NY Times Asks...

...light or dark entertainment?:

So what’s it to be, babes on the beach, or bats out of hell?

There is “Mamma Mia!,” the sing-along cinematic travel brochure that set a box-office record last weekend for the opening of a musical. And then there is “The Dark Knight,” which, safe to say, set no toes a-tapping on its dysphoric way to the biggest movie opening ever, tuneful or otherwise.

The choice, in more elegant Miltonic terms, is between Mirth and Melancholy. It’s one we all make from time to time, if only to put quotidian lives at a fair remove while we spend two or three hours at the movies. A youthful Milton described that polarity perfectly in the call-and-response of “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” poems he wrote in 1631 or 1632 that pit the merry man against the pensive one. It’s hard to say who “won,” but there is a hint in the final couplet of each poem: “These delights, if thou canst give,/ Mirth with thee, I mean to live,” the poet writes in “L’Allegro.” In “Il Penseroso,” on the other hand: “These pleasures, Melancholy, give,/ And I with thee will choose to live.” No “if” there; did Milton, even as a green and sighted sprig in his early 20s, throw his lot in with Melancholy?
____
Dr. Sander says that all plays and movies have a therapeutic function, whether we think so or not. In a way, he said, that makes the moviegoing experience “very much like a dream.”

What’s more, he said, even though “there are people who say ‘I just don’t like to see violent films, I like to see happy films,’ ” and “there are people who are prone to one or the other,” it would be “hard to say one is a healthier form of escapism.”

But off the couch for a moment. Yi-Fu Tuan, a cultural geographer at the University of Wisconsin, writes in his book “Escapism” that culture itself is “the totality of means by which I escape from my animal state of being.”...

Professor Tuan says that “rather more people are tempted to do evil,” and hence the attraction to that kind of escapism. “If we are the agent of death, we’re not likely to be the victim of death,” Professor Tuan said. “It’s not logical, of course.”

Like the great German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper, Professor Tuan sees in culture an essential link to the divine. “We look for some superhero, but in the end, Batman, Superman are both vulnerable,” he said. “So we look to the great figures” in religion. “You can think of the Joker harming Batman. But if you are a Buddhist you can’t think of the Joker hurting Buddha.”

Mr. Pieper writes in “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” that “culture depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and consequently living link with the cultus, with divine worship.”

Well, That Department Has Worked out so Well!

"Conservatives have long sought to pursue a policy of 'rollback' in dealing with proliferating government departments. The prime candidates on the list of government departments conservatives seek to eliminate are the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, and Housing and Urban Development. But at present, only the Commerce Department seems vulnerable."
- Heritage Foundation

Image below found here, inspired by Bill of Summa Minutiae:

Oh, just imagine how inadequate our energy strategy would've been without thirty years of the Dep't of Energy? (The mind reels...cue song):

With apologies to Bob Dylan...

How many times must bureaucracy be added
Before we realize it's a ruse?
Yes, 'n how many times will POTUS add a cabinent post
Before we realize it's a joke?
Yes, 'n how many times will we declare war on cancer or drugs
when a dude in his kitchen gets results?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
And still trust the Dep't of Homeland Security?
Yes, 'n how many times must our Grandma be frisked
Before we can fly and be free?
And what does hokey color-coding do
when it's really intelligence that matters?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

I work diligently not to cheat, not to make him something that the gospels don’t say he is. For example, I cannot dream of having him approve of things we approve of today. But I can emphasize his mercy and compassion as revealed in the Sermon on the Mount. I also have tools earlier novelists did not have. They didn’t know a lot about first-century life. Hence portraits in ink, oil, and words of the Holy Family often show them isolated in a dreamy rural setting. We now know people in the first century lived in big clans, prized cousins and other relatives, that life was communal even for the very rich (people just didn’t get time to be alone unless they went into the wilderness to do so), we know that travel was common, and that news traveled fast. Even biblical scholars are often uninformed about this. - novelist Anne Rice on "First Things"

