I’m still fiddling around a bit with the layout, so please excuse any hiccups that you may come across. More content will be up when I have the time and motivation. I was just so damn tired of seeing the old page.

Please drop a comment here if anything seems to be malfunctioning, or if you have any design input*. I would really appreciate it.

*Writing quality will not be improved, so don’t waste your time.

These haiku are from late 2002 or early 2003. It was midwinter, sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of winter break. I was seeing a guy and we had different ideas about our relationship. He was indifferent; I was infatuated. He tried to keep it casual; I (oh-so-embarrassingly) threw myself at him. He was very honorable about the whole thing; I refused to take “no” for an answer. We had a bunch of mutual friends, so he did what he could to create some distance between us.

I had never been rejected before. It hurt.

Solemn, you uttered,
“What we did never felt right…”
…it felt right to me.

I was sleeping with the guy while in a long-distance relationship with my high school boyfriend. I didn’t even care about my boyfriend’s feelings and I never felt guilty about cheating on him. You could call it cosmic irony, but it was really just selfishness. I think a lot of young adults go through that sociopathic phase.

Apathy crushes.
The wings of my mind are clipped;
My soul caged, muted.

I wish I could say I got a lesson in empathy out of the situation, but I didn’t. In fact, the boyfriend and I broke up and made up several times before finally calling it quits. And the guy who rejected me? I didn’t really learn anything there either, because I still can’t handle rejection adequately.

My track record has gotten a lot better over the years. I’m happy to report that I have been in a committed relationship with my husband since January 1, 2005, and I haven’t screwed it up yet. Woo!

And oh
I forgot
That all poetry
Must mimic
Sylvia Plath in
Its entirety.
Death! Worms!
Darkness! Disease!
There,
The great goddess Plath
Is appeased.

It appears to be expected of my hand:
Nay, it’s accepted if my hand
Is oft depressed, and if
My depression has sway?

And oh, am I to record at last
Each experience, each trespass
That happened within the stony
Halls of school today?

Though while I can see that they are aching
I am loath to start forsaking
Rules of grammar, rules of conduct
From the Victorian masters-o-scopic;

But I will say this of all
I have witnessed in this hall:
And that’s that some depresséd teens
Need some newer topics!

So, what’s been happening lately? Well, I got married on May 24th.

At the Museum of Science.

I know every woman says this about her own wedding, but my wedding was the best I’ve ever attended. Steve, my husband(!), really stepped up to the plate when it came to the planning. He designed our fabulous invitations, argued with the caterer, talked me down from setting things on fire — all that stuff you’d want in a future husband. I picked the music and came up with some arguably creative ideas about how things should look.

I wanted all my friends and family to feel comfortable and have fun. I wanted to create an atmosphere where it would be impossible to commit some sort of crazy wedding etiquette faux-pas. I certainly didn’t want anything dramatic or over-the-top serious. We had a 5-10 minute ceremony, performed by Steve’s sister (my sister-in-law!) Allie, and at least two of those minutes involved me failing to get the wedding ring on Steve’s finger because I was laughing so hard.

Lots of other things have been going on lately – reading, Hassle: the Dorkening, brewing and drinking beer, and well.. tons more. I’m trying to ease back in to blogging on a regular basis, so hopefully this is the first of many future updates. And hopefully there’s a site redesign in the cards soon. So this is Erin Explosion, signing out for now.

All non-invitation photos were taken by Henry M. DeBardeleben.

Henry and Colleen were fabulous; they really knew what we wanted out of our wedding photos. I would highly recommend them if you’re needing photography services in the greater Boston area.

New posts are on the way. I promise.

90% of the time, when reading it, I’m thinking about:

So somehow, in my screwed up brain, the FLDS church relates to a sweet story about a couple of people that try to cheat on each other but fail. I’m sure I can make the connection, but I’m only on my second beer.

(Apologies to Carolyn Jessop. The book is really good so far.)

• Stars – “Elevator Love Letter”
  
• Hard and Phirm – “Pi”
  
• Fannypack – “Cameltoe” (especially since it has the “how funky is your chicken?” cheer at the end of the song)
  
• O-Zone – “Dragostea din Tei”
  
• Sugarhill Gang – “Apache” (and I could only obtain the live version, which is like eight minutes long)
  
• Both the Blondie version and Smashing Pumpkins cover of “Dreaming”
  
  
• Both the Louis Anderson Armstrong and Joey Ramone versions of “What a Wonderful World” (the former has been ruined for me by “Bowling for Columbine”)
  
  
• “Que Sera Sera” – the one from Katamari Damacy (“I know you love me/I want to wad you up into my life/Let’s roll up to be/A single star in the sky”)
  
• The Beach Boys – “God Only Knows” (which makes me think of plural marriage)
  
• William Shatner – “Together”
  
• 2gether – “U + Me = Us (Calculus)”
  
• Velvet Underground – “I’m Sticking With You” (which reminds me of Morvern Callar sawing up her dead boyfriend’s body in the bathtub, which I cannot find a good clip of on Youtube, dammit)

Okay, I’m just going to post what I wrote, because I don’t feel like actually talking about it.

