This is a short video of Dr. William Lane Craig in a debate addressing faulty arguments for atheism.

Check www.leestrobel.com for hundreds of excellent FREE Christian videos.

“Letters From a Skeptic” Q&A series at Woodland Hills Church with Greg Boyd. Recorded in several sessions during January 2009

Have you ever wondered what the angels in heaven do on Black Friday? Do they have any hedonistic tendencies like so many of us on the terrestrial plane? Do they shop?

The answer is yes!

It may seem like the words “spiritual” and “hedonism” are contradictory terms. The human species is often described as being hedonistic, that is, humans are pleasure seekers. While spiritual beings, like angels, forgo physical pleasure and live in eternal adoration of God and find their heart’s delight in receiving divine gifts.

But what is just starting to be understood by neuroscientists is that the heart occupies the cockpit of the mind. Our feelings focus the intellect upon a subject or object and arrange the contents of one’s memory according to what gives us delight and pleasure.  Nothing is purchased or owned by the mind unless it represents the yearning of the heart. This pleasure seeking process is not only subjective it is hierarchical.

Pleasure can be sought in physical things, creative things, intellectual things and spiritual things. These various pleasures are distinct from each other—meaning that we can all have our heart’s desire on different levels.

As I hinted above, angels also shop for things that will give the deepest delight to themselves and to others. These heavenly pleasures are God’s gifts of spiritual goodness and their accompanying truths.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew 6:21

What do you seek?

http://www.innergardening.net

Hedonistic Thanksgiving

http://www.alternet.org/story/144201/drink_some_booze,_smoke_a_joint_and_relax:_how_to_have_a_hedonistic_thanksgiving?page=1

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason wants Christians to be “ambassadors for Christ”. What’s that?

Here is a dictionary definition of ambassador:

1. a diplomatic official of the highest rank, sent by one sovereign or state to another as its resident representative (ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary).

2. a diplomatic official of the highest rank sent by a government to represent it on a temporary mission, as for negotiating a treaty.

3. a diplomatic official serving as permanent head of a country’s mission to the United Nations or some other international organization.

4. an authorized messenger or representative. Abbreviation: Amb., amb.

Greg Koukl says that a good ambassador needs 3 things: knowledge, wisdom and character.

Greg writes:

I’ve heard it said that sometimes you will be the only living Bible that anyone can read. Well, that’s what it means to be an ambassador. You will speak for Christ. One way or another, for good or for ill, you will speak for Him if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. So we want to strengthen good representatives, and we know that takes emphasis in three areas.

One are to strengthen as an ambassador is knowledge. In other words, you’ve got to know a few things that your sovereign wants you to represent to the rest of the world. So you’ve got to have this knowledge base.

Secondly, you’ve got to communicate that knowledge in a way that is sensitive to the people that you’re sent to. You need to understand their way of thinking. You need to understand their language after a fashion. You must be diplomatic, tactical after a fashion. So there is a certain wisdom, the right use of knowledge, that’s necessary for you to be an effective ambassador.

A good ambassador, any ambassador, packages that knowledge and strategy in the manner of delivery in himself or herself. It’s all wrapped up in an individual, and if that individual is offensive, if that individual is a bad representative, it doesn’t matter that the knowledge and tactics are sound. If the individual is wrong then the message loses its force. This is why we emphasize not just knowledge, not just wisdom, but also character. You must package the entire message in you personally so that you can be an effective, accurate, and virtuous representative or ambassador for Jesus Christ.

I think that a good ambassador for Christ needs to be motivated, as well. A good ambassador is concerned when some people have false beliefs about God’s existence, character and purposes. An ambassador cannot stand by and do nothing while God’s reputation is diminished in public. It is this concern for God as a friend that drives people to study apologetics, as well as theology,science, history, etc. We want to know what God is like, what he’s done and how we can show these things to be true.

The mission of Christian ambassadors

Consider 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, especially verses 11 and 2:

¹¹Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.

¹²We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.

¹³If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.

¹⁴For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.

¹⁵And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

¹⁶So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

¹⁷Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

¹⁸All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:

¹⁹that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

²⁰We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

²¹God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This passage about reconciling God and man is one of my favorites in the Bible.

