Romeo would have eventually explained to Juliet that
they were young when they met.
He needs to explore his options and find himself.
You cannot adequately experience life if you commit
when you are fourteen.

Snow White's man would later clarify that the draw
had been necrophilia.
She had become far too animated for him.
However, they could try coma-inducing drugs if she is
desperate to hold on.

Cinderella's uncomfortable shoe would eventually
shatter against the wall.
Someone forgot about compatiability of personality at
the four-hour gala.
His mother considers her "white trash," and he wishes
He had married a princess.

Esmerelda never tamed and was sent back to the
hunchback.
She was not "military-wife" material.

Prince Erik would resent Ariel's fish past.
He ponders the possibility of having tuna for children.

The Beast would have declared that she was great
while he sported the hair.
But look at him now; so handsome, so chisled.
He must be shared.

Sleeping Beauty was 100 years older than her
prince.
No man can overlook that age difference.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, why did you cut your hair?
Your comfort does not incite his libido.
The pounds of drag and the extra conditioner were a
small load to bear, a labor of love.

The miller's daughter lied about spinning the gold.
She risked having his son taken by a dancing gnome.

The deceitful, common, peasant witch; her head came
off without a hitch.

Women learn that "happily ever after" lasts as long as
it takes to close the book.

To stop the rare pop-ups/unders that appear on Firefox, here's the fix. You can thank me later. (for those of you that are still using IE, join the cool kids club and use Firefox. You'll never go back.)

Répondez s'il vous plaît, already!

Q. I found out that my friend, who is 15, sells and smokes weed. What should I say? Should I try to help him?
A. You best bet is to find out more about him. What’s up in his life? Does he have problems? Does he know that God has a purpose for his life and pot will destroy that? Love him like Jesus would. Be there for him, but you can’t hang out with him and get involved in this stuff. Talk to a pastor and have him talk with your friend. It’s better for a guy to talk to him than you, as a girl.

Q. Hey, my question is how do you tell a friend that’s your crush that you’re into him without ruining your friendship?
A. You don’t. Sorry. You just don’t tell him without it ruining your friendship. God made guys to be the leaders. That means that they lead in relationships. They tell you they like you. It is just an all around bad idea for girls to take on a guy’s responsibility.

Q. The Bible says I'm supposed to be loving my enemies. Does this mean I'm supposed to love Satan?
A. The answer is no, we are not to love Satan. Satan is the enemy of God. He is more than a foe to us; he is evil itself and as children of light we cannot love darkness of have any part in it.

Satin is the enemy of God.

You didn’t ask to be born but here you are, breathing, moving, living. You’re holding onto a rising balloon that you can’t let go of because by the time you realize you’re holding onto the thing, you’re already too far off the ground. But you know one day it will pop. In the meantime, you have to find something to do. Quite a predicament.

The fear of life can be overpowering. Much of the fear of life comes from fear of the unknown, of not knowing what to expect. The photographer Diane Arbus, famous for portraits of the retarded, the poor, and the forgotten in America, remarked, “Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks are born with their trauma. They’re aristocrats.”

from The Anti-Purpose-Driven Life
by Lincoln Swain

The hatches were battened
The thunderclouds rolled and the critics stormed
The battle surrounded the white flag of your youth
If you need to know that you weathered the storm
Of cruel mortality
A hundred years later I’m sitting here living proof
So you know you’re all right
Life will come and life will go
Still you’ll feel it’s all right
Someone’ll get a letter to your soul

When your whole life is on the tip of your tongue
Empty pages for the no longer young
The apathy of time laughed in your face
Did you hear me say each life has it’s place

The place where you hold me
Dark in a pocket of truth
The moon had swallowed the sun and the light of the earth
And so it was for you
When the river eclipsed your life
And sent your soul like a message in a bottle to me
And it was my rebirth

We received an unusual artifact of religious media in the mail today -- a stealth Christian campaign for the new Russell Crowe movie, Cinderella Man. The movie, as far as we know, is not a "Christian" movie; but Grace Hill Media is trying to flack it as such to those in the know, a "must-see film about inspiration, hope and faith." And what Hollywood movie -- besides Revenge of the Sith -- isn't? But Grace Hill is going for something more pointed here, with just three blurbs, from Christianity Today, something called the St. Anthony Messenger, and every Christian conservative's favorite Jewish movie critic, Michael Medved. Nowhere in the release is religion, much less Christianity, specifically mentioned; but the PR guy encourages us to "share the good news" with readers.

So here it is, folks: "Liberal" Hollywood has learned the true lesson of The Passion: Christian conservatives are a market. And that's one hell of a racket.

Making it in America

I think the Christian community is making an extremely dangerous mistake with this. The mistake is we are going from dissatisfaction to legislation and missing the middle step of persuasion. Now you would think, from our beliefs from the Gospels, that God isn't just interested in us being focused on the law, but he actually wants to change our hearts. That’s my understanding of how the Kingdom of God works, but we (the church) don't seem to understand that.

