'A Most Ingenious Paradox!'

fa-so-la-la

Haha! I've caught Picasso in a rather interesting worldview anomaly! Not exactly a life goal of mine to be sure, but still, pleasing, in a quiet way.

So you can all picture Your Typical Picasso, right? Here's one for you...

Ok, so with that in mind, look at these two portraits, one of his first wife, the other of a later mistress:

Beautiful, aren't they? Looks like the old blighter couldn't quite keep up all that fragmentation etc. when his heart was in it. Rathah revealing, don't you know.

there's something seriously wrong with fa.

q. shenaynay

Me: Hey, girls! I tell you what! If you'll both go put your hair up and stuff, I'll go get my wedding dress box down and unpack it and y'all can finally see it and put it on and everything!!!!!!!!!

(Woo hoo! Big moment! Mamadah moment of a lifetime!!!)

Fa: But we have to finish school.


Sick. Sick, I tell you.

Fa Quote of the Week

"I've finally figured out why Beatrice needs longer to get stuff done than I do. It's because she has to stop and exude charisma."

Lunch was made for me and you.

q. shenaynay, beatrice & fa


It's late January. You're bored and you know it. So play a silly little game with us.

Think of a song lyric with the word LOVE in it
and substitute the word LUNCH.

If this doesn't strike you funny, well then you just need to get simple. This goofy exercise has proven capacity to increase your simplitude to a more desirable level the longer you keep at it. Good for when you've done way too much school for one day, one semester... one lifetime.

Note: Cannibalistic or gross entries will get hit with the oooh gross button. Which means we'll delete them. Okay, enough of the rules.


Some examples:

Funny, but when you're near me, I'm in the mood for lunch...

Lunch is a many splendored thing.

I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me lunch.

Lunch will be our mystery.

Can't get enough of this everyday lunch.

Lunch is all that I can give to you,
Lunch is more than just a game for two...
Lunch was made for me and you.

I never knew the art of making lunch.

More lunch
I can hear out hearts cryin'
More lunch
You know it's all that we need

One good lunch erases all the bitter tears on an empty dance hall... all those lonely nights when she never called, it just don't seem so tragic after all, with one good lunch...

At last, my lunch has come along, and life is like a song! Oh yeah!



And then there are Literary Lunch Quotes:

Is lunch a fancy or a feeling?

Lunch means never having to say you're sorry.

It is better to have lunched and lost and to have never lunched at all.


Okay, now it's your turn.
C'mon, baby, show us some lunch.

25 days...

... till beatrice is emancipated from her cruel chains...

a photo begging for a caption:

please help. it's for a worthy cause.


(and don't ask us to explain. bluegrass on the stereo. that's all we can say.)

what big kids do on weekends.

Don't be scared. It's just a spudly quiz.

Take Spuddy Buddy's Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com Can you Ace my quiz? Yes! No Let's Find Out!

you know you're a sentimentalist when...

...you sit down on the couch and get all emotional and introspective thinking about everyone who has sat just exactly right there.

oh me...

Not made with hands and all that, I say, wot?

fa-so-la-la

Spuddy Buddy, upon looking at a picture entitled "The New Jerusalem" of a golden city floating in the clouds:

"Wow, sister! Look at this! How did they ever build this New Jerusalem place!?!"

jeremy vs. matthew

q. shenaynay

Judging from the fact that the overwhelming majority of those of you who took Beatrice's quiz picked Jeremy Northram as the current celebrity she would most like to go out with for ice cream and a stroll in the park, I think it best that we all take a moment to set the Beehive world back on its axis.

Now, don't get us wrong: Jeremy Northram is one handsome man. He makes a fantastic Mr. Knightley in Emma, even if Gwyneth was too tall for him. (Amazing how much bigger and taller and hunkier he looks in The Winslow Boy, without the towering Paltrow hanging around.) But enough about him. I mean, hello, he's English. Not that there's anything wrong with that... but good heavens, y'all, look at the competition Beatrice offered him.

People. Think.

Matthew McConaughey.

Let's consider this fine specimen.
First: He's A Texan.
Second: He's Scottish.
Third: He's... well, yeah. All that.

I could stop right there, but I don't feel like it. He has Those Blue Eyes. And he has Those Dimples. And he talks with That Drawl that could melt butter and buckle our knees.

He saves young damsels from certain death. Twice in one movie, in fact (The Wedding Planner). He storms across howling deserts. He coaches Texas football. Arhhhh.

