This is the sound of my indie heart breaking

I love this movie. Is that such a crime? Is it? IS IT????

I have White Guilt.  Not just for all of the horrible things white people have done to other races in history, but because I see my white, middle-class, twentysomething “hipster” culture reflected back to me in ways that make me cringe.  I love Where the Wild Things Are, Moleskine notebooks, grammar, black people music that black people don’t listen to anymore, and have been an unpaid intern.  I have bangs, bad memories of high school, practice yoga, admire the work of Michel Gondry, and want to hold an 80s night party on my 25th birthday.  I feel guilty about it.  According to Stuff White People Like, Adbusters, and other self-aware pantheons of pop culture, I’m as white as it gets.  And I may or may not be shades of hipster.  This is still up for discussion.  

I do, however, love my indie music.  The more obscure, the better.   And I like to keep it to myself.  As soon as something becomes popular, it breaks my heart.  I know this is just another aspect of my unfailing whiteness, but this whole “counterculture going mainstream” thing really grinds my gears.  I want to be unique in a culture that parodies uniqueness as a popular trend.   

I will admit, somewhat begrudgingly, that I totally dug Garden State and the Zach Braff-selected soundtrack.  Imagine how distraught I felt when I stumbled upon this article in PopMatters with the beguiling title, “Bored New World: How the Zach Braff Prototype is Slowly Killing American Music.”

Chris Milam makes the point that American music these days lacks the grit and pain of earlier drama kings Sid Vicious, Eddie Vedder, and Kurt Cobain:

I saw something different in Nashville, and I saw it more and more: soft-spoken singer-songwriters mumbling timidly into their guitar as dozens and dozens of hipsters listened and nodded. These kids sang like they have nothing to prove, and something to lose, and crowds contentedly humored them.

A few years later, Natalie Portman popped headphones onto Zach Braff’s head and said flatly, “This song will change your life.” The resulting sound was not only that of carefully composed dullness (thank you, Shins), but of a million wealthy white kids investing in dull acoustic music to soundtrack their own romantic melodrama. Youth culture is now practically sponsored by iTunes and Starbucks, and if that’s not a class statement, I don’t know what is. Every commercial features acoustic meanderings with a whispering, confessional androgynous voice. Entire movies are soundtracked by the supposedly self-aware acoustic stylings of Joe Latte. Percussion and humor are nowhere to be found. Neither is a pulse. 

He has a point.  It hurts, like lemon juice in a cut, but he has a point.  I’m assuming that what he means is that these are without “teeth,” a term my boyfriend uses arbitrarily (Kid Rock, for example, has “teeth” in his opinion while Rush does not.  Whatever), and one I take to mean passion, life, and originality. If Milam is looking to indie/singer-songwriters as the basis of his critique, he should look no further than artists such as Bon Iver, Andrew Bird, My Brightest Diamond, and even Snow Patrol (yes, Mr. Milam, Snow Patrol), who display just enough “teeth” when necessary.  

I would also argue that there was a time and place for punk rock and grunge.  That time is over.  Thankfully.  In a world where there’s nothing new under the sun, where anarchy and glorified teen angst are passe, where are musicians to go but the messes and intricacies of our inner lives and relationship turmoil?  What if my generation just wants to sit back and relax because it has realized that protests and sit-ins accomplish nothing?  What if we’re just so damn tired of all the evils in the world that we want to escape from it in our music?  

Another passage that had me cringing:

Maybe the most troubling aspect of this entire phenomenon is not even the art itself, but instead its newly adopted audience (people who can’t relate to self-meditation, but want to). In our current climate, if you have access to a Facebook page, you have access to creating the World of You. Also available is the soundtrack to the World of You. And even if you have better things to do, or other things to worry about, or generally more fruitful endeavors to pursue, the newest escapist fashion requires that you lie in your bed, windows drawn, pop in your iPod, cue up Snow Patrol or the Navel Gazers, or the Weeping Gentlemen, or whoever, and “change your life” with Natalie Portman. Then everything’s smooth and dull and gravy. Why buy into your own life when you can buy into the natural privilege and self-entitlement of someone else’s? Where the American dream was once to actually become something from nothing, it’s now to imagine being something instead of nothing. Why make things better when you can just pretend they are?

There are parts of me that agree with you, Chris Milam, but you’re treading a little too closely to my life.  You’re deepening my white guilt and making me feel badly about the things I love.  

