Author: MASadmin

The end of the bridezilla era? Yeah, no.

AM New York (one of the free daily subway papers here in New York), reported about couples trying to get around the standard cake cutting fee while the New York Post countered with a report that Manhattan ladies are no longer getting diamonds to wear at their weddings. It seems that the Wedding Industry is now struggling and the main stream media is beginning to take notice!
A high end jeweler claims that budgets for diamonds use to be $65,000 dollars but now is around $10,000 and brides are not happy about it. Of course they aren’t. Over the last five years, as Americans turned to their homes to fake an economic recovery from the dot com era (our income as dropped during this period but our spending skyrocketed), weddings, like the 7th car, the 3rd house, and the McMansions, just got bigger and better. If you watch old episodes of Bridezilla, you’ll notice that the budgets were huge for incredibly boring and tacky and cheesy weddings. Now, when you turn on the show, the budgets are only high in respect to the fact that the women on the show are usually lower income and/or white trash. But they still want a wedding that feels expensive and that matches the extravagance they saw in the past five years. Weddings are not only about fulfilling your fantasies but also about keeping up with your friend who forced you to buy that godawful lemon and lime bridesmaid dress four years ago.

I wonder if someone in the Wedding Industry is hoping that someone in Washington DC will notice their plight and they’ll get a bailout.

I don’t agree that the Bridezilla era is over. I’m just hoping that the era of refinancing your house/maxing your credit cards part of weddings are over. It’s not but that’s what I hope. My fiancee and I approached our wedding with that goal in mind. We simply are paying for the best wedding that we can afford. Will it be showcased on Platinum Weddings? No. But will it be as spectacular extravaganza that will be talked about for years to come? Oh I hope so. But there’s only so many DIY hanging decorations I can make by hand before I want to give up and instead use the tissue paper to make a hat for my cat so we shall see. We shall see.

Amazon.com is removing sales ranking from certain gay and lesbian books?

A repost from my gossip blog babyrunaround.com

Update [8:53pm] : seattle pi’s take, la times

amazon_logo1

What the hell is amazon.com doing?

Right now, sales rankings for dozens of gay and lesbian books have had their sales rankings removed which means they don’t show up in lists. Jezebel.com is keeping a list and major news papers are starting to pick it up. It started a few weeks ago but is only being reported mostly now. #amazonfail on twitter has been the current big reporter on this scandal and there is no other word to describe it. Right now, when you search for homosexuality on Amazon.com, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality IS THE FIRST RESULT. The first! And the whole first page of results is all about stupid bigoted religious nonsense about homosexuality. The books are utter bullshit, a perversion of my brand of faith, and promoting hate and intolerance instead of God’s love. It’s appalling to see this. Appalling to see that amazon.com is pulling stupid bullshit like this to appease….no one. They claim that the books that have lost their sales results are “adult” while vibrators, anal beads, and sex toys have their sales rankings still there. Did a religious group write enough complaints in? Did they take control over the sales department there? Or is this company now owned by Wal-mart? And why, in this time of economic recession, would you alienate an extremely affluent part of society? This make no economic sense, no rational sense, and no religious sense either.

I just received a $50 dollar gift certificate from amazon.com today. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it now. Bah.

ENGAGEMENT PARTAY!

Is it wrong to have an engagement party in your own home?

Technically, my fiancee and I weren’t the host. The party was held in my fiancee’s home because, well, my apartment isn’t big enough. It was intimate, 10-12 people, on the Saturday of Easter weekend, and it was well catered by my roommate (who was the official host) and Costco. Oh. And 5 liters of champagne. We didn’t finish all the food but we did finish the champagne.

And my fiancee went to the Easter Vigil with a hang over.

The party started around 1. We put out bagels, lox, chicken salad, fruit, melon wrapped with prosciutto, clementines, cream cheese, and other such deliciousness. OJ, kool aid, and special mixes were for the champagne. Good talk, lots of drinking, and not enough eating. I’ll be eating chicken and bagels for months.


Watermelon, Lemon, Lime


Obama keeps watch.


