And I thought slash was something you did with a knife...

I used to think I was pretty astute about popular culture. I don’t like being out of the loop. If there’s something going on I want to know about it.

This started out with a simple question. I wanted to know the name of the actor who plays the angel Castiel on Supernatural, who dragged the character Dean out of hell, and who shows up regularly to keep him on the right course. He’s a rather pretty angel. Anyway, I found out it is Misha Collins, but that in turn somehow – I don’t remember how now – led me all over the Internet.

I had never heard of slash fandom. I knew people hung out on fan sites going over every blessed detail of their idol’s life and swooning over this, that and the other. It reminds me of being a teenager and huddling with your best friends giggling and sighing over the latest cute celebrity.

I didn’t know that people were writing and posting speculative fiction about romances between male characters in TV shows. And they’re creating videos and still images as well. Castiel and Dean have inspired multitudes to spin romances about them.

I was truly annoyed that this had not occurred to me first.

I mean, I’ve been well-trained at spotting a homoerotic subtext. That began in high school reading Moby Dick, which, despite being homoerotic (Or homosocial, I think the teacher said, but whatev. A book that describes a whale’s penis in great detail has something going on), was extremely boring. I was fascinated with gay culture in any case. Brideshead Revisited, Another Country, A Month in the Country, Prick Up Your Ears, Maurice, If, Bronski Beat, the Smiths. I think I horrified one of my high school friends when I told her I wished I were a gay man. I meant it, too, even though the AIDS epidemic was at its height. Looking back, I imagine I thought that if I had to have sex with a man, it would be better if I came at it from a position of equality. Men seemed to have all the fun, and they didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant. They had to worry about dying, but I was dealing in fantasy, after all. I was less than eager to lose my virginity, so this must have been a form of sublimation. The possibility of sex with a woman wasn’t even on my radar, then.

Anygay, I’ve wasted a good few hours wandering around in the slash world, a world that would have been limited by locale if it existed at all when I was a kid. And now anyone can circulate their writing and create videos with international access, all about a topic that was just beginning to be broached in my teen years. Heaven knows there’s still a lot of prejudice, but sometimes I’m just floored that there are gay characters on TV. That was unheard of when I was young. And actors had to be very skittish. You didn’t want to play a gay character (and you most certainly didn’t want to have to do anything physical), and you wouldn’t want someone to think you were queer in real life. You would not, for example, have seen a straight actor do the following, and be cheered on for playing a merry prank:

Misha signing Jarod's T-shirt at a Supernatural convention charity auction

(If you feel the need to see a clearer, more polished version - and who could blame you - click here.)

Everyone loved it, and the actor was very obviously playing to the audience. Of course, it sounds as if they are a lot of women, as no doubt there would be. For some reason women also write most of the slash fiction. Why, I don’t know. Perhaps I was not alone in my fascination with gay men.

Not discounting ongoing prejudice, if we have come so far in my lifetime, what next, I wonder?

In any case, I won’t be able to watch Supernatural the same way again.

RevGals Friday Five: A Bug's Life

Sophia writes: As I was walking the beach today, I was surprised and delighted to find it swarming with ladybugs. The sweet little red beetles are one of my favorite insects and also my daughter's blogname--though as of this morning she was thinking of changing it to Butterfly. I'll keep you posted.

This got me thinking about spiritual insect trivia: Did you know that medieval mystics and theologians esteemed the bee for its dedicated work and transformation of ordinary ingredients into sweetness? That Spider Woman is an important creator Goddess to many Native American tribes? Or that Francis of Assisi was reminded of Jesus not only by lambs being led to slaughter, but also by worms (think "I am a worm and no man" from the Psalms)-- so he picked them up and took them out of stomping-vulnerable spots?!
In that spirit, this week's Friday Five is a magical mystery tour through God's garden of creepy crawlies!

1. Ladybugs or ladybirds? Pillbugs or roly-polys? Jesus bugs or water skeeters? Any other interesting regional or familial name variations?
I’ve always known them as ladybugs and roly-polys. I have never heard of Jesus bugs or water skeeters. Not up on the insect lore, as I try to avoid them altogether. But I did grow up saying lightning bugs rather than fireflies.

2. Stomp on spiders, carry them outside, or peacefully co-exist?
Call Dear Husband and let him decide. I’m pretty much opposed to peaceful coexistence in my house, once they make themselves visible. There are two poisonous varieties – black widow and brown recluse – which I worry will make an appearance. I don’t care what ecological role those may be playing; they’re dead if I find them.

3. Favorite insect?
Butterfly, I think. Lovely creatures that don’t sting or crawl into your house looking for food or spread germs.

4. Least favorite?
Water bugs, those big fat cockroach like beasts that seem too large to squash. They win for grossness. But for pure annoyance, it’s hard to beat mosquitoes and fire ants. Right now fire ants are at the top of my list. They are trying to take over the yard, and we found out that Firecracker has a very bad reaction to bites—swelling and nasty blisters that take weeks (sometimes months) to go away.

5. Got any good bug stories to share?
Ah, yes. At one point in Manhattan I shared an apartment with a couple that was almost directly over a bakery. We loved that bakery. Kind of funky, close at hand. Well, it seems one day B. brought back a muffin from said bakery. He didn’t bite into it but instead broke it apart, at which point a roach crawled out. Eeewww. Never ate there again, needless to say.

Bonus question: share a poem, song, quotation, etc. about insects.

Ha – you wouldn’t expect anything upbeat from me, would you?

Fly on the Windscreen
By Depeche Mode

Death is everywhere
There are flies on the windscreen
For a start
Reminding us
We could be torn apart
Tonight

Lemon without the Peel

This is just one of those crap days when my mood grows even darker than usual. No matter how many times I tell myself it’s a passing feeling, that part of it’s physical, and so on, I feel like the hounds of doom are nipping at my heels.

You know, it doesn’t much help to think, boy there are people in a lot worse situations, I should be grateful.

It’s weird how being grateful doesn’t translate into being happy.

And happiness may not be everything, but it sure helps one have enough energy to give a damn what happens and to actually get done what needs doing.

The lack of energy, the inability to organize my thoughts or to plan and set goals, it makes me feel like I’m failing my family. Myself, too, of course, but I really hoped to create a better, more stimulating environment for the girls.

Last night I kept thinking that I would end up dying like my mom, of leukemia, the disease of fatigue. She was always tired, and then she finally had a good reason to be tired.

Whatever I was meant to do, I definitely feel like it is too late. Or maybe there wasn’t anything in particular, or maybe it called for more self-discipline than I could or can summon. It may be pathetic, but my hope is for my children. I hope this mental plague skips them, that they will know what they want and find joy in the pursuit. I don’t think I walk around looking mopey and depressed. I do genuinely enjoy things, like reading a book, or listening to my girls, or holding hands with my husband, or hearing the birds. I laugh at jokes. These moments are the stepping stones that get me from one side to the other, from moment to moment and day to day.

Enjoyment doesn’t translate into happiness either.

Maybe I don’t mean happiness, but something more like “zest.” I have no zest.

Just writing that out makes me feel a teensy bit better. The rhythms of writing and reading are so soothing. No zestier, though.

Friday Five: Celebrating the Seasons of Life

Sally at RevGals writes:

“It is the first of May, or as I have been concentrating on dialogue with folk interested in the new spirituality movement this last week, it is Beltane, a time to celebrate the beginning of summer. The BBC web-site tells us that:

Beltane is a Celtic word which means 'fires of Bel' (Bel was a Celtic deity). It is a fire festival that celebrates of the coming of summer and the fertility of the coming year.
Celtic festivals often tied in with the needs of the community. In spring time, at the beginning of the farming calendar, everybody would be hoping for a fruitful year for their families and fields.

Beltane rituals would often include courting: for example, young men and women collecting blossoms in the woods and lighting fires in the evening. These rituals would often lead to matches and marriages, either immediately in the coming summer or autumn.

Another advert for a TV programme that has caught my eye on the UK's Channel 4 this weekend is called Love, Life and leaving; and is a look at the importance of celebrating the seasons of life through ritual and in the public eye, hence marriages, baptisms and funerals.