As my old pastor used to say, “If you can’t say amen, say ouch!”

I love The Decemberists too. Dang it!

Like Proust, I write in bed

sometimes writing is like this ...

I’m sorry if all my posts are about NaNoWriMo lately, but that is what is consuming my life these days.  

This is November: furiously writing Unlovely, which, at 8716 words (10,000 by tonight!) is going much better than I thought, even if it is rough; watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother online and as a result, my life is filled with much more uproarious laughter with the occasional snort; anticipating the arrival of my niece or nephew any day now; avoiding getting sick and feeling like Wonder Woman with my crazy amazing immune system; looking for jobs on the Internets for the New Year (can you believe it’s going to be 2010!?!?); looking for cheap-ish apartments, specifically in the High Park/Roncesvalles area, also for the New Year, and if I get a job here; beginning to get excited for Christmas, which is unusual for me at this time of year, but is probably brought on by the addition of Baby Potstra this year, the window display at The Bay, the fact that I’m no longer a student and don’t have any deadlines looming over my head, and the Christmas drinks at Starbucks …

 

Anyway, I was recently perusing the Internets and found this interesting little article over at The Wall Street Journal.  Because writing is such a solitary, personal experience, I find it illuminating to read about how writers write.  Despite the romantic images of brooding intellectuals in dark corners of cafes (most likely in Paris), scribbling on napkins, writing is not the most glamorous of art forms, unlike the visual or performance arts.  

I’m always intrigued by movies about writers and the way they convey the writing life, seeking to make the profession interesting.  Most often, the writer is featured at their writing desk or typewriter or in front of a laptop, while their inner monologue is heard as a voice over and text or handwriting is interposed on the writer, brow furrowed in deep concentration, occasionally glancing to look outside a window with a glazed look and then returning to the writing with a renewed vigor.  It’s been done well (The Hours, Little Women, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Wonder Boys, etc.), but it’s definitely not as exciting as watching Jackson Pollock throw his body into splattering paint on a large canvas.   

Since writing, like reading, is an experience that happens in one’s own mind, community is sometimes desired but not always beneficial. While I’ve talked about my novel with a couple people on a surface level, I’ve stayed away from joining a NaNoWriMo community and communal writing events.  Maybe it’s just me and my lone wolf mentality, but in my experience, writing clubs and groups are more filled with ego-stroking and undercurrents of competition than constructive criticism.  I’m protective and have only ever talked about what I’m working on with my significant other and a few close friends who happen to be writers themselves and will say something other than, “Oh, that’s nice.”  Which is why I love to read about how some of the “great” writers go about their craft.

Ideally, I like to write in bed with complete silence.  No music, no chatter, no distraction.  I have a huge cup of steaming hot tea and my dog is close by, giving me cuddles when I need some inspiration (this fantasy takes place back home).  I’ve always romantically held on to the idea of writing in cafes, but the truth is that I’d probably end up people-watching instead of actually writing and the sound of blenders and coffee grinders would probably make my head spin.  But I’m getting better, having worked at a newspaper this summer with very chatty coworkers and the radio playing the whole time.  I’ve even brought my USB key to work so I can work on my novel in between assignments.  I’m learning to adapt and write stuff down even when I don’t feel the burst of inspiration, which is either there or it isn’t.  I haven’t written anything creatively–other than bits of ideas scribbled in notebooks–in years, and this NaNoWriMo experiment is forcing me to get over fear and insecurity and whatever else was holding me back and actually write.  Pure catharsis.

Here are some highlights from the WSJ article I found to be particularly interesting:

• Richard Powers also writes in bed.  Maybe it has something to do with associating bed with sleep and the dreamlike state, but it’s the ideal place to write.  Especially if it’s comfy and overflowing with pillows
• Michael Ondaatje and Margaret Atwood never get writer’s block.  Of course not!
• Kazuo Ishiguro “auditions” narrators by writing several chapters from various points of view
• Junot Diaz listens to orchestral movie soundtracks
• Every sentence Amitav Gosh writes goes through at least 20 revisions (Holy editing, Batman!)
• Russell Banks’ novels start out as a single sentence or phrase.  Me too!
• Colum McCann will print out a chapter of his work, staple it together like a book, and take it to Central Park, pretending he’s reading someone else’s book
• John Wray writes on trains

How do you like to write?  What are some of your own quirks and ways of averting writer’s block?

