 Of all the times of year, Christmas is the most joyous to me. I cannot conceive another time of year in which I might recline by the soul-piercing warmth of the fire, sipping a cup of rich hot chocolate, and listen to a gleeful tune about roasting chestnuts or taking a sleigh ride through the pure white snow. I love to watch the sparkling ribbons, the glittering ornaments, and the twinkling lights go up upon a Christmas tree that wafts the smell of fresh pine through my house. I cannot recall another time of year in which I spend time with my family, laughing at the memory of Christmases past, whilst I lovingly arrange little ceramic houses into a little village. The tiny stain glass windows of the snow-laden church light up in anticipation for the coming holiday. Inanimate though they are, I can almost hear the plastic carolers release Yuletide tunes into the air. I envy the snow in which they lift up their joyous song, even as I shake a snow globe, watching the flickers of white swirl inside the glass. Yes, these all are wonderful things that I cherish in my heart, but even in the midst of the laughter, I remember the starry night many years ago that changed history's course. One brilliant star, a host of angels, and the decree of a ruler brings peasants, shepherds, and kings all under one, dirty roof. Surrounded by animals and hay, they all gather round a horses' trough, a sparkle of wonder and, perhaps, surprise in their eyes. A little child, wrapped snugly in linen, sleeps in the midst of this most unusual assembly in a most unusual place. Gifts they lay before him--a king, they say, He is. Yet he does not stir--God in flesh, they hear, He is. A child like any other child, frail and weak? Indeed, but the Savior of the world, the skies declare, He is. My Savior, I know, He is. Star Wars Takeover begins tomorrow, so there will be no more snippets until January.
So, with that, I wish you and your family a very, very Merry Christmas!
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It's already Week #3 of Who Would Win in a Fight: Star Wars Edition! It's flying by so quickly!
There's plenty more exciting battles to come, though, including this week! Before we get to that, let's see who won last week's fight... Quarterfinals Week #2 Results
With a decisive yet unsurprising 80% of the vote last week, Darth Vader defeated Qui-Gon Jinn to advance to the semifinals. His opponent in the semifinals will be decided in next week's vote, Quarterfinals Week #4.
For now, though, we have yet another contentious battle this week between two fan favorites--Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Maul.
Hey everybody! Welcome back to Who Would Win in a Fight: Star Wars Edition! I'm so excited you're joining me for Week #2 of the Quarterfinals.
All right, enough with the formalities--let's see who won last week's battle! Quarterfinals Week #1 Results
With 67% of the vote last week, Rey triumphed over Ezra Bridger to advance to the WWWF: Star Wars Edition semifinals! She will now face off against the winner of the Week #3 quarterfinals. For now, though, let's jump into this week's battle: Darth Vader vs. Qui-Gon Jinn.
I draw my hand back in surprise, blood dripping from my finger. The lovely flower I went to pick concealed a dark secret.
'Twas a rose--a most marvelous and perplexing flower. I see how it is adorned with crimson petals frilled like the regal dress of a queen. Its leaves are elegant, frail, and clothed in soothing green. How men and women alike long after its gracious beauty! Yet amongst its cloak of leaves and hypnotic petals lie a menacing stem of thorns. Almost like the teeth of a monster, they seem to reach out and bite any who dares pick them. I wonder why we have always loved the rose; for though it is seductive on the surface, it is stark and harsh underneath. We go to pluck one, and it rejects us as if we are mere beasts. Yet lovers cannot resist it, bundling it in colorful bouquets and embellishing their clothes with it. Why, pray, do we love the rose? Then, I think, why do we love? We buy gifts for one another, embrace one another, give our time for each other--only to one day lose it all in death, or worse, to lose it all to bitter fighting. To each other's faces, we love, but to each other's backs, we hate and bicker. We show affection and are rejected; we show kindness, but we get spite in return. Yet we do not cease to love because we must. The rose, in many ways, is just like this. It may hurt us, but we cannot turn away from it--so it is with love. Let us not turn aside from loving because of wounds; let us not replace affection with bitterness; let us not give up on one another when we fall. For, in time, if we shall carefully pick away all the thorns, only beauty shall remain.
The day has finally arrived--WWWF: Star Wars Edition begins this week! I've got an interesting roster cooked up for you guys (which I revealed last month exclusively to my email subscribers), and I am super excited to see who you pick!
I hosted a different WWWF last year/beginning of this year, but if you've never played before, here's how it works: 1) Each week, leading up to the finals on December 26th (I'll give y'all Christmas off, ha!), I'll be posting a new matchup between Star Wars characters, complete with fight scenes. 2) You'll vote in a poll to decide which character would win in a fight (or, for those of you with favorite characters, who you would like to win in a fight). Typically, you'll be able to vote in each poll until Wednesday at 11:59 P.M., but for the finals, you'll be able to vote until Thursday at that time. 3) The following week, I'll reveal the winner of the previous week's matchup. If you want to see your favorite character crowned WWWF Champion, you have to vote! Now that you're up to speed, let's get started with Quarterfinals Week #1 of WWWF: Star Wars Edition! Official Roster and Week #1 Vote
Above is the official bracket for the competition, and we begin Week #1 with a most curious matchup--Rey vs. Ezra Bridger from the Disney XD TV series Star Wars Rebels.