I believe that we live in a ritually impoverished culture, where we have few reasons for real celebration, and marking the passages of life;

So

1. Are ritual markings of birth marriage and death important to you?
Okay, I’m going to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with ritual. Part of me loves the ritual of the Catholic and Anglican traditions, for instance, and the other part was raised with Southern Baptist suspicion of all that paraphernalia and repetition. I grew up with very little in the way of ritual. My parents did nothing special to celebrate either my high school or college graduations. Nothing. They did not attend my wedding. Birthdays were nothing special once I was out of childhood. My mother’s funeral was a straightforward Baptist funeral with the usual rituals of a viewing and a service. No graveside parting that I remember.

The brother closest to me in age is a Catholic convert. My nephew’s funeral (last November) was very moving and beautiful. The rituals of genuflection, the funeral liturgy, the songs, the eucharist – I thought these all supported genuine mourning and drew the family and friends together in a community of faith. It was a real goodbye, a solemn remembrance of his gifts to that community. It is unfortunate that the Catholic communion is closed, because it did rather pointedly exclude all his relatives on our side of the family.


2. Share a favourite liturgy/ practice.
Since I have almost no familiarity with liturgy, I’m not sure what to say. When I’ve attended Episcopal services, I’ve always liked the way that they served communion—kneeling at the altar rail. I like that act of reverence as opposed to the walk-by communion at our church.

3. If you could invent (or have invented) a ritual what is it for?
Not a clue. I’m hopeless at trying to conceive these on my own.

4. What do you think of making connections with neo-pagan / ancient festivals? Have you done this and how?
Given that Christmas and Easter are already entwined with pagan festivals, I don’t see the problem with this. I know that mix bothers some and they will go to any lengths to disassociate themselves from the pagan elements. Not me. On the other hand, I would feel like a complete idiot dancing around a maypole. It seems so RenFaire kitschy.

Of course, you don’t have to go neo-pagan to incorporate seasonal festivals. Judaism has plenty. Why Christians can’t look further than the Seder is beyond me. Not that I’m busy setting up Sukkoth tents – you need a group for a festival. And messianic synagogues are a little….sketchy.

5. Celebrating is important, what and where would your ideal celebration be?
I really am very stunted when it comes to celebrations. It’s sad. Not to engage in a pity-party, but a lifetime of depression and anxiety makes it very difficult to see the world in a celebratory way. I tend to think more in terms of endurance than enjoyment. We are supposed to celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary, and I know that Dear Husband will be the one with the vision, which may include a big party. He enjoys parties. To celebrate this particular event, I think I would just like to be alone with him somewhere pretty—a mountain trail or a lonely beach (if such a thing is possible) and just be. I hope that I get better at this. It’s too bad there is no class in how to celebrate.

I think this is why the Episcopal church interests me – it comes with pre-fabricated rituals! For whatever reason, whether it’s ADD or some other issue, I cannot organize time unless told what to do. I like and need structure, but I cannot create it myself.

Aw crap, it's summer again

This time every year I start to obsess about where my girls will go to summer camp. I like our daycare. They’re organized and love what they do. But with daycare, let’s face it, after a few years your kids have been to Super Expensive Theme Park, the Mosquito Nature Preserve, Land of Bouncy Pounce, and World of Ubiquitous Soft Drink enough times to run the tours themselves.

Also, DramaQueen is going to absolutely die, I tell you, if forced to remain there all summer.

The summer camps have been promoting themselves for several months now. Fliers come home from school. The local parent mags publish summer camp editions. There are summer camp expos at the local malls. You get the impression that there are endless choices. Yum yum yum. Language camps and art camps and circus camps. You could create a camp sampler – a week of clay sculpture here, a week of soccer there. This could be the most enriching summer of your child’s life!

And then the winnowing begins. The cool art camp is 80 miles away in a section of town you’ve never even heard of. The soccer camp runs from 10 am to 3 pm. The gymnastics camp SAYS it has before and after care – if you work from 9 am to 5 pm and your office is 10 minutes from the camp site (BTW, no one in this state works 9-5 because your lunch hour is unpaid). The cool performing arts camp is $460 a week. The reasonably priced funky-sounding camp is…definitely funky, and not in a good way. The drama camp starts at age 9, so Firecracker would have to go to a different location and, on yeah, it doesn’t have before or after care EITHER. (I’m really ticked off about the lack of before and after care options. I suppose that’s why most people end up at daycares, and why if you go to the Aquarium on a weekday you’ll find yourself among 32 field trip groups, each with their own brightly colored t-shirts.)

I’m now down to two options:

Option A. A small, family-owned, sports facility offering a smattering of gymnastics, cheerleading, hip-hop, martial arts and swimming. Relatively close but in the opposite direction from my work. Refreshingly minimalist when it comes to forms and requirements. No obvious whack jobs on the premises.

Option B. The Y. Different specialty camps every week as well as equestrienne and swim camps. Very reasonable, even for non-members. Not too far but in the worst possible location as far as traffic flow. Not entirely sure I will be able to exit the parking lot during rush hour. Suspect commute could be longer than anticipated via Google Maps. Weirdly complicated lunch/snack purchase program. There seem to be three or four different configurations for lunch, lunch + snack, snacks + drink, smoothie Thursday, pizza Friday, all of which has to be nailed down and paid for in cash on the Monday of camp week. Yeah, right. The base level is pack you kid a lunch, 20 oz of water and THREE snacks. My kids will starve, probably.

DramaQueen is vehemently opposed to any sort of martial arts participation. I don’t know why. She wants Option B just to spite me for even considering Option A. She also has some odd notion that she wants to go to horse camp. This from the girl who complained about the smelly farm field trip. Firecracker, however, wants option A because she saw the students practicing Tae Kwan Do and she can’t wait to get in there and do some kickin’, which I think would be really cute.

I'll be glad when the decision is made.

Culinary Triumph

I did it! I made Dear Husband a gluten-free delicacy - key lime pie. And it is delish. I crushed up some gluten-free gingersnaps with butter for the crust. The filling was just a can of sweetened condensed milk, 3 egg yolks, and a 1/2 cup of a specialty key lime juice.

I am feeling so pleased with myself.

Easter, yadda yadda

The Easter message at church was a bit on the bland side. Well, a lot on the bland side. In general the whole service felt a bit lackluster, as if everyone was just too tired to celebrate. Or maybe I just felt that way. The girls balked at going to the kids' church, even though I knew the big service would seem dull to them. Firecracker drooped onto my lap, and DramaQueen soon followed course, cuddling up to Dear Husband.

I've mentioned how annoyed and tiring I find the wall-to-wall noise of our church. The music is both a strength (for those who like that sort of contemporary music) and a grave weakness. I just don't think music that whips up an emotional breeze is truly moving. When an entire service focuses on the rousing up-beat worship songs, something is lost. Reflection, contemplation, rest. And one thing that annoys the living daylights out of me is the fact that the band plays a sort of elevator music during the prayer. See, we can't even have quiet for prayer. Ugh.

Our pastor is a nice guy, but I've given up hope of ever hearing anything that isn't aimed at the entry-level church goer. We are always and forever for the unchurched. Once you're churched you're supposed to find a group in which to deepen your faith. I want to be welcoming. That's great. But I would like sometime to hear a thought-provoking sermon or even, wait for it, a serious sermon. I'm not asking for a sermon like I once heard in which the pastor kept alternating between huge swaths of Greek and commentary. Or even the sort of hard-core expository preaching insisted upon by the denomination I work for. But I read sermons posted by RevGals, and nothing my pastor preaches comes close.

I also question this method for attracting the unchurched, as if they are going to be drawn to the blandest and safest church. What about those of us who are relatively sophisticated, culturally astute and engaged? Suspicious of the simplistic and vapid? If I were a new visitor to this church today, I would leave thinking that I had wondered into white-bread worship - pleasant enough but stripped of nutrients. The only reason I first joined was the quality of the preaching. You know it had to be good for me to put up with contemporary worship music in order to hear it. But that pastor left, and I've had time enough to see what the current one plans to do. I'm there out of loyalty to the members who supported us during the roughest hours, because of the congregational care pastor, because the congregation never hesitates to help the poor and hungry and ill. I feel guilty to be so dissatisfied. If I went to a different church, would it be any different really? If I went to an Episcopal church, would I get fed up with the liturgy and wish someone would show some effervescent energy?

But there was a moment during the offering that I thought was pretty powerful, as long as I avoided looking at the weird film footage of a very white Jesus and the stock photos of people in prayer that flashed on the video screen. A song that felt alive and real. I gather it is derived from a collection of odes from the early church. I found only one version on YouTube. It's pretty good, but our choir, which is quite large, really kicked it.



