Best Christmas Present Ever

Today was a good Christmas. In the words of my father this morning, when he was trying to quote Forrest Gump to express his Christmas joy: "Just like mother used to say, 'Every cookie has it's secret flavor'." So close, Nick, so close. And today's cookie's secret flavor: sweet, sweet divinity.

You people that read this blog realize that I have a horrible nerdy obsession about a particular nostalgic computer game from my past. I listen to the old tinny soundtrack on my iPod, I still have computer passwords that derive from the various inside jokes and characters, I still follow online forums of fellow fans and enthusiasts. And I will be a three-headed monkey's aunt and uncle if Darren Michael Edwards of Logan, UT, did not miraculously find an obscure version that works on Mac OS X and wrap it up for me as a Christmas present. He must have sold his soul to the devil himself. I have looked for years. Years, I tell you. Everyone version I tried was bunk, required ClassicMac, crashed upon download.

Darren wasn't here when I opened my gift. My family watched as I opened it--we all figured it was some kind of mix cd (and I wouldn't have complained). When we realized Darren found me Monkey Island I and II, Amanda and William and I yelped, then immediately expected the worst. We had been here before. Like I said, no version had worked for us before. But we all praised Darren for his thoughtfulness and his keen observations of my more cultish interests.

We opened up the zip files. First we tried out The Secret of Monkey Island. Tears crept into my eyes as I saw this all-familiar sight and heard the opening credits music start up. Magically.


It was too good to be true. When will the music start to stutter and trip upon itself? When would the screen freeze and my computer take on some kind of ungodly virus? Surely I won't be able to move Guybrush around the screen and play the game like I once did.


It's totally play-able. And it goes full-screen. I don't think it's possible to have any saved games, but Guybrush can't die and the program is so small it doesn't slow anything down if I have to keep it running for the few days it'll take me to beat it as a procrastination device.


I feel like it's Christmas 1993, when I first got Monkey Island II and played it all night in the computer room that is now my mom's "Blue Room." I think I had a bowl of Fritos and a glass of water and a big blanket around my feet. 7th grade. Monkey Island had been the year before. Those were awkward years. I really had made a friend with dorky Guybrush who wanted to be a pirate but looked more like a flooring inspector.


This game has such wit, such charm, such adventure. I am who I am today because of this game. It's so silly and smart. And it taught me words like "grog" and "parley" and "vichyssoise." When I had no friends at school and my English teacher had to talk to me after class because my school report rough draft on the Loch Ness Monster couldn't be graded because I didn't put any spaces between my words when I handwrote it, I knew I could come home and laugh with my good friends pixelated and non-judging on my Apple Macintosh computer.

Humor me on posting all of these stills. I haven't even had the time to really play into these games yet and I'm sure there will be posts to come as I reach my favorite parts of these games. Darren says he also has Sam & Max and the Day of the Tentacle which is another LucasArts adventure game that I have not yet had the pleasure of making more than an acquaintance with. Darren, beer me that copy SOON!

Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge. Guybrush gets sarcastic and snarky and grows a beard and brown hair. But deep down, he is still the naive, innocent wide-eyed boy I knew and loved from the 1989 game. This character is so endearing. If any of you have played Monkey Islands III & IV......they don't have anything on the original games. III and IV kill the series. They have their moments, but true Monkey Island fans know that the first two games carry the true spirit of Guybrush. And Elaine. And the rubber chicken with the pulley in the middle.





I know Christmas is so much more than presents and material goods. But this present transcends materialism. You'd think the reality of the game wouldn't live up to my fond memories of it--but I've been surprised. It's still great. I am still completely entertained and at home. So whatever it's worth, Darren, thank you a thousand times over for paying attention to my longwinded stories about my irretrievable youth and tracking down this game of my soul. My brother and sister thank you as well. I owe you one. I owe you twelve. I'm forever indebted. Why aren't you here so I can thank you in person?! My presents are going to seem crap in comparison.......yeargh.

Ah, Monkey Island..........reunited at long last! Somebody pinch me.

Note 1: I just figured out how to save and load games. I am unstoppable now.