Northram... wears tweed suits well, and yeah, he knows how to take tea and do a nice bit of archery on the south lawn. But baby, he ain't no blue-eyed blond southern Scottish boy with dimples and a lazy drawl. Beatrice is smart, and Beatrice knows what she likes.

Beatrice dreams that McConaughey will soon appear in a movie wearing a kilt and beat up cowboy boots and driving an old faded turquoise pickup truck with one spinner. Then she will no longer have a need for three of those four " I need a happiness fix" movies she mentioned in her quiz (she'll hang onto The Wedding Planner, thankyouverymuch).

In fact, she might not need much of anything for awhile after that.

Oh, yeah.

what do you know. a quiz.

Take Beatrice's Quiz on QuizYourFriends.com Can you Ace my quiz? Yes! No Let's Find Out!

wasting away

I have a stomach virus.
It is wretched.
I am pitiful.
Life is bleak.
Please give me some sympathy.
I need it.
Hurry.

As Iron on Iron

q. shenaynay

I gave Fa a volume of Luci Shaw's poetry for Christmas, which I waited till the last minute to wrap -- I knew I would have a hard time sneaking it back from her once she had read the first two or three of these luminous poems. This one was an immediate favorite for me.


As Iron on Iron

Walking this morning, I began to think
how everything wears its other down. How
this sidewalk smoothes my rubber soles.
How stomachs slick their food, waves
burnish shattered bottles to sea glass,
how a prevailing wind shapes trees
and bends them to its gusting will.

How calm weather soothes an impatient sea.
A panther, crated for the zoo, will pace
her pattern in her cage. Today my open window
carves the sunlight to a square that warms
the rug. God tools me like a strip of buckskin.
My silence wears your chatter like a suit;
your charity unravels my reproach. You
shape me, and I shape you, and all our kindred
work to shape us into who they wish we were.


~Luci Shaw

Wow. Notice how Moses introduces the concept of the thesis statement:

“And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”
~ Genesis 1


q. shenaynay

There you have it, the perfect summation -- for what do the the remaining 66 books do? They tell the how and why (and through whom!) of this very thing: the dividing of light from darkness, and the goodness of that light. And in that brief statement, Moses also lets us know that God and God alone is the One who does it.

Mercy me, how I love a perfectly worded statement. Spare clarity has an elegance that gives words the clean power to transfer a living idea from one mind to another. The King James Bible is practically a textbook on elegant phrasing.

If you were asked to write a thesis statement for the Bible, could you have done it with a mere seventeen words?

(And isn't it astounding how every time you re-read the Bible, you will notice different things than you did in previous readings?)

starting over

q. shenanay

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A New Year always brings me a jolt of metamorphic energy. Just when the inertia of winter begins to pall, a fresh calendar comes along to give us another chance to get ourselves right. What a relief.

I make lots of resolutions. Do I ever keep them all? Well, no, but that's okay. If I make 10 and keep 3, I am still a better person than if I hadn't bothered.

Well-made resolutions have proven to have the power to change my life in years past, with the Lord's help -- which is all the more reason to make them prayerfully. Only Jesus can truly say, "Behold, I make all things new." He knows better than I what lies within me that is old and dead and in need of revival and renewal. I need Him to guide me as I examine what I should desire to change in myself, because ultimately all that matters is whether those changes will please Him.

My 2007 resolutions have not yet found their way to ink, but I know I will resolve, as always, to be more diligent in prayer and in reading my Bible. I have never managed to get through the entire Bible in a year, but the happy fact remains that the years I have resolved to try have always been the years I spent the most time in the Word.

Toward that hopeful goal, I want to share our new favorite discovery:


This Bible evenly divides the OT, NT, Psalms and Proverbs into 365 daily readings that take about 15 minutes to cover. It's published by Tyndale and available at Amazon and CBD.

I like this format for several reasons. First, this is just a super way to read those Psalms and Proverbs -- a little bit to meditate on every day rather than a concentrated reading covering only a few weeks out of the year. This format also serves to hedge the old "exiting at Exodus" syndrome, wherein one... er umm... well, you know. Let's just say it's more motivating to keep up daily reading in the Word when you know you're going to get to read about Jesus every day!

We decided to get the compact paperback version for the car, because it rides so happily in a backpack or purse, and to also get a hardback for the coffee table. For some reason I just didn't read the Bible as much as usual in 2006, so I'm all for minimizing my lame excuses in 2007.

We all need renewing, not just in January but every day of the year... and there's really only one place to go for true renewing of your mind. Let's all be sure we go there!