God has chosen us to communicate on his behalf to people who don’t know him. An ambassador doesn’t treat God as a means to achieving happiness, security, health and wealth in this life. Nor is the ambassador’s job to let other people be happy without a relationship with the real God who is really there. The ambassador has a responsibility to explain God’s existence, character and purposes to those who are still ignorant of him. And that takes effort. God is not interested in making his human “pets” happy. He’s given us a task to accomplish – a task that may well consume a good deal of time, effort and money. A task that may diminish our happiness by making us different and unpopular.

Apologetics demonstrates your friendship with God

I often think about how to test others to see whether they are genuine Christians or not. This can be done for friendship or even when testing a prospective mate. A subjective “Christian” who invents their own view of God subjectively, using intuition and emotions, is not going to put themselves second for God and serve him as an ambassador. Instead, they’ll think that a relationship with God really means projecting their own desire for happiness onto God. “God” is there to make them feel happy, not to make demands on them.

And if a person doesn’t want a relationship with God as a real person, they won’t relate to you as a real person, either. If a person doesn’t think that God has purposes and feelings distinct from their own, they won’t think you have purposes and feelings distinct from their own. If a person thinks that God’s purpose is to make them happier, then they’ll think that your purpose is to make them happier. If a person is not willing to sacrifice their interests for God’s interests, they aren’t going to sacrifice their interests for your interests, either.

Skunk Anansie are somewhat of an enigma, on the one hand they can hardly be called conventional or mainstream. On the other, frontwoman Skin they have someone with a voice and a can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her presence that your average X-Factor contestant would, and should, kill for.

That’s not to say that she is in anyway conventional either, with her voice ranging from the deceptively soulful to full on growl.

So this is a welcome return to the live arena for one of Britain’s best live bands after eight long years away.

Wolverhampton is ready, the atmosphere is electric and Skunk Anansie, and Skin in particular, are back and ready to rip the place to shreds.

Thankfully they don’t disappoint, rushing through anthems from all 3 albums, and all the new songs from the recent greatest hits album.

Weak in particular is astonishing, with 5000 people screaming it at the tops of their voices and Skin climbing onto the balcony giving the seating crowd a view unrivalled anywhere in the venue.

After barely an hour the main set is through, but the energy expended by crowd and band in that time is far in excess of what you’d expect from such a short, but intense, set.

Unbelievably, the band has enough energy left to rip through not one, but two encores.

This is a great show, in a venue renowned for great shows, and Skunk Anansie are well and truly back in the kind of form they were always known for in their prime.

Summer festivals are going to be immense, with any band going to struggle to follow Skunk Anansie on form like this.

LovevoodooFest 09′ @ Hedonism II

LovevoodooFest 09′  @ Hedo 2, Negril, Jamaica… What a week!!!

Crazy week @ Hedo II last week … Nov 14-21-09… http://hedonismfest.com…

The atmosphere was great … the weather stayed perfect and  to top it all off Lovevoodoo was there!!!

Never a dull moment as they say … from dusk till dawn … the club was up and swinging all the way up until  3am which had kicked off from as early as 11:30… the Piano bar was wild thanks to some people who will remain nameless… the shows were great, the games were fun and the staff amazing…

This year was great and we plan on making next year even better…

http://hedonismfest.com/

http://lovevoodoo.com

http://www.lovevoodootravel.com

http://lovevoodooloco.com

http://colorfulfantasies.com

http://bigonthebeach.com

A confidently carnal painting … Blue Nude (1907), by Henri Matisse. Photograph: Francis G Mayer/Corbis

Something happened to artists at the dawn of the 20th century. They started to have sex. If you look at a nude by Matisse, and the painting in my head is his Blue Nude (Souvinir de Biskra) (1907), and compare it with a late Victorian painting such as JW Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs (1896), one of the things that strikes you is surely how much healthier, abundant, and fulfilled Matisse is, sexually. His Blue Nude is a fully, confidently carnal painting. By contrast, the Waterhouse is a perverse fantasy, a lubricious idyll, neurotic, bizarre, solitary.

