I see the stars coming down there, coming down there to my heart

I'm in a better mood than I was yesterday. Despite things going... not really as expected today.

I meant to do my laundry yesterday while I was at the parent's house anyway, but I forgot the laundry and didn't even realize till I was half there. Then, I just decided to do it later, as my parents house is kind of far out.

So today I go there for the express purpose of doing laundry... and forget the laundry again. This time I don't even remember until I'm freaking pulling in the driveway. I got mad and just went home, resigned myself to do multiple loads some other day.

Then later my dad calls me up to watch a movie, and we go to the theater, but we had the wrong time, so we just give up.

So I had two relatively long, pointless car rides today.

Ah, but the good stuff: Sufjan Stevens and Broken Sword III.

Broken Sword is a series of computer games. "Adventure," the ones like Kings Quest or Monkey Island where you go around solving things and talking to people. The first one is my favorite EVER. Even over Monkey Island. Don't get me wrong, I love monkey island, but somehow Broken Sword manages to be funny AND have a really engrossing plot. It made me this nerd obsessed with the Templars way before all that Da Vinci code stuff made everyone else know who they were. It also makes me want to quote stupid lines from it at people even though I know no one will get them.

Anyway, the second one was nearly as good, and I eagerly awaited the third one. I seriously compare myself to a star wars geek when the first prequel was going to come out. That excited. And then when I finally got it... it wouldn't work. Because my parents had an old computer and I had a crappy computer. But now I have a nice computer! And when I was over for thanksgiving we found it amongst about a billion other games I don't know if I'll play but can't bear to throw away.

So yes... I am playing the third game in the series I most love of all time right now. Yeah... it is not as good as the first two, but I kind of expected that. After the huge letdown when I couldn't play it at all, anything I can get out of it is basically bonus happiness. Also: there is a fourth one out (though only in England) and I'm working on getting the parents to get it for me off of Amazon.co.uk for christmas. Supreme happiness.

And the Sufjan....... oh my gosh. I really must put "kidnap Sufjan Stevens and make him have my babies" on my to do list. He's so, so prolific, and I'm so, so fickle, I keep expecting to get tired of him. But I don't, if anything, I love him more and more every day.

The Christmas music--so beautiful. It's weird how different artists/groups I can have ultimate faith in, at least in various respects. I would not buy a string tribute to any other band but Coheed and Cambria.* The number of bands I'd buy an outtakes album from is single digits.* And I don't think I could make myself buy a Christmas album from anyone else but Sufjan Stevens.***

Anyway, like with a lot of his stuff, he's SO prolific that probably some of it could go (Sufjan calls an 11 track 35 minute album an EP, the box set had 5 of those in it, though most were shorter than that particular one). I've never been a fan of his weird little interlude tracks. And not even Sufjan could make the song Jingle Bells not suck. But some songs.... What Child Is This, We Three Kings, O Holy Night: SO good when he does them. And another nice bit is that a lot of the songs he picks are relatively less popular, like O Come Emannuel, Once in Royal David's City, The Friendly Beasts, etc. So not only are they good, I don't have to try to constantly surpress the memory of whatever the most nauseating other version of it is while I'm listening to it, like I have to with a lot of carols.

The real happiness is the original songs, though. Sister Winter, I've listened to constantly, I'll just put it on repeat and listen to it for like 20 minutes at a time, since I got it awhile ago (when the album was first announced that song and one other were free on the Asthmatic Kitty website). Part of it, that particular song paralleled something that was going on with me when I got it, so I think it has an added emotional resonance, but I still think it is a damn good song. I thought I would be tired of it by now, with the rate I've played it..... but no.

This is kind of goofy and cliche, and it makes me feel like that weird kid in American Beauty to say, but when I listen to certain of Sufjan's songs, I feel like my heart is going to explode and burst because it can't take in all that beauty at once. It's something so visceral... that I kind of think he could have utterly stupid lyrics and would still be able to do this to me. I think I kind of garbled/messed up what I meant to say there, but I can't really think of a better way to describe it. Anyway... sitting around listening to his christmas music (And Majesty Snowbird which I just d/led) all day (and playing broken sword) fixes a lot of my crankiness, if only temporarily.

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* Okay, I did, but it was a mistake.
** Ben Folds, Sufjan Stevens, Saves the Day
*** Okay I did, but it was a muppet album.