Twinkie was the center of the party of course

We received several lovely gifts, cards, and best wishes from a bunch of wonderful friends. It was a delight.

Now, I’ve heard plenty of stories and rules that you can’t throw your own engagement party. And that rule makes sense. However, how involved are you allowed to be in the planning and execution of said party? My fiancee and I shopped, planned, made the guest list, help finance it, and did everything short of officially be the “host” of the big event. And isn’t this how most of these shin digs happen anyways especially if the couple is doing the primary planning and paying of their own wedding? We have no family within 1500 miles. We live in small apartments. We own our lives. I consider it totally acceptable to take an active and engaged part of any event planning of this sort as long as I didn’t initiate the process. Someone wanted to throw us a party. The fact that I took the ball and ran with it is an entirely separate thing. And the fact that it’s for me and my fiancee, involves great times with my friends, and involves pigging out on delicious delicious foods, is just an added bonus.

Stations of the Cross on Good Friday


A print of a watercolor showing Trinity Lutheran Church in Astoria, NY

Due to recent changes in my job (*cough* unpaid vacation until April 27th, recession, blah blah blah *cough*, I was able to attend both Good Friday services at my church yesterday. The noon service was a bare bones service, no holy communion, the altar was bare, there was little music, and the cross was a chipped, wooden artifact that had seen many outdoor services when Trinity use to conduct those a generation ago. My fiancee and I were originally scheduled as lectors (she read from Isaiah, I read from Hebrews) but had, at first, thought we’d skip it and only attend the 7:30 service. However, things didn’t turn out the way we originally planned.

During the noon day service, we prayed for an interfaith reconciliation and prayed for an ecumenical reunion of the Church and of people of all faith. We pray for this quite frequently at our church. As a member of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), and part of the larger world body of the Lutheran Federation, and in communion with some Methodist and Presbyterian denominations, the ecumenical movement is something that we focus on quite a bit. Pentecost and the Unity of the Church is something that we seek which our denomination holds onto as not only a historic relic from Martin Luther’s original attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, but also as a fulfillment of the new commandment to not only love our neighbors as ourselves but also to love one another. It is sometimes easier to do the former than the later.

As a nice book end to that short intercessory prayer said during the noon service, Trinity participated as the Fourth Station of the Cross in Most Precious Blood’s annual parade. Most Precious Blood is our local Catholic Parish. They march down the road, music playing, close to 1000 members with candles and lights. They carry a statue of Mary, several of Jesus, and a glass coffin containing an image of Jesus’s dead body. We meet them at the front steps of our church. There’s roughly 30 of us compared to them but that’s how it is every year. I’ll have pictures of the event posted soon.

As the Fourth Station, our pastor reads a little bit about Mary, says a short prayer, and a hymn to Mary is sung by the procession. Mary isn’t typically part of our piety (though she’ll always be a part of mine – the Lady of Guadeloupe has had special reverence for me even when I wasn’t Christian) and the procession even asked before had if it was ok if a hymn to Mary was sung in front of Trinity. My pastor said of course it was. Before the prayer was said, several members joked whether the coffin would be brought into our church and paraded through. A member of our choir told us that had happened before and then related a story that is, in my mind, a sign of our previous noon day prayer.

She told the story of how our synod’s bishop came to worship at Trinity (or was installed at Trinity). The glass coffin was brought in to the church, marched through one side and out the other. While there, the Catholic procession saw the bishop in his vestments and immediately approached him and began to kiss his ring. It freaked the bishop out at first – this isn’t something Lutherans do. He tried to tell them that he wasn’t a Catholic bishop but they didn’t care. He was, for a moment at least, their bishop. Five hundred years of schism, countless wars, excommunication, strife, and theological distance between the two denominations were reconciled for a brief moment. And on that Good Friday, it’s compelling to see that even 2000 years after Joseph asked for Christ’s body, as Jesus is lifted on the cross, he still brings all to him.

Which totally reminds me that I still haven’t memorized the creeds like I said I was going to at the start of Lent. Sigh. Someday. Someday.