Another good thing - they had free jellybeans.

A Different Sort of Praise

I'm not one for Christian praise music, so sometimes I have to grab something out of the secular world that makes me feel celebratory. I often find secular music more uplifting than the stuff we sing in church. Christian music just tries too hard.



This lightens my heart.

And then, this song has always struck me as truly reverent and joyous:

Merging onto the Highway to Hell, or Happy Easter, Ya'll!

I’m not feeling very Easter-y. This year the whole narrative arc leaves me cold. I think I’ve been so wrapped around in religiosity that I want to rip off the garments. I have no capacity for the emotional cataclysms people seem to feel when they think about God and Christ. I had no sudden conversion, no breaking down in tears at the awesomeness of it all. I find it almost impossible to worship in environments where people sing songs like “My God is an Awesome God” (I mean, blech) or wave their hands about (“lifting holy hands,” which is a phrase I would like to banish entirely from everyone’s speech as one of the most overused expressions ever). I don’t feel like I’m worshiping anything. I feel like I’m at a concert and might as well flick a Bic while I’m at it. This double-mindedness is about to drive me nuts. I can’t just let it go or put in on Jesus or whatever—pick an evangelical phrase about how I’m supposed to behave.

I am a natural skeptic. I’m not cold, but I find it hard to suborn logic to feeling. I so often feel like a fraud among Christians that I think I ought to just hang out my sign as an agnostic. After all, if you don’t buy half of what the church tells you, most of Christendom will pronounce you an agnostic or heretic anyway. Take the crucifixion. There is no way in hell (and perhaps that’s where I’m headed) that I really believe that God demands a blood sacrifice as part of the divine justice system. He’s supposed to be the supreme deity and not Moloch, right?

Second, I seriously doubt that you go to hell if you don’t say the magic Jesus prayer, that God set it up that way just because he wanted to and he can do anything, including being a petty tyrant. And I do get tired of hearing how God’s ways are not our ways, as if we are simply supposed to swallow that God’s ways are better than ours when we can bloody well see that our ideals at least are more humane and loving than consigning people to the roaster for all eternity. God has to be more moral than George W. Bush, surely.

Third, I’ve come to the conclusion that I really don’t like evangelism. Yes, it seems to have come a long way since the days of just knocking on doors and harassing people on the street, but it’s so agenda-based. Is that really what Christ meant by the Great Commission? Tell people they need to believe in Jesus? Now we’ve started wrapping this up in “outreach” and good deeds and community action, and seeker friendly churches (crap music, cappuccino and no dress code). The agenda’s still there. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many frakking books to tell people that it’s good to form relationships and meet the needs of the community. Someone’s making a lot of money out of relational evangelism. Relational evangelism means be friendly with them until you can haul them into the fold, add their tithes to the building fund, indoctrinate them and then launch them into the heathen waters as relational bait to lure others. That’s called being winsome.

To completely empty love and works of the agenda is called “Social Gospel,” which I’m told is extremely bad for you, because it doesn’t forcefully enough shove a dose of Jesus down the throat of the lost. No totting up souls on a scorecard. No carefully schooling seekers that there’s Jesus and then there’s the highway to hell and calling that “loving your neighbor”. No stoking your personal sanctification engine.

I’ve got to this point and I don’t know why I’m so annoyed. It isn’t as if there are no Christians out there doing good without an agenda. There are plenty. There are plenty at my church. They do a hell of a lot more than I do. I just have a head full of religious catchphrases that I hear day in and day out, and trite expressions about Christ and why He came and what it means. Impatience with the same old outpourings. Impatience with my own inability to “get” it. Impatience with the noise and franticness of contemporary worship. Impatience with always being careful about what I say.

I’m just plain tired of Christianity.

Welcome to the kinda sorta not really revolution

You hear about a movie that everyone is raving about. It sounds intense. It sounds as if it were well-acted and crafted. Boy was I looking forward to seeing Revolutionary Road. Then I did.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this movie sucked.

This is why it sucked:

1. There is no evidence anywhere that the Wheelers have any traits or interests that would give the idea that they are special. Most people who think they are special are working with some premise: I’m an artist, I’m a writer, I’m a film director. Something. Other people seem to think they’re special, too. Why? I mean, we get one scene of Mrs. W after a community theater production flops, but she just seems irritable and ticked off; you don’t get the sense that she’s devastated, hurt to the core. Their house contains no books, not art, no anything to show that they aim to be different or unique. How are they cultivating their delusions?

2. Because we get nada as a back story, no insight into whatever grandiose dreams these two were nursing, the Wheelers come across as dull, petulant, and really boring. They start out that way and they end up that way. There are no car chases, conspiracies, alien invasions, nudity, graphic sex, or sparkly vampires, so I really needed some character development.

3. Where the hell are the kids? They have two kids that they manage to stow away somewhere whenever they need to have a scene without kids. Lucky folks. A 24-hour-oncall babysitter must live next door.

4. Leonardo DiCaprio seems to think that if he’s playing angry he should point his finger a lot. He also looks fairly ridiculous trying to be furious.

5. Actually, all the fight scenes look fairly odd, as if they were on stage and had to really tear up the scenery to make it convincing.

6. LC still looks like he’s about 12.

7. Uh, what’s so awful about these suburbs, anyway? I was expecting evidence of some stifling oppression but it didn’t really come through. Are we supposed to think the neighbors are awful and dreary? That all the houses look alike (they don’t)? Am I just supposed to accept that suburbs = soul-destroying misery?

The one thing that didn’t suck was the crazy next-door neighbor who came out of the asylum long enough to tell the Wheelers the truth about themselves.

As an aside, there were some really peculiar dated references. At one point April tells Frank that he’s one of the most beautiful things in the world: a man. Yeah, right. Then during one knockdown fight Frank tells April that any woman, any “real woman” would just love to have children. It made me think of the scenes in Rebel without a Cause in which the father is wearing an apron, thereby signaling his emasculation by the big bad woman. The crazy neighbor refers to April as a ball buster. She’s not a “real woman” and he’s not a “real man.” In the end Frank, we are told, is dedicating himself to the kids – the woman’s job. Don’t know what to make of that, but I found it odd that the movie did not in any way comment on these gender stereotypes. I suppose if they had been wildly bohemian in the first place, I would have pondered the role restrictive gender stereotypes played in their downfall, but since they were so boring to begin with, it doesn’t seem to matter much.

In the end I didn’t care what happened to Frank and April. I felt no sadness over their fates, because they had no life in the first place.

I'm not just on the grid, I'm on the griddle

I have now discovered the joys of Twitter. It's like eating cotton candy while you walk around a fairground filled with noise and bright colors. You can follow celebrities on Twitter, which goes to show that just because you're rich and famous doesn't mean you don't waste a whole lot of time. I adore this. You can even follow Stephen Fry, which makes me happy. He's in Labuan Bajo right now, by the way, wherever that is, and has been bitten by mosquitoes. See? I and 375,824 think it is worthwhile following Mr. Fry to receive these exotic updates.

Twittering has also led me (via Rainn Wilson who is, like, such a riot) to this site about Sockington, the cat who blogs and twitters. Top that.

So while the rest of you are contemplating the resurrection, I'll be launching pithy nothings out into the vasty blackness. Given that no one is following me, it could be an exercise in futility. But I did figure out how to feed my twitters into my Facebook account,which has maybe 60 captive friends to appreciate my pith.

Selling Our Soul at the Crossroads

Do you know who Louis Giglio is? In our Sunday School class we’ve been watching snippets from the movie Expelled along with some video of Giglio performing preaching. I guess the point of these sessions has been to reassure all of us that evolution can’t take our God away from us. At least that’s how it’s felt to me—a big warm hug and it’ll all be okay as long as there’s Intelligent Design. Huddle round the wagons, folks, the atheists are coming. So we hear some scientists speak vaguely about a first cause and how nothing so complex could just come about spontaneously and the big bang as God shooting the starting gun, and then we listen to Giglio wax poetic over the wonders of the universe.

I find this sad and problematic.

First, I think Intelligent Design is a lot of hooey. There’s nothing wrong with evolutionary theory. It works just fine. Why can’t we get over the debunking of a 7-day creation? It’s like we feel the need to stand heroically in front of God, protecting Him from the light sabers of science.

