++ Relapsed Catholic ++ religion politics culture blog

"No, Perkins..."

Call it the Seven Year Bitch. After being online since 2000, RelapsedCatholic is now FiveFeetofFury.

[Update below]

"Have you seen that bumper sticker '9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB'? If you haven't, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime that thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn't quietly offed some of these dissident professors –- or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract. (...)

"Apparently, 39 percent of Democrats still believe Bush didn't know in advance – or, at any rate, so they said in May. But I'm confident half of them will have joined Rosie O'Donnell on the melted steely knoll before the Iowa caucuses. If Iraq is another Vietnam, 9/11 is another Kennedy assassination."

(...)

"According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one's death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they're after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely odd but as one more reason why they'll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen.

"But that's the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he's retained counsel..."

PLUS: "Islam is as moderate as the over-arching culture." 

Yes and no. When you read troll comments on conservative blogs, from lefties who insist they know/work with/go to school with plenty of moderate Muslims, these comments are always made by big city/college town North Americans. The prevailing secular, consumerist culture takes the edge off all faiths, including Islam.

However, I've never heard such a view expressed on a UK or Euro blog, although obviously I haven't read every single one. And "moderate" would seem to describe those cultures quite well. "Indifferent" even. "Hostile to religion", in fact. Yet this where we see the development of terrorist cells.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn via email:

"I think I've either been misquoted or misunderstood. What I usually say is 'Islam is moderated by the over-arching culture' -- and then, as I did in Phoenix, I cite, for example, Indonesia under the dictatorship, the Central Asian stans under the Soviet Union, and Turkmenistan under that
crazy Turkmenbashi guy who died a few months back. None of these places had problems with radical Islam. I then add, as I did in Phoenix, that none of these examples is terribly encouraging for western democracies. I also refer to India under the Raj, which also had problems with Wahhabism in the 19th century but managed at least to contain it. That's also not terribly encouraging to the genetically non-imperialist Americans.

"But that's why Europe's Muslims think they'll win. Belgium, the Netherlands et al have no 'over-arching culture', only the nullity of post-nationalist mush-relativist EU pseudo-identity. In that vacuum, Islam grows ever fiercer.

"Best as always..." 

Creative anti-KKK counter demo.

A reader reads my mind:

"Did you happen to watch Luciano Pavarotti's Catholic state funeral [in Modena Cathedral] on television this morning? It was on RAI International, so maybe you don't get that channel.

"The guy abandoned his wife of 34 years and three daughters for his secretary who was less than half his age and younger than his own daughters in a highly publicized affair.  He divorced and remarried this woman and had a (now fatherless) bastard child with her too, and they were in the funeral procession.  But I guess canon law doesn't apply if you're rich and famous.

"Abortion and gay marriage loving Romano Prodi is giving a eulogy right now!"

Ex-ACLU lawyer gets seven years for child pRon possession, including videos of infant sexual torture.

Pretty damn clever.

"David Schmitt, a professor at Bradley University in Illinois, analysed the geographic distribution of the 'Big Five' personality traits -- extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousnes, neuroticism and openness -- in 17,837 people from 56 nations. Using the U.S. as a statistical benchmark at 50.0 in each of the five categories, Canada scored 48.32 in extroversion, 49.14 in agreeableness, 49.05 in conscientiousnes, 50.58 in neuroticism and 48.75 in openness.

"This means Canadians are only slightly less extroverted and open than Americans, and a touch more neurotic. It also suggests denizens of the True North are actually less agreeable and conscientious than their U.S. counterparts, turning decades of contrasting stereotypes on their head.

(...)

"The Quebec sample was the only group of Canadian respondents that diverged from North American averages, with scores Mr. Schmitt said more closely resembled those of France than the U.S. and English-speaking Canada.

"France drew one of the lowest global scores for extroversion (45.44), was found much less agreeable (46.64) than North America in general (Canada, Mexico and U.S. together averaged 49.27), and was among the most neurotic of all surveyed nations (52.29)."

"Canada is a two-faced country. Most times, we are a moderate, tolerant, easy-going people. But when election time comes, things change. Once the writ is dropped, our elites suddenly become dogmatic secularists. Such is the case now in Ontario where, as we write these words, one can hear a chorus of left-wing pundits tut-tutting at John Tory's common-sensical acknowledgment that some Christian Canadians take God seriously.

