You know how sometimes your birthday or Christmas rolls around and everyone says, what do you want this year?  And you really can’t think of a single thing you really want?

Yeah, me neither.  Especially this year.  I can think of lots of things I would like to get into my hot little hands.  Some of them are things I really need (in ivory, king size, please), some of them are things I think I need (size medium, thanks) and some of them are things I’m fairly sure I don’t really need but might die if I can’t have (size ten, if you are in the market), and some things that I just think are downright pretty and might want to come live at my house, with me (I’m a libra in case you were wondering).

Speaking of things I want and like, I want to amend my statement that Lie to Me is the best show on television.  It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve decided I like Castle the best.  Partially because I love it when ridiculously good looking people do mundane every day jobs on television shows, but MOSTLY because I love every single article of clothing worn by Detective Kate Beckett.  Her clothes are obviously not in the average salary range of a new york city cop, good thing her back story includes her being a park ave princess in her earlier life, you know, before tragedy struck and her mother was killed and she swore to avenge her by joining the Force.  It makes it all so much more believable, especially the part where she wears spike heels while chasing criminals through the streets.  The unbelievable part is how completely obsessed I am with all the different leather jackets she sports. I love all her coats, and her shoes.  Sigh.  So, sorry Lie to Me, until you can beef up the wardrobe, Castle is in the lead.  And a quick search of the internet leads me to believe I am not the only one who is obsessed with this aspect of the show.

I hope you have all enjoyed this installment of “I’m a materialistic fashion whore who watches too much television.”  Tune in next week for “I like to complain about things that don’t matter to anyone but me to everyone I can corner and make my captive audience against their will.”  Actually, next week might be more along the lines of “Listen to the nutty, crazy, ridiculous and embarrassing things that were said and done by my family on Thanksgiving after a few bottles of wine.”  Who knows, you just can’t ever tell.  (Note to family:  I’d never really report such things on the blog, I keep them all written down somewhere else for the expose novel I’m going to write one day about everyone I know and love).

Man, I’m cracking myself up with the jokes this afternoon.

I went to sleep early on Monday night, and Briscoe was upstairs with me.  Bo and Bella were downstairs in the kitchen.  All the sudden I hear a CRASH!  It sounded like the baby gate we use to keep the dogs in the kitchen had fallen down.  This happens on occassion and isn’t a big deal, since the dogs are deathy afraid of the gate and won’t climb over it.  The concerning part, was that there continued to be crashing and noise from downstairs.  Not in the kitchen.  When meant, something other than the two dogs I’d left downstairs was presently enjoying the classic decor of the living room. 

I called Travers, he said he’d be right there.  I called Matt, cause he was in the cottage, and he came over to help.  Briscoe was freaking out.  She ran into the living room and I watched in horror as she chased a squirrel up the plaster wall and onto the window scounce. 

Can you see his arm and leg?

Matt got close to the window, and the damn thing fell, bounced on his back on the table, leapt onto the piano, almost knocked over every breakable object in the house before hiding behind the china cabinet.  Smart animal.  Too heavy to move, too fragile to try. 

The dogs were so traumatized.  I had to physically carry Bella into the house and drag her into the kitchen.  She knew the squirrel was still there.  She knew.  Well, two days later, after chewing through a couple of electrical and cable cords, setting the alarm off and otherwise terrorizing the dogs, I came downstairs yesterday morning to find a dead squirrel on the rug in the living room.  Sweet.  Dead things.  Well, we all know I can’t pick up the squirrel or go near it, since the last time I tried to pick up a dead squirrel he wasn’t dead and bit me. 

