“you lost me”

Christian Aquilera on the “American Idol” finale the other night. Honestly, the ONLY good thing to come from this season of complete and utter dreck. I watched intermittently only and cared not one bit who won.

Uhm, who won again?

Check this out. (Fast forward to about 4:07. Anything before that is just the American Idol rejects singing Christina and it’s cringe-worthy.)

But the woman herself? Amaaaaazing. Raw. Staggeringly beautiful.

jokes, haha

I think I’ve talked before about the relative who sends me dumb blonde jokes. (I’m blonde, for those of you who don’t know or haven’t clicked on the About page.)

Unfortunately, the joke sending has now morphed into sending random jokes that are offensive to all women. Equal opportunity offense. I don’t know what to say to this person. I really don’t. Because if I speak up and others find out about it — and others WILL find out about it — I’ll look like a real sourface prissypants. Which I am, I just don’t want to look like one. I’ve created an email filter, but occasionally a joke gets past it. Then the email is magically clicked on. You know, somehow. Okay. Well, mainly because it’s there and I see it and I experience a phenomenon I just made up that I will call “pre-anger” or “anger foreplay.” I get all hot and bothered about the whole dealio, just thinking about what that email might say, so of course, I HAVE to go all the way and READ the damn thing just to have the sweet release of anger that I’m so jonesing for and just to prove that my pre-anger anger was justified. (This all makes perfect sense inside my head.) If the jokes were funny, I’d forgive the offensiveness. I would. I mean, if you’re going to be offensive, you’d best be wet-my-pants funny, Slappy.

The problem here is the jokes are 1) NOT funny, and 2) SO offensive.

Here’s the email joke this relative sent this week:

A woman goes to the doctor, beaten black and blue.

Doctor: “What happened?”

Woman: “Doctor, I don’t know what to do. Every time my husband comes home drunk, he beats me to a pulp.”

Doctor: “I have a real good medicine for that. When your husband comes home drunk, just take a glass of sweet tea and start swishing it in your mouth. Just swish and swish but don’t swallow until he goes to bed and is asleep.”

Two weeks later the woman comes back to the doctor looking fresh and reborn.

Woman: “Doctor, that was a brilliant idea! Every time my husband came home drunk, I swished with sweet tea. I swished and swished, and he didn’t touch me!”

Doctor: “You see how much keeping your mouth shut helps?”

Wow. WOW. WOW. So we women deserve to get the crap beaten outta us because we can’t keep out mouths shut???

WHAT??

If that weren’t bad enough, I noticed on the list of recipients the name of a young girl, a mutual acquaintance, who happens to be about 18 years old. (And, yes, the sender is a male.) Is this the message he wants to send to an 18-year-old girl he cares about? That women just need to keep their yaps shut? That not keeping your yap shut is the thing that makes a man hit you?? That it’s YOUR fault if you’re hit?

I imagine most women reading this either have experienced being hit or know women who have been hit. I have. I do. And it’s not the woman’s fault. It’s NOT.

In what universe is this joke funny?? Or, really, tell me if I’m overreacting. And then tell me what you’d do about this person who’s sending these jokes.

I have no idea what to do. Or, rather, I know what I WANT to do, but I think the price of doing it may be too high.

lost about “lost”

Uhm, so what up, “Lost”? Because you wrote yourself into a corner, you fall back on the relativism of everything is possible, everything is right, whatever YOU think it means is what it all means?

Thanks a lot, Slappy.

Did anybody else watch the series finale? I need to vent but I don’t want to give away spoilers here.

snippet

We are watching “You’ve Got Mail.”

ME: Did you hear that lyric?? “I’ve been around the world, had my pickle in a girl”????
HE: Hon, I think it was “Had my pick of any girl.”
ME: Oh.
HE: Yeah.

missions

MB and I have some acquaintances from a previous church who are “missionaries.”

And, yes, I hate to say this — and I’m totally hiding from God as I do so — but I call them “missionaries” as opposed to missionaries.

