whitney and pedro are married!
here are the photos i took while in stockton for their wedding: http://picasaweb.google.com/the17pointscale/200908WhitPedroWedding?authkey=Gv1sRgCMfS4OCIpuDgGw&feat=directlink.
i am told that as christianity struggles to remain relevant in a fast-paced, anything-goes culture, a new kind of church is rising from the empty pews of the mainline protestant denominations. it's a church that seeks to provoke thought and kiss off complacency. it's a postmodern or emergent church. the pastor may drink beer or vote democrat. the worshippers may sing hymns or play crashing guitars and accordions. and the church treasury may sign checks to support human rights groups, evangelists, or artists.
i happen to attend a church like this, and every winter we do our part to encourage the arts. members of the bethany community volunteer to teach classes to fellow church-goers or folks in the north seattle community. the classes--thai fusion cooking, card making, ts eliot poetry, digital photography, salsa dancing, cheese making, classical guitar, lectio divina, etc, etc, etc--are advertised throughout the community and occur in homes, coffeshops, and the church basement.
last year, beth the s.o. and mari (she doesn't yet have a 17 point scale deidentifying nickname) both taught several classes for the bethany arts college. this december they nobly approached me to see if i might also teach a class. i say nobly not because it's a strange funny-looking word but because my 2 year attendance at bethany community church has been nearly devoid of service. that is, i show up on sunday but give almost nothing of my time. i am a christian parasite (yikes!), and beth and mari's recruitment efforts may perhaps represent an unconscious attempt to reform me and precipitate some kind of evolutionary event in my soul.
"you could teach a class in blogging," they said.
besides my initial gut reaction--"that's nerdy"--and an overwhelming sense that a class on blogging would be very unfun, there would be something akin to hypocrisy if i were suddenly deemed master blogger. you see, here's what i would teach as the three most important keys to successful:
i've finished rating my mp3 library, hooray! that means that i've assigned a rating to 4,184 songs. in celebration, i've spent the last 15 minutes listening only to songs that were rated five stars (that's 88 songs on random play) and posting a picture of cake (the next best thing to eating it). i also deleted some of those nasty albums that were wasting precious disk space (about 1 gig to nearly be precise). now, because i know you all love lists, here are the first 11 albums (/artists)to receive the axe:
doolittle/pixies (everyone seems to love the pixies; everyone but me, that is)
frances the mute/the mars volta (intriguing album and band name, but, oh, well)
hoars/16 horsepower
laundry service/shakira
peel slowly/the velvet underground -- i left a few 3 star songs
so jealous/tegan & sara
the best little secrets are kept/louis XIV (it serves them right to have their album deleted; it's title is a lie)
the downward spiral/nine inch nails -- kept "hurt" and "a warm place"
with teeth/nine inch nails -- kept "every day is exactly the same" and "right where it belongs"
the Futureheads/the futureheads -- kept "the city is for you to use"
wet from birth/the faint (it's too bad; i liked their band name)
andrew david. "kayaking down a river of eggless chocolate" shekinah, saskatchewan.
i'd really love for this blog to be a space where i sit at my keyboard and spin fantastic webs of light. i'd love for my words to jump off the page and rattle around in some fellow's brain until they bust a hole in his ventromedial prefrontal cortex, short-circuiting his laissez-faire let-it-be morality, shaking him from his apathy, making him high with the possibility of some greater purpose. but i'm neither prophet nor poet. i'm the anti-dillard--i fill space with preposterous commentary, not meaningful echoes of the sublime. truth is a dreamy-eyed hermit who visits me in secret; she rummages through my cupboards, raids the fridge, and occasionally i catch sight of her coat as she runs through the backyard grass and into the trees. yes, these posts are mostly about grammar, sports, and cooking, but perhaps one day i'll stumble upon her yellow plastic hood bobbing in the rain. until then, i'll be that guy with a holeless brain.