I don’t see how it makes any difference to science if scientists acknowledge God. Does it make any difference to my pipes if my plumber is Christian? So what if we say God started it all? God started it all and then, well, ah, oh, evolution carries on. Or, no, I guess we have to have God tweak it all the way along. Who knows why we had dinosaurs. One of God’s fun experiments, I guess. Maybe they existed just so we could have fossil fuel. Not very far-thinking, though. And hominids, what were they all about? Did God love Neanderthals? Gee, we’re back to the same bloody questions we had in the first place.

On to Giglio. Maybe he’s a fabulous guy. Maybe he’s an amazing preacher and loves God a whole bunch. Me, I tend to distrust preachers who fill auditoriums and sell tickets to their worship services. Giglio loves the universe. Its beauty astounds him. That’s great. He’s got lots of beautiful photos. The universe is beautiful. God’s creation is astounding.

Then he starts talking about something called laminen, a protein molecule that “holds us together,” as he puts it. He shows us a diagram of the molecule. It’s in the shape of a cross. Lots of ooos and aaaahs. Then he shows us a picture of laminen taken by an electron microscope. There’s the cross again, a bit squished and toppled. More hushed admiration.

Alarm bells are going off in my head. Is this guy telling me that God built us out of crosses just so he could make a point gazillions of years later about Jesus dying on a cross? Is that what he’s saying? That God would do something so ridiculously pointlessly stupid just so we could stare slack-jawed at a photo as if we were watching a freak show? Does laminen even really look like this?

No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t look much like a cross at all, actually. Or no more than about a billion other cross-shaped things in the universe. If a cross (as we know the cross) was even what Jesus was nailed to. I don’t think anyone drew a diagram at the time.

Next he shows us photos of constellations. Lots of wowie zowie isn’t this just fab-u talk. He has a letter from an astronaut that acknowledges God (take that, you atheists!). I decide to pass over the “eye of God” comments. I give Giglio the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t think the center of the constellation is literally God’s eye. We see a photo of the furthest constellation that’s been photographed. “Now I’m going to take you even further out,” he says.

Oh, no. He’s going to show us a picture of the crucifixion, isn’t he? He’s going to be that obvious, that banal. Yep. He beams and nods sagely as the audience laps it up. But that’s not all. For the grand finale we get to see a special photo of a constellation, with, you guessed it, the shape of the cross in the center.

Groan.

Evangelism has sold its soul to the scientific method but still can’t tell the difference between metaphor and reality.

Do we really think that if we pile up enough scientists who believe in God it will erase the doubts and fears raised by what science reveals? If we see enough crosses in the world, will we finally be certain that God’s eye is watching us?

What's Rattling Around in My Head

1. DramaQueen did not test into the gifted program. She’s kind of bummed about it. I’m kind of bummed, too, because she tests high in two of the four categories, so I guess she’s just supposed to continue being bored and unchallenged in those two.

2. I still don’t understand Twitter.

3. It’s possible that my ancestors came from an area around Dunakin castle (named something else now) on the Isle of Sky. I would like that to be true just because I like the name Isle of Sky. One of my brothers is the family genealogist and actually enjoys roaming around cemeteries and poking around in dusty old papers.

4. One of my relatives forged some documents trying to establish that we had our own clan. I think it more likely that we were peasants hanging onto a protector clan by the skin of our teeth.

5. Sometimes I think about the fact that I’m here because my ancestors managed to survive the Black Plague.

6. For some reason, after I drop Firecracker off in the morning and start my drive to work, whatever song is playing on the radio will make me cry. This morning it was Bruce Hornsby’s That’s Just the Way It Is.

7. WiiFit. Is. The. Best. Thing. Ever. So far I excel at the hula hoop.

8. Why did Taylor Swift get a recording contract and why does anyone like Love Story, which I vote one of the suckiest songs ever?

9. Except, there’s the Jonas Brothers. Rolling Stone actually compared them to the Beatles. That reviewer was obviously smoking crack, probably supplied by the bros’ record company.

10. DramaQueen thinks my music sucks and all the singers look weird. And so the generational conflict begins.

11. Yet DramaQueen has not yet figured out that it is very uncool to watch ballroom dancing.

12. I think coupons are a frakkin waste of time. I get so tired of the same old advice about online coupons (most of the sites list the same deals and more than half the time they aren’t coupons at all but some in-store deal for something I don’t need in the first place). I don’t use half the products that appear in these coupons, and the coupons that require multiple purchases are particularly useless. How many things will I buy name-brand? I won’t buy store brand of: Mac N Cheese (Anything but Kraft is immediately detectable as not-Kraft. My kids have radar or something), cereal (man the knock-offs taste awful), coffee and ice-cream. You could spend hours just printing, clipping and organizing the bloody coupons.

13. You can save a lot of money by just not buying anything. No need to use the coupons for the fruit roll-ups, the pre-packaged meals, or the disgust-o snack food.

14. Have you noticed at Walgreens that you don’t even have to have the store coupon on you? You don’t even have to know about the coupon. The cashier keeps their newspaper insert at hand and checks it against your purchase and then just zaps the coupon with her laser to register the savings. That rocks.

15. Now, if someone invents a card where I can download the bloody coupons and hand it over at the register which it automatically checks for matching items, that might be worthwhile.

16. I have got to do something about off-season clothes storage. My closet is the size of a broom cupboard, and my clothes are plotting a mutiny. Already I cannot find some of them.

17. Our dishwasher is exhibiting a desire to remove itself from our cabinetry and advance face down into the center of the kitchen.

18. I have 9 years’ worth of photos in boxes. None of them are in photo albums.

19. From the amount of mail we get, I think at least 12 other people use to live in our house, a number of whom the IRS and Social Security are trying to contact.

20. For reasons I cannot comprehend, Dear Husband does not like Monty Python. Now I have no one to laugh with me over The Upper Class Twit of the Year or The Ministry of Silly Walks.

Noise

When I started writing this, I had a very different direction in mind. I hesitate to post yet another psycho-rant. It makes me sound as if I’m never any fun and must spend my days in an Emo funk. But the buried and not so buried somehow claw their way to the top and it’s almost impossible to stop the undead when they really want to get somewhere.

It feels like spring, and I feel springy. Exactly like a spring, coiled and ready to sproing. In devotions we watched one of the Nooma videos, on Noise. Pretty appropriate, as I feel like I’m full of noise. I love Rob Bell. He always makes Christianity seem wondrous instead of churchy and tired. And he has really cool glasses. I’m not quite sure how he pulls them off, they’re so cool.

We all had a lot to say about Noise, which is ironic. It was one of our longer devotions. We talked about how we find it so difficult to be silent. I used to spend much more time in silence than I do now. In New York I spent a lot of time in quiet. I would go into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine or the sanctuary of the Church Around the Corner and sit. I loved quiet. I wrote in quiet. Now one of the few places I have quiet is at work. Too much quiet. I’m isolated in a cubicle away from everyone. It’s quiet but not private, and of course I’m supposed to work and not meditate. I get a bit squirrelly when I have to work without anyone around. Funny, because when I write for myself I can’t stand to be disturbed. But that’s because I have words to fill up my mind. I don’t like total quiet without being able to generate something out of it, something to keep me company. My mind is not a pretty place and I don’t like to be alone with it.

I have a problem with screaming. I grew up with parents whose main form of communication was screaming. They didn’t scream at me, usually, but they screamed at each other. Now I find myself screaming periodically at the girls. It’s not the best parenting method. I’m a firm believer that spanking and threats aren’t viable, and yet I find myself resorting to coercion when I’m on my last leg. I can tell I let my impatience show all too often because the girls are now extremely impatient with each other. I feel like every time I try to improve in this area I end up worse than I began. My therapist encourages me to identify the physical sensation I get just before I lose it. Well, I haven’t been able to do that. One moment I’m dealing and the next I’m a banshee. For someone who was never directly threatened or coerced as a child, I sure am good at it.