Some feminists think that [St.] Therese was oppressed, because she had a brief longing to become a priest. A goal which soon changed back to her primary dream of being a nun...Apparently in the same spirit, one of my listeners has decided that St. Therese’s brief longing to do great deeds like Joan of Arc was quashed by cruel sexism...Nobody ever seems to believe that St. Therese’s desire to become a girl hermit in the wilderness was quashed by cruel, cruel eeeeeevil sexism. But that one lasted for several years of structured make-believe play and was shared by someone else! Much more credibility than the priest or the Joan of Arc thing...You’ll notice that nobody ever seems supportive of St. Teresa of Avila’s desire to go on crusade as a missionary as a kid, with her brother as a knight or a missionary, and convert all the Muslims. And Jews too, which is interesting since her family were Converso Jews...Hello? Hasn’t anyone here been a kid? Is sexism the only reason any female ever reconsiders a potential career? Isn’t it sexist to assume that sexism was the problem, when all the evidence is against it? - Maureen of "Aliens in this World"

Accidental orthodoxy - phrase invented by "Sancta Sanctis" to describe "Duran Duran" hit

There was much more hate than love, poor man, in his make-up. Can you hate something you don't believe in? And yet he called himself a free-thinker. What an impossible paradox, to be free and to be so obsessed…."'What's the fuss? It's only a bit of bread' [Blacker said,] looking so longingly and pleadingly up at me that even as a child I wondered whether he could really think that, and yet desire it so much." - from Graham Greene short story via Kevin of Philokia

"[Meredith's friend] thinks that Thomas Aquinus should make Christian Bale the sixth way." It's better than the Ontological Argument, anyway... - Meredith of "For Keats' Sake"; I would nominate Yvonne Strahovski

If I was writing a romance novel, even if I was not a "humanae vitae" fan, I can't imagine writing a sex that mentions birth-control techniques. The whole conceit of a romance novel is that you're supposed to be swept away. These details seem like they would just "harsh the vibe". Are visits to the ob/gyn included in romance novels? Somehow, I doubt it, unless it is critical to the plot. - Commenter on "Sancta Sanctis"

How on earth can anyone make a movie that winds up with me skipping past a scene a guy being eaten by multiple huge tapeworms not because I'm horrified but because I'm numbed by the preceding interminable action sequences? The mind boggles. - the inimitable MrsDarwin reviewing the latest "King Kong"

Continuing my walk to the end of Wall Street on Broadway, I saw a plaque. I love historical markers. I take pictures of nearly all that I see and then read them when I get home. This marker announced the location of the fortified wall that protected early New Amsterdam--certainly an important one for NYC and the United States. So, naturally I wanted to take a picture. Raising my camera, and very obvious focused on an otherwise completely blank piece of wall, I apparently alarmed a security person who informed me that no picture were allowed. I pointed to the plaque. He said, "No even of the plaque. It's stupid if you ask me, but that's the rule." Well the rule was made by the Bank of New York on which the plaque resides, and it struck me then, as it does now that in all senses of the world, a business does not own the exterior view of that business...We have grown so security conscious and so frightened of our own shadows, that we have begun to sacrifice some of our liberty and some of our freedom to our fear. - Steven of Flos Carmeli

I was in college when the film of "One Day" came out. I watched it in an auditorium full of coddled American students, who for once were dead silent as the movie played. When it was over my roommate murmured, "Remind me the next time I start to complain." It's important to remember things like that. It's important to remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the countless prisoners Ivan Denisovich represented. - Desperate Irish Housewife on death Sunday of Alexander Solzhenitsyn

To the person who searched for “vestments in plaid” …Please. Don’t. - Amy Welborn

Books saved my life — literally kept me from killing myself– and now I know it was because so many people were willing to burn out their lives in front of a page trying to get it right. People whose goal wasn’t to sound smarter or more profound than the rest of us, but to show us what it means to be human. People who set out not to sensationalize their pain, but to shed light on ours. People who didn’t set themselves above the world, but were part of the world, and loved the world and suffered for it, and made art of their suffering. These are the heroes I look up to, whose feet I hope to sit at one day, whom I hope to have a chance to thank for their stories that sustained and comforted me, their hard work, their example. - Excerpt from Heather King's book "Redeemed"

Any allusion to right and wrong, any attempt to acknowledge the existence of gray areas instead of blindly insisting on black-and-white, any suggestion that the other side had a certain point, or that our own client was not entirely innocent — and reference, in other words, to the truth - was the ultimate taboo. In fact the entire legal profession was so driven by the fear of not winning enough money, so intent on covering its ass, so inured to the meaninglessness of the whole enterprise, that if the truth had stood up from the jury box and waved, we would have stared for a moment in shock, then made a motion in limine to rule it inadmissable. - Heather King, on her years practicing law in a personal injury firm in Los Angeles