(this itsy-bitsy paragraph was loosely inspired by two burned fingers, a few months of richard dahlstrom's preaching, the blue road, and the book of hebrews...i'd say more about that, but i only have one and a half hands to type.)
andrew david. "imagine these yahoos in christmas sweaters--are we sure we want to go caroling?" shekinah, saskatchewan.
i edit like a blind guy. i feel my way through a paragraph, listening to the sound of consonants, words, and ideas; the squawk of a renegade comma or miscreant phrase. i have a knack for this sort of thing. but a blind knack ain't always good enough. writers are notoriously protective of their work, and every so often they may challenge an edit. and when they do, it doesn't pay to say "oh, i play by ear--it just sounds better this way." therefore, i'm quickly learning to combine my instincts with science. i've become a bit of a grammar junkie. my drug of choice is fowler's modern english usage, but i've got all kinds dictionaries, websites, and stylebooks to keep me company.
thus, one day it came to pass that i was merrily editing a schizophrenia manuscript, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a because came flying onto the page. "what's this?" i asked. the because sat in the middle of the sentence, separated from the main clause by a big ghastly comma. as i moved to strike the comma, i wondered, "gosh, is there actually a reason to delete this comma?"
little did i know that such a simple question would lead to an avalanche of becauseness. indeed, if you scour the internet for because, you will probably find that i have compiled the most comprehensive online resource for this silly subordinating conjunction. because of its size, the because reference is being stored at the 17 point scale appendix. but to whet your interest, here's a table of contents:
I. because answers the questions why? and how?
II. because at the beginning of sentences
III. commas
IV. confusion with other words
A. because versus as and since
B. because versus for
C. because versus inasmuch as
D. because (of) versus due to
E. because (of) versus due to the fact that
V. the reason is … because (no!)
VI. because and negatives
VII. references
andrew david. "misplaced modifier" shekinah, saskatchewan.
i'm proud to say that i have some fine photographs of mountains, lakes, sign posts, and grass. however, i'm not too handy with low light environments, sports events, or family portraits. i have a knack for seeing the world, but only if it's sitting silently in front of me. if a picture requires a flash or thoughtful consideration of f-stops and white balance, i'm screwed. and so, as you can see below, i don't make much of a wedding photographer (thus i'll try to hurry through these pics of danny's wedding), but i might make a great PI. that is, while i can't make people look good, i'm awfully talented at making them look goofy. in the end, that's fine though; even if my people pictures stink, they amuse me. take this series, for instance. it was supposed to be a romantic picture of danny and alison, but somehow that chap in the vest and violet ensemble steals the show. for some reason i just love how he progresses from thoughtful boredom to smiley, laughey, and, finally, clappy (sorry for the small thumbnails, you can either trust me on this one or open 'em up and check out zany violet man for yourself).
andrew david. "kissey, smiley, laughey, and clappy" shekinah ("the presence of God"--i just discovered this when i was googling to verify the town name; isn't that cool? danny and alison were married in the presence of God, saskatchewan.), saskatchewan.
(1) i've made $11 on istockphoto.com! only $89 more and i'll actually be able to cash out.
(2) i've evaluated 4,182 mp3s. only 75 more and i'll have rated my entire itunes library.
(3) i've exchanged 4+ emails about editing a client's novel. only 1+ more and i might have a deal.
(4) i've posted 192 blog entries. only 8 more and i'll have exhausted all of my ideas for the 17 point scale. okay that's probably not true, but at the moment it certainly feels that way. and since it's always best to be prepared, i've found you a replacement site; it's a blog about reading, writing, and annie dillard. in the most recent post, the blogger (beth) talks of church, polar bears (well, they're actually dillard's polar bears, not beth's), and the beautiful agony that is writing (or more particularly, the troubling realization that visits nearly every young writer, the sad epiphany that some greater, more renowned author has somehow stolen your paper mache idea and given it wings, the elegant, nuanced wings of a monarch butterfly or a hoatzin). just imagine the coolness of my parenthetical thought multiplied by some really big number (maybe a number like 70. isn't that the really huge, seemingly infinite number that Christ offered the apostles when they asked how many times they should forgive their brother? i may be recalling this wrong, but if not, does that mean that jews and romans were really bad at math? or should i stop forgiving him later this year?), and you'll have a rough sense of how great this blog is. but there is one problem. you'll have to pay spu a few thousand dollars before you can read it. yep, it's that good. officially, the money that you'd spend to read the blog is considered tuition for spu's mfa in creative writing, but we all know that that's just lawyer talk, cause i'm telling you, it's a darn good blog.
andrew david. "yes this is a rather plain wedding picture and yes i wore those sandals during the wedding and yes thats danny and alison at the bottom of the page and yes you can tell becky that ive finally read some wendell berry" saskatchewan, canada.
may you be as happy as n-than oin-s both tonight and on thanksgiving day!
andrew david "smiley" saskatoon, saskatchewan.
