I'm off to Boca Raton today to witness my friend Aaron marry his sweetheart Ann Marie. I know both of them from school (well, Aaron from homeschooling and Ann Marie from the Film Department at UCF) and I can attest that they're a perfect match.

Last time I drove down to Boca Raton (Rat's Mouth, what an unfortunate name), I hit a patch of oil and water and flew off the road only to spin in the grassy median over and over. So, today I go with fear and trepidation. I did do a common sense pep talk to myself--things like that can only happen once, right? And it's not like HWY 95 is permanently slippery. Right?

Whatever. I want to see the wedding. I'll take my chances. =)

I'm off to take the GRE! If I don't come back in 5 minutes...you know the drill.

I wasn't going to really get into anything tonight on the blog; I'd decided to just transcribe a page from my Moscow journal (circa 1996), from a time before blogs and self-publication. Then I read a little of my journal. I had gone into this whole transcription thing believing that a page from my journal would be a little more real, a little less self-conscious--it was written for no audience, right? My inside cringed as I read the lines--this is the narrative voice of someone who is saying what he thinks others would want him to say. I don't know who wrote this journal--the events are there, but the feelings definately aren't. Where did they go? Why in the world would I censor them?

So, now my little quick typing project has turned into "Annotated Journal Hour", in which I'll put up a page from my Moscow journal, but with brief interruptions to fill in the blanks that I was chicken to fill in before:

"October 27, 1996 -- It must be...sunday!

"Well, can you believe that I'm actually starting a new journal? I didn't know if I could actually be faithful writing a journal, but it seems like I'll be fine (as long as I don't have to write in cursive the whole time =) )"

yes, I used smileys a lot then as well...

"Today, I had agreed to take Misha (the older one, not Misha R.) to church. I had signed up to go to "Pure Heart". Since we left later than the C___s, I went and picked up Misha at 8:30am. We went to my floor and played Connect 4. Honestly, he beat me bad! At first, I thought I should let him win, but he won fair and square more times that me (maybe he let me win those few times =) ).

"After we played a few games, we quit and went to my room to read our Bibles. I read about David taking a census and God's punishment of him. What's neat is that David goes on and then starts to arrange the building of the temple. Instead of sulking in his failure, he does the next right thing. I think that I can (or need) to take after him in that regard.

"The trip to church was nice. While waiting for bus #191, I gave a grandmother and her granddaughter a tract. She was cautious at first. She didn't understand that it was a free gift. We then gave her a New Testament. She was happy, but still a little incredulous at the fact that she didn't have to pay. When we got off bus #123 at [the metro], the babushka asked if I was from America. I said the affirmative =) + she said "spacibo".

"#191 had just got there, so we ran and got on. The ride was pretty uneventful. Boy, did church hold an unpleasant surprise. When it was time for prayer, that same old man who prays every week kneeled down and gave a heartfelt prayer to the Lord. Lindsay said he prayed for the leaders of the church, the youth (some by name, I think she said), and even us, the Americans. He finished with an Amen and the next person started to pray. I heard a sound like someone falling down and some chairs moved. The next thing I know, they're pulling that man out of the sanctuary. Church went on, but later we found out that he had died. I couldn't believe it! I'm so glad that he was a Christian."

and this is where I have to interject--this doesn't even scratch the surface of what I was thinking. Sure I was glad he was a Christian considering I believed being a Christian meant going to heaven...but that's not really what I was thinking...I put that there "just in case" anyone found my journal while I was in Moscow...a little pithy spiritual thing to say. In all actuality, the experience was horrific--his wife watched the entire thing, people were wailing...the whole experience made our little trip with its requisite Bible and tract distribution feel as if the trip itself was only "scratching the surface", so to speak. And then there was Misha--the look on his face, shock tempered by the hardness of gaze that come from having both of your living parents give you up to be an orphan...I didn't know how to help him--he was my charge for the day and all I could do was sit next to him, teary eyed and silent, and watch the chaos.

In true "Keith" mode, I pull out all the stops with forced cheerfulness...I figured, why make everyone else miserable when you might just catch up with the cheerfulness you're exuding. Once again, I can see the percieved audience of the following passage--the leadership of the Christian group I was with. I wouldn't question, I wouldn't dwell on the negative, I'd be cheerful:

"Other than that, the day hasn't been overly eventful. Tonight, I should get a new roommate. I wonder who it will be?"

yeah, that rebound scares the crap out of me too =)

"Well, it feels like a new year for me here at the MTC." MTC = Moscow Training Center

Although I told Anne that I would go right to sleep, I had to post something--to get back into my old posting rhythm and all.
***
The most hilarious thing of the month is saved on my cell phone's voice mail memory. My friend Braden fixed Megan's computer and wanted to let me know it was finished. He left me a message at 11:30pm. At about 12:20am, I checked my voice mail to find that he had left this message to the tune of "We Are Siamese" from the Lady and the Tramp. By the time he had fit the phrase "riddled with spyware" into the melody, I was, as Megan puts it, writhing on the floor and laughing uncontrolably--all in front of the ladies' restroom no less. I'm sure that the girls exiting the restroom with Megan thought I was in the middle of some horrible epileptic seizure. No, I was just checking voice mail.

Today--didn't get much done. I did, however, find out that I'll probably ace the Sentence Completion part of the GRE. Relief is mine. That is, until I study more math tomorrow.

Sleep time! Love to all!

Such a dour last post--how did everyone let me get away with it? Deep deep shame for all involved. =)

No more "by myself" movies to report. I'm looking forward to seeing the new hum-dinger from Christopher Nolan tomorrow afternoon (although it's already 3am on the morrow, oh well...you know what I mean). At least I'm not going alone...btw, check out Juan's blog sometime...it's been updated lately to a more "pure" weblog-ish form in which very high quality hyper-textual/column-style writing appears. Half the fun is clicking links. So click links, why don't you? =)

Has anyone else noticed the anti-transcendental nature of a few recent pre-summer and summer "blockbusters"? While not exactly on the plane of Poe or Hawthorne, where every mention of human nature is in the pejorative sense, a few flicks of late are sure showing signs of like ideology. David Koepp wrote two of these scripts--"Spiderman" and "Panic Room". While Spidey is much more optimistic than Panic Room, both seem to propose that people are just one step away from showing their evil, greedy, vengeful, violent or paranoid sides. Neither film, however, matches the sheer volume of "humans are scum" references than "Changing Lanes"--a muddle of a morality tale that seems to want to prove that we've de-evolved past the use of them. I'll be watching the summer flicks with this trend in mind...if my hypothesis holds true, we might have seen the last of movies like "Pay it Forward", for better or worse (I never saw it).

***

In other news, I like my Devoted Bee T-shirt.

Also, MegaTokyo is getting good. If you haven't checked them out yet, please start from the first comic...until then, nothing will make sense. I'm talking on the macro-life-level here, people. =)

I hate it when people use the word "people" like that.