I wish you'd left sooner.

The only question I have now is when is that troublesome Fagan Jr. getting the boot, too?

Yes, Creative Slips is 3 - three - III - now. I forgot to note this eleven days ago because I was too busy getting ready for Spring Break. So Happy Blogday to myself.

Now we return you to your regularly scheduled dose of mundane silence on this Wednesdayesque morning.

Went to a shooting range - which totally rocked, by the way - watched Taking Lives, The LadyKillers and Casablanca (finally), learned some guitar chords and pretended to be an overnight rock star, and acquired over twelve hours' worth of music to listen to.

And didn't do my homework. Oops.

I need to get outta town more often.

Now for some "on holiday" fun:

Good post from Joe Carter on God being a pacifist - or not.

There are a few things he mentions that we've been studying in Sunday School, namely submitting to and respecting authority. I'll be the first to admit that this is easier said than done, especially since it's so easy to criticize the people who've been given leadership positions directly over us. Areas of authority that we've been looking at include direct-from-God authority, family authority, church authority and civil authority. I will say this about the entire authority study: the next several months are going to be quite interesting, because exercising submission and respect in a couple of those areas is going to feel more like a chore than a gift.

Beal.

Couldn't they have given it something that sounded, I dunno, normal?

It was a bad idea to let my brother move his computer to his room. Lare, who happens to be quite the EverCrack junkie (EverQuest for the uninitiated), spends most of his time playing when he isn't at work or school. Since he moved his computer to his room, I haven't seen a peep of him unless he's hungry. I sincerely hope his computer suffers a Denial of Service attack from which it will never recover one day.

A lot of blogs are sporting green today, so here's to them Irish.

Reverend Donald Sensing has a fantastic op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the same-sex marriage debate. If you've read his other posts concerning this issue, the article might look familiar.

Blogger Scott Elliott's parents were killed on Monday during a drive-by shooting in Mosul, Iraq. You can leave any notes at his blog, Election Projection.

Scott put it eloquently enough, in my opinion: "Jesus Christ was glorified in their lives. He will be glorified in their deaths."

Amen.

Today is Eat An Animal For PETA Day.

I added to the fun by getting a cheeseburger from In N Out (for once, the fries weren't limp), and I must say that it's really gleeful to tick off a bunch of radical vegans, purely for the heck of it. Eat yer heart out, PETA.

: The other side of the coin. I can't tell if this is a parody site or something, but it's not like I'm making it up, either. I'm craving a strawberry banana smoothie now. Those poor strawberries and bananas - willing to sacrifice themselves to satisfy my taste buds...

I just discovered this post at The Thinklings blog, where Jared asks,

When was your first kiss? (You don't have to say who it was, if such a thing would be embarrassing or a violation of anyone's privacy.) And if you've never been kissed, please share that too, so we can provide sympathy or derision as appropriate.

I say that with some defiance and hesitation, but mostly with indifference. It'll happen one day.

We had an interesting discussion in class last night about autobiographies, after reading Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face.

I actually don't like reading autobios and personal memoirs that much because they're not my type of book, but how much detail in most autobiographies are true? Think about how different autobiographies are compared to biographies about the same person. Which account is more interesting to the reader? Why are they different? And if they're so different, why sell the story in the first place to a particular audience?

How different is a politician's memoir from a writer's?

And now that I've deluged you with all of these questions, how much of my Distractions post are you willing to believe is true if it happened (which it did) but I was also very selective about which details to include in the story?

Does that change how you read it?

It wasn’t the stork wearing a milkman’s hat
Who delivered her at the home of N and L
Instead, I think an angel accidentally nudged
The “Deliver New Soul” lever a twinkle too soon
And a little girl arrived in the world a month early

That little girl would learn that
Heaven dispelled shadows like a blade parting fog
And Hell regularly vomited up its victims’ bones
Only to swallow them again immediately after

She would learn that
Pens shouldn’t be used as a hammer on her sister’s crown
And glue was to make things stick together
And shouldn’t be eaten like applesauce

Wetting clothes was not polite
Relatives weren’t always normal
Boys couldn’t be kissed till she was sixteen
And what was a kiss, anyway?

Now
Every mirror she passes peeks back at that little girl
Who resembles a china doll
With a too serious face and seldom seen smile
But the woman on the outside
Laughs merrily at such illusions
Because Heaven is light, Hell is fire
Pens are instruments as well as weapons
Glue is better than staples
Sweat stinks
Relatives will always be insane
And boys didn’t have to be kissed right away
But she still doesn’t know what a kiss is

If life wasn’t detailed with such vibrant lines
Life itself was an illusion

The theatre version of Return of the King is being released on video/DVD on MAY 25.

Nice way to complete a day, if you ask me.

(via Stephen Green)

I don't stay on top of political issues on the national and int'l platforms today like I used to, but I do agree with this gal: I hate this "my side, your side" thing. (Via Jay)

Monday

The train pulled into the Daly City station, and I looked up from my book to see a Bart employee with a walkie-talkie approaching the man sitting near the door. The man wore a bright yellow sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his unkempt hair; he had the look of a homeless drunk who was passing the time by riding the trains with no particular destination in mind.

“Sir, is this your destination?” the Bart employee asked politely.

“Huh?” Yellow Sweatshirt looked about, a little dazed, before his expression fell. “No, I think I went too far.”

“Well, let’s get off here so we can have a good look at you,” the Bart man replied, and gestured towards the open doors. The walkie-talkie squawked, and he brought it to his mouth. “Yeah, don’t close the doors till we’re clear, ‘kay?”

Yellow Sweatshirt stood and slowly limped towards the door. His pants were starting to sag and he didn’t seem aware of where he was going. He wasn’t swaying, so he couldn’t have been intoxicated, but he was being careful enough about walking to catch my interest. I glanced at his feet.

His left foot was bare and covered with raw lacerations, and he was doing his best to shift his weight to his undamaged foot while the Bart man encouraged him to keep going until he’d stepped on to the train platform. I wasn’t the only one staring.

However, I was the only one worrying about what to write for my assignment due tonight. I’d already thrown out one scenario that had to do with my captain alter ego, which involved a jungle, a bunch of marines and a weapon that was a cross between a spear and a Swiss army knife. It got too complex, however, and I was too lazy to do the necessary research so the scene in my mind would sound right when I started describing it on paper. I was delving into Marvel Universe territory, the way things were shaping up, so the story scrap disappeared into my mental file dubbed “Unfinished Crap.”

I returned to my book, Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, and pretended that the train doors were closing and we were on our way out of the station. “It’s not that bad,” Yellow Sweatshirt said on the platform.

“Yes it is,” Bart Man countered. He lifted the walkie-talkie to his mouth again. “Yeah, he’s not in the train anymore. Go ahead.”

The usual ping sounded somewhere above us, the doors slid shut and the train began pulling away. Platform Three rushed past the dark-tinted windows and the wail of a train overrode the last glimpse of Yellow Sweatshirt and Bart Man as I headed for my own destination.

Suddenly, wondering about where those foot lacerations had come from sounded like something better to occupy my mind with rather than stuffy homework.

Sort of.

DYL is back, yo.

And this geography lesson is for Californians. The ones with a sense of humor, anyway. (Via Jay and Ipse Dixit)