Except, of course, there are all sorts of coercion and all types of threats. My mom’s main threat was that she would die. Basically, I was killing her. Weird how refusing to do the dishes can be lethal. She was much older than anyone else’s mom (42 when I was born) and I was very afraid of her dying. And the main form of coercion was the usually unspoken but sometimes spoken threat that mom would be hauled off to the asylum. That was the scariest thing imaginable—having to rely on dad for my day-to-day needs. I was very invested in keeping mom sane--and I had no idea she was actually mentally ill at the time. I didn’t know that until I was in my 20s. Have you ever seen someone make fun of another person for being mentally ill? My dad did that all the time. When my mom would have one of her spells he would tell her how stupid and crazy she was, and she would tell him how much he disgusted her and how vile he was, and she would mock certain habits, like the way he ate, by mimicking him. My mother’s “episodes” were ugly, full of repetitive, sometimes nonsensical rants and paranoia. She would become cold, unreachable and as furious as, well, one of the Furies. My dad would eventually run away somewhere, but I got to listen to the full litany of weirdness that scared me because I didn’t know where it came from and because it was completely impervious to reason. When she was sane she worked very hard at getting me on her side, making me her ally. Dad was not so successful in his attempts. I can still remember him sidling up to me when she was in full form during a visit to my grandparents. In a very low voice, a slimy, oily voice, the kind of voice reserved for dirty jokes and propositions, he told me that sometimes mom was not quite well and I shouldn’t let it bother me. If there is any one thing in my childhood that makes me angrier than any other, it may be that single attempt on his part to gain my favor.

I hated my mom for acting nuts and hated my dad because he always seemed to provoke her, and sometimes I would get this crawly icky feeling that I was going to wake up one morning with an axe in one hand and be completely unable to stop myself from killing them. And then I would be alone, very alone, all life-lines cut and evil settling in. At one time my mother was obsessed with the idea of possession—creepy obsessed. I was certain she thought I was possessed, and I was convinced it was a real possibility, that at any moment a demon could nest in me while I watched helplessly as my body was taken over. It seems so ridiculous now, but at the time I would lie paralyzed on my bed, waiting for any sign that a demon had come a knockin’

So I soaked up a lot of fury, and I am very very angry at my child self for not being able to make everything right. Logic does no good here. It makes no difference that I know it was impossible for a little girl to fix the huge mess my family made--the anger and self-loathing are still there. You’d think in this amount of time and oodles of therapy later I would have made some inroads in processing and transforming this.

It’s scary to have two daughters, living breathing projections of my child-self and potential recipients of my rage. It was one of the reasons I vowed never to have children. Now I have two beautiful girls and I’m afraid of what they’ll inherit. I love them so much, but then again, my mother loved me.

RevGals Friday Five: Signs of Spring

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. (Song of Solomon 2:10-13, NRSV)

Songbird at RevGals writes: In the late, late winter, as the snow begins to recede here in Maine, we begin to look almost desperately for signs of spring, signs of hope that the weather has turned and a new day is on the horizon. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Easter and Spring twine inextricably, the crocuses and daffodils peeking through the Earth as we await the risen Christ.

Share with us five signs of hope that you can see today or have experienced in the past.

1. I’ve seen daffodils. Here they aren’t just peeking through but are in full flower. Nothing says spring like daffodils. They are such bright and happy flowers, smiling flowers.
2. Our lawn is covered with flowering weeds. Yep, weeds. But the girls don’t care if they’re weeds. All they see is a carpet of tiny purple flowers. I felt the same when I was young. I would pick the flowers and put them in my hair or bring them in to my mom.
3. Light, so much light. Light that stretches further into the evening. Light that is still soft, unlike the harsh light of summer.
4. Easter baskets. I know that it’s very commercial and not at all relevant to the real meaning of Easter, but I love going into stores and seeing the racks of Easter candy (especially the jelly beans!) and the baskets. Yes, the baskets have ballooned into elaborate constructions with toys galore, but I still enjoy them. I love the colored cellophane and grass, and now the baskets themselves are so varied and pretty.
5. The sounds of children playing outdoors. They’ve been let loose! Our neighbors have a wooden play set outside, and now we hear the kids as they climb, slide and swing. Yesterday I found a notice that the exterminator had been by – hopefully we can get rid of the fire ants in our yard.

And now for something completely serious

So enough of vapidness. Time for a bit of gravitas. It is Lent, after all. Not that I have ever observed Lent. But it seems a good time to accomplish a task I’ve been avoiding.

My therapist gave me an assignment weeks ago that I have not been able to process. Two assignments, actually. The first is to write about whether depression is a choice, and the second is to describe my ideal life.

Is it any wonder I’ve preferred to immerse myself in frivolity and look at pretty boys?

Of course I don’t believe depression is a choice. Who would choose such misery? There’s no payoff. When people think of it as a choice, what they are really thinking of is a bit of the blues, a soaking in self-pity, a stubborn refusal to put a positive spin on things. Those are so very different from depression. Over the years I’ve experienced all sorts of cognitive therapy techniques. Relaxation. Guided meditation. Rewriting your inner scripts. They have their place. Which comes first, the wrong thinking or the depression? Once the neurological switch is tripped, does it even matter?

I don’t know why some people just feel a bit glum, a bit low and others flail about in inner darkness. Genetics? I find that once I’m far enough along, rewriting scripts isn’t very effective. It feels like I’m traveling farther from either positive or negative thoughts into numbness. The numbness is superficial but tenacious. Underneath is a tremendous rage. Wouldn’t you be angry if you were caged and trapped? Numbness is the cage door. That is deep depression, when there is fury inside beating against enormous resistance, resistance so strong that it has drawn all my energy into itself. These are the times I feel the urge to hurt myself crawling over my skin, because that release is so calming and so immediate.

(I’ve never even mentioned my history of self-injury to my therapist. Oh, the things I leave out of my personal narrative.)

I’m thankful that I haven’t felt that way in a long time. I no longer feel the need to sneak the X-acto blades from the workroom supply, just in case. Having children is an amazing deterrent. They watch your every move. And Dear Husband. The few times I’ve slipped he has been furious. He’s so practical. If it isn’t the solution, why are you wasting your time? It’s self-seeking, self-pitying. Find a way out, any way out. For once fear and shame created a positive outcome, and so I have retrained my impulses, which is just as well. And I’m medicated. I can’t dip too deep anymore. I’m buoyed on a pharmaceutical sea.

Choices. When options aren’t available, you simply make do. When I experienced my first depression, my parents didn’t notice. Or they did and hoped it would go away. Or they did and were so afraid I would be like my mother they ignored it. Why didn’t I ask to see a psychiatrist? Did I ask? Did I hint? Did I think it was so outside the realm of possibilities that I didn’t bother? Did I choose not to talk to anyone about it, or was I rebuffed? Did I think it wouldn’t do any good, that they would simply look at me as a freak and send me on my way? Would I have even been able to describe what I felt? What would I have said? I want to die? I hate myself? I don’t understand your world? I can’t fix this? Someone help me?

As choices became available to handle depression, I took them. I’ve found that behavior can be modified, even if you still feel like shit. I have enough experience to know that the worst will pass or at least change. But depression itself, it comes when it will.

Onward then, to my second task. My ideal life. This is hard. I have a notable lack of ambition. I’ve gone through life letting circumstance make decisions for me. Even when I was young I couldn’t imagine myself into any particular life. When kids were starting to think about careers, even in high school, I simply knew that I wanted to study literature. That’s as far as I got. I didn’t want to teach, I knew that. I didn’t want to marry or have a family. Otherwise I had no idea. I wasn’t sure I was going to live past 20 anyway. I’ve gone on having no idea through college and grad school and a number of jobs.

Now here I am in my 40s and it feels a bit ridiculous to be without a plan. My mother used to infuriate me. Her constant refrain until she died was, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.” In my meaner moods I would tell her that if she didn’t know by now, she never would. And she never did. She was hindered by a mental illness far more significant than mine. She refused medication. She refused therapy. Her vicissitudes kept her confused and distracted. Here I am with lots of lovely medication and therapy, but I still have not made any advances as far as life goals.

I have vague impressions. I would like a creative life. I would like to be able to write again. I would like to be around other creative people. I would like to be around very intelligent people. I would like to be at home with my kids. That’s unexpected, and I may be off-base or it may be standing in for a simple wish for more compatible work, but it has been a longing all the same. I would like to homeschool my children, something else I think might be completely incompatible with my personality, and yet… I would like to travel England. I love England.

You see how very vague that is? I want to write poetry, but I don’t want to be a poet, with all that entails. I want to be at home, and yet I am completely incapable of structuring my own time. England…England we can save money for. Travel at least translates into a tangible goal.

I don’t exactly dream big, do I?