"The circus began on Wednesday, when the Ontario Conservative leader told reporters that Christian academies that include creationism in their curricula would not necessarily be excluded from his plan to provide public funding to religious schools. In the local media, this earned Thursday headlines such as 'Tory downplays religious schools flap' and 'Tory gets 'F' for faith-funding idea.' Respected commentators are suggesting the comment could cost Mr. Tory the Oct. 10 election.

Colby Cosh adds:

"There is no denying that what is about to happen to Tory is somewhat unjust. He may, after all, end up as the first Conservative party leader anywhere in Canada to lose an election because he advocated relativism and multiculturalism. These are twin creeds that Liberals and public-school teachers are happy to profess when the subject is government or sexual morality, but just watch how quickly they are abandoned when someone challenges the science curriculum.

(Yet, oddly enough, the most effective militancy against Darwinism in public life is mostly perpetrated by liberals and educators themselves. If Mr. Tory had wanted to reduce his political career to ashes even more rapidly, he could have suggested that eons of sexual dimorphism have endowed men and women with a completely different set of cognitive abilities and social adaptation strategies. No other view is tenable under Darwinian evolution; you don't have to take a slow boat to Galapagos to see that differences between the sexes are the universal rule in nature. And yet any politician who says as much will find himself abused to death by the Furies in a matter of hours.)"

"I'm strongly against the veil. Never mind what it's called (veil) -- and insisting that it is a religious requirement is specious.

"Why specious? First, because the veil is not a religious requirement but a cultural tradition. Even if it were a religious requirement, voting is not a religious but a civic act -- and as such, has its own requirements which overrule the 'religious' one.

"The fact that the veil is a cultural tradition is irrelevant; it is not the cultural tradition in our country -- and, when participating in one of the basic traditions of our country, voting, its rules must be followed.

What are the rules of voting in our country? That you have one vote person; that you must be a citizen. Now -- to validate these two attributes, the electoral officer must be able to 'unite' two descriptions of reality. One is primary, the other is secondary.

"The primary description is the actual physical body in front of him. Secondary descriptions are those that are 'actualized' as driver's licenses, passport, other documents.

If I am masked -- then, I have totally removed the primary description of me, as a physical body. Gone. Invisible. The electoral officer has no means of connecting my physical reality to my secondary descriptions.

"So, I could, since I am invisible as a primary description -- vote many, many times! I'd just change the secondary paper data. I could even be a man, voting for my wife.

"Furthermore, if this removal of the primary description, the physical body, is allowed in our elections process -- then, it has to be allowed to everyone else (heh -- discrimination). We should all show up at the voting booth masked, or better yet, wearing full burka and veil -- and insist that the electoral officer accept ONLY the secondary description -- those ubiquitous and readily photocopied paper descriptions."

I've been blogging for seven years and a writer for much longer, and I'm still amazed at what will strike a nerve with readers.

* Married Anonymous Dude writes:

"This notion of neo-Cath frumpiness seems to be taking hold on the blogs, but I do have to ask: where are you all going to Church? I see very little of it here in New Jersey, where the NFP soccer moms trucking around 4 and 5 kids all have their hair and nails done, and are back to mass about a week after giving birth. It's like the suburban version of The Good Earth, except with pilates and adoration instead of rice paddies.

"I'm a longtime reader of Relapsed Catholic, and you definitely seem to be down on the RC experience of late. I see much more of the typical Chestertonian love-of-life Catholic around here. I'm a horror/mondo/kaiju fan who plays (and writes about) violent video games, drinks, f*cks with
gusto and minimal metaphysical posturing, reads Harry Potter to my kids, and does all those other things the pinched neo-Caths are supposed to hate. I'm orthodox, but not so orthodox I can't see that most of our bishops and leaders are craven careerist shits unworthy of their position. I don't see many of these crypto-Calvinists that are supposedly haunting the kneelers, and as a CCD teacher, I come in contact with a lot of them. Maybe it's a regional thing.

"So, take heart, and keep up the good work."

* John writes:

"Thanks for your recent post on the frumpy semi-orthodox.