I was never a big Annie Lamott fan - she seems too self-absorbed, to invested in her own “difference” - the dreadlocked, politically liberal Jesus-lover! The white chick worshipping with the minorities! Interestingly enough, Heather King shares some of Lamott’s profile. She’s counter-cultural, she was a prisoner to destructive behavior, she lives in an area in which she is a minority, she hangs out at the edges of society and culture - in her case, with recovering and struggling addicts and others at the margins. But even as her story is about her, I found her writing to take me far beyond Heather King in a way that Annie Lamott’s writing does not take me beyond Annie Lamott. Like Lamott, like all of us, King wants to feel okay, but the okay-ness she finds points her beyond herself, and so we, too, look with her to the rest of a suffering imprisoned world in need of being…redeemed. - Amy Welborn, whole post here

Environmentally Speaking

Let's assume that the environmentalist agenda is correct. That man is the cause of global warming and that the elimination of fossil fuels will prevent the dire apocalpytic scenerios that I heard from a friend and family member over the weekend, i.e.:

The coral reef is degrading rapidly due to pollution. This will cause the plankton & other parts of the lowest level of the sea's food chain to die, which will ripple up until the oceans become lifeless.

As Greenland glaciers melt due to global warming, this will cause a massive influx of cold water into the Gulf Stream thereby bringing about a new Ice Age.

My impression is that scientists disagree on these matters and so the layman is forced to put his faith in this scientist or that scientist (which defeats the whole purpose of science), but I read one scientist say that it's too late anyway and that even if tomorrow we ended fossil fuel usage that it wouldn't matter. But for the sake of argument let's assume that we can reverse it.

So my interlocutor said that we need to fix the problem (where "we" is collective humanity) by eliminating use of fossil fuels. His despair was heartfelt inasumuch as he admitted the hopelessness of the situation. It seems to me that successful implementation of the environmentalist's agenda would require either one-world totalitarianism or a sudden across-the-board increase in virtue in the world, where virtue is defined as deferring present pleasure in order to prevent future pain. I'm not sure which is less likely. In a thousand different ways we know that virtue is not humanity's strong suit, and those in China and India have economies just now tasting the first fruits of industrialization so that would take a heckuva lot of virtue. (Again, this assumes everyone believes the threat is real and believes that we can reverse the damage.)

My interest in this is primarily the parallels between the environmentalist who despairs of saving the earth and the Christian who despairs of saving his soul. In both cases the means is wrong; the environmentalist relies on humanity - even while spurning humanity by saying there are too many of us - to save the earth but deep down knows the futility of that, while the Christian sees his own continual attempts at increasing virtue and is tempted to feel the same. In both cases there has to be a recognition that only God can save us. Human futility is no excuse for inaction since there is no futility with God since He can do the impossible, which is why the gospel Sunday about the five loaves and two fish is so illustrative.

The earth warrior and the soul warrior will meet only at God because humans and creation are so intertwined and both the earth and the soul were created by God. As St. Paul wrote: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." It's likely that the restoration of the earth and our individual soul will occur in the next life and next Creation.

UPDATE: I probably should've said in this post that I'm not personally concerned about the apocalyptic scenerios posted above, but I did feel sympathy for my weekend visitor, who is. Steven Riddle comments:

Coral reefs grow where they grow because nothing else does...Other than being home to a great many sea animals, they contribute relatively little to the balance of the oceans. What is critical there is estuarine environments, and I can only see ocean level rises as potentially good for estuaries...

[And] given that we are coming out of one of the coldest periods in Earth history, one would expect that temperature would be on the rise, greenhouse or no greenhouse.

Rather like the anecdotal coment/asteroid that could at any moment crash into Earth, it's one of those things we need to learn to live with. God's way of keeping us humble.

UPDATE II: Good 'un from Dylan:

The best environmental slog I've seen came on the t-shirt of some guy riding the # 77 bus along Mass. Ave. :

SAVE THIS PLANET
It's the only one that has beer.

