I don't know how to love Jesus.

I would make a West Virginia joke here, but I'll refrain, because it's the Christian thing to do.

I tried; I really did. I used to go to church on Sundays with my friend's family when I was eleven. I was excited to learn the Lord's Prayer and I took communion despite the fact I was never baptized. I used to beg my mom to buy me those hurricane candles in the grocery store with pictures of Mary's face glued to the glass. I was fascinated and enamored with the quiet, cold, insular, and ancient world of Catholicism.

And then I got a little older.

I wasn't raised with a religion, an issue I would torpedo at my mother during my pre-pubescent temper tantrums. "Why don't I go to Sunday School?" I would wail. My mother, nonchalantly, would reply, "Because those fucking bitch nuns ruined my life." My dad always maintained that he didn't believe in anything really, but if he actually cared, he'd be Buddhist.

Growing up in a very Italian, psuedo-religious town, it was hard not to feel left out. Now, there was no passion in any of it - it was tradition, it was going through the motions until you were confirmed, it was something you did to set yourself up for later in life, but it seemed like everyone did it. The only people who were actually dedicated, who went to church regularly, were the old widows, who'd kneel with their rosaries and pray for the health of their grandchildren and seek solace in the words of old men, much like the husbands that left them behind.

This past weekend I attended a VERY religious wedding, with the all the classic elements - insistence on honoring God in the vows, stressed importance on having Jesus as the focus of the marriage, backhanded comments about homosexuals and civil marriage. I tried not to roll my eyes. I tried to honor the belief system of these people (both of whom I actually like very much), much as I would hope they'd honor my complete apathy to any religious system, nearly all of which have been clear in placing women below men and systematically devaluing half the species. I can't subscribe to a set of beliefs that tells us to believe in the love and power of a God who lets people starve and allows extremists to kill thousands of people in his name. I also can't believe an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being that supposedly created everything in the universe actually has a sex and a gender.

Now, don't get me wrong - Jesus sounds like a good person. It's just all the crap surrounding him that turns me off. I won't speak badly of the guy, but due to the circumstances, I just don't think it's going to work. It's not you, Jesus; it's the assholes who think they know you. It's the self-righteous pastors and priests who condemn all of us who fornicated, lied and cheated - yet those were the people you flocked to. You knew long before Billy Joel that laughing with the sinners was better than crying with the saints.

Just do us all a favor and tell the people who worship you to lighten up.

brides are f**king crazy.

Since I've started planning the wedding, I've been looking at a LOT of stuff online. It's been really helpful and the internet is responsible for my awesome self-designed wedding postcard invitations, our paper lanterns/fans, my parasol, and my DRESS! (which is still in the works).

I never realized all of the things you have to think about when it comes to a wedding - where people are going to sit, how to decorate, how to do vows & readings, music, thank you cards, etc. I've spent a lot of time looking at different sites for advice, checklists and the like.

As a result, I've come in contact with maybe the greatest site ever, and the site that maybe the signifier of the coming of the apocalypse.

Offbeat Bride is soooo bomb. They celebrate unique weddings that stray from the original rules, which is exactly what I'm going for. Their associated ning community, the Offbeat Bride Tribe, is a great community where people can share their weddings *without judgment* and get inspired by others' creativity. There's lots of DIY, lots of people with ridiculously small budgets (like my own) and lots of like-minded people who don't buy into the WIC.

The WIC, or wedding industrial complex, if you're not familiar, is otherwise known as the wedding industry and its completely fucking inane constructs. The diamond engagement ring is a product of the WIC and the invention of a female copywriter from the 1940s. A diamond is forever? Not really, only about 65 years.

Another invention of the WIC is the concept of lavish white/ivory gowns which you HAVE TO WEAR. White was only made popular by Queen Elizabeth I; prior to that, gowns were blue. Blue was actually meant to signify purity, while white was used to show wealth (ie., you could keep a white item of clothing clean). The furthest any bridal magazine will stray from white/ivory is a light champagne. If you are getting married, you will be told by society that your only option is white. Too bad for those assholes, because I'm wearing black.

But the whole idea of the WIC - spending $20,000 or more on a super-formal wedding that includes elaborate flowers, three course meals, videographers and giant fondant cakes - is crap, in my opinion. And no place is a bigger cheerleader for the capitalistic, material shitshow that is the modern wedding than theknot.com.

To be frank, the women on The Knot are evil. Okay, so maybe they're not possessed by Satan, but if you dare to speak on their community and do not have professional engagement photos, they will proceed to call you tacky and cheap and try to get you kicked off the site simply because you are not a spoiled little bitch with daddy paying for your $4000 Vera Wang gown.

I am not resentful of these women with unlimited budgets and dyed-to-match bridesmaids. I'm really not. I am happy to have a small, intimate, casual wedding. That's exactly what I want. I just don't understand why these women have to be so fucking mean to people who don't like what they like. It's like high school, all over again.

These women spend all day on The Knot's community forum, asking about whether or not they should buy chocolate fountains. These grown women make avatars of themselves in their wedding dresses and write bios about their relationships, as if anyone gives a shit. They are pretty much the most self-absorbed, bitchy, stereotypical wedding-and-baby-obsessed female products of our patriarchal, greedy society that exist. If you meet a woman and she says that she's getting married and then goes on to spend 10 minutes talking about her "colors" and whining about how her maid of honor actually has a life, RUN. Just run. These women make me embarrassed about being engaged. They don't care at all about marriage, just having their "perfect day" that they won't even remember when they're fighting over the china during the inevitable divorce.

yeah, I'm getting married, you jerks.

Okay, so this has basically been the strangest/oddly hardest thing I've ever done.

The last thing anyone thought I would do. Aside from spawn. No worries, folks. My uterus has no plans of serving any purpose in the near future.

All I seem to get is faux excitement from most people. Which is fine. Believe me, when I start talking about centerpieces, I want your eyes to glaze over. Please, everyone, make sure I'm not one of those women. I still will never be able to care about the difference between a princess or an asscher-cut diamond. I could give two shits about whether ivory or champagne is the right color for a veil.

To anyone that was genuinely hurt or bothered by the fact you found out on Facebook - I'm sorry, I really am, but I wasn't going to call everyone in my phone and gush about my impending nuptials. I know I should have contacted some of you, but I really don't know how to handle all this stuff and I don't want this to be the focus of my personality for the next 6 months. It's hard enough dealing with my mother's reluctance. Yes, I am young. No one is more aware of this fact than I am. But I met someone that I know I want to hang out with forever. What's the point of waiting when I'm more sure about this than I've ever been about everything in my life?

Okay, /wedding-related rant. Upward and onward to bigger things.

HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEW JUNIOR BOYS? Um, crap. It's awesome. They're playing at the middle east in may, so I finally found some use for my Ticketmaster giftcards. If you're not familiar, let this blow your mind:




I just found out IAMX is releasing a new album in may as well. My heart bursts.