Sometimes I have plans. Lots of plans, but small ones. I’ll paint the house. I’ll take up knitting. I’ll finally learn to garden. I’ll do something with the photos. They go nowhere. They skitter away the moment I turn my back. They suddenly don’t seem so interesting. In fact they are dull.

Has a life of struggling with depression, or bipolar disorder, or whatever it is, rerouted my neurological pathways in such a way that I’m incapable of forming a plan, incapable of even dreaming a dream? Is that what happened to my mother? Will I be just as bad despite all my advantages – the education, the understanding husband, the medication, the therapy?

And now, what connection between this serious navel-gazing and the frivolous listing of the world’s hottest actors according to me? What do these fantasy figures mean, and why do they suddenly loom large in my imagination only to disappear just as quickly? What am I to make of such a preponderance of dominating men? Men who are lie detectors and truth tellers. And they aren’t very pleasant about it. In fact, to be in their line of sight is somewhat humiliating, but also thrilling and transformative. In Secretary, the female character is a cutter, something James Spader’s character picks up on right away and redirects into a series of erotic games. I connected to the woman right away, not because of the similar modus operandum or because I have any desire to participate in an s/m setup, but because I like the ingenious way in which he steers her away from despair by going through her neurosis rather than around it.

It all seems terribly anti-feminist. Is that the way it is, then? I respond to a male figure who dominates, judges and directs? Where’s Freud when you need him? Did thinking about depression and ambition trigger my current fascination with certain characters? Perhaps that silly list began with me feeling lost, defeated, and directionless.

What do I conclude from all this. Not much. I’ve always been good at seeing the connections. Conclusions, not so much.

Because I'm even more shallow than you thought

One of my friends pointed out to me that I left Ciaran Hinds out of my list of beautiful actors. It is, indeed, a sad oversight. I must admit, though, that he does not always look as splendid as he did in Persuasion. I just saw him in Escape to Witch Mountain, in which he looked a bit like my old high school English teacher with a buzz cut. If you listen closely, you can hear his accent peeking through. Not that I mind the lilting sound of an Irish accent, but then again I don’t think Homeland Security would be hiring anyone from Northern Ireland, either. I had a peek at his IMDB entry and was startled to find that he was Herod in the Nativity Story. He was? How did I miss that? And I forgot that he was Lord Tarleton in Amazing Grace. Besides being a baddie, he didn’t look nearly as good in a wig as Ioan. It also took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to pronounce his name using the odd phonetic notation on Wikipedia. Since he’s Irish, I can’t assume that I know how to pronounce his name by sight. For all I know it could be pronounced “Carson” or “Warren” or even “Cadwalleder.” In Gaelic the word on the page never seems to bear any resemblance to the way it sounds. Imagine the difficulty I had with Ioan Gruffudd. Welsh seems to think that if there’s one letter, there should be a duplicate, just for fun. Still, Mr. Hinds is a man with fabulous bone structure and should be celebrated. Huzzah, Mr. Hinds!

I also somehow left out Gary Oldman. Dear Husband makes fun of me when we watch the Harry Potter movies with Sirius Black, because at some point I was a bit too exuberant in my appreciation. Apparently I called Mr. Oldman “delicious.” I blame my MIL, who brought it up in the first place. Then of course there was Dracula, in which he mostly looked great, with the notable exception of his doppelganger with the weird updo. I still don’t know what that was about. But my first memory of him was in the film Prick Up Your Ears, as bad-boy playwright Joe Orton. He channeled self-centered jack-ass really well. And he threw himself into the role with great, uh, enthusiasm. You would think he was born to meet young men in public restrooms. If he captured anything like the real nature of Orton, no wonder his lover offed him. I find that movie has an odd staying power, particularly the final scene of his funeral, with the Beatles song “A Day in the Life” playing.

As it happens, Gary Oldman and Tim Roth are friends. How did I find this out? Why, by wasting time on a Tim Roth fansite. Yep, while other people were creating great art, feeding the poor, writing sermons and generally getting on with life, I was wasting time surfing a fansite. One with a nice selection of photos, I might add. Anyway, I found out about this rather odd exchange between Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, involving messages inked on their bodies. I won’t put the photos here in case someone at these magazines gets ticked at me, but you can follow this link to view them. Here’s how the site described the correspondence:

“Do Tim and Gary Oldman really write messages to each other on their body parts?
Yes, at one time they did. This is because, according to Tim, that's the best way they could communicate with each other with their busy lives. Some history: In a magazine interview, Gary Oldman was asked to name certain people who he found to be attractive, Tim Roth being one of them. Tim must have read this, because Tim wrote something on his arm (or his head?) that read something along the lines of "G.O. I think you're sexy." Oldman then on the cover of the May 1994 UK edition of Premiere wrote on his arm, "Tim Roth I think you are sexy too!" Then in the April 1995 issue of Detour, Tim wrote on his forehead, "Gary Oldman Let's Do It" … Many of these pictures can be seen on this web site.”

(fans self)

Glory be, where are my smelling salts?

(faints)

Ring of Fire

I finally saw Fireproof this weekend. I have resisted seeing it because I didn’t like Facing the Giants, and What’s-His-Name who plays the lead irritates me. All that stuff about not kissing anyone but his wife, even for a movie. Sheesh. That seems like one of the advantages of being an actor, getting to kiss lots of people, maybe even of both genders. But I shouldn’t make fun of him for that. I guess. Maybe. He has principles and just because they make me giggle doesn’t mean they aren’t serious business for him, and rather noble and all that.

Anyway, Dear Husband got hold of a copy and it was clear there was no avoiding watching it at some point. I enjoyed it much more than I expected. The acting was pretty good, and where it was amateurish it seemed churlish to make a fuss about it. Here were all these people working for a film they believed in, and gosh darn it giving it their best shot, and I ended up rooting for the poorest actors just because they were trying. There were some parts that were quite humorous, although I wasn’t sure what they were doing there except adding some levity, and I’ll concede that some levity was much needed. The firefighter who gave a little performance in front of a mirror should have his own sitcom.

Fireproof (and Facing the Giants) was filmed in my hometown. I find that not a little amazing. Albany has to be one of the most boring places on the face of the earth. At least that’s how it was for me. I’m a big city girl. I can’t stand to be that far away from a cultural center. Albany isn’t small enough to be considered a small town, big enough to be a true city (not enough books, education and culture) or rural enough to be the country. It’s a bit like an extended suburb with elements of city and country scattered over and around it. It was interesting to see it in film. It’s very flat there. Pancake flat. Lots of trees hanging with Spanish moss. Lots of gnats (The final shot is of a wedding cake, sitting out in the open. My thought was: if that were truly sitting out in the open in Albany GA, it would be covered with insect life and half melted.). I hated that place. A lot. So I’m glad to see that Sherwood Baptist Church has sown a little acre of creativity. If I ever go back to visit, perhaps I’ll see the Good Life City with new eyes. Or at least without the feeling that I could be snared by its sticky web and stuck there forever, gnawed on my giant spiders. Ahem.

For the most part the movie avoided squirm inducing Christian-y dialogue. I was so thankful that What’s-His-Name didn’t go all gushy about Jesus that I could have phoned him up and praised him for his restraint. There was one scene that made me roll my eyes, when the Fount of All Wisdom father talks to What’s-His-Name about forgiving however much you are rejected, and he ends up standing right under a cross. That conveniently placed cross, ready to glow in the light of grace and a beautiful sunset. Barf. Then we get the usual blood atonement speech which miraculously convinces What’s-His-Name that he needs salvation. Just like that. The kind of little talk that would have made me run screaming for the blessed hills of atheism. That’s just me, half heathen that I am.

But like I said, I was so thankful that What’s-His-Name didn’t start talking like a reject from TBN that I could have kissed him, if kissing were allowed. He didn’t run to the firehouse and babble excitedly to everyone who didn’t want to listen, or institute regular prayer meetings at the ol fire station, or go home and announce his conversion to his wife and drag her off to church where she too sees the light and is baptized on the spot, start handing out tracts at the local bus station, or make himself into an obnoxious idiot in any way. He even managed to look like a regular person instead of a Godly Man. Amen.

The message of the movie was great. I had nothing to complain of there. Love is an action and a choice. The situations were believable. He was an utter dick and he finally came to understand his essential dickishness through a series of deliberate actions he had no desire to undertake or any real hope of completing successfully. Christ will work a change in you, and you don’t have to sound like a bad evangelical preacher to convey that.