The dogs had had enough of me forcing them to hang out inside with a squirrel, and flat refused to come inside yesterday morning, so I left them outside.  I put water under the house and made sure they couldn’t get out anywhere.  And I found the biggest spider I’ve ever seen.  I freaked out, got in touch with Josh (Josh is a professor and has his phd in forestry bugs – I saw his dissertation, the man knows his bugs), and anxiously awaited his instructions.  Josh said she won’t hurt me, that it’s what they call a banana spider, they are quite common and spin really pretty webs which they use to catch beetles (read – roaches) and mosquitoes.  He further recommended that I grab a few beetles and throw them in her nest, because she will attack them and spin them into a cocoon before she eats them and that it is “neat” to watch (his words, not mine).  Sweet.  It really made me miss him.  I told Josh I appreciated his expert opinion but that I would not be throwing any beetles anywhere.  I am really pumped that she eats mosquitoes and roaches, so I’ve decided to keep her as a pet.  I’ve named her Hermione and she has been watching the dogs for me while I’ve been at work.  She is the size of my fist and I swear I can lean on her web without it breaking.  It’s like fishing line. 

My life is so national geographic.   

Other happening of note, we had a successful last minute cook out last night, with lots of tomatoes, cheese, beer, hamburgers, chicken, and french fries.  It was a victory of effortless entertaining, low stress, high enjoyment, everyone left happy and full.   Thanks to Kate and Trav for going out of town. 

I have woken up the past few mornings to a chill in the air, which has made my coffee taste better and my over all personal happiness level improve.  My imagination immediately transports me to a morning where I am getting ready to get into a car to drive to Athens for a football game, instead of driving to the office.  Of course in that scenario I would be drinking a cold beer instead of hot coffee. 

But you know what today is don’t you?  GAME DAY!  I want everyone to be watching football tonight.  I hope that everyone has been watching the HBO series Hard Knocks, which is a reality show about the Cincinnati Bengal’s training camp.  I get really sad when anyone gets cut, it’s so depressing for the players to be woken up at 5 am and sent home.  But I really really really love Chad Ocho Cinco.  Love.  Child Please.  I could say it all day long.  Child.  Please.  child.  PLEASE.  child…please.  CHILD please. 

And I know I’m never suppose to say such a thing, but I’m going to say this once and only once.  This is for Ike and Peter and Matt and Claire and Darius (I love your music Darius).  Ahem.  Um.  Give me a second.  Deep Breathes.  DEEP.  Okay.  Here goes.  go cocks!

Case in point -

“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”*

Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he’s trying to fall back in love with his wife.**

“At that point I was very careful, everything was paid for in cash,” Sanford said. “And you won’t find a credit card record.”***

Culbertson said he believed his friend when he said that this was his only marital transgression. He thinks Sanford was simply caught off guard by “the power of darkness.”

“One of the quotes we use in our couples course is, ‘You can choose your sins, but you can’t choose your consequences,’” Culbertson said. “We used to use David as an example of that. Mark may be the 2009 version of a good example.  “Mark knew what David knew.”****

* SHUT UP!  Seriously!  Think about your four sons reading this and stop professing in the international news your love for the woman in Argentina!  STOP IT. 

** Lucky Mrs. Sanford, he’s TRYING to fall back in love with her. 

***Is he bragging about this?  Is he proud of how sneaky he was with his cash paying hotel rooms?

**** Did he REALLY just compare himself to King David?  REALLY?  AGGHH.  I’m absolutely blown away by his arrogance.  Please, just stop talking.  And don’t even get me started with how straight up crazy Culberson sounds. He sounds like a cult leader.   This is my favorite crazy quote so far -

“God hates lawlessness and is tireless in His desire to dissuade man from his fascination with lawlessness,” reads a paper titled “Cubby’s Talks.” ”Our hearts are lions’ dens of devouring lusts. Lawlessness torments righteous souls every day.”

I can deal with a whole lot of things, and flying roaches are not on that list.  They make me die a little inside every time one gets close to me.  Which is unfortunate, since I come in close contact with them on a regular basis these days.  I have the Orkin man on speed dial and he told me today that it was a battle we were going to have to fight together.  They live outside, these are not the sort of roaches that inhabit the inside of your walls.  These are the kind of roaches who might fly off with your dog if you leave her in the backyard for too long. 