Credit to Jud McCranie via Wikimedia Commons, used per permissions of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0. Some changes made to the original work.
Has one truly seen the world if he has not seen the South? In few other places might you find an old house on the brink of collapse and a brand new home with grand wrought-iron doors on the same road. In few other places might you see an astonished deer dashing into the dark woods and, just moments later, a city blazed with light.
Go now, friend, and drive those old country roads, winding through hill, lake, and plain. See how the fresh asphalt turns to dirt and back again in the blink of an eye. Turn your gaze to the cotton fields covering the land for as far as the eye can see. See how their wispy boughs blanket the plains like snow on a chill November morning. Watch how the cattails sway with the rhythm of the wind, and how the bushes quiver in the breeze. Take a moment to stop and rest in the general store that has withstood the uncertainty of the ages. It is indeed a cold morning, but they have nothing to offer you save sweet tea or, perhaps, an icy glass bottle of soda. Your nose catches whispers of the scent of frying chicken wafting through the kitchen door, but you see the perfectly warm homemade biscuits and buy one of those instead. Step outside. Breathe the sharp air on that windy, wooden porch. Remember the long-forgotten wonders of childhood as you taste that buttery, flaky biscuit. Admire the sun as it climbs over the horizon and dispels the dark with a golden whip. This, my friend, is my home. This is the South. 
In case you missed it, news broke this week that Amazon is reportedly in talks with J.R.R. Tolkien's estate to produce a Lord of the Rings television series. Apparently, the company is looking for a hit show like Game of Thrones; in fact, the negotiations are getting pretty serious: Jeff Bezos himself is supposedly in on the deal.
Excuse my bluntness, but no, just no. Call this an open letter of sorts--I don't really care. But for the love, please, Amazon, do not remake Lord of the Rings. I hear the anguished cries of many diehard Tolkienites already. I know Peter Jackson's movies were not religiously faithful to the books, and even good portions of the books were omitted from the movies. I get that, and I realize that a television show would have the potential to explore some of those aspects of the original work (such as Tom Bombadil). That said, though I consider myself a Tolkien fan, I'm also somewhat of a movie junkie--my family and I watch movies all the time. From a cinematic perspective, the films are incredibly well-done. Let's face it, too, even those of you who were Tolkien fans before the movies were released have a difficult time separating, say, Orlando Bloom from Legolas or Ian McKellen from Gandalf the Grey. This is especially true for those of us who became fans through the movies (I was three when Jackson's Return of the King was released in theaters). As such, like it or not, these characters have become nearly inseparable from the actors, at least in popular culture. And pop culture does not appreciate recasting. Aside from this (as I realize some will still not be convinced), it's inevitable that a television series is going to deviate from the original work in some fashion. Hollywood is quite good at doing that. If you were one who is hoping for a more faithful adaption in a TV series, don't hold your breath. From the studio's side, a straight up Lord of the Rings adaptation would not attract the same audience as GoT, either, without an extreme (and I mean extreme) perversion of Tolkien's work. Frankly, Game of Thrones is far more graphic, especially with regards to sex, which unfortunately gives it a much wider audience. LOTR is not necessarily fantasy for the masses, despite its superiority to GoT in my opinion. That isn't to say there isn't an audience for a LOTR television series (obviously, the movies grossed hundreds of millions at the box office). But it won't be the same audience as GoT, and recasted characters would undoubtedly be a turnoff for a good portion of the fans of the films. Instead, I would like to see Amazon pursue another Tolkien work, such as the Silmarillion. Granted, some of the issues mentioned previously would persist (i.e., different viewership and unfaithfulness to the work), but at the very least, it would be a fresh story to television viewers. In addition, the Silmarillion is a collection of stories that even, at the very end, encompasses the Lord of the Rings. I would be far more interested in seeing a series that gives some background to something like the War of the Last Alliance, where the Ring passed to Isildur, rather than a rehash of LOTR. And the best part is that several other of Tolkien's works go hand in hand with the Silmarillion, providing an almost endless amount of storytelling material. To me, the world has had enough remakes in recent years. It's time for something new. Mr. Bezos, pick another Tolkien book--he's so much more than just Lord of the Rings. 
Diamonds? They are dirt--mere rocks, dead and cold. After they are cut and shined by the toil of a jeweler, they might glint in the purest of sunlight, they might put a little sparkle in someone's eye; but until that time, they are worthless and might as well be counted among the most repulsive refuse of the earth.
Not the stars, though they, too, have been called diamonds: they are not slabs of stone that glimmer if they are prepared by the most skilled of hands. No, not the stars. They burn with the clearest of white, a passionate fire blazing in the icy nothingness of the distant dark. As the sky ripples, the stars glitter like ghosts hovering over an inky sea, illuminating the heavens with their haunting beauty. Ah, that I could be the moon--that I could swim in that entrancing ocean of stars, galaxies, and nebulas! That I could take one of those sparkling apparitions and bottle them like a firefly--that I could reach out with my own hand and touch their flame unscathed. The mystery of that black sea streaked with wisps of grey cloud pulls on me. Where may I find a silent place to look up at the stars? Take me there; let me sleep under the soft glow of the night sky; let me dream of the dance of the planets, the comets, and the moons. That dream shall take me far deeper into that wondrous black sea than my eyes ever could. |