Now, a little confession. I have to admit that for much of the movie I kept thinking that What’s-His-Name was looking kinda hot. I seem to remember him looking like an utter goofball, but he was definitely easy on the eyes in this film, lean and wiry, hair cut close, revealing, much to my surprise, a rather nice face. The man who played his friend and fellow firefighter was also pleasing in all aspects of his being. I’m not sure that’s what the director and writers had in mind. I am probably very bad.

Oh, yeah. Kirk Cameron. Why can I never remember his name?

Eye Candy for the Mentally Ill

Because I’m feeling dull and unwilling to address weightier issues--such as Who am I? and What am I supposed to be doing with my life? or even What am I going to do about the cat litter?--I’ve decided to indulge in one of my frivolous exercises, listing the most attractive talented actors according to moi. I’ve been doing this periodically ever since high school when my friend Caroline and I came up with groupings we called The British Triumvirate and The Australian Triumvirate. I think, at the time, that The British Triumvirate included Anthony Andrews, Rubert Everett and Jeremy Irons. Close, anyway. The Australian Triumvirate comprised Mel Gibson, the actor who played Scorpio on General Hospital and a Rugby player whose name I cannot remember. Or maybe it was called football. I don’t know. Whatever it was it was a violent game with a ball and well-muscled Australian men. We hadn’t the slightest idea about the rules or scoring, or anything mundane like that.

You get the idea. I haven't advanced much since high school, although I hope I have better haircuts. Okay, back to the list of incredibly hot talented actors.

Hugh Laurie. I’ve liked him since he played the hopelessly addled prince regent in Black Adder. Oh, he is a master of comedy. So when I heard about House, I was expecting great things, and I have not been disappointed. I’ve read that his character was based on Sherlock Holmes. Oddly, I had a crush on Sherlock Holmes as a young girl. (I found fictional men more acceptable than actual men.). House is so mean, so witty, so entertaining. And then he slices through someone with The Glare. Hugh Laurie has a fine pair of eyes with which to glare.



Tim Roth. Okay, I didn’t know who he was until Lie to Me. Reservoir Dogs isn’t my sort of film. Whacked earless artists are usually my thing, but somehow I missed him playing Vincent Van Gogh in Vincent and Theo. When I first saw him in Lie to Me, I thought he was rather ugly, but the accent wore away at my resistance. I love me some British accents. And there’s nothing like a stern, slightly overbearing male character to exert a fascination on me. (Dear Husband should not get any ideas from this that I would like him to be stern. That would be a Bad Idea.) Anyway, Dr. Lightman, his character, pelts his victims/clients with provocative questions until they squirm under his unrelenting gaze, ready to pounce on the slightest tremor or twitch of the eye that gives them away. “Oh now you’re lying.” I think I would swoon.


Aside. As you can see, it is usually the fictional characters rather than the actors themselves I find so compelling. Curious that my first two choices play characters who believe that everyone lies and who spend their shows sorting the lies from the truth. When I was a wee thing, I sometimes would daydream about being on trial for an unnamed crime. Heaven knows what I was working out, but it was always a great relief to have my crime found out, confess, and be sentenced. I very much enjoyed Crime and Punishment when I read it as a teenager, because I could relate to Raskolnikov’s overwhelming need to confess. Except, of course, being an ax murderer, he actually had something to confess. But back to my list.

Ioan Gruffud. Isn’t he pretty? I thought he did wigs and breeches very well in Amazing Grace, channeling charm, righteous indignation, and a love for little bunnies. Oh, how could you not like someone who spends his life championing abolition? And doing it with such good bone structure. I suspect the real Wilberforce was not quite so well knit together. I’m not sure I knew who Gruffud was before that movie, although I gather he had a rather prominent part leading Oscar Wilde astray in Wilde, which I did see. Not sure how I could forget Gruffud and Fry getting hot and heavy, but perhaps it was so tasteful I didn’t notice. Or so embarrassingly cringe-worthy I forgot it (When it’s obvious that actors are totally freaked out about kissing other men, well, it results in scenes you wish they would just leave on the cutting room floor. Remember Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in Clue? Could it have been more obvious that they were thinking ooo gross the whole time?). Note to self: Revisit Wilde in the interest of education. I’ve never seen the Horatio Hornblower series, and I think it’s about time because Gruffud would look scrumptious in 18th century British naval attire, and no doubt his splendid hair gets whipped about a lot by salt spray. Ahoy.

James McAvoy. Penelope was such a charming film, and I really liked his scruffy, ne’r-do-well who discovers his basic human decency. At the beginning they put rather a lot of red around his eyes—it looked painful, like perpetual pink-eye. Didn’t like him so much in that film with Angelina Jolie. The film made no sense at all, and it seemed rather derivative, part Matrix, part Fight Club. I think Angelina is dead sexy in a scary not-with-a-ten-foot-pole sort of way, and watching the romance scenes was a bit like watching a cobra tracking its lunch.

Rufus Sewell. He was also in Amazing Grace, playing a radical abolitionist with rather odd, poetic-looking hair. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, late in the film he has a scene carrying a baby around a field. I’m not sure if it’s his baby or one he found while out for a walk. Now he’s the lead in the Eleventh Hour, which I thought I wasn’t going to like much, but I find his eyes are a sufficient reason to stick around. They are…startling. I am hoping beyond hope that they avoid any romantic tension between him and his stick of a costar. He would have to draw upon an enormous reservoir to create any chemistry there.




Colin Firth. Ah, Mr. Darcy. Another stern, rather aloof character. He is so very good at British reserve, which is, for some reason, insanely sexy. And what better way to serve up British reserve than in a wet shirt and some knee pants? And, it takes someone special to work those sideburns.

Alan Rickman. Did you know there are groups devoted to Severus Snape as sex symbol? It must partly be his voice, which is, hah, spellbinding. Oh, I guess the bad boys are just irresistible, and it doesn’t get much badder than a Death Eater in a fetching black cape.




Simon Baker, who plays the lead in the Mentalist. I really don’t care for blond hair, but he’s beginning to win me over. Now I think his hair is delightfully tousled. He isn’t cold, but like House and Dr. Lightman, he enjoys messing with people’s minds. It seems essential to cause as much embarrassment as possible to drag out the information you need. And he manages it with a bit of a crinkly smile around his eyes, just to let you know that he’s essentially a nice guy. There’s Tragedy in his past, and I gather he’s looking for revenge. But I think it’s hard to look vengeful with crinkly eyes.

James Spader. Yes, he got a bit pudgy as Boston Legal wore on, and he lost some of the mean, amoral edge that made his character so thrilling to watch. By the end he was almost cuddly. I prefer to think of his character in Secretary, the sadistic lawyer who likes to play interesting games with his willing secretary.

Do you get the feeling that I’m a smidgen submissive?

I’m sure my tastes are indicative of something or other. Such a preference for cold aloof men who relentlessly strip you of your comfortable lies until your true nature is revealed.

Huh. That actually sounds a bit like an old-fashioned psychoanalyst.

The Anti-Supermom

I’ve made one of those classic mistakes of motherhood. DramaQueen had drama classes. What about Firecracker, I thought? We can’t afford classes for her, but what else is there? Girl Scouts, I thought. And since the Daisies and Brownies met at the same time in the same place, I thought they might as well both join. They can have fun earning badges and doing community service. I am such an awesome mom! I’m going to “get involved.”

Oh. My. God.

I am never ever ever doing this again.

Firecracker won’t even stay with her troop. She gave up long ago trying to follow what was going on. They might as well be speaking ancient Mesopotamian. The clamor of a herd of Daisies is not the best environment for those with learning disabilities. “They look at me,” she wails. “I’m shy!” So she hides behind the counter on the Brownie side of the room.

DramaQueen is having a bit more fun, in a lackadaisical fashion. She’s a sociable girl once she settles in, so no hiding behind cabinets for her. She went out on a service project and rather enjoyed it. We went to World Thinking Day and she enjoyed collecting SWAPS, which seemed to me to the only point of going. There didn’t seem to be a lot of thinking going on, and most of the posters and displays about foreign countries seem to have been created by, guess who, the moms.

That was a mind-numbing experience, btw. Firecracker refused to walk around the booths, so the event was painfully boring for both of us. There was nowhere to sit down. Thankfully there were some snack machines, and since it took hours for DramaQueen to make her rounds, I was happy to feed Firecracker whatever crap she wanted. We made our escape when I saw the People In Charge do the three finger GS salute that means Shut Up, indicating that some GS ritual was about to take place. When someone called for the girls to form a circle I knew it was time to skedaddle.