Here’s why:

This couple was sent off from the church with great fanfare and hoopla. They were moving to southeast Asia to start an orphanage, you see, and isn’t that a noble idea and all that. The wife’s family comes from this particular country and she inherited some land in said country. For their orphanage, right?

Howevah …… and here’s where it gets squinky for me and I don’t know why I’m throwing all Christians under the bus lately, but, well, I’m a crankypants.

The squink is this:

They didn’t start an orphanage. They’ve lived in this country for 4 or 5 years now. They’ve had 2 children while living over there. It’s cheapcheapcheap to live in this particular country, but, then again, the church supports them, so it’s even cheaper! Somehow, once they’d been “in country” for a while, the Lord conveniently “changed” their vision. They weren’t supposed to use their land to build an orphanage. No. They used the land to build themselves a HUGE house instead.

Now to be fair, they do take in foster children from this country. At one time, I believe they had as many as 6 kids total living in their home. The husband is an aspiring novelist and works on his books most of the day. I mean, he doesn’t work outside the home in this country. The wife homeschools the kids.

I guess I don’t understand HOW this is missions. I don’t get it.

Plenty of people in the US take in foster children and, yes, they get a small stipend or whatever from the state, but this couple is having their entire lifestyle subsidized by the church. I’ve known people who’ve taken in foster kids here in the US, and in every case, at least one of the parents worked outside the home. My own parents took in a foster child when I was 6 and my foster sister was 16, and at that time, BOTH of my parents worked outside the home. They were earning their own money. Now I’m sure there are people who take in a bunch of foster kids just to get the money from the state, but I don’t imagine the people who do this are calling it “missions” either.

Someone help me. How is this “missions”?

Is there something I’m not seeing?

To me, the idea of missions is an outwardly focused thing. An evangelism thing. Sure, this couple is teaching their kids about Jesus, but so is my sister. So is my brother. So are dear readers Brian and Kathi. So is any Christian family — one assumes — anywhere in the world. And they’re NOT being subsidized. My brother and sister have real world jobs where they earn real world money to support their children. They don’t sit back and receive tithe money from their churches so they can work on their Great American Novel. Or their Great Southeast Asian Novel.

I mean, to be honest, since we’ve witnessed all this going down with this couple (they have a blog we follow), MB and I have seriously discussed going BACK to this whackadoo church and saying we want to be missionaries. Ohpleaseohplease, let us be missionaries. Because it kind of seems like a sweet gig, doesn’t it? Being paid for what the rest of us work for? Church welfare in a beautiful country overseas?

Look, these are tough times. I mean, I’m in school right now to completely change careers. But maybe I can chuck all that, move to a cool country, call myself a “missionary,” and get on the church dole.

Come on, pippa! Let’s be “missionaries” and start our Sudden Yurt commune overseas!

Who’s with me?

si se puede

A while back, a friend who’s on Facebook (uhm, all my friends are on Facebook, apparently) emailed me about some “Christian” page on Facebook that I should join — you know, when I join Facebook. (Hahaha and all that.)

But I was SO annoyed with her description of this page, I created a FAKE Facebook identity just so I could get a gander at the stupid thing. Yup. (And, no, I will not be starting a page. I created a name and that was it.)

So this “Christian” page: It’s called “We CAN find 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook.” Here’s its stated purpose:

The purpose of this group is for Christians to take a stand in their beliefs and be counted. our goal is 10 million. It is a big goal, but I believe it can be done! Thank you for joining and please invite your friends!

Okay. So you go there. You join. And somehow you’re standing up for Jesus? Being counted? (Well, I believe you’re being counted, but maybe not in the way you’re hoping, silly Christians.)

Give me a break. The whole thing strikes me as totally ridiculous. So you find 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook. So what? Who cares? To what end or purpose?? So Christians can stand around and go “YAY! There are 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook!!”?? That’s just retarded. What do the people who’ve joined this page think will happen if they reach that 10M goal? The rapture? The second coming? People around the world saying, “AHHHHH!! There are 10M Christians on Facebook, I am now convinced me that I’d better accept Jesus as my savior immediately!”?? And what will the people who’ve joined this page DO when and if they hit that mark? Send “Christian hearts” to one another’s Facebook page? Have a cyber party with cyber cake in “Cafe World”? (Yes, I do know some things about Facebook.) Seems to me like the moment the page clicks over to 10M will be more anticlimactic than a New Year’s countdown. I mean, at least that involves the entire world. And at least people get kissed.

