Monday Night Poetry Club

Today is one of those days… I have to start paying back my student loans, on a tiny salary and with no support from the parents.

My dog had diarrhea in her crate. Then she, apparently, ate most if it back up (I was at work through all this merriment). Then, when I came home from work, she puked it back up, all over the apartment.

Well, it was a good excuse to smoke inside…

So this is my life in a nutshell right now:

…The world is grey, the mountains old,
The forge’s fire is ashen-cold;
No harp is wrung, no hammer falls:
The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls;
The shadow lies upon his tomb
In Moria, in Khazad-dûm.
But still the sunken stars appear
In dark and windless Mirrormere;
There lies his crown in water deep,
Till Durin wakes again from his sleep.

– J.R.R. Tolkien

I’m trying to hang on to the moment when I first saw Moria through the eyes of the Fellowship. Everything counted for something in the end, right?

Keisha Castle-Hughes

The young woman who plays the Virgin Mary in the upcoming “Nativity Story” is unmarried, dating a 19 year old guy, and, at 16, pregnant.

The press reports that the Vatican does not want the actor to attend the film’s screening. I am not entirely sure if the reports are true, because she is actually on location, filming in another country, but both the studio and the religious establishment could be trying to avoid some embarrassment there. Either way, the rumours have already started.

It’s pretty damn brave for a woman who plays the world’s most famous virgin to admit to the fact that she is pregnant and unmarried, and has no immediate plans to get married. I have a feeling that the majority of our pre-packaged movie stars would have had a quiet abortion, and denied it all with a big, sugary smile on their faces. I don’t think that having a kid while you are yourself a kid is such a hot idea, but she obviously made her choice, and to hell with what the mighty studio may think.

Now the debates have started – will her pregnancy impact ticket sales, what’s going to happen to her career, etc. All publicity is good publicity, though. Unless, of course, you’re OJ.

She’s an Oscar-nominee with a support network. I think she’ll make it. I just hope they don’t turn her into some baby-faced anti-abortion poster child, because, frankly, most teenagers out there at not nearly as lucky as she is.