Over Christmas the troop leader cajoled me into being the cookie mom. I thought, hey, I really should do something for the troop. I said this despite the fact that I hate—let me emphasize HATE—any sort of sales. But stretch yourself a bit, I thought. Hah. I didn’t even take DramaQueen door to door. I hate it when people show up at my door selling stuff, even stuff I like, and no one likes GS cookies more than I do. Unless we want to develop a generation of car salespeople, I don’t see how this is supposed to foster “leadership” skills. Oh, I am soooo not a leader. Do I think it essential that my girls grow up to be leaders? Let me rephrase that. Do I think it essential that my girls learn how to sell cookies?

You know what, since GS is so gung-ho about parental involvement, I should have just admitted to myself from the start that I don’t want to be involved. I don’t want to be one of these moms who works full time, is room mom, volunteers for the PTA, and handles set design at the local community theater. I want to take my kids to classes and let them do whatever they need to do to acquire the skills that interest them. That, to me, is a valuable lesson to learn—taking charge of your own talents and interests through personal diligence and practice. I want to come home with some expectation of relative calm, not frenetic activity because I’ve sold my soul in exchange for a Franklin Covey planner. The stuff I want to learn about does not include camping, tallying up cookie sales, teaching girls how to sell cookies, making posters about countries that no one will ever look at, making SWAPS (for heavens sake), learning the GS pledge, shuttling girls to events, haranguing shoppers at the local grocery store to buy cookies, and selling calendars (because it’s not just about cookies anymore).

So far most of the GS year seems to have been about selling something.

BORING!

So far, my girls seem to agree with my assessment. Firecracker has told me she wants to learn soccer. So I’m going to look into a nice recreational soccer program (cause I hate competition about as much as I hate leading) and let her try it out. DramaQueen can keep doing her drama thing. I’m going to follow my therapist’s advice: one extracurricular activity per child. Period.

We All Lived

Children did actually show up at Firecracker's birthday party. One didn't bring a gift and one brought his older brother, but who am I to complain? The room was full and my child was happy, and, best of all, two very competent women ran the whole thing. They played games and marched them outside and did more games and made periscopes and took photos and read them a story, and yet when it was all over they still looked tidy and in control, much to my amazement. I was exhausted and I didn't do anything more than cut the cake, pass out the snacks and hand over the presents. One little boy threw up. It's not really a party until one child throws up. That's how you know the party's winding down. And Firecracker did not receive any girlie presents, no Barbies that have to be passed along to DramaQueen. Her fave was a NASCAR race car that vrooms away when you press a button. Good stuff. Not that she's completely opposed to gentler activities. She used a gift card to buy a doll carrier to hold her little pink puppy, the one with sunglasses and a heart pillow that says Hot Stuff. I've had to buckle it into the car seat each morning on the way to the daycare and promise that I will take it into work. Shhh. Of course I take it into work.

I can breathe again. For a while.

The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devil's own satanic herd.

I wonder if I’m doing okay? Sometimes I’m not sure. Sometimes I’m not sure I’m that in touch with myself. Maybe I could send myself an email. My thoughts have been soggy. When we passed the anniversary marker for Firecracker’s surgery, and when I remember it, my stomach clenches its fist and looks balefully at me. What were you thinking? To put your child through that? And for what? Nothing!

I feel death wafting around me. Perhaps I will die this year. I don’t want to die. I’m really opposed to it. My nephew, my friend. My friend. Is it easier to meet death deliberately instead of waiting for it to snare you? Why did she feel that dying was better than living? I miss her. And what about me? I think of estrogen. Perhaps I should have gone on tomoxifin. Maybe estrogen is the enemy. I’m overweight, so I’m even producing more of it. I’m practically swimming in it. Perhaps it’s wreaking havoc even as I sit here so indecisive. Perhaps I’ll die from indecisiveness. And then there’s Dear Husband. Whenever he has a flair up I wish I could peek into his bladder and make sure all the cells are behaving, no proliferation. Everyone’s health panics me. What is going on that I cannot see? Death and his demons, where are the creeping?

It’s amazing what plastic surgeons can do with reconstruction, it really is. But my new breast will always be a…a… construction. It is better than cancer, but it is still this alien sculpture perching on my chest. How I wish they could have done the TRAM. I’m still sad about that. I’ve never intended to have another child, but the knowledge that I could never nurse one if I did makes me cry. Isn’t that weird?

I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not doing what I was intended to do. The problem is that I have no idea what I was intended to do. You know, that idea that God has a plan with a place for everything and everything in its place. Do I even believe that? What do I believe? How can I believe? When I think of death, it seems the most preposterous suggestion that we would go somewhere after. It pretty much looks like a blank wall: bye bye. But there are these stories, this scripture that says otherwise. I find it hard to swallow.

I find it hard to chew on most things Christian these days. The claims, the glib prayers, the churchy stuff, the inspirational books, the enthusiasm, the dull dull tumbling of words. The bright shininess and maudlin spectacle of it all. The music. Oh god the awful sameness and bouncy bouncy of it. Sometimes it seems that if I jumped in the river it would come up to my ankles, so shallow the water is full of silt.

And then there are these longings that I don’t believe in: to home school my children, or at least to be a SAHM there when school is over, when the bus drops them off. The mom who can visit the class with the cupcakes and a story to read, who may actually someday meet the other mothers whose children my daughters spend more time with than with me. It seems so out of balance, but who am I kidding? My salary is essential and always will be, even after we pay off the cars and the student loan. Besides, I can’t organize my own time. I’m useless at it. How can I organize anyone else’s?

There, I’ve written it out of me for now. Tomorrow Firecracker is having a birthday party. I’m afraid no one will come. That happened one year, or nearly. Only one child showed up. I’ve tried calling, and the moms either don’t speak English or act as if they are reluctant to admit that the live in this universe, the universe with the invitation, my child, their child, and their common classroom.

More on my adventures in dyspepsia later. The title of this post, btw, is from Black Adder, and it gave me the day's first laugh. If you aren't familiar with Black Adder, you need to correct that deficiency right away before it becomes a way of life.

RevGal Friday Five: Taking a Break

Songbird says: Where we live, it's February School Vacation Week!

Yes, that's an odd thing, a vacation extending President's Day. But it's part of our lives here. Some people go South or go skiing, but we always stay home and find more humble amusements.

In that spirit, I offer this Taking a Break Friday Five. Tell us how you would spend:

1. a 15 minute break
Coffee and a book, although sometimes a book is just too engrossing. So, coffee and a chat with a friend.

2. an afternoon off
Sit down with a good book and forget about any errands I think should be done.

3. an unexpected free day
Hmm, perhaps a walk if the weather is nice, followed by some puttering. Or a trip to the bookstore/library. A movie—I hardly ever actually go to a movie. Pick up the girls early and play Uno with them.

4. a week's vacation
A trip to Savannah, or to Alabama to see my side of the family, or to LA to see Dear Husband’s side of the family. Or maybe a trip to the Grand Canyon. I would love to show the kids the Grand Canyon, and hubby’s never seen it either. Or a trip to New York. I would really like the girls to experience that. Walk around in Central Park. Walk around everywhere. Visit my old neighborhood in Park Slope. Go to the Cloisters. Must go to the Cloisters—one of my favorite places—and the Botanical Gardens. Broadway’s overrated and overpriced IMHO, but a nice play…or opera, though the girls would be bored stiff. The museums, Indian Row, East Village. Sigh.

5. a sabbatical
We all take a trip to England and visit as many cathedrals and castles as possible, as well as stopping off in York to finally see Bronte country, and to Cornwall, just because I’ve never been there and it sounds pretty. And of course visit the National Gallery in London, and the British Museum, and whatever museum that is with the Turner paintings, and Hampton Court, and the Soames Museum, and there has to be some theater in there somewhere and and and.… I’ve never seen the changing of the guard or Buckingham Palace. Oh I have to have tea and scones as many times as possible, and ploughman’s lunch and those enormous British fry-ups that B&Bs give you for breakfast. Have to get to Cambridge, too, and, what the heck, Oxford. And I would really like to see that house where they filmed Brideshead Revisited. Go walking in the Lake Country—that sounds good.