Before I start this post, I just have two words for Tim: Thank you.

2008 is looking up to be a movie year for the record books. You might have already seen the countdown on the right for Star Trek, which is arguably my most-awaited movie for the past several years. On the other hand, there’s also The Dark Knight, which, from trailers I’ve watched so far, make Tim Burton’s original Batman movie also featuring the Joker look like a fairy tale Christmas in comparison.

And then there’s Iron Man.

Now, I was telling my church friend that I wasn’t really looking forward to Iron Man any longer. Even though the scripted villian Justin Hammer aka The Iron Monger is as much a classic enemy of Iron Man as the Green Goblin was to Spider-Man (and we all know how genuinely brilliant that one went), but seeing two suits of power armour face-off seriously doesn’t appeal to me at all. In addition, it looks like Iron Man will be taking to the skies rather often, and unless there’s a dogfight of sorts between Iron Man and several F-22 Raptors, the air-chase has already been done to death in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer - and that one was WAAAAY~ cooler.

That being said though, it does seem like the movie WILL focus on the origins of Iron Man quite a fair bit. Now that, is cool.

It may not be the most promising film, but any trailer that uses Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” is cool in my book.

I thought I’d begin my Christmas post with a little confession: I contemplated suicide again today.

The events leading up to this are inconsequential. The fact remains that, on the day when we commemorate the “Birth of Hope” and the “Dawn of our Salvation”, I chose to take the cowardly way out of dealing with my hopelessness. This time around, I wrapped a tie around a hook on my room ceiling, tied the other end to my neck and threw myself off the chair. To my relief, I discovered that I had miscalculated the length and my feet could touch the floor, though barely.

The truth is, I can’t commit suicide. As I searched this blog for other occurrences of the word, I discovered that I hadn’t blogged about it since 2003. And even back then, I was painfully aware of how much of a coward I was for contemplating suicide, and how much MORE of a coward I was for not being able to go through with it.

It has often been painfully obvious to me how easy it is to attempt to take one’s own life. The methods are all classic - hanging, jumping off a building, cutting oneself with a knife, gassing - these are all things I could do without ever leaving my block of flats. Except that when it actually comes to pulling the proverbial trigger, I am suddenly reminded of all that I am leaving behind and of the foolishness of the act. Mostly though, I am filled with the fear of the unknown and the fear of judgment.

(I suppose it needs to be said, at this point, that the Catholic Church no longer believes that suicide is a black-and-white issue where the victim is condemned to Hell for committing a mortal sin without the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.)

The ultimate irony, I suppose, is that deep inside me, I know have NO reason to end my life prematurely. In the same section, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states clearly that “[Suicide] is gravely contrary to the just love of self” and in the same paragraph, “Suicide is contrary to love for the living God.” And the ultimate truth of the matter is, I cannot deny or break away from this love, having felt it so strongly, so often. No matter what drives me close to the edge, this love is the ONE thing that stops me from going over.

This is the Love we celebrate at Christmas.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son. That anyone who believes in him shall not die but have eternal life.” –John 3:16

POSTSCRIPT: I’m fine, really. I’m not gonna do anything stupid. This is NOT a cry for attention or help. But I do appreciate the concern.

When your December begins with two of the most enjoyable and most fulfilling events of your life, you know it’s gonna be a good month. I’m going to take this opportunity to finally blog about them… sharing my personal (and shameless) thoughts on them.

Firstly, Camp INCREDIBLE: Heroes for Christ, our parish’s youth camp which was held from the 6th to the 9th. From the start, I knew it was going to be an event that would resonately wonderfully with me. The reason: Superheroes. As part of our pre-event publicity, we did everything superhero-related, from creating Spider-man webs and Hulk footprints and plastering them all around the church grounds, to making Spidey cupcakes, to making mobiles of symbols associated with superheroes like the Fantastic Four, Superman, Batman and the Green Lantern. It was tiring work, but the hype didn’t stop there. Throughout the camp, codewords like “The Observatory” and “The Oracle” were used to keep the theme permeating through the whole event.

As part of the publicity team as well as a group facilitator, it was a good opportunity to try something that was out of my comfort zone, as well as to learn more about myself through doing different things and working with people I normally didn’t work with. Ultimately, though, my time at camp was more of an affirmation to the past four years of journeying as a catechist with a group of young men and women who will always be special to me. Reading each and every one of their notes to me, thanking me for being a part of their faith journey… no greater reward could one enjoy.

The Camp didn’t end that weekend, though… the Youth Mass this past Saturday was a strong reminder to the parish that our youth scene is ready to explode in a big way. With a brilliant and humourous skit performed by some of our most talented youth, an offertory that expressed our thanksgiving to God as youth and a huge show of unity from the many parish youth who stayed back after Mass… it’s an exciting time to be around, and we can only hope to maintain (or even surpass) this in the coming year.

And in the following week there was…

EOY 2007!!!!

It’s only been two days since the event so I’m naturally still enthused about it. It was my first proper cosplay event (I’ve since discovered that CosFest and CosCon don’t come close to the hallowed reputation of EOY) and it was crazy fun from beginning to end. Note: I had fun, but those in the team who were MUUUUCH more involved than me (you know who you are…) truly deserved all the praise for all their hard work, stress, panic attacks and late nights invested into this.

I might have been a little too excited about my involvement in this whole thing, though. I told raydance very early on that I wanted to be a part of the team if there was a character for me… and it turned out there was! The irony, of course, was that when we were at the tailor’s getting our uniforms done in late October… I hadn’t even got past the first episode of the drama that our cosplay is based on: Nobuta wo Produce. But after that fateful Saturday, I got hooked. I began watching it as often as I could (at work, no less!), once even catching three episodes one after another! I then tried to get as many people to watch it as well (succeeding only once, unfortunately) while I started viewing the whole series from the top all over again.

But oh gosh, the day itself was something else. Everyone had fun at the dance medley performance… people bought all the hand-made Nobuta souvenirs (even though my little contribution to that endeavour turned out to be more of a hindrance… >_>;;) and I think there was a really good atmosphere throughout the whole day. But enough from me… I’ll let the videos speak for themselves (sorry about the size).