Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

Call Me Easily Amused...

...but not late for dinner. Terrence Berres (who emailed me: "athletes should give 110% to avoid cliches like the plague") remarks on the change of his diocesan newspaper from The Catholic Herald to Our Catholic Herald. Now there's your democracy in action boys and girls! No top-down organization there, at least when it comes to names.

I love things like that. Like when my hometown of Hamilton, Ohio re-named itself Hamilton!, Ohio in order to increase tourism. There's a sort of naive innocence in those who actually think those things work. You can see them around a board table and their eyes light up: "You know, we could change the name!"

The Herald's substitution of the personal pronoun reminds me how when I go to McDonald's fine restaurants I'll sometimes say, perversely, "I'll have your Quarter Pounder with Cheese" as if the cashier feels a sense of ownership. (And while on the subject of McDonald's, here are a few ways to have more fun during your drive-thru visit: Pronounce "filet of fish" as "fill-ett o' fish". Roll your r's when asking for a breakfast burrito. And when they ask you how many creams for your coffee, say "2.5".) Anyway, Terrence B. writes,

I suppose that this blog might serve as something of a journal of semi-pro manipulations by parish and archdiocesan staff. They do seem to often forget to close the cover, and we see the gears turning and stripping...

Perusing other postings, I could vicariously appreciate Patrick's smittenness with ice dancer Elene Gedevanishvili. Having watched all of thirty minutes of the Games, it's possible I'm giving these Olympics short shrift...

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Speaking of Russians, heard Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture this morning on the way to work, a piece I'd hadn't heard in years, and was struck again by the climactic ending. Ravel's Bolero is supposed to be erotic but I think the 1812 Overture could give it a run for its money.
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The writer at Simply Wait writes of the best places to write:

I once considered moving back to the mother country, where undoubtedly the writerly impulse slipped into my genes as stealthily as my melancholic temperament or my fondness for black beer. Yes, I could go back to Ireland, the country my malnourished ancestors fled, rent a little cottage in the countryside, drink Guiness and wait for the golden river of prose to start flowing.

And if the prose doesn't flow, there's always that black river of Guinness...