Note 2: I realize that this version is undoubtedly at least partially pirated. My only excuse is that everything I know about pirating, pillaging, and plundering came from repeated playings of Monkey Island I and II.

Subnote: Ron Gilbert, if ye be reading this blog post and are supremely upset with me playing a pirated version of your beloved classic, please contact me via the commenting place below and I will be more than glad to shake your hand and send you up to fifty bucks American cash.

A Couple More Clues....

Okay, Christmas Eve, I have a second in-between wrapping presents (cutting it to the very quick, I am) and I already have these stills ready to go, so for the couple of films that have not been guessed already, have one more go. I'll post the answers for the ones correctly guessed and one more still from the three that are still unknown. Note that number 4 has been guessed correctly, but not with confidence so I am giving that person one more chance.

1. Lost in Translation
2. IT
3. Ghostbusters
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5. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
6. Jaws
7. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
8. Harold & Maude
9. Labyrinth
10. Poltergeist
11. About a Boy
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14. Breakfast Club
15. Adventures in Babysitting
16. Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure
17. Jeremiah Johnson
18. Big Trouble in Little China
19. The Phone Call
20. Edward Scissorhands

Well done, friends, well done. Let me know if you have the remaining three figured out. Merry Christmas!

P.S. Grifter, if you're reading this, be sure you check my reply to your response in the original guessings from the posting below. I congratulated you on your guesses, and I want to make sure you hear me clapping or else all my clapping would have been in vain.

Name That Movie Still

All right, here goes nothing. I don't know if this week of Christmas is a good time for people to sit around guessing movies off of this blog or not but I'll have this up here for a couple weeks anyhow. This is a straight copycat of the mighty Zufelt's movie still contest which was then followed up by the clever Griffin's movie still selection.

The way the game goes is you have to tell me what movie I pulled these frames from. I tried to make a variety of difficulty levels. Most American human beings have seen the following films at some point or another. They are hardly obscure, save a couple, one of which I have included specifically for J. Price should he charm me with his reading presence. JP, if you don't get this movie, you are a poser.

Some movies should be pretty ridiculously easy, others hopefully not. I couldn't decide which stills to use at times, so if the extra hard ones don't get any takers, I'll post a medium difficulty level still of the same movie in a week or so. Have at it, friends.

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And She Was

Periodically I go through periods of a restless mind. It's been years since I've dyed, hairsprayed, or otherwise paid any special attention to my hair. I still haven't bought any kind of product for it aside from shampoo and conditioner, but I did dye it brown/purple and brought back the bangs. I desired a transformation. I'm going to read Kafka over the break. I've been having recurring dreams about trail heads. I'm either trying to return to one or trying to leave from one. Different people have accompanied me in these different dreams, but the trail head always looks just about the same. I woke up from one and spontaneously bought Grateful Dead's American Beauty album. I haven't stopped dancing to it. And I have a pocketful of notes from the girls I am leaving soon. More on that later. I'm glad I was able to share a moment of standing with a handful of my girls at Body Worlds in Salt Lake yesterday, surrounded by skinless cadavers artfully split apart and propped up, each of us writing down verbatim a hanging poster explaining how it is scientifically possible to die of heartbreak. Stress cardiomyopathy they call it. Resilient hearts can suffer from it, but they bounce back. But the heart keeps the traces over the years. Even the fleshiest places of the body can scar, I think. So I dyed my hair purple on impulse. This is my current state of mind. Bring it, 2009.

O Oysters, Come and Walk with Us!

I live a highly blessed and fulfilling life. I've danced with the hippies and eaten noodle dishes with modern-day samurai masters. I have heard great poets sing and I have cried with young, lost, yearning youth. I am the granddaughter of a man who fought in a world war and spent the rest of his days in a garage about twenty-five feet away from the house with a big wild rose hedge separating himself from the rest of the world. He washed his hands with gasoline and used to talk to a fat, surly gopher that lived in one of Grandpa's rusted trucks, trucks that had spent so much time parked in the field waiting to be restored, they had weeds growing up beneath their wooden floorboards and flower stems curling around the steering wheels. To this day, I love the smell of gasoline, and I love staining my fingertips with the touch of rusty metals (please don't anybody quote Salad Fingers here....I'm being genuine about this).