Come ON. It’s a pointless endeavor. Sorry, Christians, but it bugs me. You’re making me and any other basically sane and intelligent Christians look bad. Please stop. This is what’s becoming so irritating to me. Either the collective Christian IQ is plummeting precipitously or else I’ve just been exposed to a spate of real dummypants lately.

Look. I’m sure there are more than 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook worldwide, so why is this important? Why is this something worth doing? Just listing yourself as a Christian on Facebook makes Jesus all proud and tingly? No. He’s going, “Quit wasting your time with that crap. And leave me out of it, kthx.” IF you asked each Christian who came onto your page to give a dollar to World Vision or Feed the Children or something, THEN you might be doing something worth doing. But you’re basically saying , “Hey, Christians. Come over here and sign Jesus’ yearbook.”

Well, he doesn’t need me to.

So I don’t wanna.

And you can’t make me.

Nyaah.

thumbs

My right thumb was the beautiful pale bride in a lacy white wedding dress. My left thumb, well, my left thumb was stark naked so I just had to imagine him as the dapper groom in a sleek black tux. The ceremony was brief but touching. The little thumb bride wept during her vows. The little thumb groom spoke in a gruff voice, choking back his emotions. When the moment came, the two kissed with abandon, channeling all those emotions into a slow lingering moment.

“STOP, Tee Tee!”

The Banshee wasn’t buying it.

“What? They’re married!”

“They’re THUMBS, Tee Tee!!”

“I know. Isn’t it cool? They’re married now.”

“They CAN’T be married!”

“And why not?”

“They’re THUMMMBS!”

She tugged at the tiny doll wedding dress covering my thumb. I gasped.

“Banshee! Are you taking her wedding dress off?!”

Shaking a naked doll in her hands, she declared, “It’s supposed to go on HER!!”

“Oh? Hm. I think it looks nice on me, don’t you? And look how the veil wraps around my little thumb. So pretty.”

I lovingly stroked the tiny tulle veil on my thumb. The Banshee started to laugh.

“Tee TEEEE! This doll is naked!!”

“She has underwear.”

“JUST underwear.”

“Yeah, I see that. Sheesh. Put some clothes on her.”

“Your thumb is WEARING the clothes!”

“Does that doll want to marry my thumb?”

“Noooo!”

I sighed. A big drama sigh.

“Okaaay. Well, I guess she can borrow my wedding dress.”

“Good. Your thumbs are now UNmarried.”

“Oh, no. They’re still married. They’re not unmarried just because this thumb changes clothes.”

“But they’re THUMMMMMMBS, Tee Tee!!!!”

“Happily married thumbs. See? They’re always together.”

I looped my thumbs together.

“Do you want your thumbs to get married now?” I asked. “I’ll be the preacher.”

She hesitated for the tiniest second. She was considering it. She was.

“NO, Tee Tee!!”

But she smiled, she giggled, she almost let her thumbs get married.

Almost.

Maybe next time.

milk

His picture is on our fridge, held there by an alphabet magnet on one end and Pickup Stix magnet on the other. Part of a careless gallery of photos and ephemera. I feel guilty that I look at that photo more now than I did when he was alive. Still alive, a little over two weeks ago. Now I look at it constantly. MB looks at it constantly. Part of me feels frantic to take it down. It’s too much to see his open face, his shining eyes, knowing he’s gone and I’m just getting some milk. It seems wrong. I want to take the photo down so I can get some milk. I don’t want him to see me doing something so mundane. But then I don’t want to take him down just so I can get some stupid milk. Standing at the fridge door has become some cosmic junction between the everyday and the eternal.

And I am bothered by milk.