Has Taylor Swift even read Romeo and Juliet?

On Sunday I asked Ashley about the lyrics to Taylor Swift's song Love Story. Well, I didn't really ask her anything about it, but wondered aloud if they made any sense. She got very defensive that they did make sense. She was kind of stressed, though.

Let me clarify. They DO make sense, they just have very little in common with the story of Romeo and Juliet. Now, Swift's lyrics start out strong. The two protagonists ("Romeo" and "Juliet" for our purposes) meet each other at a party, as in the play, and at least one of the parents is against it:

That you were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles
And my daddy said stay away from Juliet

I'm not too sure about throwing pebbles, but otherwise, this fits. In the Shakespeare play they were told to stay away from each other (seeing as how the two families had hated each other for generations). The song goes on, there are some other lines, it kind of fits the story of the play, but then there's this:

'Cause you were Romeo, I was a scarlet letter

She's a scarlet letter? Mixing metaphors, tsk, tsk. Given that The Scarlet Letter is about a woman that commits adultery and suffers nearly her entire life under the weight of her sin, I'm not sure what Swift is going for here. Ashley explained to me that "Juliet" is shunned, and that's what this line is about. Okay, fine. But the line that really gets me is:

I talked to your dad, go pick out a white dress

First of all, didn't the dad warn him to stay away three verses ago? But more than that, it's definitely not the way the story of Romeo and Juliet goes. At this point I think the only thing she knows about Romeo and Juliet is that they were in love. Everything else she's made up. It's like an 8-year-old wrote the song after falling asleep while watching the movie version.

Anyway.

Since I already sound cranky, let me mention something that really bothers me. (To clarify, this is not something else that really bothers me, because I really like that Taylor Swift song. It's just that the lyrics are pretty dumb.) I hate when cars at stop lights leave huge gaps between them and the car in front of them. I've threatened many times to get out of my car, walk over to the offending driver, knock on their window, and ask them to explain to me why in the world they've stopped 30 feet back from the car in front. I have yet to do it. Perhaps, if you're someone who does this, you can explain why this happens so I don't have to scare the bejesus out of some poor driver one day. I have photos.


I stitched together these four pictures so you can see what I'm talking about (that's right, it took FOUR pictures to photograph the enormity of the space that this person left between them and the car in front). These were taken at the intersection of Windy Hill and Powers Ferry. Why would this person stop where they've stopped? I can't understand it.

We went bowling the other night as part of what I'm billing (starting now) as the Weekend of Heather. I bowled possibly my best two games ever, 167 and 150. Here are the scorecards:



One last thing. I really like sudoku. I'm currently trying to solve a very difficult puzzle, difficult enough that I think I need to learn some new techniques. I think I can use the X-wings technique on it, but I'm not sure. Help me out: