What does a mouse, CS Lewis, and the Holocaust have in common? aka the really long blog post

In answer to the title of this post: nothing that I can think of, other than I'm going to bring them all up in this post.

About a Mouse: A month or two back (I'm not sure how long ago), my roommate Jose swore he saw a HUGE cockroach in our bedroom. That's really not implausible considering:

a) We're college boys living in an apartment; cockroaches come with the territory.
b) I've seen cockroaches, on occasion, in our apartment before.
c) Our room's a mess, with plenty of places for tiny creatures to hide out.

He set out a cockroach trap, and that was the end of it for a day or two. Then one evening he shouts at me to come to the room and says, "It's not a cockroach. It's a mouse!" And indeed it was. We saw the little rodent and tried to get him, but, alas, the creature was too quick and clever and had far too much stuff to hide behind or under.
We discovered that he had access to several cupboards in our kitchen through these little man-made holes (not sure why those are there) in the cupboards around and beneath our sink. We discovered chewed up stuff and little mouse-turds there. We purchased glue traps and set them about the house, but it was to no avail.
I could go on and on, but I'll try to keep this short: basically, we'd have the occasional mouse-spotting with requisite mad dash to catch him, but the little guy is GOOD at what he does! There'd be days on end where he'd see no sign of him other than the poop he left behind (on top of our kitchen counter, underneath drying dishes--blech!). We discovered he actually also would live inside our stove, popping out of the grill and running back in when we tried to catch him.
There was a week or two then when I didn't see him at all till finally he became bold the past few days and popped out more and more. I saw him once while sitting on a chair in the living room. He came from the kitchen and darted underneath my chair. I didn't even get up to try to get him; I was resigned to the fact that he was too fast, and, besides, he was fascinating to watch. Eventually he popped out from under/behind a couch at the other end of the living room and squeezed into this little (again man-made) hole in wall. What I did not realize is there's another hole on the other side of the wall leading into Jose's and my closet.
Well, a couple of days later, while studying on my bed, I looked up and though I saw a glimpse of him on the top shelf of our closet! I called for Jose and we both went and looked and Jose confirmed that he was hiding behind a bag up there. We moved stuff around to try and get him, but he leaped onto one of my hanging coats. I thought he must have gone down to the ground, but Jose said he was just staying there, hanging onto the coat. So we moved the coat, he finally dropped down and then dashed behind one of luggage cases. There we discovered the hole in our closet wall.
So, I placed one of my old yearbooks over the hole to keep him from coming through that way again, we set three glue traps beneath the hole in the living room wall, and we cleaned the copious amounts of mouse crap on our closet shelf. The next day, while I am off at the U of A, I get the text from my roommate Jose that the glue traps worked and the mouse was caught!
I admit, I was actually kind of sad about it, because I knew this meant probably the death of Remy (our nickname for him, inspired by Ratatouille). When I got home that evening and asked about it the story was even worse than I thought. My roommate didn't even kill the mouse; he just sprayed him with some toxic stuff (he was trying to kill him, but it didn't work, at least not quickly) and threw him in the dumpster. I felt really bad, because I think when it comes to these sorts of things I feel you should just smash the creature and put it out of its misery. I agree with catching him and even killing him if necessary (and I'm not sure how you detach an animal from a glue trap), cause you don't know if the thing's carrying any diseases and he was pooping all over the place, but I'd like to cause them as little pain as possible in the process. I really hope he's crossed over Styx by now and isn't still writhing in the dumpster.
So spare a moment of silence for poor Remy. The moral of the story (for animals) is: don't compete with humans for an environment; we're big, ruthless, and quite adept at eliminating other species when we put our mind to it.