I really don’t want to come off as whining or unreasonable, but I am really disheartened by the blatant anti-Catholic sentiment in the comments lately. I know you’re making the effort, but its getting to the point where I just cannot read Jezebel anymore. It’s not an issue of people politely disagreeing with Church doctrine — I fully respect that — but it seems like every three days there’s at least one conversation that degrades from constructive discussion to flat-out hate. It’s not even comments like, “oh, this archdiocese is doing a really boneheaded thing.” It’s like, “oh those Catholics, denying people basic human rights and raping young boys again.” This is basically like saying, “Another suicide bomber? Oh those crazy Muslims!” And honestly, I don’t think a comment like that would fly on Jezebel. So why is Catholic hate totally okay?

The Church has long been concerned with social justice, and I think it’s unfair to make blanket statements against an entire religion and group of worshipers just because some of their leaders are out-of-touch. Just because something is happening in Brazil does not mean that all Catholics everywhere stand behind what one Cardinal says.

So yeah, saying something like,
“SHUT THE FUCK UP CHURCH JUST GO AWAY”
“Hey Catholicism, as far as your talk of murderers goes; it takes one to know one.”
or calling the Church “evil corporation whose chief goal is self preservation and making money”
…is pretty disgusting to me. Even as an ex-Catholic. Especially when these statements come from people who don’t even know what an Archdiocese is. I don’t tell other religious groups to go fuck themselves; why can’t the religion that I was raised in get the same respect?

Also, I apologize for the things I said about Descended Like Vultures. It’s growing on me.

Someone remind me to write a Yelp review for Eye Q. I’m so happy with my new glasses.

• I thought Rorschach would be uglier. He was merely Hollywood ugly.
• I thought Dan would be fatter. He was merely Hollywood fat.
• I thought the Comedian would be less likable. I really felt conflicted. It was a good thing.
• I didn’t like the condensing/changing of Rorschach’s backstory. I am really caught up on the fact that he didn’t leave the child murderer in a burning building with a saw to cut off his hand.
• But oh god Jackie Earle Haley was perfect.
• WTF at Mickey from Seinfeld showing up.
• Dr. Manhattan on Mars doesn’t translate well to film, but I admire what Billy Crudup did with the character. And I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t see him as “that kid in Almost Famous.”
• Reading the trivia section on IMDb is kind of heart attack-inducing. Especially lines like, “X was slated to do Y, but turned it down.” Especially when X is Tom Cruise or Michael Bay.
• The only sex scene I can think of that is more awkward than Dan and Laurie in Watchmen is in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet.

I had a serious F____ you for being done! moment this morning after I’d finished Shannon Burke’s Black Flies. Even though it had a couple of typos. And you should know that it takes a lot for me to like a book with editing problems.

Gang Leader for a Day was a great read. I’m going to go ahead and say that you’re an idiot if you’re reading the book for statistics or an objective view of life in the projects. This is basically a memoir. It’s more like reading Garfinkle than Pareto. Fair warning: you may or may not want to stab someone when you think about all the stupid things Venkatesh does (intentionally leaving his research in his subject’s home? really?).

World War Z was a little contrived. It had a stark realness to it, sure, but so much predictability in the worst way possible. I mean, we’re talking about plot twists M Night Shyamalan would write. “The dispatcher that saved her life was actually her imagination!” “That guy in the mental hospital that’s being interviewed about a guy actually is the guy!”

I’ve been listening to Maritime’s We, the Vehicles a lot. The songs you should listen to first are “Parade of Punk Rock T-Shirts!” and “Tearing Up the Oxygen.”

Rogue Wave’s Descended Like Vultures is not as good as I thought it would be. I probably need to give it more of a chance though. Download “Love’s Lost Guarantee” and you will be satisfied.

I got an Xbox 360 recently, so here are some mini(er) reviews:

Fable II: The main plot line ends in a really anticlimactic way. You can never be skinny if you want to have a good amount of health (my female hero did not have a neck despite existing solely on celery). I’m in the process of playing it through again without rushing.

Castle Crashers: …is cute and fun!

Left 4 Dead: I am so bad at this game, but it’s so much fun! I’m hoping I’ll be a bit better once I get new glasses and maybe adjust the brightness a bit. I am sad that melee is not an effective way to kill zombies. I was expecting it to be like Halo where you can one-shot someone with a whack to the back of the head.

Rock Band 2: The adjustment from playing real drums to playing plastic drums is difficult. My hands are slow and stupid when it comes to regular guitar; the plastic guitar is no different. Maybe I should be playing lefty.