Lessons learned

This has certainly been a week of great learning for me, and, being the responsible web presence that I am, I've decided to share some of my discoveries with you, my loyal followers:

1. It's not necessarily wise to watch seven episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer back to back, even if they are the last seven episodes of a season.

2. Be suspicious of people who, on meeting you, shake your hand with an iron grip. They're hiding something.

3. Never leave your cell phone at the post office. Your parents will surely call your phone, talk to the postmaster, and then give you grief for days and days and days. This is especially difficult if you have no other phone line, hence no other line of communication.

4. Not only is moving bad, but living in close proximity to people who are moving is also bad.

5. The Manchurian Candidate is a wonderful film, even better if you're watching it during convention week.

6. FOX News is a giant load of crap (surprise!) and believe no one who admires Bill O'Reilly.

7. Nature documentaries can be cool, even if they are about bugs.

Have you prayed for hetero marriage today?

A friend at UVa went home to his hometown in NC over the weekend where at church the minister asked him to pray for George Bush and to pray to protect heterosexual marriage. Has our country gone insane? This prayer is a pretty good example of what's been entirely enraging about the political discussions this week. I'm beginning to believe that the church has simply no part discussing this issue at all. What right does the church or religion have to influence how the government gives marriage benefits to couples? You guessed it. No right, unless of course you're a firm believer that church and state should be closely connected. If people do believe in this close connection, then a lot more of the government needs to be changed than an amendment on marriage. As it stands, the church can sanctify a marriage, but the church does not issue the licenses for the marriage.

The politicians opposing gay marriage also seem insincere in their attempts to connect gay marriage with the erosion of a strong "civilization" based on heterosexual marriage. They might talk about values, about saving the family, about helping out kids, but the vote is simply an attempt to polarize the religious right for the November election and create some sort of veneer for what, under any other situation, would simply be homophobia. As for the idea of civilization, come on! That's the most ethnocentric statement I've heard lately. We, the US, save civilization through a constitutional amdentment on marriage?

I can say more about this, but it all seems so ridiculous and hateful. It's so exhausting to even think about it. I'm having a beer and reading some Henry James tonight (though not in that order)!!

Back to work?

Well, Amy and Nick took off this morning, and I've been reading Wilkie Collins's _Poor Miss Finch_ in the UVa library, but my heart's not in it. Even though I've had my coffee, I feel as if I could fall asleep. After the page-writing mania of the last few weeks, I really need to get my bearings and get back to writing. Highlights of the weekend included tubing the James river, a party at my house where the gang met Amy and Nick, finally making the whiskey trifle without a hitch, and touring Montpelier with Miss Jayne, a tourguide who acted like she knew James Madison.