Predictions

I made a calendar entry for March of '09 to check the accuracy of the dire predictions made by one Jeff Culbreath. If Obama has the audacity of hope then Jeff Culbreath has the audacity of pessimism. In my inner battle between pessimism and contrarianism it seems I'm more the latter since I'm ready to predict the opposite of most of what he's written, although he starts quite plausibly:

November ‘08 - Prop 8 fails in CA, same-sex marriage permanently established.

Likely. CA is married to the proposition of same-sex marriage because in CA they love radical experiments to the social order. (As a whole; there are plenty of conservatives there too; just not enough of them.)

November ‘08 - Obama wins presidency; Democrats increase majority in both houses.

The latter half of that is a slam-dunk. The former is 50-50.

Dec ‘08 - Mar ‘09 - Another dry winter for California. Water emergency predicted for summer with massive drop in ag production.

Very possible.

January ‘09 - Price of oil combined with extreme low temperatures triggers heating crisis in the northeast and midwest. Rioting ensues.

Extreme low temps? I thought we were in global warming mode. And Midwesterners don't riot. We merely complain on blogs.

From there the predictions begin to sound very Jean Dixon-y, what with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court mysteriously retiring and two shortly thereafter dying.

My predictions take a contrarian view. I'll say that no Supreme Court justice dies or retires before April of '09. And I'll predict that the price of oil falls to $100 a barrel. A major new Saudi Arabia oil field is scheduled to come online and assuming there isn't trouble with Iran that should relieve some pressure.

So instead of wide unrest, I predict wide rest, at least until 2012 when the Mayan calendar says the world is going to end. Of course this could just be the contrarian in me talking, just as the pessimism in Jeff likes to come out now and then...

Summer Thoughts

I see our new patio umbrella and smile. It looks so good surrounded by green and and endowed with sun. It's no wonder St. Francis gave primacy to the sun, even over water, in his Canticle:

May you be praised, O Lord, in all your creatures, especially brother sun, by whom you give us light for the day; he is beautiful, radiating great splendor, and offering us a symbol of you, the Most High. . .

May you be praised, my Lord, for sister water, who is very useful and humble, precious and chaste. . .

May you be praised, my Lord, for sister earth, our mother, who bears and feeds us, and produces the variety of fruits and dappled flowers and grasses. . .

Praise and bless my Lord, give thanks and serve him in all humility.

Ham o' Bone is down at the beach, in SC, and so I'm reliving the sea's organic freshness, exuberance and laxation, vicariousl. I recall discovering that remote part of the isle where our dog ran free, there where we could see in the distance the Marine isle, aka Parrish Island.

ON beach trips I never know what book will engross & surprise but there’s nothing quite like reading in a setting unparalleled since the Garden of Eden. One thing you rarely find in non-fiction but sometimes will in novels is that remarkable symmetry when an author – like Joseph O’Neill in “Netherland” - says exactly what you’ve been thinking. You can’t read expressly for that purpose since that serendipitous moment is so rare, but it’s a nice side benefit.

At home it’s been disagreeable to have to share our backyard with the movers and shakers who are on an endless road-widening project. How slowly this watched kettle refuses to boil; it feels like death and taxes in its permanence. Their endless toil, their endless piling up and re-piling of dirt here, there and everywhere, the ubiquitous “beep-beep” when they go in reverse, as they always seem to, as this whole project seems to. But enough lament! We should all be so fortunate in our choice of lamentations.

Oh how lean I felt in April, before the beautiful balcony where the seagulls cried! The terrace diner at Busch Gardens, the sandy runs, the hooked but free’d pelican. How long ago it seems now! I misjudge my strength only belatedly, and am never sure on the location of the line between prudent self-preservation and reliance on grace. I sort of miss the old sick days of yore when I would get a cold – nothing more, hardly ever a fever – and when I would stay home in bed and veg and watch game shows like "The Price is Right". Psychosomatic for sure, for when the sick days were rolled into vacation time, they came much less frequently...Certainly rejuvenations through liturgy seem less an option and more a practical necessity; the Byzantine Liturgy seems a personal gift from God.

Rut-breaking vacations need not be to Madagascar but as simple as a camping trip to a local state park, a cottage in nearby Hocking Hills, or even a meal at the local Amish Restaurant followed by some goat-petting. We need not be, in other words, a Bill O’Reilly who has tamed lions and swam the Amazon while beating off sharks. But, at the same time, I distrust my reliance on vacations.