There’s no way around it: many 19th-century paintings reek of masturbation. They are not lacking in sensuality, but it is of a deferred, fantastical, almost proudly warped kind, typified by Waterhouse. It’s only among the avant garde that love becomes real – in Gauguin’s painting Nevermore, for instance.

Read more at: How modern art shed its inhibitions

What with a boondoggle to the campus of the Black Warrior to abuse large children Lecture graduate students, [1] and the early observation of Dinosaur Day to accommodate the complexity of obligations among family members, [2] I didn;t get an opportunity to collect up the articles of note that had accumulated over the week.

So much for the fiction that Sol has set on the English Empire, [3] in the wake of that English politician mouthing off about giving up meat, now an Asiaindian [4] politician has announced [Link]

“The single most important cause of (carbon) emissions is eating beef. My formula is stop eating beef. This would stop the emission of methane, Beef leads to emission of methane which is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide,”

Of course asiaindians have all sorts of religious beliefs about eating meat so no hardship for them. All I can observe of this is that we are approaching statistical significance of anecdotal evidence of the validity of the theory that human intelligence is directly related to the digestion of animal protein.

Next, [Link] some interesting information from a survey [5] of the hedonistic behaviors of students residing in coeducational [6] dorms. A summary:

“university students in coed housing are 2.5 times more likely to binge drink every week, likely to have more sexual partners, and, pornography use was higher.”

But what was telling is the statement:

“that doesn’t put coed housing on par with fraternity and sorority houses”

Seems like the real hedonists are the Greeks. So if your child belongs to a fraternity or sorority you know they are not getting either an education or career training. Not that this is any different from when I was an undergraduate. So perhaps this is just another fine downlieing (as opposed to upstanding) American tradition?

In a spasm (orgasm?) of journalistic analysis, I am appraised that the Sony and Barnes and Noble eReaders are sold out for the Winter Solstice season, leaving the field open to the Amazon eReader. [Link] The intriguing component here is the conclusion that this is the result of some brilliance on the part of Amazon. One has to rather suspect that the journalists had help here, probably from economists or Wall Street financial experts, if not both. Last I checked there are several other eReaders out there; indeed, most of the ads I receive daily for eReaders are other brands.

Second, and perhaps most telling, is that Sony and B&N have sold out and Amazon has not. Could this have something to do with the desirability of these two former eReaders compared to the latter? I am instantly minded of the recent All Hallows Eve season that we recently endured. The particular is candy. Has anyone ever tried to to buy Halloween candy late? The choices are rather strange

One has to wonder if the two situations are the same? Not that I was going to run out and purchase. The Nook does look a lot more intriguing with its improvements, injecting some constructive improvements into the fray, but there is still far to go to equal the resolution of the printed paper page. And the selection? Still abysmal, get some real nerd book, like Gradshteyn and Rhyzik’s integral tables, or Stegun and Abramowitz.

[1] If they’re still in shul then they’re still children aren’t they? Sort of like the Trobriand Islanders’ definition that babies aren’t really human until they’re weaned, about age three because of the contraceptive effects, which rather puts all the arguments against abortion in a dismal illumination.

[2] Makes me rather glad that FD SCP and I are way-out-in-the-tails-of-the-distribution introverts and don;t even like going to the family thing, much less other social nonsense.

[3] Which happily we disattached ourselves from two hundred plus years ago are the point of a bayonet. Of course we still have to put up with them as allies and general nuisances, largely because of the fiction of a shared language. Anyone who has tried to converse with an Englisher knows there is nothing shared in speech.

[4] How to tell asian indians from american indians? Neither is strictly native as claimed since all humans originated in Africa (some debate there depending on when you start calling hominids human.) My new world archaeology professor used to call the asian variety ‘injians’ but he had spent the Second Great War in the China-Burma-India theatre, mostly the latter, and was given to eating a broiled onion daily at luncheon in a habit learned there to ‘control the intestinal parasites.’ My academically unctuous (that’s new speak for politically correct) colleagues refer to american indians as Amerindians so the others must be Asiaindians?

[5] Horribly small sample size, a population of 500 spread over five campuses. That makes the confidence on the estimates of something like 0.1 or so. But it is entertaining and undoubtedly made great use of bail out monies and kept several graduate students employed.

