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well, that's it. tripod has finally revoked my david privileges. i look like the binx now. sorry, binx, no offence.

woo, that is an ugly banner. i wonder if the diary is as ugly as that damn banner is. go look for me, and let me know. i can't do it myself.

today, we're having a barbeque. it's grey and gross outside; yesterday it started grey and gross and eventually cleared up enough for me to sit outside, read Betty DeGeneres's "Love, Ellen" (which i got for my mother and she scoffed at and never read) and pull out some melanomic freckles. i'm either pasty with pasty freckles, or pasty with darker freckles. or burnt. there is a sickening lack of inbetween.

this barbeque we're having. guests are coming. a family, the wife of which is my mother's best friend. and also intensely religious. but she don' give me no grief 'bout my les-bi-osity. she be one of those cool christians, you know, love everyone, back to the land kind-of-thing.

this week, the baby she was looking after died of SIDS. knowing this woman you know there is absolutely no other explanation, if not medical on the baby's part. but the next day, this tiny little article in the ottawa paper appeared - "Baby's death puzzles detectives". the woman read a passage in church on sunday, and when my mother asked how she was doing, she said, "i brought this on myself."
"what do you mean?" asked my mother.
"well, i prayed to god for suffering; i didn't think he'd go this far."

uh-..........huh.

i say bust out the hairshirts, marie de l'incarnation! let's get back to the good ol' days of self-flagellation to rid our lives of pleasure, and maybe then we wouldn't have to fill them with the displeasure of other people! of their insanity! (aka my BROTHER) of their insecurities! of THEM! beat ourselves, get rid of all good things, and we don't have to use our families and needy clingy high-maintenance friends as our hairshirts. damn. it's starting to make sense to me now.