Success to Bring Division?

Politics always has an element of tribalism about it, as Darwin Catholic explains. Many vote for those with an R or a D after their name. Others based on skin color or religion or what have you: Mormons for Romney, blacks for Obama, Rinos for McCain (just jokin').

But current black leaders seem to be envious (that was for Tom of Disputations, who doesn't like it when I use 'jealous' when I mean envious) of Obama, for the understandable reason that he hasn't paid his dues. I expect that from Jesse Jackson but less so from Tavis Smiley for some reason. Unlike Jesse, who is publically supportive of Obama but privately not so, Smiley is publicly skeptical. He's not a go-along-with-the-crowd type. He's ambivalent about the messiahship of Obama -- a regular Doubting Tavis.

Tom Joyner says that the perception was that Smiley was supporting Hillary Clinton but even if not true Smiley seems a bit old-fashioned in that he seems to care more about ideas - i.e. furthering government liberalism and all its misguided works and pomps - than skin color, even though liberalism for Smiley is mostly a vehicle for helping black folks, for whom he feels real passion. (With Jesse Jackson, by contrast, there seems more feeling for poverty wherever it's found.)
The New Yorker has the story:

In quieter moments, Smiley often strikes a note of concern about whether, after the campaign, Obama’s “soul will be intact.” One night, driving through Los Angeles with a friend, the actor Wren T. Brown, Smiley said, in a soft voice, “We are going to have to keep that brother at the top of our prayer list. As the old folk say, ‘Keep that Negro on the altar.’”
___
Among African-Americans, in particular, an Obama victory in November would probably be celebrated as if it were a national holiday. (Even Smiley says, “If the brother wins, I’m gon’ be on the front line of the electric slide—I’m gon’ be there celebrating, like everybody else.”) But it could also be traumatic for anyone who makes a living talking about or to—or, especially, for—black America. Black leaders who opposed him might find themselves, as Smiley did, dissidents in their own communities. Bitter intra-racial debates over the policies of our first black President could only make the notion of a singular black community seem that much more illusory, emphasizing schisms that many black leaders have been at pains to ignore.

Why We Read What We Read Book

This is a cut & paste from a comment made on Sancta Sanctis...I was watching the authors of "Why We Read What We Do" on C-Span and they mentioned the incredible popularity of the relational non-fiction (self?)help books and the equally popular romance novels. In the first category we have John Gray ("Men are from Mars...") and Dr. Phil and others. In the second Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele and many others.

They said there is one huge similarity and one huge difference in the fiction/non-fiction approach to relationships. The similarity is both assume men and women to be alien, exotic creatures completely different such that it's a Darwinian miracle we ever get together.

The difference is that with non-fiction, we try to live with the differences peacefully such that the key to happiness is for the guy to take out the trash and give more hugs. In other words, don't expect passion or you'll be disappointed.

With fiction, it's the opposite. The obstacle is not afterwards, it's before. It's the stormy courtship. Couples live happily ever after if they can just *meet*, just meet the one for whom the passion is so strong it will last the rest of their lives.

The authors' main complaint was the lack of nuance in both genres, saying both have all the nuance of those 1950s sexual education videos.

Update: More thoughts here:

Enbrethiliel: So here we have women from successful marriages choosing to write Romance novels rather than self-help books.

In James Fixx's "The Complete Book of Running" he explained there are two ways to deal with painful and fatiguing marathons. (Not to compare love to marathon running of course though someone once wrote that love is "beautiful in dreams but harsh in reality"; for Mother Teresa, love of God was like a grueling marathon.)

One is to escape, to put a headset on and listen to music, to mentally do puzzles, to do anything to get your mind off the pain.

The other is to fully engage, to constantly monitor your body, to pay close attention to your footing. If you feel a twinge in your left foot then you try to correct for that, if you see a hill coming you will bend a bit at the waist and hold the arms higher or lower...etc...

This may be a stretch, but it sounds vaguely similar to the non-fiction/fiction approach to romance. The non-fiction tries to examine pains and be aware of them, and constantly strive for betterment. While the fiction approach - is it escapist? If most romance novelists are mostly happily married are they finding an outlet for their passion in the novels themselves rather than the relationship?

