I like this nice young woman.

I'm officially giving up on men

in favor of this man.


"Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed."

-Jesus




for realz

best song

let me upgrade u

Something about these moves:







and these lyrics:


I can do for you what Martin did for the people
Ran by the men but the women keep the tempo
It's very seldom that you're blessed to find your equal
Still play my part and let you take the lead role
Believe me
I'll follow this could be easy
I'll be the help whenever you need me
I see you hustle wit my hustle I
Can keep you
Focused on your focus I can feed you

[bridge:]
You need a real woman in your life
That's a good look
Taking care
Home is still fly
That's a good look------------------------


Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it

wo oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh oh 


Don’t treat me to the things of this world
I’m not that kind of girl
Your love is what I prefer, what I deserve
Is a man that makes me, then takes me
And delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond
Pull me into your arms
Say I’m the one you WANT
If you don’t, you’ll be alone
And like a ghost I’ll be gone








doesn't quite match up.

listen to NPR's song of the day + yesterday's

today's

yesterday's

but this is interesting

Black and elitist in America, huh? Hmm.

(photo credit: this is from a long-lost cousin of mine in Tennessee)

heyyyyy, I don't care

Maybe I'm just blinded by loyalty, but I'm getting pretty annoyed at people's reactions to Obama's being selected as the Nobel Peace Prize recipient. First of all, that they're still talking about it. Secondly, that they assume that speaking and giving speeches doesn't count as "action." And mostly, that they want to dedicate facebook status updates to the news that they're against it. Both my conservative friends and my radical pacifist friends are doing this. Well...cool. With all this political self-righteousness and needless divisiveness, apathy seems more and more appealing every minute.

My mom is the harshest of critics.

Well, maybe a dying corn field in October.

Is there anything more beautiful than a dying bean field in October? I think not.

An Impromptu Analysis of the Life of Holly Regnier Using a Pseudonym, Upon Request

Scarlet bo Peep loves her cats because they are hers, and because when they were kittens, they were cute (if you like that sort of a thing), though just as frivolous as they are now, and just as willing to swat at the hair on top of your head from above the couch. She hedges. She mumbles. And Scarlet has no qualms about falling asleep while driving, while watching a movie, while walking. One would not call her a great wit, perhaps, but there is no denying that she has a great mind. That is to say: Scarlet is a little slow on the uptake, but she has an almost uncanny understanding of things like time zones. She is a fan of evading the question, but then, who isn't? She is very generous with her money, her car, her time, and her house, and this she gets from her father, a koala. Scarlet bo Peep has available several stunning senior pictures in which she is bewitchingly pictured playing a flute. Her flute. She is as musical as she is mathematical: she sings, she plays the piano, she plays the flute, and on occasion, she dances. The dancing is nothing any of us has ever seen before and we would not like to see it performed by any other person or animal. Scarlet bo Peep is sensitive and discreet, except at wedding parties. She has excessively sloping shoulders. She bakes the butteriest, fluffiest of rolls and denies, unreasonably, that a better bread product can be found. The roles do not sell for as much as, say, a Swedish Tea Ring at a 4-H County Fair food auction, but they manage well enough.

facebook, bumper stickers, and language

Today, I read this on my former classmate's facebook profile:

"If you can read this. Thank a teacher...
If you are reading it in English....
THANK A SOLDIER!!!"
God Bless America !!


What are we, France? Are we this concerned about language preservation? Who really thinks that English is dying out, or that we are its only practitioners? Is this what the soldiers are doing for us? I didn't... I just... that's not how I conceptualized soldiering?

On a related note (really not related at all), yesterday I read this bumper sticker on the back of a car I drove behind for about ten minutes:

"Jesus is God. Is he YOUR God?"

I have trouble understanding this message as well. I think they probably mean something like "Do YOU have the enviable personal relationship with Jesus that I have?" and not necessarily in a snide way. But the all-caps YOUR throws me off, I don't mind telling you. I have a facebook friend/acquaintance who has listed on her profile a similar sentiment, something about loving "my friends, my family, and my God." I think an & symbol is used, actually. A little smug looking, isn't it? So curly and cozy it is. Sometimes I like the & sign and sometimes it reminds me of a bony, purring cat rubbing against my leg, and then I want to puke. But to get back to the subject at hand:

I've been noticing this lately--this use of the possessive personal pronoun in relation to God. Well, I don't think I like it. Is that bad? It's like my car calling me "my driver." No, YOU'RE MY CAR! Well, no, it's not even like that. It's like a very boring and self-involved rock at the bottom of the ocean calling the ocean "mine"! Hopefully a desire for possession isn't behind this trend, but I fear it is. That's right- fear. I am very afraid. The desire to possess seems to be behind nearly every bad and cruel thing about us, in fact. Really. Even that first thing about the English language. D. H. Lawrence belabors this point like the belaboring pro he is, but I've always found it to be true. And I do agree, Mr. Lawrence, as I've told your ghost and my few living blog readers before: We can possess nothing. (Yes, D. H. Lawrence's ghost reads my blog.)

Finally, I keep meeting and casually conversing with 20-something grammar freaks (I spend far too much time in coffee shops) who complain about comma splices. And I would like to add here the not very interesting observation that facebook has also made comma splices more acceptable, at least to me. Someone's status could be "drinking pop, hoping the Illini win even though they suck, I forgot to go to gramma's," and this is perfectly acceptable, mostly because the commas are separating three separate thoughts that form the list that replies to the question "What's on your mind?" But regardless, I see this so often that I'm now inundated with comma splices and ANYTHING GOES, folks. You might be surprised that I would have formerly enforced such a grammar rule, but sometimes, descriptive grammar methods are too much for me, and whenever prescriptive grammar rules enforce what I consider a more aesthetically appealing use of language, I'm for them. It's just that for most grammar rules, this doesn't hold true. "One of the best short stories of which I know" sure does not sound as good to me as "One of the best short stories I know of," but then again, I am from "the Middle West" as William Maxwell would say, and as that most gentle and generous of Middle Western writers has put it, "Nobody I know in the Middle West has ever gone out of his way to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition." Incidentally, I have it on good authority that when Maxwell wrote "his," he meant "her/his," and certainly with the "her" out front (he was a proponent of affirmative action, you see).

Considering the four people who read this blog actually know things about grammar, maybe you'd like to add your expert opinion? eh? Because, I have a feeling that I only half know what a comma splice is, and that half only from context clues. Actually, I didn't want to talk about grammar. I get really sick of people talking about it. Grammar's really not that interesting, and academics always say the same things about it. I wanted to talk about that first facebook sentiment-- the one that doesn't actually seem to care at all about soldiers, let alone teachers. And now I remember that another former classmate's facebook status yesterday was about eff you all, I serve the military and everyone forgets about me on my birthday. I have nothing to say about this, except that I am sorry, and that when I think of this status update in light of the previously mentioned profile quotation, my mind sort of spins and I am just sick again of how we can't seem to help but mess everything up and for misguided reasons. Clearly, I should be more thankful for those serving in the military, I should probably go to friends' birthday parties, I should probably not express xenophobic sentiments disguised as patriotism or devotion. Well. I can't wait 'til this is fixed for me when we're all robots or genetically perfected automatons!!!



P.S. Is there an alternative to exclamation points? I hate them. From now on purple text or possibly a tiny Michael Jackson icon will signify an exclamation on this blog. Thank you.

one of the best short stories I know of

"When she saw them she put a zinnia in her mouth, and held still."