Although, I do have to say that these roaches have nothing on this sucker that lives in maggie’s parents pond.  I swear to the heat of the South Georgia summer that thing in the water is a giant catfish.  Who Maggie swears wants to eat her dog. 

This train of thought is going to spin off in two different directions – one – animals around here that want to eat your dog - over in Aiken they have collected 7 monster pythons – man-eating pythons as they are called – and placed them in a big pit to see how they survive.  Sweet.  This sounds like a HORRIBLE experiment.  Apparently a bunch of pet shops carried these man eating pythons in Florida back in the ’90s and a lot of the snakes escaped in the destruction of Hurricane Andrew.   (side note – Florida is like another country.  When you enter Florida on I-95 the big trucks have to go through a customs like check point.  How weird is that?)

A direct quote from the article -

While pythons don’t make a habit of attacking people and most aren’t large enough to eat a person, Gibbons called the possibility a “nightmare.”

“What about the first kitty cat they eat? Or the first little poodle? They’d love poodles, I imagine,” he said.

Mike Dorcas, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, has sliced open pythons in Florida to find the remains of white-tailed deer, bobcats and large birds.

Then this last part - 

Pythons are masters of disguise — slippery and quick — and all but one of the serpents was invisible within minutes of being deposited into the pit.

So counting pythons in the wild is a daunting task. Scientists don’t have an accurate estimate of how many pythons are in Florida.

“It’s certainly in the thousands, or tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands,” said Gibbons. 

The other train of thought is the safety of the fish you catch in the Central Savannah River Area.  I thought it was interesting that the parts of the river that do have advisories say – one meal per week.  Is that one fish per week?  Because, my meal is not the same as some other people’s meal.  Some people could eat four fish. 

So, we do a lot of quiet title actions around here, which is how you clear title to a piece of property that has been sold at a sheriff’s sale when the property taxes haven’t been paid.  Although quiet title actions do not normally involve any particularly complicated legal principles, the difficulty lies in finding all the people who have ever had a claim of title to the property and serving them, which often time includes adjacent land owners or the heirs of an estate.  Which means I spend a lot of time trying to find people and figuring out how to serve them in Jamaica, New York, or Erie, Indiana, or, as the case was today – Denver, Colorado. 

The process server I found in Denver is a fleet of bike couriers.  How cool is that?  This time my petition to quiet title is going to be delivered by bike!  This really made my day.  And the guy I talked to on the phone was so nice and friendly and it made me really wish I was in Colorado.  I got really Colorado Home Sick.  Or maybe I’m just, IT IS REALLY HOT HERE SICK. 

Last night at tennis clinic I got to play singles with Jane.  AGGHH.  I LOVE singles.  I love singles so much more than doubles.  In doubles I feel like I’m in the way, or the wrong place, or I should have made that shot because I’m letting my partner down.  In singles, I know where I’m suppose to be the whole time.  Maybe I’m not always there, but the knowing is much more instinctive.  It’s been so much fun getting back into a sport.  I haven’t played a game in a really long time and I didn’t even know how much I missed it. 

Briscoe has been sleeping in the new big bed with me recently and every morning I wake up I feel the need to grab her toe and sing to her about catching a tiger by the toe.  She fails to see the humor and normally either tries to bite me or kick me.

2.  Call Clerk’s office in Florida.  As soon as clerk picks up the phone, scream bloody murder because the wasp that has been buzzing around your office all day that you thought your boss killed with a broom earlier has crawled up onto your desk and across your mouse and onto your hand. 

3.  Stop to talk to your neighbor after running a few miles in the heat.  Stand there, with blank look on your face and try not to be concerned that you have no idea what you just said but you are pretty sure the neighbor thinks it is strange that you are still in their driveway.  Wander off. 

4.  After you have attended a tennis clinic for three weeks, and spent the entire third week clinic hitting with the instructor, call him by the wrong name in a loud voice in front of the whole class.  Thanks Nick!  (CHARLSIE!  HIS NAME IS RICK!  NOT NICK!  AGGHH IDIOT). 