I’m finding that, if anything, this NaNoWriMo experiment is like the opposite of writer’s block.  You just keep writing despite your mind telling you “you suck.”  Because you probably don’t.

Dr. Horrible

I just wanted to share with you my future husband (not for real though):

That is all. 

Back to your regular scheduled programming.

“Thirty Days and Nights of Literary Abandon”

Day One of NaNoWriMo has been completed.  I’m sitting at 2229 words after one night, which is a bit over the suggested goal of about 1667 words per day.  

I probably won’t update this every single day to discuss the writing process because I don’t want to bore you out of your skulls, but because I’m a NaNo virgin, I thought I’d give you a little update about the writing of Unlovely thus far.

Day One thoughts:

Writing is tough. Well, writing creatively is tough.  After so many years of essays and journalism, creative writing is a somewhat awkward transition, made even more difficult by not writing any more poems or short story snippets.  Although I’ve always tried to infuse my professional writing with creativity, writing fiction is so much tougher than I imagined it would be.  

For years I’ve filled my dollar store journals with novel ideas, dreaming that someday I’d be able to seamlessly transfer these mostly abstract ideas from head to paper (or more specifically, Microsoft Word).  A perfectly painless journey from conception to, ideally, publication.

Yeah freaking right.

Writing the first chunk of my novel last night reminded me of writing some particularly painful essays in university, minus the extensive research and detailed annotated bibliographies.  It’s like trying to draw water from a stone.  You know you’re writing a bunch of crap but you keep going because the deadline looms above your head like an ugly bird (and the metaphors that you come up with under this kind of pressure are also rather dreadful).  I can say, with no small amount of smugness, that I’ve never missed a deadline.  In some special cases, I’ve asked for an extension, but have never handed anything in late.  The thought scares the bejeezus out of me.  Despite all the crap, there are some rare gems and you surprise yourself with some of the things you come up with.  Lots of authors talk about characters doing things without their knowledge and plots taking unexpected turns.  This happened to me last night.  One of my characters became half French-Canadian.  Who would’ve thought?  Looks like online English to French translators will be my new best friends!

I know this is probably not how real novels get written in the real world–that is, in 30 days (although there have been some novels published as a result of NaNo), but like I’ve said before, if I don’t try this now, when will I?  

This article has been very inspiring to me while writing this horrendous first draft and trying to get my Inner Editor to shut up (she’s a very vocal one).  I know that what I’m going to come up with this month will probably be five layers of crap, but hopefully, hopefully, there will be something worth working on in the months or years ahead.

Onward ho!

Remember, Remember, the first of November …

… Not because of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the British Houses of Parliament (technically, that would be Nov.5), but because it is the first day of NaNoWriMo!

Now that I got myself on the topic of Guy Fawkes, I can’t resist posting a picture from one of my favourite movies (donning a Guy Fawkes mask and going as V would be a great Halloween costume idea, by the way):

 

I kind of feel like watching it for the 10th time now ...

So the countdown to NaNoWriMo begins … 5 more days. I’ve never done it before, and am petrified as well as extremely excited. If I plan to reach my goal of 5,000 words, and I do my math correctly, then that would give me 175 pages to write over 30 days, or 6 pages a day.  Which sounds daunting, and my nightly ritual of watching multiple TV series online is definitely going to suffer (which is why I made sure I finished The Tudors and got caught up with Being Erica), but I know I can do this.  I used to churn out 50-billion pagers in university, and because I’ll be writing fiction, it will be 1,000 trillion times more fun, right?

I’m planning on taking a hiatus from Facebook for the month to concentrate on writing, and Twitter updates and blog posts will also lessen. Other than that, I haven’t done much planning/graphing/mapping/character- sketching/brainstorming/outlining. That’s just not how I roll, other than having a basic idea of what I’m going to write. I’m very much inclined to the flow of creative inspiration, which is what NaNoWriMo is all about. A rough first-draft of a novel. Nothing polished or fancy. Just getting 5,000 darn words out and seeing what happens. 

