Note to CNN: Stretching a point isn't news

Theology 101 for CNN: Pregnancy is not what made Mary, the fiance of Joseph the carpenter, the Virgin Mary. It was the fact that she became pregnant by means other than doing the wild thing after a late night party.

I saw a headline on CNNs website: "Life Imitates Art".

It seems that 16 year old actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, who plays the Virgin Mary in the new movie "The Nativity", is now pregnant by her 19 year old boyfriend.

I didn't realize that the Virgin Mary had a 19 year old boyfriend. Oh, she didn't? Then "life imitates art" might be stretching the point a bit.

I am not judging the actress, in a nation where a sizable portion of children are now born out of wedlock (mostly because as a society, we have seen heterosexuals make a lawyer's game of divorce to the point that the institution is not valued anymore, contrary to the paranoia by the Religious Right that somehow homosexuals are defiling the institution when they want to make a commitment and have it solemnified by the state or the church) there is nothing particularly shocking about a sexually active child (16 is under 18, legal definition child) getting pregnant by her boyfriend. I still believe that children should be conceived and born in a stable relationship, and marriage, both legally and religiously, was designed for that purpose

What is going to be interesting is to see how much hay the 24 hour news channels are going to make over either the vilification of this young woman or the "eerie parallel" that the girl who played Jesus' mother is now going to be a mother. Hey, guys, I understand Julia Roberts once played a character who drove a car...and now...she drives one in real life. Eerie...

Get real, kids. Why not report about Britney Spears' seeking custody of her children during her quickie divorce from some guy whose name is already a trivia question, announcing she's "ready to party" and hitting the town with Paris Hilton? I would love to be in family court the day those two losers go at it over who makes a better parent, any sane judge would rescue the kids and declare them orphans. But we will get 24 hour coverage on all of this, just reinforcing to our kids the notion that marriage is not worth a bucket of warm piss.

Hand-wringers: We should let gays marry...they couldn't mess up or defile the institution any more than we have. They might actually do better, they seem to have some sense of value for it.

No Civil War in Iraq

Good news, people. Official word from The White House is that the American Civil War never really occurred, there was just some "significant factional infighting" for a time.

Next up: World War II will be reclassified as a "lover's spat" and the Holocaust will heretofore be listed as merely a "domestic dispute".

Can we quit lying to save face? The Administration spokespeople (I feel sorry for Tony Snow, I really do...his credibility has been shredded by taking the Press Secretary job) just somehow think that if they refuse to admit the truth (isn't that fundamentally the same as a lie?) then the unplesant facts will go away and people will still love them.

Tell that to the brave men and women of our Armed Forces who are spilling spilling blood and giving lives on foreign soil for a war that never should have been, an act of arrogance and violence more to prove the masculinity of a single pathetic figure than to achieve any true political, humanitarian or even economic purpose.

Asking for feedback on a representative track of the CD

Just looking for some old-fashioned feedback. You can comment here, or drop me a line.

We're doing a major urban renewal project on the old City of Legends...and there are decisions to be made.

Not the least of which is which of three different clips from THE LAST ROMANTIC VERB will be used as the sample clip from the section on that CD...

here are the choices:

Kisses for Karma. This sweet, 3 minute and 15 second reverie on the decisions we face in loving has a very great charm for me, despite the rather jarring horns midway through.

and

Beasts of Legend. An intense and spawling work (15 and a half minutes long!) with several poems in it: "My Electric Lady", "Brisant Revelations", "Shards of Light", "Radiant Tigers", "Aureate", "Pellinore (watching from across the room)" and "glass roses". That incredible bridge just before "Radiant...". Maybe too long, too complex.

and

The Gods of Love, Live at Kyrienar. The Gods come down to play in this virtual concert. Five minutes and 38 seconds, containing "Monument", "Phoenix & Golem" and the defining moment that is "TRANSCENDENCE".

So, which should I use? I see the good and the bad in each. The person who comes up with the best reasoned argument for any one of the tracks gets a free book.

too many ideas...

I realized as I sat down this morning to blog that it is not that I don't have any ideas for the topic, I have too many. I need to sort those out and prioritize, as I find most audiences have a problem with anyone who writes about too many things.

It rattles our need to keep things simple. We actually consider a lack of complexity a virtue. Of course, this means that even nature is lacking in virtue, as most things that actually work are more than one-cause-and-one-effect-and-there-ya-go!

I worked with a new class last night and in the course of the evening went around the room and had everyone in the room interview a partner. The number of people who came forward and said they wrote poetry was surprising. I asked one of them my classic protege qualifier as to what poetry was to them:

"Is it a hobby, a job, a career, an obsession or a religion?"

He answered "At one time it was a passion, an obsession, but I seem to have lost it since my divorce."

I reassured him that the muse was merely taking a vacation. I once had that happen for several years, leading up to my auto accident, when it came back with the roar of a panther and a vengeance. Whether or not you view what happened in my personal life at the time as a good idea or a dumb one, you have to admit, when the muse came back, she came back with galleon of gold for ransom for my soul.