Fruit flies like a banana.

Sadly, I have very little to say which is deeply profound tonight. Actually, probably nothing of that nature at all. Just a brief update, mostly about some movies and books.

Earlier today I watched a film from Senegal called Moolaadé. It is about a woman who refused to allow her daughter to go through the tribal "purification" ceremony. That is, female circumcision. As a result, a few years later 4 young girls come to her home seeking protection, or a sanctuary, invoking the right of moolaadé. The woman does not refuse the girls, and must stand up to the tribal leaders, both the men in charge and the women who perform the ceremony, in order to protect them.

Please understand that I generally hate using clichés (and seeing them used), but this really is a powerful and moving film. Yes, it goes a little turbo-feminist at the end, making it's point very (very) clear. And usually I hate it when movies or books get obvious (this is the reason I continue to put off reading Orwell's Animal Farm). But there are exceptions to every rule, and sometimes a point simply needs to be obvious, for although no counterpoint truly holds any validity, that counterpoint is so often the standard. For more information about female genital mutilation and the efforts to stop it, check out http://www.equalitynow.org/.

Also, I strongly recommend checking out The Triplets of Belleville (that's a link to the trailer), an insanely quirky French animated movie. Don't worry about the language barrier, though, because there's almost no dialoque in the entire 80 minutes. I can't really explain why it's so cool or appealing, only that it is. The only thing more I can do, I think, is refer you to Roger Ebert's review of it, which also recommends without explaining why, but does so more eloquently than I can.

I finished reading Pride and Prejudice, which was enjoyable in spite of my Y chromosome. I then backtracked to American Pastoral (I posted a passage from it here), and I'm going to finish it this time. It's kind of like Pride and Prejudice on a really bad acid trip - everyone's dysfunctional, no one listens to anyone else, and just for fun, there's a little bit of radical youth terrorism thrown in. I'm also into Mere Christianity, which is so far much easier than I expected it to be - I thank J.I. Packer and Knowing God for what I believe was a very good preparation for this and whatever other more dense works I read in the future.

By the way, at the moment it's looking like that job I was hoping for at my community theater isn't gonna work out, due to system errors I don't feel like getting into. There is still hope, but there's a good chance I could end up bagging groceries for tips this summer. Which, given my desire to do something actually productive with myself this summer, will be absolutely *insert sarcastically optimistic adjective here.*

That's it for now. Thank you Dack, Jon, Ian, and K-Barge for being online (and just for being cool).