I lived in fear of my grandfather for much of my young life. He always threatened to shave my face and would chase me around the house with his old man shaving brush, lathering up my face and waving a razor at me, laughing his gruff, mischievous belly laugh, his boots tromping and creaking on the wooden floor boards in their old house. He'd also do this thing where he'd grab my or Amanda's ear and twist it between his knuckles until we yelped and started to cry. Grandma would say, "Ted, quit teasing those girls!" and he would wink at us and we couldn't help but feel part of some great secret.

He liked to give us hell in the house, but out at his garage, we became his compadres. We'd watch the gopher sunning with an ornery, distasteful look on his mouth and we knew there would never be an animal more comfortable than this one in Grandpa's company. Gramps would let us watch him tinker with his old engine parts--grease on his knuckles, between his fingers, on his boots and thick dark jacket, grease in the hair he combed back periodically with his hands. He always made someone cry at Thanksgiving and he always complained the blessing I was asked to give every year ran on too long.

When I was in Japan, my Grandpa got sick and no one wanted to tell me. They didn't want me to take my mind off of the work I was doing. My mom and my grandma wrote me faithfully every week--they seriously never missed a single week and I never missed writing them either. When I was living in Kasai and writing emails home from Hiroo, where the Tokyo LDS temple is located, I started writing about my grandpa a lot in my letters home and my grandma and mom decided that I must have somehow felt my grandpa's pain and that I needed to be told what was happening. They told me he had been hospitalized and could be on his way out. None of us believed it, really, and we were right; he wouldn't pass away for another two years. Still, when I walked back out into the muggy air thick with cicada whirrings and fumes from inner-city Tokyo traffic, I surprised myself with how close I felt to that small plot of land in South Jordan, Utah, where all the huge Caterpillar equipment sleeps like a cemetery of old working boys who are only too content to watch the same sunset over rugged brown mountains again and again as their yellow paint slowly chips and fades to red, then black, until the rust finally breaks through, rotting swiss cheese holes into their flanks and joints.

When I came home, Grandpa was thinner, but he was as cantankerous and rough as always. He started to tell us kids that he loved us when no one was listening. Then he'd ask me when I was going to get around to graduating high school, not because he was senile, but because he liked being a jackass. He gave really good hugs in those days. Big, burly, heavy hugs from huge arms that engulfed your head because he was so tall, with hands like rough burlap pillows and an impenetrable chest that smelled of exhaust, Old Spice, and dirt. He cried at my farewell and again at my homecoming.

Grandpa died when I was on the trail, eating salted lentils on Cherry Creek with a band of sinagua men (the boys older than 18) giggling with ridiculous joy about having running creek water at long last. We had found water pockets earlier that week that were hidden in the thick shade of dirty, angrily plush junipers, keeping the water freezing cold and delicious even in the middle of the hottest Arizona August summer in years. The summer of 2005. I couldn't drink enough of that water and would lie by a tiny trickling fall of water from one pocket into the next, watching the columbine flowers tip a little from the canyon breezes.

Amanda and I both had to speak at Grandpa's funeral because there weren't enough old family members to take up all the time. His hands were too small. Everyone commented on his hands. That was the first time I cried for his death. I had been sad, but I hadn't cried. My sister cried, too, which surprised us all. I've seen her cry only twice in our adult lives. She grabbed me and hugged me. All the people that had shuffled through the viewing line were gone and it was just my immediate family left in the room with Grandpa. I held my sister and felt like I was eight-years-old again and her protector and favorite ally. I wept for all of that. My little brother Will pulled us both into his arms because he is bigger than us now and would fight ravenous wolves for his sisters. My mom joined the ranks and held us, too, I think fulfilling a need for hugging all of her children at once that she silently carries more often than we realize. Dad was huge, tall, shifty and awkward and stood next to us until we grabbed his waist and pulled him in. We cried until we laughed and then one of us asked if it was the first Gilliland family hug. Another of us replied affirmatively.