[6] As a parent and former college student, I have my doubts of the educational aspect of the term. Is hedonism educational? If so, it would seem that a more economical path would be to drink, drug, and congress at home. Isn’t that why we have automobiles?

[7] Aha! You though I would use the “I” word didn’t you?

I’m seven chapters in with the first draft of my new book “Alive”, which is about enjoying life, and I’m quite excited about that. It looks like it’ll be a nice short book, like I planned, maybe about 120 book pages.

I originally planned for it to be seven chapters but that has increased to nine as I’ve added a few more in that seemed important.

So far, I’ve covered a chapter on the purpose of the book; a chapter on hedonism; a chapter on knowing God; a chapter on being in communion with God; a chapter on love; a chapter on money; and this morning I’ve just finished a chapter on taking risks.

It’s flowing very nicely and I’m really excited about this work. It has also helped to solidify stuff I believe around the topic of enjoying life. Once its done I’ll probably post a few snippets of it here on this blog, so if anyone is interested they should check back here.

Sounds like a bad joke: So a guy walks in to a bar wearing a lab coat, boxers, and carrying an old Brother 600 typewriter. Munching on cheese and drinking a Coors, he tells struggling writers to …

Struggle more?

Ray Bradbury’s Advice To Struggling Writers: Struggle Harder! – Book vortex – io9.

The Giraffes are a hedonistic and heavy rock and roll band from Brooklyn, New York.  Fearless Music is a television show that airs on Saturday nights (late) featuring indie bands performing live.  The Giraffes played a song last night on the show (you can go vote for them), which hasn’t been cranked into the Internet yet.  When it does — probably sometime this week — I’ll be sure to embed it.  The band also played the show years ago, when their self-titled album came out.  On Fearless’ website their dubbing the song “Having Fun With Our Souls” when any Giraffe fan or Giraffe himself would call it “Having Fun With Assholes” (the real title).  Quite a difference in meaning there.  Besides, anyone who knows the band knows these guys don’t have souls.  Either they were born without them, or they sold them one a piece each for a ringed six-pack of Diesel-Talls.  Here’s a good vid of “Louie Guthrie Wants to Kill Me” off Prime Motivator.  Notice how many beers, bottles, cups, and drinks are thrown on the singer and his reaction (or lack of), that should give you a good indication of what type of band this is.

-Sonny

Sunt foarte entuziasmata de o carte si abia daca m-am putut abtine sa intrerup lectura doar pentru a scrie acest post.Dar constatarea e interesanta,o contientizam si inainte din punctul de vedere pe care vreau sa il abordez,insa poate nu intr-un mod atat de elegant si impertinent in acelasi timp.

Pentru ca nu am rabdarea necesara sa explic de la cap la coada intreg mesajul cartii (Cartea de capatai a Hedonismului-Michael Flocker) ma voi opri strict la o scurta ghicitoare,posibil stiuta de multi,posibil sa fi circulat online,insa eu,vazand-o pentru prima oara,o voi scrie aici,fiind acest post ca un fel de semn de carte al lucrurilor pe care le-am citit si mi-au placut.

~*~

Coincidenta consta in faptul ca azi,in timp ce mi-am petrecut ora de sport cu Octavian Paler pe sub banca,in jurul meu roiau robotii.Stii,acele persoane in topul clasamentului clasei,sfintele,mironositele,cele care provoaca incretirea orificiului anal al profesorilor zi de zi.Vorbeau si radeau efectiv ca niste tute despre subiecte care la fiecare 5 min declansau franturi de Am vb cu X pe Mess si Da dc nu ai mai vorbit cu el?haha..sa imi dai mie id-ul!.Nu e nimic anormal,nu? Dar de la niste fiinte care stau ora de ora la scoala,(si se uita ciudat la tine atunci cand chiulesti,te duci sa fumezi in pauza,mai exclami cate un sincer Ia pula adresat mai mult sinelui cand n-ai chef),vorbitoare cursiv de franceza,si care atunci cand le intrebi ceva referitor tema/lectie/semnificatia unui cuvant in franceza sau latina,iti raspund cu atata sictir invingator ca si cum Base ar accepta sa i se linga picioarele de catre Barack dupa lungi rugaminti de la cel din urma,evident te astepti la altceva,la alt gen de conversatie.