So our first move when we're unhappy about something is to get laws passed about it. To me that is pure Colonialism, Colonialism says change the world, by controlling other people against their will. The work of persuasion would be much harder, and it requires us to change our rhetoric 180 degrees. You can't, you don't, influence people you identify as the other side of the culture war. The language of the culture war is the language of "strength on our side" to dominate the other side. That leads to belief in things like redemptive violence, which is incredibly widespread in the Christian community, and which, I think, needs to be questioned in light of the teachings of Jesus. That discussion you certainly aren't going to hear on religious broadcasting.

So, firstly, I think it’s a gross and foolish mistake of strategy. If we were to take 30 percent of the effort spent on legislation and invest it instead on sensible and palpable persuasion, we would get an awful lot farther.

Secondly, it’s hypocritical, because the conservative religious value always talks about how we want to weaken federal government. They want to weaken the federal government when it talks about the government helping the poor, preserving the environment or doing a lot of other things that I think Christians should care about, and they want to strengthen the government in all these other ways. They ought to at least be honest and say, "We want to strengthen the federal government for our agenda and not somebody else’s." I think it’s incredibly duplicitous to, in one breath, call for weakening the federal government and then try to use it for your advantage. I'm stunned that people who call themselves Christians would practice that kind of duplicity. It's stunning. It feels to me like George Orwell.

Arrested Development
Indigo Girls (!!)
Hawksley Workman (yes, he did call me "cute")
Ron Sexsmith
Sarah Harmer
Shelby Lynne
...and a bunch of others.

Welcome to why the church has died
In the heart of the exiled in the kingdom of hate
Who owns the land & keeps the commands
And marries itself to the state
Modern scribes write in Jesus Christ

Everyone is free

And the doors open wide to all straight men & women
But they are not open to me
And who is teaching kids to be soldiers
To be marked by a plain white cross
And we kill just a little to save a lot more

The philosophy of loss
There are a few who would be true out of love
And love is hard

And don't think that our hands haven't shoveled the dirt
Over their central American graveyards
Doctors & witch hunters stripped you bare
Left you nothing for your earthly sins
Yeah but who made this noise just a bunch of boys
And the one with the most toys wins
Who is teaching kids to be gamblers
Life is a coin toss
And of course what you give up is what you gain

The philosophy of loss

Whatever has happened to anyone else
Could happen to you & to me
And the end of my youth was the possible truth
That it all happens randomly
Who is teaching kids to be leaders
and the way that it is meant to be
the philosophy of loss

When the young woman -- the mother of this child -- stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors.

On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

• The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Season 1.
  

• Clarissa Explains it All, Season 1.

May 11, 2002 -- I graduate with an Honors degree in English Literature from Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, GA.

May 11, 2002 (6 hours later) -- I board a plane in Jacksonville, Florida -- bound for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan!

May 13, 2002 -- I start summer undergraduate classes (in preparation for MA in English). Two months, 4.5 hours a day of Chaucer, and then Shakespeare. Ugh.

May 16, 2002 -- Attend a matinee showing of Attack of the Clones.*

Cross the Floor, originally uploaded by Jordon.

Heh, Belinda joins the Liberals. I love it. I only WISH I could have seen Harper's face when he first heard the news.

This will definitely make for an interesting vote on Thursday.

Just before I processed down the aisle to take my ordination vows as an Episcopal priest, an older priest leaned over and said, “Astrid, just remember that priests are bottom feeders; so if you’re going to be in a job that’s nourished off the misery of others, at least try not to contribute to that misery, too.”

Perhaps Lauren Winner, the popular twentysomething journalist/author and self-styled expert in contemporary Christian morality, could use that advice. It’s bad enough that in her latest book, “Real Sex: the Naked Truth about Chastity,” Winner might be contributing to that misery by doling out dubious marriage advice to impressionable young people. But what’s worse is that if all goes as planned, Winner will soon become an Episcopal priest—a scary thought to those of us who may end up having to minister to the casualties of her evangelically hip but potentially destructive theology.

In an increasingly conservative world where everybody wants the answers without having to ask the questions, “Real Sex: the Naked Truth About Chastity” is undoubtedly destined to become a bandwagon bestseller. It deals with the evils of premarital sex and the biblically correct approach to sex, i.e. confined to marriage. The topic is so ancient it creaks, but Winner is nothing if not media-savvy, and has added lots of perky yet supposedly scholarly window-dressing to what is essentially fundamentalism at its most insidious. A sharp young woman with a degree from Columbia, making an intellectually arguable case for chastity for her generation? Bring on the talk shows!

[...]Or maybe she should stop forming her view of the world based on what goes on at frat parties. Did it ever even occur to Winner to take into account the people I deal with day in and day out? People like the gay couple that can’t take marriage vows; the older couples whose spouses have died and who aren’t quite ready to tie the knot again; or the many intelligent, sexually active thirtysomething Christians in my congregation? Just because sex is performed outside the context of marriage doesn’t mean that it is automatically promiscuous, vacuous, and self-serving. In attempting to provide all of humanity with a blanket formula for