Moving on, I just watched a terrific move this past week: Shadowlands. There's a good chance you never heard of it, which is sad, because it really is a fantastically well-made, well-written, well-acted movie. But it came out the same year as Schindler's List so I think it was overshadowed a bit.
It's a movie about famed Christian/Narnia writer CS Lewis and a relationship he had with an American woman named Joy Gresham. For me, CS Lewis is always a good thing, so just the subject of the film has me intrigued. But to further increase my interest in the movie, it has the great Anthony Hopkins playing CS Lewis. I'm not sure that Hopkins has ever given a bad performance (none that I've ever seen, anyways), and he's fantastic here. Debra Winger is likewise wonderful as Joy Gresham, though her performance was almost off-putting to me at first due to its brashness (but I think that befits her character and is the intended effect at that point in the story). The movie really is mostly about their relationship, so don't expect this movie to really explore in-depth Lewis's faith or writings, though they do come up several times (his beliefs regarding how God can allow pain, in particular).
Be warned, though, this is not a fast-paced movie. It is long, and it starts slow, but the dialogue and performances have real wit in them (I laughed out many times; there's an exchange of dialogue between Lewis and his brother that I think is one of the funniest movie scenes I have ever seen). It's also very moving and powerful (you might want a box of tissues handy when you watch it), and I actually think this movie may become my all-time favorite love story, in large part due to its gradual development and quirky, unconventional nature.
The cinematography and direction is all quite beautiful too, and after watching it I imdb'd the movie and discovered it's directed by Richard Attenborough. You might know him from his performances in The Great Escape (he's the British officer that's in charge of the big escape plan), Jurassic Park (he plays John Hammond) or the 1990s Miracle on 34th Street remake (he's Chris Kringle/Santa Clause), but he really is a fine director, having made the 1982 Best Picture-winning biopic "Gandhi"(and if you haven't seen that, your REALLY NEED TO. It's very long, but it's a powerful portrayal of an amazing life and Ben Kingsley delivers one of the greatest movie performances of all time [and deservedly won Best Actor at the Oscars]).
I did have some problems with the ending, not really in what it depicted but on what the emphasis seemed to be, but I really can't get into that without giving away stuff, so I'll refrain. Still, overall, I think this is one of the best movies (totally Mormon-friendly, too) I've ever seen, and I recommend it highly.

Finally, I had to read "Night" for my Jewish Civilization class recently. If you've never read it, it's Elie Weisel's account of his experience during the Holocaust (he was a Transylvanian Jew who ended up in one of the death camps). It's very powerful, very bleak, very depressing. After reading a passage early on in the book about (I think?) local soldiers roughly herding Jews into the ghetto and then onto trains that would take them to their doom in the death camps the idea for a poem came into my head, and I wrote a couple of stanzas. I completed it some days later, and thought I'd post it here. It's not about mass-murdering sociopaths like Hitler or fundamentalist zealots like terrorists, but about normal people who give into pressure around them and end up doing terrible things. Here it is:

“You Will Remember”

The sound of shattering,
I was afraid,
My life asunder,
Beneath a blade.
Sending prayers for help
Into the void,
You answered me,
And you destroyed.

Moving like a machine,
Rhythmic and cold,
Completing duties
That you were told,
I captured your eyes
With my last breath.
I witnessed life.
You witnessed death.

I was weak
And you were strong
But you will find
Before too long
Time and lies
Can’t hide a wrong
So try to blend
In with the throng,

But you will remember what you do.
You will remember what you do.
When night falls
And you are through
You’ll still remember what you do.

The passing of seasons,
Movement and time.
They never leave you—
Your past, your crime.
You hide behind smiles,
Hope they will fade—
The silences
That you have made.

And you are no monster,
No beast of hell;
But you shut your heart,
Gave in and fell.
A normal soul caught
In evil days
You dealt in blood;
The stain now stays.

I was weak
And you were strong
But you will find
Before too long
That time and lies
Can’t right a wrong
So try to blend
Amid the throng

But you will remember what you do
You will remember what you
When night falls
And you are through
You’ll still remember what you do.

I am the accuser,
The memory,
The jailer who never
Will set you free.
Because deep down
You know it’s true:
When you killed me,
You killed you.
You will remember…