3/20--All Gone!

And some nights you just watch wrestling.

When I was small, my family bonded over Friday night wrestling. We had one TV channel in Zimbabwe, and it had two highlights during the week: wrestling on Friday and X-Men on Saturday morning. On Friday nights we'd make pizza, congregate in the living room, and watch big men in small clothing hit each other. Mom and I had in common a particular appreciation for Razor Ramon, who would walk jauntily into the ring with a toothpick tucked into the side of his mouth. Razor Ramon, I would like to note, eventually turned his back on WWF, joined WCW, changed his stage name to Scott Hall, and became part of the NWO--lame. Anyway, wrestling has always had this strange, kitschy charm, just because of the way I grew up with it (I just saw a clip of the Undertaker's being beaten up, and how old is he anyway? He should not be in the ring, okay?). I'm watching it tonight, because there seriously isn't anything better on (seriously!), and I just love the staging. It's so clear that the posturing is simply that--none of it is real--but it's so fun. There's this development of mythologies (the Undertaker's the prime example) that just never disappear.

I have nothing profound to say here. I'm just having fun watching wrestling.

Dogs, paint cups, and sketching

This will be mostly a picture post. Here's Fergus helping to explain so many things we wonder about:

Yes, that's my paint cup. Gotta love the little twit.










And here's a sketch of the most recent project. As you can see, it's pretty rough still. What do you think, kid? Is it a start? Would you rather something more portrait-style?

On another note entirely.

So occasionally I make forays into the freezer to inquire after long-forgotten frozen pizzas and the like, and I had noticed a Wal-mart-bagged something in there, but I usually avoid such things, as they generally turn out to be frozen chickens or turkeys. Today, however, as Steven and I were poking about, he pointed out what was actually in the bag:


Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. See, Steven's Sunday School teacher works at Kroger, and every Christmas he gets to take home a pig's head, because Kroger always orders two (for what purpose I dare not ask), and fails to sell one. So James gets to bring it home and, being a man who works with youth, he uses it for pranks. Steven put this in his best friend Ben's car one morning during church, and Ben didn't find it till late that night, but he thought, why waste a perfectly good pig's head? So he put it into his mother's freezer. Mrs. W., suspecting nothing, opened the freezer a few days later and freaked and threw it away, so Ben rescued it, and Steven transferred it to our freezer, where, after the pattern, Mom found it a few days later, freaked, and then gave in. So there it sits. I have no idea what we're going to do with it, but it has eyeballs and everything, and it's thoroughly repulsive. Welcome to the weird, weird life of my family.

Tradition!

My African friends will love this. My family can't
have a normal anything, because that would be
conforming, and we just don't do that, y'all.
Really, though, having lived in Africa, we just
can't make the regular Christmas decorations cut
it. So this is our tree:










Aaaaand this is the closeup:













Aaaaaaaand this is my Christmas face:

















Just kidding. I will probably wear less black at Christmas. Probably.

In recent news, because I know you're all interested...

• Mom took the dog to the groomers yesterday and had to pay an extra ten dollars' hazard fee, because Fergus is a wildchild. When I found out, I gave him a treat. He's definitely one of us.
• Went to Juvie on Thursday and got to talk with the boy I met last week. When I talked with him before, he prayed to accept Christ, which was awesome, but I had my doubts, because I'm learning that kids will do almost anything if they think it can get them out of jail. Thursday, though, he was excited and interested, and we had a neat hour and a half of condensed discipleship. It was incredible.
• I'm two witnesses short this term, and I'm praying that God will raise up at least two divine appointments.
• I'm thinking about dropping two of my classes for next term: I need the down time, and I haven't put paint on anything since last semester, which is just sick.
• I found out that U of M offers Arabic classes, and I'm thinking about getting in on that at some point.