I started out with 11 ideas that have either been swarming around my head for years or just spontaneously came to me recently. Upon the consultation of my boyfriend and one trusted writer friend, I whittled the list down to three or four.  I then thought about which idea was occupying my mind with its insistence to be written, and that story will be Unlovely. I’ve had this idea for a couple years, and while the names of the characters have changed and further details and a first line have been added, not much has changed to the basic plot. As for the conclusion, I have no bloody clue. 

We’ll see what happens come November and I’m actually forced to write the thing … 

 

 

Can’tLit: Fearless Fiction from Broken Pencil Magazine: A review

A review for the ECW Press Shelf Monkey program:

In the foreward to this collection of startlingly original short stories which have appeared in the 14 years of Broken Pencil’s existence, cofounder Hal Niedzviecki says, “These stories are outcasts. They don’t fit into traditional CanLit … They are anti-literature. By and large, they read ragged, lacking the refinements of metaphor, magical realism, and perfect epiphany on the prairies. A few of them might even be badly written. On purpose? By accident? Who really gives a fuck. This is Broken Pencil. We’re not trying to win awards, launch the writers Oprah wants you to read, or really do anything at all. The words do the work. Their ink seeps past the skin and on into the flesh. I carry these stories around in my heavy heart, clogged arteries, chest cramp laughter, sharp pain an insistence that things still matter despite all evidence to the contrary.”

With an introduction like that, it may be easy to approach this anthology with mild trepidation, the anticipation of having one’s mind monumentally blown, and excitement to approach unconventional stories that may be so poorly written that they’re far superior to anything written by, as editor Richard Rosenbaum mentions, that of “The Tyranny of the Margarets.”

The collection as a whole, however, slightly disappoints in its failure to form a cohesive theme from story to story, aside from unconventionality. The gap between the prose that gives one pause, and the prose that offends and/or confuses, is too large. When read hurriedly, jumping from one story to the next with little room to reflect, there seems to be an odd number of stories that borderline on the grotesque; one can only read about so many blow jobs and graphic sex before thinking oneself a prude. Niedzviecki is right–some of these stories are very, very poorly written.

Others are just too avant-garde for those raised on a steady diet of “perfect epiphanies on the prairies.” Craig Sernotti’s “Another Young Lust Story” feels like an excuse to write a one-paragraph story about sex, “Scarlatina!” by Derek McCormack didn’t make an ounce of sense, “Too Much Mean Me” by Geoffrey Brown may have done something interesting if one was brave enough to tackle the imposing block of text, Charlie Anders’ “Yes Man” is definitely not for the squeamish, and Joel Schneier’s “Dandruff,” among others, seems so simple that the only response is, “what?”

That said, there are others in this collection that dazzle. The authors use the medium to their advantage, telling stories with great resonance and depth in such a small alloted space. Golda Fried’s “Lindsey” is chock-full of effortlessly gorgeous phrases and images such as the final one: “Lindsey put heaps of sugar into our coffees and it escaped from the spoon all over the table. She turned up the radio until it made us bump into things. She tossed her closet on the bed saying, ‘Honestly, we can go anywhere tonight. You decide,’” as is her brief yet beautiful “Summer.” Martha Schabas’ “Natural Selection,” an account of a troubled, modern relationship, is also one of lasting impact. “Camp Zombie” by Ian Rogers, about a camp for the sleep-disordered, is darkly funny and unexpectedly poignant. “Little Wite Squirel Angel” (sic) by Christopher Willard, about a reality-show addicted obese woman, written in “whitetrash” vernacular, makes a funny, yet disturbing comment on American culture. “The Jesus” by McKinley M. Hellenes is beautiful and tragic. “The Napoleon Difference” by Julia Campbell-Such has an alarming ending, Emma Healey’s “Last Winter Here” is almost poetic in its simplicity, Kate Story’s “Flame Retarded” captures the end of childhood innocence perfectly, and Jessica Fauld’s “Sickness” is everything a short story should be: tight and well-crafted with an unexpected conclusion.

Perhaps it’s not useful to expect this entire collection to take your breath away. Some stories may; others will disgust or confuse you, causing you to wonder how the heck they made it into a published anthology. For this, the editors offer no apology. They state from the get-go that these stories are sharp, often abrasive, and sometimes poorly written. Expect the unexpected.

The best way to approach this collection then, is not as an English Lit. student bent on discovering a common thread, a theme that binds the anthology together. Nor should one desire workshopped metaphors, conventional short story structures, or brilliant insight. One should, however, keep an open mind. The originality of some in this collection may cause you to reconsider everything you know about “literature.”

