Two dubious temporary qualities: tipsiness and the state one enters into after having just watched a film like High Fidelity.

While the characters in High Fidelity should rightly be viewed as pathetic, the fact is that they accurately, if not sadly, represent youngish (35> [somewhat arbitrary, I know]) people, both Christian and non-X alike. There. I said it. Of course, if we do not care to acknowledge reality, we can always take recourse to the Internet in order to encounter folk who claim to live The Way people should live, yet such Internet denizens are, for the most part, WiFi creations who live only in the land where people really do choose death before sin and dishonor.

The film chronicles the romantic misadventures of record store owner Rob (John Cusack), who does not realize until it is nearly too late that he has preferred to live among fantasies (e.g., women who want to see a film that you have already seen and approved) because it is a much easier than dealing with real people (e.g., women who do not even like the films that you like). This preference for fantasy—nothingness, as he admits—prevents him both from committing to the actual, though imperfect, people and situations that are in his life as well as from planning for the future.

More than likely the bourbon is talking, but I, likewise, really do want to stop with the fantasies and get married. At some inarticulate level, I feel as if I can do what I need to do only if I do get married.  Much energy goes into dating or simply being on “watch” (a horrible, horrible period of one’s life, really), energy that could be better channeled elsewhere. For example, the energy that I expend in waiting to see if any young ladies at my church receive Holy Communion on the tongue can be better spent writing that heartbreaking novel that has been floating around in my head for a while.

Yet, what does a guy like myself do, one who does not feel at home in modernity, yet does not care to align himself with communities that pass the time by discussing the implementation of a monarchy in the US, the immoral nature of the Civil Rights Movement, and the delightful fewness of the saved? Though with fear and trembling I consider such a matter as follows, my idea of a good time is not discussing the implications of Fatima and the souls who fall into hell like snowflakes. I would rather dance the Argentine tango with a pretty brunette. In what way is this paragraph connected to the one preceding it?

Does anybody care to read this? No? So be it. Pass the bourbon.