So ends my 22nd birthday. This is a fine age to be, I think. As the number suggests, I feel I have been back for seconds a lot lately. Lately Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, the second book in her Vampire Chronicles, arrived in the mail, and after the first 50 pages I am glad I finished Whitman's interminable Leaves of Grass earlier that day to make room for something less shallow. The impious reputation these books have acquired is really undeserved. Lestat, necessarily, is quite the sinner, but like the first book's Louis his very existence as a vampire leads him to a disdain of mortals' lack of curiosity about the grand scheme of things and the reason for being he despairs of discovering. And, as if to throw a bone to counter-cultural traditionalists who cannot but mention "rock n' roll" without mentioning that in some paleolithic era the term itself was lewd, Lestat confirms their suspicions: Rock music is satanic. I believe it, even if I can stand a Doors song once in a while. The second second, in case you were wondering, was Sara Bareilles' Kaleidoscope Heart, which my kind brother purchased for my big day.

More significant than my good fortune is the approach of Christmas. Sigh; the way this advent has proceeded, the War on Christmas certainly seems lost. And it is rather hard to get into the Christmas spirit when the unusually potent lame duck Congress passed, among other abominations, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, with the assistance of a flip-flopping Senator Scott Brown no less. There can be no greater sign of sickness in a nation than acceptance of open sodomites and other criminals against nature, in armed forces which should foster genuine manliness and shun effeminacy no less! See my favorite commentary on this disaster here. Nonetheless, Christians always have reason for hope, and in this season most of all. Christ is our refuge, even if He is excluded from every place on the earth but our own hearts. Please enjoy this year's Christmas sonnet, which just happens to be the big 150.

Sonnet CL- The Father's Christmas Gift

The sky peered sweetly over Bethlehem,
Lit bright from deep to earth, hardly a night.
For God had placed a star, marvelous bright,
For men of good will in Jerusalem
And in the country near to follow, find
Their captive Israel's Messiah come.
These guests brought presents also; soon with them
The Infant's shelt'ring stablery was filled.
Eggs, poultry, linens, songs, fine gold and myrrh
Accumulated round the trough and kine.
The finest gift, though, roof could not confine:
For in the midnight blue and royal were
An endless many angels fair as stars
To glorify the throne our Savior chose.

Thinking of the little drummer boy, naturally Jesus accepts all the gifts he surely received that night, but when I think of them piling up like children's toys and men's gadgets underneath the Christmas tree, I expect that whether they were really all that good themselves was a different story. Moral to the Story: The presents God gives are a lot better than the ones we give.

Even though it's my birthday, your goodies do not end there! I also have a recommendation to make, after the fashion of those bloggers who select any old obscure book and label it a "conservative obligation", I assert the same about Shangri-La, the anime Al Gore doesn't want you to see. When I read that the plot involves a corporate elite that enrich themselves by manipulating the carbon market, which arose when the nations of the world joined together to fight global warming with tax on CO₂ emissions, that got my attention. This little darling, Karin Ishida of Ishida Finance, makes obscene sums of money by manipulating the carbon market with a computer program named MEDUSA. Note the teddy bear; she's also fond of lolly pops. And of course, no anime would be complete without a pale heterochromatic girl afflicted with an XP-like disease, coddled like an absolute monarch, and with power of life and death over her army of underlings, here manifested in Mikuni, called the Moon. I caution, to be sure, that global warming is real in the world of Shangri-La and causes sea levels to fluctuate, but most of the good guys are members of Metal-Age, a resistance group that protests government carbon policy, which is so strict that street merchants have to bribe the police to ignore the emissions from their grills, and is clearly a remedy much worse than the original problem. Lure eco-crazies in with the promise of an anime all about the environment and climate legislation; they'll be be glad you provided the assist. Maybe they'll even be ready to realign themselves with Metal-Age.

This is Kuniko with her trademark boomerang. See the opening here, and the ending here. The entirety of the series is available legally and free at the Crunchyroll website.