March Madness, Indeed!

My friend Miss Swartz (huh, that's a character from Vanity Fair, too) and I have been planning on a March Madness party since the beginning of February, so I took a planned hiatus from the hiatus tonight while a bunch of us gathered at her casa to hang out and eat chips and lament the sad state of offensive rebounding in the NCAA and yell at that idiot Texas player who went for five 3-pointers (easy, kids, I'm talkin' basketball, not theology) in overtime even though he hadn't hit a single one in the whole stinking game.

And did you see that commercial they kept playing over and over? It looks like a beer commercial to begin with because it's a scantily dressed woman gyrating in a club, but then it turns out to be for Old Spice!?!? What!? It wasn't just that commercial, it was EVERY commercial. Going without TV for a few weeks makes every sexually-driven ad all that much more scandalous to me! I know I already live in a Bible Bubble, going to seminary and hanging outHere's what shocked me. Did y'all see that stupid Old Spice deodorant commercial they kept with my friends from church and stuff, but living in virtual media starvation even amps up the isolation. And I don't mean that in a bad way -- I mean, why do we (I, I mean) feel like we (I) need to be desensitized to this whole sex-sells, consumer-driven, godless culture? I know I never batted an eye about trashy commercials or skimpy outfits before I started doing this... I guess one more reason to thank God for Lent, right?

It reminds me of something a homeschooling proponent said: "People always ask me about socialization. And I say, look at our society! Do you really want your kids to be socialized into THAT?"

On a lighter (though not on the caloric side) note, I went for the first time into the (new) Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Kitchen today, a place with a cumbersome name and a heavenly purpose: to provide absolute, childlike joy and bliss to customers of all ages, in the form of toothsome sweets of every possible variety. As Lindie said tonight, "I tried to die." A 20-foot-long case full of creative homemade ice cream flavors and no less than 25 kinds of pie, plus county-fair-blue-ribbon-prize-deserving cake, and positively enormous cookies. Good heavens. I was grinning so much that I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my head, and that was BEFORE I sunk said teeth into a slice of coconut cream pie. Divine. The prices are reasonable, too. I fear that I may have to resign myself to a career in a sideshow now that I've found the place -- come one, come all, see the fat lady who'll eat any kind of pie you put in front of her! I do love pie. And they have sweet potato, and banana cream, and pecan, and 4 kinds of apple, and, and, and... oh, heaven.

Do you think there'll be pie in the resurrection?