5.  When the mother of the groom comes to retrieve him from the bar at 2 am on Friday night after the rehearsal dinner, hop on in the car with him and try to be supportive of his demands to go to Krystal.  When you find rubble where the neighborhood Krystal USED to be (torn down for renovations – literally, levelled), find the next closest Krystal with Google maps and place the order while hanging out of the back window of his mother’s car.  Try to keep the car clean by taking the remaining chiks and cheese krystals that remain in the bag into your house when they drop you off first.   

6.  Send the runner on errands such as 1.   Pick up Briscoe’s flea medicine from vet 2.  Get jewelry cleaned  3.  Pick up Blizzard (small, peanut butter cup).

7.  Neglect your dry cleaning long enough to where you have to pick it up on the way to work in order to have anything suitable to wear that day. 

8.  Wage war on the dandilions in your yard.  Dig the roots up with a shovel if necessary  (my dad saw me trying to get the whole root of this dandilion the other day and told me to stop being weird.  I told him to leave me alone and let me be weird in my own backyard – he told me not to act like that in my front yard).

But anyway, May is suppose to mean HOT.  And I can’t talk about being in Colorado all summer because having a real job makes that sort of thing a lot more difficult. 

I was so productive on Sunday, got my life together for the week, laundry, grocery, cooked some food, cleaned my house, went to the movies.  Natalie and Bucket moved in!  Hooray!

Then Monday night I discovered that the large bottle of Palmolive under my sink had been turned over and spilled.  I pulled everything from under the sink and cleaned it all up.  Soap is surprisingly difficult to clean up.  Well, I didn’t get all the soap out from under my finger nails, and I put my finger in my eye, and I got soap ALL IN MY EYE.  AGGGHHHH.  It freaking hurt like the devil.  I flushed my eye with water for what seemed like forever.  Still didn’t get it all.  I HATE flushing my eye out with water.  It hurt almost as much as the soap.  I’m a MORON.  A moron.  Just when I was starting to feel like I had my life together. 

Last night Travers stole some wood from Kate and Trav and we had a little fire in my little fire pit in the back yard.  It was nice, although the wind was gusting (I love the word GUST) and every once in a while you would feel like the fire just might get you.  When Briscoe and I were about to go to sleep last night I kissed her on the nose and realized that all her fur smelled like smoke.  So hilarious.  Bucket’s fur also smelled like smoke.  I’m going to start calling them Smokey and the Bandit.  Their current alter egos are Biscuit and Bobby, to which they are starting to respond. 

I had a magistrate court trial yesterday, and although I think I got my point across well, I laid in bed last night and thought of all the small procedural mistakes I made.  The defendant was pro se, and I almost felt like how when you play a sport against someone who sucks – like tennis – you play like crap, but if you play against someone better than you – you play up to their level.  I feel like I played down to this guy’s level.  Hopefully I’m learning. 

I was driving my car at lunch and I was for some reason dumb struck by how cool driving a car is.  You’ve got this wheel, and you can spin it around, and when you spin it around, the ENTIRE SUPER HEAVY car moves.  At the flick of your wrist.  How cool is that?  It’s amazing how I drive a car every day and never think about how awesome driving can be. 

I made Kate (the runner) cupcakes last night because it is her birthday.  And I BURNED them.  I’m so embarrassed and horrified.  I really never burn things.  Ever.  Not baked goods at least.  I guess I haven’t ever baked in my new gas oven before.  It was really hard.  I’m concerned.  Not only did they burn, it was just the bottom of them.  Ugh.  I’m going to have to practice practice practice and get better before Christmas rolls around.  Britt’s mom has promised to teach me how to make cinnamon buns this Christmas, btw.    

It has been such a pretty day.  I hope it doesn’t cloud up before I can go home!  I want to go play outside.

