Stories, Apples, Buffy, & Mushi-shi

I love green apples. Don't get me wrong, I like red apples too - delicious Braeburn, crunchy Cortland, the best apple in the world, the Braeburn/Cortland hybrid, Fuji, Gala, Pink Ladies...but they don't smell as good as the plain old Granny Smith I have sitting on my desk.

I took it from the cafeteria for a snack (someone paid for my lunch, so no, I wasn't fruit-napping), but it's going to be enjoyed just for its smell for a while before I partake of it. (I could go into gory details and describe how yummy its white flesh is but that sounds weird and I'm not a zombie) The green apple smell is one of my favorite smells, one of the few that I actually stop to smell. I don't really care about roses or pumpkin pie or cologne, but I delight in letting my nose discover the fresh greenness of a Granny Smith.

That is just to say that you should try smelling a green apple once in a while. It is calming.

Stu and I are watching our way through the Buffy seasons - someone gave me all seven seasons and we are in season 3 right now - just 2 1/2 more discs and we'll be watching season 4! I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow Rosenberg is my favorite character, followed closely by Angel and Spike. While I regret most of my highschool and college years (90% was a waste of time, emotion, money, and mental capacity), I like seeing what it was like in the 90's - laughing at their shallowness, the slang, and being sad when they lose their virginity. It pains me. It really causes a little depression in me...because I don't regret being a virgin at all. I wanted to keep sex for marriage and I've seen what happens when you don't.

I also know that Joss's characters all end up unhappy, and I think, subconsciously, everyone knows that part of the problem you have with relationships later are the ones that you got too far into in the past. Those parts of the show cause me pain, while I thank God that He helped me keep myself pure for marriage. It just reminds me that I've got regrets and mistakes too, no one is perfect, and that I'll be in the real world at some point with people who were like this in highschool - except none of them were zombies or demons or vampires or slayers [or I haven't met those people yet].

A story idea approached me a few days ago. We've been discussing things back and forth, back and forth, as the picture becomes clearer in my head. The Gentleman & the Lady are an amalgamation of my favorite fairytales and superhero stories. This new story seems to be an amalgamation of Buffy and Battlestar Galactica. It has opportunities for romance, comedy, action/adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, and mystery...it's interesting. It's slowly becoming less cloudy and more like a story I want to write. We'll have to see where it goes.

I've just started watching a new anime - Mushi-shi. It's based on a manga and there are only 26 episodes. I've watched episodes 2-4. Strange, but interesting. The main character, Ginko, is quite different from any of the other characters. There's also a live-action version but I don't think it's been sub-titled yet. Anyway - if you like anime, try going to Hulu and watching an episode of Mushi-shi. Kind of like...the Japanese version of X-Files. Kind of.