Arghh…ce ma enerveaza ca am prea multe idei si prea putina rabdare si articolul asta nu va iesi atat de clar pe cat aspir!

Asa ca mi s-a dovedit inca o data ca faptul ca nu sunt robot,nu faramiteaza absolut nimic din propria-mi evolutie,valori si calitate.Beti oameni buni,fumati-ce doriti,atata vreme cat detineti un univers propriu nelimitat de extindere.Aia cu Prigat din colt care va vor comenta nu sunt decat niste impostori,barfa e o manifestare a frustrarii,iar in viitor declinul pentru ei ar putea deveni iremediabil.

Revenind la acea ghicitoare:

Intrebare:

Trebuie sa fie ales un nou conducator al lumii,si nu conteaza decat votul dumnevoastra.Vi se prezinta trei candidati si vi se dau urmatoarele informatii despre caracterul lor.Pe care il alegeti?

Candidatul A:Se stie ca s-a asociat cu politicieni corupti si consulta astrologi.A avut doua amante,fumeaza ca o locomotiva si bea zilnic intre opt si zece Martini.

Candidatul B:A fost concediat de doua ori,obisnuieste sa doarma pana la pranz,in facultate a consumat opiu si bea in fiecare seara un litru de whisky.

Candidatul C:Este un erou decorat in razboi.De asemenea,este vegetarian,nu fumeaza,rareori pune gura pe cate o bere si nu si-a inselat niciodata nevasta.

Pe care dintre candidati il alegeti?

Raspuns:Candidatul A Candidatul B Candidatul C.

Weed, grass, pot…let ‘em smoke it. Gay, homosexual, partners…let ‘em put a ring on it. Inconvenient, unintended, accident…let ‘em kill it. Decent, moral, compassionate…let ’em all just forget it.

When I read an article by Jacob Weisberg in a recent issue of Newsweek, that is exactly the message I took away from it. Weisberg seems to think if enough people want to do something, every one else should just get out of the way and let them do it. My problem with this short-sightedness is that when anything goes, everything goes.

“Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission,” Weisberg writes in the article, titled, “Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can’t stop either. Why that’s good.”* “Rather than trying to take away long-standing rights, they’re instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society.”

While I do think too many in the media would love it if Americans could just lounge around all day massaging their same-sex spouses, inhaling cannabis, eating Doritos and shooting babies with BB guns, I do think a majority of Americans still disagree. Certain elements of society — namely, the media — are “liberalizing,” but many Americans such as myself feel like a lot of this is being shoved down our throats. We are starting to choke.

Weisberg quotes the president, Barack Obama, saying, “‘I inhaled — that was the point.’”*  That is just one more reason I am glad I did not vote for the man. Seriously, even when he admits he consumed illegal drugs, Obama does it in a condescending way.

Pointing out that the bastion of conservative ideology, The New York Times, (can you hear my sarcasm?) has recognized gay unions on its wedding pages for the past seven years, Weisberg says this reflects “evolving social norms.”* I say this is just another example of a media outlet foisting its views on us.

Weisberg writes, “What’s advancing the decriminalization of marijuana is not just the demand for pot as medicine but the number of adults — more than 23 million in the past year…who use it and don’t believe they should face legal jeopardy.”*

Wow, I am amazed the “but Mom, everybody else is doing it” excuse can be used at any age now. Weisberg calls this the “evolving definition of the pursuit of happiness.”* I call this another example of our declining civilization.

Rome crumbled once the societal elites turned to hedonism. Is that the path we wish to travel? Should we let just anything go?

Discussing the relaxing of marijuana laws, Weisberg reports, “In L.A., you need only tell an on-site doctor at a walk-in pot emporium that you feel anxious to walk out with a legal bag of Captain Kush.”* Well, I have to stay up late to get this article done. How long before I can step into a walk-in methamphetamine boutique to pick up some Captain Keep-Me-Awake?

This is exactly my point. Where do we draw the line? When does it stop? Who is going to stand up and yell, “Enough!”? When are we going to realize what I said before — when anything goes, everything goes?