Ben and I were talking about birthday presents.  I ordered an Ipod touch on behalf of my parents, which made them happy, and made me happy too.  Ben said he normally just asked for money and put it in the bank.  I laughed, and thought, I'd rather light one dollar bills on fire and enjoy watching them burn (obviously this is probably an extremely dramatic statement of the truth, as I don't think I would actually enjoy watching money burn, but I do think birthday money should be used for something fun) than put my birthday money in the bank.  I also told Ben that he is a much more fiscally responsible person than I am. 

We had family birthday dinner last night, and my dad gave me 50 $2 bills.  Daddy likes to give us $2 bills.  A few years ago, Daddy gave me and Travers 100 $2 bills for Christmas.  I asked Travers what he was going to do with his 100 $2 bills.  He said he was going to go to the bank and get $2 100 dollar bills.  Which I thought was something of a responsible, novel idea.  Needless to say, that is not what I did with my $2 bills. 

I gave mine away.  I gave one to a crack head in New York (how do I know he was a crack head?  he had a crack pipe in his hand), I paid for taxis with them, I left them as tips, and I handed them out to friends.  Like they weren't real money.  Which for some reason I have a hard time remembering.  I had a lot of fun giving away my $2 bills.  Almost like lighting them on fire.  Yesterday Libby told me that Bryan still has the $2 bill I gave him a couple years ago(I said – LIKE THE CRACK HEAD!  HAHA – BRYAN"S A CRACKHEAD!  Maybe that's not as funny as it seemed at the time). 

Is this the ultimate example of my inability to realize the value of a dollar?  I'm really fairly responsible when it comes to money in general (and the more I learn of the fiscal practices of america in the past decade, the more responsible I feel).  But is there something wrong with me that would prefer to give my $2 bills away than buy something with them or save them?

So yeah, yesterday I had 50 $2 bills.  I've given eight away so far.  I mean, seriously, I can't help it.  People like them!  It's like having $2 prizes to give to people I like (and random drug dealers)! And they were a present.  He could have given me $100 worth of beer – and I could have handed the beers out to friends and bums.  Like a party!  But this a $2 bill party.  He could have had coozies made for my birthday, and I could have given those away.  But instead he gave me $2 bills.  and I want to share them. 

I just need to remember to not take them to the bar with me tonight.  Libby and Bryan are in town and we are going to ATHENS very shortly.  I'm so excited!  Yippee!  Call me if you are going to be in town!  GO DAWGS!

I didn’t have a fever when I went to sleep last night, after watching the eclipse by myself since I didn’t want to make anyone else sick if I was in fact sick.  Which I was pretty sure I wasn’t.  Because, after all, I’m a hypochondriac.  I probably took my temperature fifty times yesterday just to make sure I didn’t have a fever.  If you have a fever you have proof you really are sick and aren’t making it up.  But regardless of how many times I checked it, I did not have a real fever. 

I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible sore throat.  Damn that swollen gland I thought.  I took some Advil and tried to go back to sleep. 

At 6:30 am, I realized this wasn’t working for me.  I was in so much pain, I wanted to go to the hospital immediately.  Both of my parents were out of town for the night and I was at their house looking after the dogs.  Travers and Elizabeth left for a long weekend in Mexico this morning.  I didn’t think I could wait till the doctors office opened at 9.  I couldn’t swallow the saliva in my mouth my throat was so swollen.  I was in tears.  Which just made it worse. 

After some pathetic phone calls to my mom – she got in touch with one of her friend’s son – a guy I grew up with who is an ENT about five years older than me.  Only problem he was in the Evans office for the day 30 minutes away.  I got in the car and was one of the first people at the office.  I had never been to this office before, and the nice girl who checked me in – after I filled out the paper work – she said – now just look at this little camera and I’m going to take your picture for your file.  that was enough to send me over the edge. 

As I was sitting in the waiting room, every minute was an eternity.  Finally I had to tell myself to get it together and stop crying in front of a room full of strangers.  But I really didn’t have to wait that long considering. 