Things that Make Me Go Awwww …

We all need our hearts melted a little bit. For me, animals do it every time.

Especially this treasure captured by photographer Norbert Rosing when a polar bear stumbled into his camp and encountered his sled dogs:

I’ve been watching this on repeat. It’s the perfect little pick-me-up.

Also, I know this is old, but it also makes me cry:

And, because baby polar bears are the cutest things in the world:

The song is friggin’ annoying and gets in my head, so I always mute it and just watch Knut be his cute self!

For the husky lovers among us:

Nothing like a little animal cuteness to break up the monotony of the day!

It might be a quarter-life crisis, or just the stirring in my soul

I have a tag, quarter life crisis, and I speak about mine often, so I thought I’d clarify what it is.  If you’re a twentysomething and don’t know what the hell you’re doing, chances are you’re having a second adolescence, with less rebellion and just as much angst. Christine Hassler, life coach, professional speaker, author, and Gen Y expert, breaks it down at The Huffington Post.

Here’s her quiz. If you answer “yes” to 12 or more of the 25 questions, you are having a quarter life crisis.  Let’s see how I fare with this quiz:

1.  Are you in a “funk” where you feel like nothing is terribly wrong, but nothing seems right either?

2.  Do you feel older for the first time in your life?  

3.  Are you unmotivated, directionless, or passionless?

4.  Are you concerned that you don’t know what you want to do with your life?

5.  Do you feel pressure to grow up and get your adult life in order?

6.  Do you feel entitled to a life much grander than the one you are living?

7.  Do you often feel depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, lost, and maybe even a little hopeless?

8.  Do you feel a lot of pressure and expectations to do, have or be something?

9.  Do you feel that time is running out in regards to figuring out your career and deciding whether you want to get married and/or have children?

10.  Are you stressed out by choices that seemingly will affect the rest of your life?

11.  Are you experiencing confusion or disappointment in your career?

12.  Do you feel that you have failed because you don’t know what you want to do with your life?

13.  Do you know what you want to do, but can’t seem to make it work?

14.  Is it difficult for you to make decisions and when you do, you question them?

15.  Do you overanalyze yourself?

16.  Do you ever feel guilty for complaining about your life or feel like you are disappointing people (especially your parents)?

17.  Are you embarrassed that you have not figured out more?

18.  Is a breakup, romantic relationship, or lack of one causing you stress and/or sadness?

19.  Are you still living at home with mom and dad?

20.  Do you frequently compare yourself to other people your age and feel like you don’t measure up?

21.  Do you feel financially unstable?

22.  Could your self-esteem use an upgrade?

23.  Are you thinking about going back to grad school because you don’t know what else to do with your life?

24.  Are you constantly thinking about the future resulting in anxiety and possibly panic?

25.  Is your life just not at all turning out like you planned?

My results: 15/25.  

Read Hassler’s opinions on how to sift through your quarter life crisis.

You’re Smart, Funny, and Beautiful

 

... but not as much as them!

“You’re smart, funny, and beautiful,” said the creepy middle-aged man, speaking into his headset loud enough that the quiet, half-asleep, Monday Morning streetcar crowd could hear his every word.  

He said little else but announce each stop to whomever was at the other end of the phone call.

“We’re at Tecumseh.”

“Shaw.”

“Augusta.”

“Bathurst.”

“Spadina … no, Spadina, not– … No, no one makes fun of the name Spadina.  No, you’re a naughty girl.  No. No.  Nooooooooo … I’m going to …”

Fortunately, there were no children within earshot, or they would have been getting their first lesson in BDSM.

Silence, and a pretty, well-dressed girl gets on at University, talking on her cellphone as loudly as middle-aged perv, discussing how pathetic men are.  

The woman on the other end probably asks, “Why do you love me?” or “Why are you with me?”  I picture her in a ratty bathrobe covered in cat hair, intermittently petting Fluffy sprawled on her lap whilst taking long, practiced drags from a cigarette. Hair in curlers.  Eyelids painted blue, heavy lines around her mouth.  

“Well, because you’re smart, funny, and beautiful.”

Smart, funny, and beautiful. The three adjectives most often used when describing your special someone.

“Why did you fall for so-and-so?”