Uncle Vern pulled me aside after the funeral and told me with wet eyes that when Grandma had found his wallet after Grandpa had been sent to the mortuary already, she opened it up and only found two pictures inside of it (no one had been allowed near that wallet when Grandpa had been alive). One picture was of Vern, the other was one of my little kid pictures. Vern squeezed my shoulder in that kind of vice grip that men who live their lives on construction equipment under the sun with other men give each other to signify confidences or mutual understandings. I decided to assume at that time that Grandpa only carried those pictures with him out of convenience--someone had given him those pictures while his wallet was already open and he promptly forgot they were there once he placed the wallet back into his pocket.

It is only tonight I am wondering if Grandpa might have only understood me better than I understand myself, had sensed a kind of kindredness we share in isolation, in quiet, clammy hiding places because we can't find anyone who completely agrees with our shifty moods and understands our somber, lonely thoughts. I want to be a wife and a mother, a damn good wife and a mother, but even in Japan, even on the trail, I found myself caving up at times, wandering just past the hedge with the prickliest, thickest flowers to creep behind and tinker with whatever would keep my mind off my own incapacity to connect with those whom I am meant to connect with.

"I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately." Does one really have to be so lonely to be honest, genuine, deliberate? Am I really so selfish and angsty that I can live my blessed, plush and moderately successful life with such jitters and petty fears? How is it that I can carry so many blood brothers with me, yet find myself unable to live in close quarters with any of them without clapping up like a shellfish and taking long walks around dark neighborhoods in moody, passive silence?

Perhaps I should start bribing the groundhogs with rich salad materials.

Or perhaps I'll just snap out of this tomorrow and be back to my normal happy self. Maybe I'll take a trip to visit the fam. Tackle this business of clamming up a different day.

Mystery Solved

I called Long Lost Brad and made him listen to a few bars of his mysterious Track 04s and he subsequently set me straight. Google didn't pick up on the lyrics because the artist is more unknown than I realized. The credit goes to Ryan Morse (like the code) from Logan, UT, and the song is called "Father," dedicated to a friend of his whose father had committed suicide. The pain in the song is more poignant to me now. I'll see if I can upload the track here soon. And Ryan Morse, if you are Googling your name and found this page: hey, man...I'm a big fan of yours. Thank your friend Bradley Gibbons for introducing me to your music.

And the instrumental track was Elliott. I should have known. Two more Track 04s have names and homes now. I feel so accomplished.

"The answer is the same. Be kind. Love them."

Elder Joseph Wirthlin passed away last night and I've been impressed by some friends who devoted blogs to his memory today. I don't have anything profound to say and I hope this post doesn't seem disjointed from my previous posts, but I hope I am okay to share a few thoughts he taught over the past few years that have resounded in my soul and shaken me awake more than once:

"I urge you to examine your life. Determine where you are and what you need to do to be the kind of person you want to be. Create inspiring, noble, and righteous goals that fire your imagination and create excitement in your heart. And then keep your eye on them. Work consistently towards achieving them."

"Tied to this misconception is the erroneous belief that all members of the Church should look, talk, and be alike. The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world."

"The abundant life is a spiritual life. Too many sit at the banquet table of the gospel of Jesus Christ and merely nibble at the feast placed before them. They go through the motions—attending their meetings perhaps, glancing at scriptures, repeating familiar prayers—but their hearts are far away. If they are honest, they would admit to being more interested in the latest neighborhood rumors, stock market trends, and their favorite TV show than they are in the supernal wonders and sweet ministerings of the Holy Spirit."

"We are sons and daughters of an immortal, loving, and all-powerful Father in Heaven. We are created as much from the dust of eternity as we are from the dust of the earth. Every one of us has potential we can scarcely imagine."

"The Church is not a place where perfect people gather to say perfect things, or have perfect thoughts, or have perfect feelings. The Church is a place where imperfect people gather to provide encouragement, support, and service to each other as we press on in our journey to return to our Heavenly Father."

"Each one of us will travel a different road during this life. Each progresses at a different rate. Temptations that trouble your brother may not challenge you at all. Strengths that you possess may seem impossible to another."

"Never look down on those who are less perfect than you. Don’t be upset because someone can’t sew as well as you, can’t throw as well as you, can’t row or hoe as well as you."

"Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. It comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles. It leads us through valleys of darkness and through the veil of death. In the end love leads us to the glory and grandeur of eternal life."