As I followed the nurse back to the room I passed my doctor friend.  He said – You don’t feel good, I can see it by just looking at you.  I almost started crying again. 

The first nurse asked me if it hurt on my tonsils or on the back of my throat, I told her it just hurt.  She wanted to know what side.  I said it hurt.  She took my temperature.  101.2.  Well, you definitely have a fever she said. 

Then Doctor Friend came in.  He looked at my glands, and told me that I either had tonsillitis in both tonsils or a really bad case of strep.  Then he looked in my throat.  Nope, not tonsillitis.  Must be strep. 

I hope you don’t have to go back to work today he said.  I said, no, I don’t, but I have a flight out to Steamboat to go skiing in the morning.  He laughed.  You can go, but I promise you won’t have fun. 

I’m going to give you some steroids, I know this is no fun, but we can give you a shot today, or you can start on the pills, you take six the first day…..

SHOT!  Please give me the shot!  I can’t swallow my own spit.  I want the shot.  I want the shot right now.  I don’t mind needles. 

Oh, okay.  Shot it is then. 

Then he swabbed my tonsil to do the strep test.  The nurse explained to me that it works very similar to a pregnancy test.  Just a few minutes, and we will look at the lines and see if it is positive or negative. 

The nurse gave me the shot, and they left me for a few minutes to wait on the strep test.  I had to go look at the little test while they were gone.  Hmmm.  One line.  This means negative right?  Like on a pregnancy test?  You have the control line to tell you the test is working and then if it is positive you have the other line.  (Isn’t that what I learned from the movie Juno?)  Well, if I don’t have strep….

When they came back, Doctor Friend looked at the test and said – well, if I’m reading this right, then you don’t have strep.  Which means, you do have Mono.

Wait, what?  Mono?  I have mono?  How old am I? 18?  I haven’t been tired.  I’m not rundown.  I can’t even think of anyone I might have kissed four to six weeks ago that could have given it to me. 

More importantly – I’M NOT ACTUALLY IN COLLEGE!  YOU GET MONO IN COLLEGE!  GAH. 

I haven’t even HEARD of anyone getting mono in like five years. 

So, Doctor Friend wrote me some prescriptions for a bunch of stuff and sent me to the lab across the street to get some blood drawn. 

Then I stopped by target to get my prescriptions filled.  I was sort of hoping that I could find something at target to blow some money on to make me feel better about not getting to go skiing and not feeling well.  But I didn’t find anything and I left target having spent less than ten dollars, which I’m fairly sure is against the law. 

So you know how you are suppose to not be hungry when you have mono? Well, I was starving.  But swallowing things was still a problem.  I stopped at the chik fil a in front of target and got a milk shake.  Which felt good.  But all the milk shake did was make me wish I had french fries and a chicken sandwich. 

Luckily I still have one more chik fil a between where I was and my house.  So I stopped there and got the fries and sandwich I wanted.  I couldn’t really eat it, but I tried. 

Right.  So I’m sick.  Indefinitely. 

Rawr.  Today has been a very long day.   And I think Briscoe has been playing in the rain all afternoon.  Great.   I bet she is real clean. 

It is now 37 degrees, feels like 30, and cloudy, with showers predicted for the rest of the day.  High 42.  Pretty much miserable. 

But I have a bunch of soup left over, that should taste even better today, and no where that I have to be tonight, so I’m not going to complain.  I also have a warm little furry friend with which to snuggle. 

I think mini marshmellows make an excellent snack.  I like them when they are a little stale.  Low calorie, very sweet, fun to eat, great for people with oral fixations. 

I’m getting a lot better at drying my hair.  I have an awesome new hair dryer, which helps.  But I also think I’m not quite as paranoid.  And I’ve figured out what sort of stuff to put in it and how long I can go between washes with it still looking good.  I’m sorry if you think you should wash your hair everyday, I don’t agree with that, my hair likes not being washed every day. 

Guitar Hero is really, really fun.  And I am really, really, really bad at it.

