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tinkerbell and smee (i guess?)

Some day, I will master the focus feature on my Nikon Coolpix. (I wonder when that will be.) But you get the idea.

Tink and Smee/random fearsome pirate.

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Pirates like flowers. Who knew?

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13 years

Egypt Air 990, October 31, 1999.

RIP Aunt Mary and Uncle Bob.

Evil does exist. No one can convince me otherwise.

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thinking of you

Thinking today of all my dear blog friends on the East Coast — Sheila, Cara, Jayne, Roo, Nightfly, Kate P. — and of everyone back East in harm’s way.

Please stay safe and know that the prayers of many people are with you.

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“aaaaaahhhhhh!!!”

Okay. I’m kind of loving this photo gallery of terrified reactions at the Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada. It’s not clear what they’re looking at and the piece doesn’t reveal it, but, clearly, it is horrifying.

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Hahahahahaha. Screw this. I’m outta here!
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happy jack on trampoline

This is from February of this year, so it’s many months ago now but I just love him in this little clip. He was just lying there with crazy static hair and I had to film it. You will hear real names in this clip — for those who are curious — so get ’em while you can because they won’t be used again.

You will also hear me make an array of embarrassing undignified noises to get him to laugh, but, eh, I’m good at embarrassing myself.

Beware his eyes that bore all blue into your soul.

(Let me know if that’s working. I see a video of my nephew, but now I’m not actually sure if you can see it.)

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well, the day has come

Finally. The day I hoped and prayed for, the day I thought would have to come soon, has finally come. Hallelujah!

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against leaders of the FOC for coverups of sexual molestations.

Three young women and their families have come forward to file this lawsuit against ol’ Baldy and other pastors. I know the mother of one of these young women through our own FOC blog. I’m so heartened to see this courage and this willingness to say “No more.”

My story is nothing, nothing compared to what’s happened to others. I’m well aware of that. Nevertheless, I do take it all a bit personally. My disgust about this place continues on slow simmer — although at this moment, it’s boiling. I know for a fact there are more victims out there than just these three, so it will be interesting to see how big this story gets.

It’s the evangelical version of the Catholic Church scandal.

I’m praying for justice. And frankly hoping that justice means this abusive and corrupt organization will be totally destroyed. (I know I sound all Old Testament-y, but damn, they piss me off, pippa.)

Here are several links to the story. And yes, these links will reveal the real names. I kind of don’t care on that score anymore.

Huffington Post

Christianity Today

Radio interview with plaintiffs’ lawyer, Susan Burke.

Those are some starting points for anyone interested.

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original banshee and i mugging on the sofa

MB has been taking 8 mm film of the family when we get together these days. It’s so wonderful, all grainy and shaky with emotion. It’s suggestive, not entirely illustrative, and that’s the beauty of it.

Below are some screen shots I took of his footage from back in March of this year. It’s Original Banshee and I just doing some basic goofing around. I don’t really remember what I was doing or saying but she was just laughing so hard. Her little hand over her mouth is just so cute to me.

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I love that girl.

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“trusting god”

I’ve been recently perusing some of the emails we received when we had our FOC blog up last summer. Many people poured their hearts out to me which I found really touching, but even the ones who no longer attended a FOC church still spoke the “special language” of a FOCer and were still in the process of deprogramming themselves. Some of them were sweetly manipulative in asking me for access to this blog. One lady — who actually goes to Maybe Church — wrote me quite often and at one point said, “I’d really love access to your ‘real’ blog but I don’t want to ask. I’m just trusting God with that.”

She had been quite complimentary to me in the email and then followed it with that non-request request. It’s classic FOC. Butter ’em up to get what you want and for extra emphasis, throw God into the mix.

Uhm, peaches, here’s the thing: You were actually asking for access to this blog, there just wasn’t a question mark in your request. I’m all for trusting God, I am, but unless God appears to you in a burning bush to give you this blog’s URL, he’s not the one in charge of giving you that. I am. (Or, alternatively, I suppose you could ask Joe, since goes to your church and seemingly has this blog’s URL memorized.)

Assuming you wouldn’t do that, then yes, I’m the only one who could give that information to you. So why are you trusting God with that since I’m sure we can both agree he’s got more important things to do than to appear to you in a Starbucks cup announcing this blog’s URL?

Ohhh, wait a minute.

Could it really be that you’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL? That can’t be what you really mean, could it? But giving you this URL would totally defeat the purpose for having published a whole different blog elsewhere. It would make that decision seem irrational and, while I can be quite irrational, I’d rather not appear to be so if it can be easily avoided.

But that’s what you’re really doing: You’re trusting God to move my hard heart to give you the URL.

Well, it’s been over a year now, so good luck with that, Crackie.

I kind of hope God moves my hard heart to give you the URL in, oh, 23 years so you’ll look in your inbox and say, “What the hell is this?”

That would amuse me.