Of course the fact that I know nothing about this subject nor about the inner lives of romance novelists does not preclude me from throwing out possbilities, be they ignorant or not.

Enbrethiliel: Yet Romances do give some credit (perhaps far too much credit) to the fact that romantic love is a grace and a mystery.

That does seem a key difference too. There are many potential analogies going thru my head, like self-help books are the Novu Ordo and the romance novels are the Latin High Mass. Like self-helps are for the left-brain'd and romances for the right-brain'd. Like the self-helps are for conservatives and the romances for liberals. I suppose it's not "either/or" but "and/both" since we need both.

From Fellow Ohioan "Suburban Banshee" ...

Fine list lives up to Curt Jesterian standards:

TOP TEN CONTRADICTORY ATTITUDES OF THE SIXTIES BUNCH

10. Demonstrations and marches are good.
Eucharistic and saint-day processions are bad.

9. Incense at home to cover up that marijuana smell is good. Yay, Sanskrit chant!
Incense in church to waft prayers to Heaven is bad. Boo, Gregorian chant!

8. Renovating old houses and antiques to their original condition is good.
Maintaining old churches in their original condition is bad.

7. Indoctrinating children from birth to love peace is good.
Baptizing children soon after birth, and teaching them the Christian faith, is bad.

6. It’s good for kids to learn a second language. Bilingual education is great.
It’s bad for kids to learn Latin. Teaching Mass parts in Latin or Greek is abusive.

5. Early music is good, especially on the original instruments and for its original purposes.
Early music in Mass is bad, especially on the original instruments and for its original purposes.

4. Grassroots movements are good.
Grassroots traditional religious movements are bad.

3. Diversity and experimentation is good.
Diversity within religious tradition is bad.

2. Alternative lifestyle choices are good.
Chaste alternate lifestyle choices are bad.

And the number one contradictory attitude of the Sixties Bunch?

1. All life is sacred, and every person has worth and is good!
Babies we don’t want are bad.

Thoughts Aloud   -alternative title "Thoughts Allowed!"

This just in: Ken Griffey Jr. dealt to the Chicago White Sox, his approval pending.

* * *
Paradox in the spiritual life (i.e. reconciling free will v. God's sovereignty, the presence of evil in a God-made world, etc...) is to be expected. If God were capable of being well understood by us than that would be a god on par with us.

* * *
I have a scapular with St. Michael the Archangel on one side and a Cross on the other with the saying "Conquer by this". It's interesting how I tend to emphasize one or the other as I retrieve it in the morning. I used to emphasize St. Michael ("defend us in battle") but now I mostly just remind myself that we must conquer by the cross. It's odd that it's so either/or, when it should be and/both - i.e. we are being helped and we must cooperate.

* * *
Adulthood sometimes seems primarily a process of undermining faulty assumptions made in youth.

* * *
It's been a source of insatiable curiosity: what did Rev. Richard Neuhaus have against William F. Buckley's theology? There was no elaboration on that subject in the First Things issue after WFB's death, but I have to admit I do wonder. I read WFB's book "Nearer My God" and nothing stood out for me as being "wrong" although obviously my knowledge of theology isn't close to either Buckley's or Neuhaus's so perhaps the differences between them would be lost on me.

* * *
The corporate steeplechase seems a bit like the game of monopoly, only you don't acquire hotels but just try to avoid pitfalls such as downsizings and endure the latest management fads (which are all painful though they differ greatly in intensity).

The hottest new managerial trend must be individual meetings with every employee. Call it mandatory feedback. I've been scheduled for a 15 min meeting with my bosses' bosses' boss (I hate plurals; no emails pls for any grammatic incorrectness). Also a 30 minute with my bosses' boss. Last year I had 30 minutes with another high level dude and now I've heard that my bosses' bosses' bosses' boss is having eight-on-one lunches.

August is a traditionally slow month around here and when management is bored they have things like this. The worst thing is that I have to look presentable and try to be semi-coherent which, depending on the day and time, can be a challenge. *end silly complaint*

* * *
From the ridiculous to the very sad: if you might spare a prayer for my uncle, who was just diagonsed with AML Leukemia, I would appreciate it.

New from K-Tel! Only $19.95!  (plus $37.50 shipping & handling)

The Purgometer!

You own a pedometer, speedometer, chronometer, blogometer, but do you have the brand new Purgometer?