The Track Fours

One year ago, I was in and out of the Sonoran Desert for weeks at a time. I was also lucky enough to be on the receiving end of many great song mixes, burned and sent via snail mail or jammed into my hand during May graduations and forever goodbyes. Around this time, my laptop CD-player went on the fritz and I had to upload my burned gifts from my parents' home in Layton whenever I was visiting from Arizona. These trips were spontaneous and rushed and I barely made time for myself to copy the new and beloved song tracks onto a thumb drive and safely into the supple womb that is my Apple lappy.

These mixes came with song lists, hastily written on scraps of napkins, typed neatly onto scented, illustrated parchment, or sent through emails that began, "Oh and by the way: here's the song-listing..." Most of these lists fell by the wayside as I squatted from place to place, though, fortunately, I always made sure to at least ensure that each song list carried an album title of "from [insert so-and-so]."

Now, when my iPod is set to shuffle and I am driving long distances, these mysterious Track 02s and Track 13s appear. I secretly despise that I don't have band and song names for these tracks and am tempted to just skip them over to something familiar, something dependable, something loved. However, some of these tracks swim into focus slowly and suddenly I think, "Wow, I love this song--what is this again?" and then I am shocked that it is a nameless track. Recently, I've realized that an astounding number of the times I've had these epiphanies, it has been a Track 04. Not always, but remarkably frequently. So often, in fact, that I've decided to devote a post to tracking down these tracks (if you will) and bringing them to recognition at long last. It is the first step of many to get rid of all my "Track ??s," though I have already created and enjoy a "Beloved Track 04 Playlist" to forever commemorate the strange and lucky relationship they all share.

The Best of the Track 04s (and the BFFs who bequeathed them to me):

04: Nitin Sawhney's "Sunset" from Beau H.
04: Queen's "Flash Gordon: Savior of the Uni." from Bradley G.
04: A really fantastic instrumental track from another of Brad G's
04: Mew's "Am I Wry? No" from Darren Z.
04: Coconut Records' "West Coast" from Jamesy B.
04: The Delgados' "Clarinet" from Rus Beck
04: Memphis Minnie's "New Orleans" from Eiryn Dubya
04: Lightnin' Hopkins' "Shine on Moon" from Joe G.
04: Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" from J. Price
04: Travis' "More Than Us" from April Sunshine Sanchez
04: Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" from M. Sowder
04: some Korean club-dancing hip hop song from Konradius M.
04: Devendra Banhart's "A Ribbon" from Vincnt
04: The Organ's "We've Got to Meet" from TroyBoy

Note: Not all of the above songs necessitated a Google-search to list here....I think I have at least three copies of Dylan's "Don't Think" at this point in my life since just about every man I've dated in the past decade has given it to me at some point (with the disclaimer of "don't take this literally") but this particular copy still lives on my iPod as an unnameable Track 04 and I listen to its entirety every time it shuffles through.

Note II: Darren's Mew track is my most listened-to song right now. I've put it on repeat twice. James'"West Coast" was my most listened-to song six months ago.

Note III: I have one last mix album from my pal Bradley G. who has long since married and lost contact, though I suppose I could text, who left me a track 04 song I really enjoy and whose lyrics have, as of yet, shockingly do not pull anything from Google searches. If anyone recognizes the following spurts of lyrics, please point me in the right direction. I'd like to know the artist. The voice is somewhat nasally, somewhat Western Statesy, acoustic, somewhat upbeat but casually so.

The snatches of lyrics I feel confident about:
Why, father, why, do you have to go? Why, father, why, do you have to go and *something something*
Take, take with you, your body and your bones. Take, take with you, your body and your bones a-and bury me too.
[a bunch of lyrics]--why oh why oh why oh why oh why my father had to die.
Hike up the canyon, high in the trees. Hike up the canyon, high in the trees a-and *something something*
Suffer like a whale (well?), dried up like bones a-and *something, etc.*

I know it sounds like a real downer of a song, but it doesn't feel that way at all. Nostalgic, yearning, but not whining. Despite the somewhat nasally voice. This isn't being described the right way at all. Can anyone help me?

Cheerz, Gillychan