If Ashlee Simpson fell down in the forest, would she make a noise?

God works in mysterious ways.

I wrote, briefly, about Jehovah’s Witnesses last week (nothing bad, mind you, but probably mildly irreverent). The post subsequently, and mysteriously, disappeared.

Then Sunday morning, on my way to church, I was tracted by a Jehovah’s Witness – tracted is probably not a real word, but I mean to say I was given a tract, a copy of Awake! magazine. Aside from the cover story (“How to Be a Good Father”) there is a wide range of topical articles (“Teens Ask: How Can I Avoid Pre-Marital Sex?” and “Reaching Pygmies With Bible Truth”) with lots of highlighted text boxes outlining the salient points (“Discussing your problems with your parents can help you stay chaste” and “Adult Pygmies average 4-5 feet high!”). There’s even a personal witness story involving chorus leader Fred Waring, who is a much-beloved figure in the history of the Bamm-Bamm family.

Depending on how vulnerable I’m feeling on any particular day (i.e. how much time I have on my hands to sit and obsessively ruminate), I’m likely to interpret this chain of events as a sign that God wants me to:

a) be a father
b) stop having sex
c) become a Jehovah’s Witness, or
d) minister to Pygmies

I’ve been able to eliminate b, c, and d this morning; b) because I don’t want to, c) because I’ve come across a bushel of websites to help “ex-Witnesses” in their recovery process, and d) because I can’t travel someplace where there wouldn’t be showers or Cottonelle Flushable Moist Wipes. So that leaves a), and I think I’ll wait a while to see how Dino turns out before making THAT level of commitment.

Ascribing universal importance to everyday coincidences is the reason I can’t read fortune cookies or horoscopes anymore, and why I must divert my attention during the day with mass media. I trust if God ever really wanted to get in touch with me, he would have sense enough to appear on a television show, or insert Himself as a special feature on a DVD.

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I fell asleep after the news segment on Saturday Night Live this weekend. And so I WAS going to write about how retarded Ashlee Simpson looked during her first song, because she was OBVIOUSLY lipsynching, and her “choreography” consisted of marching back and forth in a straight line. (I mean, isn't the point of lipsyncing to free your body up to do a showy dance?)Imagine my dismay at learning that I missed her comeuppance.

I have it in for that Simpson family anyway. I don’t know why, I just do. I can’t stand the sight of that simpleton Jessica and her lunkhead husband. (He’s SO handsome, why the hell can’t he shave once in a while?) I can tell you one thing, she and her husband do a new version of “A Whole New World” on the new Special Edition Aladdin DVD, and if she sings with as much sterno-clydo-mastoid tension as she lipsyncs with, she’s got about two years of vocal production left before she ruins herself (Mariah Carey, anyone?)

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Jet is headed off to evening opera rehearsals for the next month, and so I’ll be watching lots and lots of horribly written and acted shows and movies that he doesn’t enjoy, and will have lots to tell you. Last night, on our final evening of relaxation together, we watched Goodbye Mr. Chips, and also a bit of a documentary on bush pilot Tom Claytor, who left home in 1990 with the aim of flying solo around the world, and has not been home since. He flies somewhere (usually a place inaccessible by any other method), works a while, learns the language, then moves on. Nothing funny to add, just interesting if you’re into that sort of thing. Plus he’s pretty easy on the eyes.

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Code Dependent fell off a horse. Read about it here!