Hey y'all-

Sorry it's been awhile. Big B is very busy with his job and I have an Oct. 1st deadline that is taking up all of my time. School is going well and I am quite proud to say that I have completed my first original screenplay that has nothing to do with Darkfin or my previous stories.

Do not worry -- I will be getting back to Erika, Morrigan, and the gang in October for sure!

In the meantime, I can't tell you how much I love this man's words:

Jesus Doesn't Wear Prada
A shrill New Testament gets a "sassy" teen fashion-mag makeover. And
you thought Britney was scary
By Mark Morford

These are the things to imperil young girls.

These are the things to corrupt young gullible minds and short-circuit
self-expression and demean the desperately needed impulse toward
spontaneous self-awareness and individuality and happy guiltless
vaginal investigations.

These are the things to make Mary-Kate and Ashley's alarming and
utterly demonic stranglehold on the world of vacuous saccharine
multimillion-dollar teendom seem like a boring day at the mall, with
lots of makeup and tube tops and Hot Dog on a Stick.

Here's the gimmick: Take a weird, modern conservative revisionist New
Testament and wrap it in faux-hip fashion-mag duds and hawk it to
unsuspecting young maidens who otherwise wouldn't get within ten
low-rise jean lengths of the gray-bearded dust-choked finger-wagging
dogma of King James and all his hoary misogynistic machismo. Clever
indeed.

It's called "Revolve: The Complete New Testament" and it's apparently
racing up the Amazon.com sales charts -- whatever that means -- as it
sucks up all the accoutrements of a teen fashion rag and rams them
through the cute Christian grinder of humorlessness and sexual rigidity
and homophobia, and regurgitates them as kicky dumbed-down slightly
numb virginal tidbits of advice and admonition and, yes, Biblical
storytelling.

Because apparently girls don't already have enough dogma out there
telling them what to do, a large enough mountain of misinfo and scorn
and sexual mixed messages to sift through, and not a single source is
telling them how to really tune into themselves, listen to their own
unique voices, find their own sex and their own power and their own
divine potency.

Nope. Instead they get this, a sweetly uptight, revisionist Bible
cross-bred with a bad fashion magazine, full of Top 10 lists and
quizzes and Q&As, telling them to "pray for a person of influence"
every day and check the "godly" quotient of the boys they date and that
Jesus doesn't really like it when they wear skimpy clothes and goth
eyeliner. Yep, that should clear things right up.

"A 'Revolve' girl makes a point of dressing modestly. She might wonder
to herself, Would God find this too revealing or too suggestive?"
That's a direct quote from the ultra-prim Laurie Whaley, one of
"Revolve's" editors over at Thomas "Bibles 'R Us" Nelson publishing
house, whose picture graces a recent interview in the Mew York Times.

Wonder not, my children, at the status of Laurie's chastity. Wonder not
at what kind of pristine white underwear she might be wearing. Wonder
not at her desperate need for a Hitachi Magic Wand and a bottle of
Anejo Silver and a long, hot summer night alone in her room. Oh,
Laurie. Come back to us.

What, not scary enough? Fine. How about this: "Revolve" takes a
decidedly conservative view of the Bible, condemns homosexuality,
encourages virginity until marriage, and informs girls that excessive
makeup and jewelry and revealing clothes are to be avoided and chastity
is to be rewarded because, well, Jesus really loves baggy sweaters and
granny underwear.

More? You got it. It also tells them to quietly shut up and always
listen to your parents and don't take the initiative by actually
calling a boy on the phone, ever. Did Mary Magdalene ever call Jesus?
Of course she didn't. And "Revolve" tells these befuddled girls, in all
seriousness, that it's best to let the males lead the relationship.

There now. All better. Screw the female cause. Screw individuality and
divine feminine power. Sure Jesus loves you, Jenny, but he loves you
more if you wear long shapeless wool skirts and minimal mascara and
don't think too darn much, K?

And yet, weird little makeup tips abound in the book, outright groaners
for all but the most painfully gullible Bible-belted girls. "You need a
good, balanced foundation for the rest of your makeup," says one "tip."
"Kinda like how Jesus is the strong foundation in our lives."

Yes that's right. Jesus is the Chapstick for the dry lips of your
sinning self. Jesus is the holy Clearasil for your Satanic shin zits.
Jesus is that amazing clenched feeling you get when you lie back and
aim the shower massager just right and ... oh, never mind.

"Make sure that Jesus would be pleased with what you wear. You don't
have to look frumpy, just make sure you look like a child of God." This
is the advice. This is what passes for serious religious assistance.
Has it really come to this? Are girls supposed to believe God really
cares what they wear, and is watching their every purchase at the
Esprit outlet like some supreme pervert stalker? "Revolve" says, hell
yes!

"The fire of God's love burns out the sin the same way the hot steam
routs the dirt out of your pores. This kind of relationship with God
will do more to improve your looks than any amount of facials," reads
the part on "Spiritual Facials." Isn't that clever? Doesn't it just
make your colon clench right up in divine bliss? Sure it does.

Maybe you'd be tempted to think this is progress. Maybe you'd like to
think it's somehow a good thing that Christianity and certain
publishers of mutant bibles are trying to reach new audiences, to break
down barriers and make themselves "hip" while striving to hook a new
generation into Christianity's lair or gentle oppressive patriarchal
fun.

Or maybe you think "Revolve" is really chock full of nice, safe,
wholesome messages teen girls can really use in a world of teeming,
roiling sexual anxiety and confusion and way, way too much Britney and
MTV and premarital sex and poor condom awareness.

You would be wrong. "Revolve" is actually very much like a mind-control
experiment, very much like some sort of sinister trick wherein they,
like Christian rock bands, surreptitiously infiltrate a world the girls
actually care about and use the teen's own anxieties and angst against
them to instill a certain, narrow Christian agenda, induce a fluffy
sense of guilt and shame, all the while imparting a bleached, sanitized
morality that includes not a whit of funk or style or messy icky sex or
intuition or sly winking cosmic knowledge. Almost makes "Glamour" look
like "The Celestine Prophecy," no?

"Revolve" is basically a sheep in wolf's clothing, a prim training
manual for future well-Valiumed housewives who let their husbands rule
the roost and don't strive too hard for anything and don't think overly
much or who have long given up notions of exploring the diversity of
the world, or divinity, or sexuality, or much of anything, really. And
yes, it's a bestseller.

"Revolve" devolves the teen cause. Not a word about how individuality
is cool and self-exploration is way bitchin' and that they themselves
are divine, are all-powerful, and that sex is a gorgeous powerful
wondrous sticky joy to be respected and enjoyed and explored and
consented upon and well learned. Heaven forefend. That way debauchery
and hellfire lies.

Are these really the only choices? Is it really either vapid anorexic
fashion mags or an uptight prudish revisionist New Testament designed
to reduce the female teen spirit to shrill hollow pious guilt-addled
automaton Formica?

Where, pray where, can a young teen turn for true unadulterated
perspective and inspiration? For insight and anxiety relief and a big
heaping dose of the gloriously convoluted, slithery, well-accessoried
mess that is modern life? Hmm. Maybe that's why God invented books.