At the click of a button, the Purgometer will tell you how much you've increased your stay in Purgatory during a given day or week or month. It catalogs your sins as they are committed (now includes sins of omission!) and instantly your recalibrates the amount of fire necessary.

Of course, unlike a pedometer used for exercise, you'll want to minimize your Purgatometer number. But even if it gets high this can be a prod to increase charity for love "covers a multitude of sins"*.

* - (Loveometer sold separately.)

The Art of the Possible     -- Or 'Tales of the Frugal'

Long-time readers (first time callers) may recall Ham o' Bone and his awe-inspiring frugality.

I thought I'd devote this space in homage to him. He deserves more, say a Money Magazine cover, for he is the fiscal equivalent of a saint. Just as we bemoan our lack of money even though it's usually the result of choices we've made (but will not admit), so often we bemoan our lack of sanctity despite the choices we've made (but will not admit).

And, like most saints, there is an element of craziness. Witness this mention of der Bone as written on this blog back in 2006:

I long to write the Great American Novel tonight between 10 and midnight. It would be sweet and sad and inspiring all at once. Ham o’ Bone will feature prominently of course, as a partially disguised character who frugally uses one square of TP per bowel movement. Ham, in a bid to save money, once decided to use his downstairs toilet for urination only. That way he could flush but once a month, saving water and cash. This came to an abrupt end when his mother-in-law visited and went for a smoke in the downstairs bathroom. Overcome by the smell, she told her daughter that that was ridiculous and must stop if she expected future visits. How many of us can lay claim to a sweet absurdism such as this?

Ham has mellowed in middle age and went so far as to recently purchase a 2000 square foot house that is extremely attractive. With that purchase the monthly budget for his family of six roughly doubled, to $4500 a month.

They home school their children and the unexpected benefit of this is a reduction in peer pressure ("to 25% of its strength" Bone guesses) and this has an effect on expenses because peer pressure almost always translates to material purchases unless the parents are especially resistant to entreaty.

Perhaps the most amazing statistic is Bone's purchase of two Geo Metro cars over the past 16 years. He has spent under $11,000 on those cars during that period of time, which includes maintenance and the initial cost of the cars, but not oil changes or gas. To have spent $687 per year for his transportation over 16 years seems amazing, and that was done mostly on the back of making every other purchase on his GM Card, which offered something like 3% towards the purchase of a new vehicle. Both vehicles were purchased at ridiculously low prices after the rebate was applied.

Clothing purchases have been minimal. The kids get hand-me-downs from relatives, as well as gently used clothing from Goodwill or Salvation Army. A recent example of Bone's ingenuity: when Meijer's offered 10% in-store credit of the value of any gift cards purchased, he bought $2,400 worth of Meijer gift cards (towards groceries, which he would have bought anyway). That gave him $240 of free money to purchase clothes at Meijers.

His four children, ages 13, 9, and twins aged 4 (roughly) are not interested in sports but he does not skimp on funding what they are interested in. He buys a $210 YMCA summer membership. Two of the children take weekly piano lessons ($2,000 a year). The eldest recently went to Boy Scout camp ($200). And there was a recent outlay of $100 for ten group home school lessons ($100 per quarter).

He can be infuriating, at times, but Andrew Sullivan's blog without Andrew Sullivan reminds me of something David Letterman once said about decaf coffee: "It's like non-alcoholic Scotch. What is the point?" - Dylan of "More Last than First"

why I envy Augustine...He is so faithful to so many that he met, e.g. Cicero. He never forgets what each one did for him, even if it wasn't enough. With me, a pallor falls on those that I once loved - as if they're all used up. - FPK of "Reconnaissance of the Western Tradition"

One of the old signs of saintliness was always a genuine love for animals coupled with the ability to give them orders, to which even wild animals responded with love and respectful obedience. This reversal of the Fall and return to something like Eden is part of what we are called to do, as co-workers with the New Adam...We can’t separate ourselves from Creation, or pretend that we can treat ourselves like crap, ripping away our own human dignity and oppressing ourselves, and still be able to treat everything else with love and respect. Mystically, too, we are connected to the world. - Suburban Banshee of "Aliens of this World" via Enbrethiliel

