreams. So many visions, too many to remember and decipher, all basically pointing to one thing... her. I'm getting the impression that we are being given a second chance and that it would be a mistake to sever that bond between us by going through with the divorce. I can't tell if these are signs being shown to me by outside forces or if they are manifestations of my own subconcious mind. I don't think I ever told her that I only agreed to do the divorce because that's what she wanted... kind of like that old Chinese proverb about letting the butterfly go, because if you love it so much and hold on it instead then you end up crushing it and damaging its wings. She has mentioned that she would be willing to try again, but only from the beginning after the divorce is finalized. Something in me just can't accept that easily... it almost seems like a conveniently easy out when things get a little difficult, or else there's something else going on that isn't quite public knowledge yet.

So here I sit early on Sunday morning trying to get some overtime in at work to pay the bills, frustrated with my heart being pulled in both directions. I've found myself listening to lots of harder and darker music lately... currently it is Ashes by Tristania, followed by Tool's Lateralus. I managed to get more sleep than normal lately because I actually put my foot down and got to sleep by 10PM, listening to an ambient thunderstorms track on my computer. It's funny that the only thing that has been able to put me to sleep lately is the rumble of thunder and the steady pattering of raindrops. It is rather symbolic though, the dark and tumultuous churnings of the clouds represents my insides and the rain is what I need to do... let it all go and return to a balance within myself. Perhaps these words are the first drops of rain, falling from my heart, and perhaps the last drops of rain must come from my eyes as I sign court paperwork.

Only when the rain stops will the balance be restored. Until then, I must wait out the storm.

Apple and ABC 'get it'

Let the future of television programming begin. Apple officially announced the video iPod today. If their previous success with music is any indicator, then my wishes may finally come true, not to mention the growing popularity (particularly among the anime fansub community) of portable video on the PSP. Apple and ABC are teaming up to allow downloads of popular shows like Lost the day after they air, and for only a paltry $1.99 per download!

Let me pull out my calculator here... $1.99 times 24 episodes is almost $48. I paid $35 for my Lost season 1 box set. That's a rather big difference considering the digital download doesn't have to cover costs of disc pressing, art design and packaging, shipping, etc. The only downsides I can see to this are the tiny screen size of the unit and the fixed price for all videos. Why should we pay the same price for a three-minute music video and for a 42-minute television episode? A tiered pricing structure would make more sense to me... $1 for music tracks, $1.50 for music videos, $2 for TV shows.

No details have surfaced so far on the DRM scheme to be used, but I expect to see DVD Jon's name in the news not long after these hit retail shelves. I can't imagine Apple being able to sign a big name like ABC without some sort of protection on their content. As with anything else electronic, it will eventually be hacked and broken wide open. I'm just pleased to see this finally happening, and reasonably priced as well.

Extended Halloween!

It looks like Halloween won't be over at midnight this year, as Konami has announced the release of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness on November 1st. I'm not expecting anything fast-paced like the Devil May Cry series, or even anything on par with Symphony of the Night, but hopefully it will be longer and more fleshed out then Lament of Innocence was. At least I have more awesome Castlevania music to look forward to... that's one department that Konami hasn't failed in yet with this series.

Hopefully Fry's Electronics will have a special price on the release date, otherwise I'll have to wait for the price to drop from that $50 MSRP. Oh, and happy haunting! =)