I do not think the problem is that society is becoming more liberal. I think the problem is that we are becoming weak and spineless.

We are too afraid of appearing judgmental. We are too afraid of being deemed politically incorrect. We are too afraid of causing offense.

I say the whole thing about not judging others is a load of crap. We judge others all the time. It is in our nature to do so. If I hurt your feelings and you think I am politically incorrect, go cry to your mama. If I offend, maybe you should be offended. Perhaps that is exactly what you need.

* Quotes from the article, “Gay Marriage & Marijuana: You can’t stop either. Why that’s good.” Newsweek. Nov. 9, 2009. (24).

First, the Bible is true because it gives us the experience it claims it will. For example, the Bible says God will forgive our sin (1 John 1:9). I believe that, and I can truly say that I have a sense of freedom from guilt. The Bible also says that “if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). That’s what happened to me when I came to Jesus Christ. The Bible changes lives. Someone has said that a Bible that’s falling apart usually belongs to someone who isn’t. That’s true because the Bible can put lives together. Millions of people all over the world are living proof that that is true. Maybe you know one or two of them. They’ve experienced the Bible’s power.

To summarize the great philosophical thinkers of the past 2500 years, please enjoy the following slideshow.  It might help to put into perspective the shoulders of the great psychologists, economists, and philosophers that we are standing on to better glimpse our path to happiness.

November Chronicles: Green lights in SoHo, margaritas & pizza, early morning walks to work, a happy reunion, and other charming/vaguely interesting moments that made up the first couple weeks of November. . .

Click below for the photos…

xx

Sure there are different classes of celebrities, and some probably more tokenistic than substantial **coff coff Paris Hilton coff coff**, but I was recently speaking to a few mates conducting a bit of a Chicago School style sociology study into the area of celebrity theory, and influence can be cool in so many ways.

I have yet to see a quantitative method study style in the area of celebrity theory, but just in terms of influence, The Walt Disney Company has most recently been in the fore front of just some of the amazing influences Christians can have in the sphere of entertainment.  Starting off with symbolic interactionism in the area of what has become known as “purity rings”, coming up from the land of the South, formerly criticized for its traditional views in the area of slavery, Baptist and Pentecostal Christians alike (mostly from the post-reformation arminian movement) have gained unprecedented access to children’s television through the Disney Channel.

In our post-modernistic world of pluralism, it has also been interesting to see evolutionists deferring to the right of belief of creationist.  In particular, as referenced most recently by Alyson Michalka (also Disney), stated:

[People came from] Monkey’s?  Umm, I don’t think so!

This was complemented with the remark from her sister (also Disney), Amanda Michalka, who noted that

They’re teaching that [evolution] in schools these days?

Even taking the classical school view of the celebrity theory, drawing from utilitarian and social contract theory which asks “why not?” rather than “why”, the idea that man is a calculating animal means that popularity/hedonistic influences from media Christians can have a profound effect on the course of their life.  By utility, this could ultimately reduce the net numbers of child offenders, and act as a social theory deterrent for crime, in view of the rational choice theory.

Applying the conflict theory, the Disney family adopts its own class, which is utility in the inclusion of children who may feel out of bound.

Alyson Stoner (Disney) is majoring in sociology, and will be doing research in this area, so I’m looking forward towards it, even if it never sees the day of light in the public eye!

My bed feels like a garden and my legs feel tethered to it like weeds. Maybe it’s the vicodin, but it wasn’t the wine. I didn’t drink a sip of wine tonight. The week was corkscrewed open and poured close, down my throat, until I curled under the blankets and let myself go. The vicodin, I swear, I had to take because of my back. I slept on it all wrong. And once I fell out of a window. Once I was even in an upside down car. This week, you could say, was an upside down car—except, instead of crashing into rocks, it was served on them with a lemon. You could say that, you know. There are pictures and bottles and rumors to prove it. Too many police officers and not enough heavy breathing. But what happens at the end of the long, autumn nights? Where do we keep the umbrellas when the rain has stopped coming down? I lie slack in bed and ask questions with or without the wine. The vicodin, I promise, won’t answer.