Dogs' lives are short, too short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion. There's such beauty in the hard honesty of that, in accepting and giving love, while always aware it comes with an unbearable price. Maybe loving dogs is a way we do penance for all the other illusions we allow ourselves and for the mistakes we make because of those illusions. - from a Dean Koontz novel via "Sancta Sanctis"

As it is the nature of a seed to grow into a fruitful plant, so it is the nature of a human to grow into a perfect child of God, and forcefully uprooting the weeds in our nature -- weeds, let us not forget, that we ourselves have nurtured -- may also uproot the good plants through which we are to be perfected. - Tom of Disputations

One of my favorite bloggers, Cecily, just got back from the Blogher conference in California. In giving her impressions of the conference she wrote about blogging and about the popular blog writer Dooce: "I've read her blog for almost five years, and I've watched her become more private over that time, less willing to do what they called at BlogHer "naked" blogging. Sure, she's been compensated for her blog, but she's lost a great deal too.I am a "naked" blogger; when Heather said that she doesn't blog about 95% of her life, I thought, wow: I am the total opposite. I don't blog about more like 5%. I really do put it all out here." This was interesting for me to read. I have just been thoroughly chastized (again ) in other parts of the blogosphere for speaking up when other bloggers "blogged naked" and put some of their more controversial stuff out there. I've even read from some mommy bloggers that they consider their blogs to be their personal little spaces on the web, like pretty front porches. - Elena of "My Domestic Church"

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to commentary on FOXNews about the [teenage] pregnancy pact…One expert in Gloucester truly connected some dots for me. She surmised that one of the big draws for these teenaged girls--young teenaged girls--was that maternity clothes had become so chic, so totally hip. Let me re-phrase that: high school freshmen and sophomores are eager to get pregnant because they know they'll look pretty darn cute in today's maternity fashions. - blogger at "In the Heart of My Home"

all we need is hard work, fervent prayer, and rifles - Tagline of blogger at "Zero Summer"

In 1987-88, Mary kept me Christian. Not Catholic, but Christian... I found myself drawn to the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, where I saw such epithets as "to Jesus through Mary" which puzzled me...I was wondering about Jesus and whether it all really happened. The one thing I couldn't get out of my head was the visit of Our Lady of Guadalupe. She appeared to Juan Diego to tell him: "Am I not here, I who am your mother?"...The skeptic may dismiss a priori any miracles such as this one, but to one who is open and doesn't presume to turn away from anything that claims a reason beyond what can be observed in a laboratory - to one who doesn't set a limit on what can happen, then, Our Lady of Guadalupe doesn't easily reduce to formulas of power and shamanism. To me, it's clear that Our Lady of Guadalupe did appear to Juan Diego...Jesus suffers a thousand competing reductions in the common mentality: Jesus the revolutionary, Jesus the hippie, and the various Jesuses of South Park, the Simpsons, and Family Guy. With all these counterfeits, abstractions, and reductions jumping around, it can be difficult to see Jesus as a person. Mary changed that for me. Mary is the sign of Jesus's humanity. - Frederick of "Deep Furrows"

Joseph and John, as well, are bound to Mary in different ways. In her assent Mary was led by the angel immediately to the Lord, without the intervention of her husband's consent. Joseph, who is warned by the angel that he should not divorce Mary because she has conceived of the Holy Spirit, is bound directly to the human person, Mary, in order to become through this bond a servant of the incarnate Lord. John, however, is first claimed by the Lord for himself and only then brought together with Mary and given over to her. If Joseph attains to God and to holiness only through Mary, God draws John immediately into His friendship and binds him as the Lord's friend to the Mother of the Lord. - From "The Handmaid of the Lord" via "Deep Furrows"

Of Baseball Card Collectors

When we were young there were two sorts of collectors:
those who joy'd in what they had and those who felt the lack.

Some fixated on the Missings saying
"I need your Candiotti
to complete my set."

(As if they'd abandon the 99 for the one!)

Joey and I thought it strange
(their hobby looked like work)
But they got our Candiotti
for their Aaron or Clemente.

We pitied the never satisfied
chasing some never-to-be-completed set,
those who bowed to the external standard
and authority of Topps' Checklist.

Yet imagine our surprise to learn
that joy and need had married
that love and law had hitched
that now and not yet had merged
in Him, through Him and with Him.

Festival Procession at St. Margaret's