I had an old man tell me over the phone the other day that he didn’t think any less of me because I was a woman.  Thanks. 

The Oregon Trail game on Facebook is pretty silly. 

American Gladiators is entertaining.  Deal or No Deal makes me nervous.  I had no idea that not a single person has won a million dollars yet.  American Idol is pretty fun, but makes me feel guilty for laughing at the pathetic people.  It is mean.  I don’t love reality tv and I’m sad that all the other tv is gone because of the writer’s strike.   

I drink too much caffeine. 

I had a crazy dream last night that I was in New Orleans again, with some of the same people and some different people.  It was very jumbled, but colorful and entertaining.  Briscoe was with me, and I also had recently adopted a bulldog puppy.  Gah, I can’t imagine what I would do with two dogs. 

My Uggs melted next to the fire the other night.  Very, Very sad.  Sniff.  I mean, I can still wear them, they are just a little warped.  Kate says they are ruined.  I told her to be quiet. 

Y’all be good, I’m going to try to work harder at updating more often. 

Kisses. 

Britt:  WHOA!  That is a huge book!

Me:  Yep, I like big books.  This is a children’s novel.

Britt:  What is it?

Me:  His Dark Materials, you know, the Golden Compass. 

Britt:  Wait, I think I read something in a church bulletin that said you shouldn’t read that book or let your kids go see the movie.  Something about it being satanic.  Is it satanic?

Me:  That’s what I’m trying to figure out.  As far as I can tell, it is a children’s novel set in a fictional world, where an entity similarly structured as the church is evil.  Personally, I would compare it to 1984, where the government is evil.  I mean, it was written by an atheist.  But there seem to be some good moral themes.  It obviously is going to come down to good vs. evil.  We’ll see. 

____

Dan over at the Pasty Quail has been covering the Golden Compass debate, and I think it is really interesting.  I really like what he has to say here.  I strongly disagree with any organization that wants to tell me what I can and can’t read, or what I should and shouldn’t watch.  Why don’t churches worry about movies full of violence and hate and the kind of evilness that really and truly does exist in this world, instead of waging war against a STORY about an IMAGINARY place?

I haven’t read the whole thing.  So maybe I’ll feel differently about it when I get finished.  But I somehow doubt that a lot of people who are against this book and movie have read it.  I personally have more faith in my own faith than to be threatened by a novel.  Especially not a novel who heroes and heroines refuse to break their sworn promises, and who fight for the innocent, and whose actions are compassionate and heartfelt.  Because that is what I have gotten out of the book so far. 

But, you know, maybe it becomes satanic later on.  I would like to be a part of a church that encouraged children to read the book, or see the movie, and then initiate a discussion about how the "church" or the "god" in the book is different from the Church and the God that we believe in.  My mom said that some people don’t like the idea that people can be moralistic even if they aren’t religious.  But that is just a fact of life, right? 

I’m not sure why this whole thing bothers me so much, but I really don’t like the whole controversy.  I think part of it stems from the fact that it irritates me when people talk about Harry Potter being evil, and even some people think Lord of the Rings is negative, which is really amazing to me. 

There are over 500 facebook groups about the Golden Compass as of today.  Most of them are titled – DO NOT GO SEE THE GOLDEN COMPASS, or BOYCOTT THE GOLDEN COMPASS or THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND IT’S ATTACK ON CHRISTIANITY (wtf?) 

I particularly like – BOYCOTT THE GOLDEN COMPASS AND IT’S ATHEIST MESSAGE.  Really, I would say there appears to be more hate in these groups than in the book that I’ve been reading. 

I want to join the group – YOU KNOW WHAT YOU RELIGIOUS BIGOTS?  I JUST MIGHT GO SEE THE GOLDEN COMPASS.   or maybe – READING THE GOLDEN COMPASS DID NOT MAKE ME AN ATHEIST.

Really, I could spend hours going through these facebook groups.  But I don’t have time.  I need to go finish my novel.  I’m intrigued, and entertained, and challenged by it.