“Because he’s smart, funny, and …” Well, handsome in this case, but the two are interchangeable. 

I try to avoid these ill-used cliches, telling my boyfriend I love him because he’s confident, caring, sweet, optimistic, silly, responsible … the list goes on.  Not everyone is smart.  I know this for a fact, because I’m a snob.  Not everyone is funny. Some people are just lame and have no sense of humour whatsoever.  As for beautiful … that’s debatable.  Beauty is purely subjective.

But then, I suppose, so is intelligence and funniness. 

Again I picture the woman on the other line, and wonder if she’s book smart or street smart, what her sense of humour is like, how he finds her beautiful in her curlers and bathrobe.

More silence.

I wonder if he’s speaking to himself …

Freaky Friday

Is there a full moon tonight?

Today there seems to be a touch of crazy to it, something driven by the moon and its waxing and waning.

To start my day, a couple of sketchbags had a tussle in the middle of the street, which was kind of amusing but also kind of sad in a way because it was between a large woman and a scrawny man.  I was wondering if I should yell something or call the police, but it was just basically sloppy wrestling with no punches being thrown, and no one else waiting for the streetcar seemed to care all that much.  Sometimes apathy is safer than concern.

Then, I was approached by a nice-enough crazy person on the streetcar, whom I made the mistake of listening to during a barely comprehensible ramble about Jesus, “fags with poodles” (his words, not mine), his “dangerous lawyer” and how he is a paralegal who graduated from UofT (sure, sure). He decided I was going to be his best buddy, leaning all over me, rubbing my shoulder, kissing my hand, and spilling hot coffee all over my shoes. It was embarrassing, mostly because the rest of the streetcar was silent and I was the only one naive and smalltownie enough to smile and nod at the crazy guy’s babbling. I told him my name was Alice when he asked, and when he asked me if I was married, I lied and hid my left hand in my coat pocket, to which he responded, “That’s a shame because you’re blond.”  

He informed me that if a guy ever tried to grope my breasts “or any other part of my anatomy,” I should use my cell phone to call the police (thanks for the advice, homie).  When he started to get ready to get off at Ossington (surprise, surprise), I pretended that my phone was ringing and “took a call” while he screamed across the whole streetcar: “Alice! Alice! Say a prayer for me, sweetheart! It was lovely meeting you, Alice! Aliiiiiiiice! Aaaaaaaaaaaalliiiiiiiiiceeeeeeee!”

STELLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Ugh.

I wish I wasn’t so damn approachable.  I think I have a stamp on my forehead that reads: HEY CRAZIES, PLEASE COME TALK TO ME!  I guess I have to work on my unapproachable streetwise scowl, which will be difficult coming from a place where everyone you see on the street smiles and says hello to you.

Anyway, one hyper-caffeinated mocha from Starbucks later, I started browsing through my Google Reader at work and stumbled across a couple things that can definitely fit into the Odd and Bizarre categories.  I love crazy things that aren’t in my face, kissing my hand and spilling coffee on my shoes.

First of all, this website.  Apparently, people from all across the world dream about the exact same man.  Some theorize that he’s Jesus, and anything he tells you to do in a dream, you should do (wack-o alert!)  Others believe he is an archetypal image based on Jung’s psychoanalytical theory. According to their website:

From January 2006 until today, at least 2000 people have claimed they have seen this man in their dreams, in many cities all over the world: Los Angeles, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Tehran, Beijing, Rome, Barcelona, Stockholm, Paris, New Dehli, Moskow etc. 

At the moment there is no ascertained relation or common trait among the people that have dreamed of seeing this man. Moreover, no living man has ever been recognized as resembling the man of the portrait by the people who have seen this man in their dreams. 

Reality or hoax?  In a world of grilled-cheese Jesus faces and little boys supposedly in balloons, who knows?

Speaking of Jesus, some little church in backwater North Carolina is planning a Halloween Bible burning.  I’m not lying. This stuff exists.  In 2009.  According to the church pastor, members will be burning any version of the Bible that isn’t the first King James version as well as the books of “Satanic” authors such as Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Donald Miller, Benny Hinn, etc.

This story has been spreading like wildfire these past few days (LOL!), once again proving that the crazy Christian fundamentalists are the ones who get all the press, giving the rest of us a bad name.  And a good laugh.  Followed by tears and bashing one’s head against a brick wall.