"Home"

In family parlance, "home" is a split-level home on five acres outside Fernie, BC. However, "home" is somewhere different entirely. It's a small, largely greenish island in the middle of the Atlantic somewhat closer to the far side than the near side.

I'm off on rather short notice to said home-italics-inclusive, and I'm bringing a dark suit. It's unfortunately not the first time I've done this, and it's sadly probably not going to be the last.

To tide you over while I attend to this vital business, join with me in a delightful puzzle: together we shall ponder if and how the verb conjugation is correct in Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars."

If I lay here.
If I just lay here.
Would you lie with me
and just forget the world?

Some sort of exotic pluperfect mishmash? Or evidence that people from the northern part of the aforementioned island need a revised grammar curriculum?

"...drenching us in golden, godly love"

This thoroughly fascinating article published in Harper's 18 months ago has, shall we say, new relevance today. Author Jeff Sharlet takes us inside Ted Haggard's Colorado Springs megachurch:

The atrium is a soaring foyer adorned with the flags of the nations and guarded by another bronze warrior angel, a scowling, bearded type with massive biceps and, again, a sword. The angel's pedestal stands at the center of a great, eight-pointed compass laid out in muted red, white, and blue-black stone. Each point directs the eye to a contemporary painting, most depicting gorgeous, muscular men—one is a blacksmith, another is bound, fetish-style, in chains—in various states of undress. My favorite is The Vessel, by Thomas Blackshear, a major figure in the evangelical-art world. Here in the World Prayer Center is a print of The Vessel, a tall, vertical panel of two nude, ample-breasted, white female angels team-pouring an urn of honey onto the shaved head of a naked, olive-skinned man below. The honey drips down over his slab-like pecs and his six-pack abs into the eponymous vessel, which he holds in front of his crotch. But the vessel can't handle that much honey, so the sweetness oozes over the edges and spills down yet another level, presumably onto our heads, drenching us in golden, godly love. Part of what makes Blackshear's work so compelling is precisely its unabashed eroticism; it aims to turn you on, and then to turn that passion toward Jesus.

So, um, should we colour ourselves surprised that Haggard likes the cock?