"My late mother, who was the orthodox Catholic personified, and the terror of progressive priests, would never appear in public without making herself as she put it, 'presentable.'  She avoided slacks and pants, but was a soulmate of hats, caps, and quite stunning, but hand tailored clothing, much of which she made by herself on a shoestring.  She never wore anything but high heels even when gardening.  When she was 97, I had to confiscate her high heels on Dr's orders as she was prone to tripping.  When she was 90, my mom managed to make el and subway trips down to the Chicago Loop 15 miles away with my six-year old daughter in hand so that they could shop at Marshall Field's, Carson Pirie's, go to noon mass at St. Peter's in the Loop, and then get a frozen yogourt treat.

"There also was a family of seven (five children) a few years ago at my old parish-- the wife and mother of whom always came to Sunday mass in stunning clothes of good taste -- not ostentatious -- just classy and wearing a large brim hat.  The dad was a great guy with a wonderful sense of humor--and all seven of them occupied a whole pew.  And her daughters all dressed with taste, fashion and modesty.

"So there are those who hold the high ground between the slut look so prevalent among one side and the frump and dowdy look on the other.  For my own sake, I have seen too many 60-year old plus cleavages when the time had long ago come to rein them in.  Dowdy may look dumb but at least one does not have to face the effects of weather beaten, gravitational pull before one's eyes.

"God bless you."

* Charlotte writes:

"Isn't this cute? Think I'll crochet myself a couple so I can look like Mary, too! Love those shoes!"

Yeah, because men want their wives to dress like the Queen of Heaven... Ladies, we've all heard the one about being a lady in public, a chef in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom.

Guess what? It isn't in the Catechism or CS Lewis, but it's true. If your husband denies the "whore" part, he is cheating, lying or gay.

When your husband was baptised, his male brain didn't get all nice and cleaned up. Men like to look at women in sexy outfits. God made them that way. When I hear (as I did last week) of a young Catholic newlywed planning to wear long johns under her nightgown after she marries, for the sake of "modesty", my heart goes out to the fellow who snagged that prize.

 Remember, you guys: divorce is a no-no, so why do more to encourage it?

For whatever reason, Jews seem to have a better handle on sexuality than these pseudo-Prot Catholics do.

The kitchen I can't help you with.

Severed dog's heads?

"One of the ladies at church this Sunday asked me what it is I do to make a living. I work in the beauty industry.

"The lady in question proceeded to challenge me to reconcile my occupation with my Catholic faith. Apparently aware that there exists today in many women a superlative vanity and lack of modesty, she looked quite smug. She does that.

"I answered that she might as well ask me to reconcile gin with tonic..."

(...)

The Catholic frumpiness craze, "cannot help the birthrate.

"The next thing you know, there will be calls for teetotalism. It is a kind of puritanical Calvinist insanity to reject physical beauty. I don't see why it has caught on among Catholics while even the weird sober evangelicals are still teasing their hair and painting themselves up like Miss Texas."

"...someone who's stepped from the shower and been handed a dress shirt by his manservant George. He's like a senior account executive on 'Mad Men," writes Peggy Noonan, whose column has a couple of typos. I think you chose the wrong file, WSJ editors.

Her analysis of the debate is really engaging, perhaps because the debate itself was too.

Meanwhile:

Thompson "doesn't remind me of Chuck Woolery like Mitt does."

Mitt reminds a lot of people of a lot of people. Is that a good thing?

Having a bad day? The first time I heard these interviews I couldn't stop crying with laughter. Now they're on YouTube.

So, what should we call the war?

Maybe I'll show up wearing a Nixon mask, a la The Ice Storm...

"Fatwas also are issued by satellite television programs and over the telephone, forcing traditional organizations like Dar al-Iftaa into a race to keep up. Gomaa's media adviser, Ibrahim Negm, said the institution has doubled the number of fatwas it issues daily through a year-old telephone hot line, and it is now developing a Web site to answer queries.

"Negm said modern communications have helped fuel a growth in fatwas by making it much easier for people to solicit religious opinions. The some 1,000 fatwas that Dar al-Iftaa pumps out every day are more than six times the number it issued per year a century ago.

"Gomaa has been highly critical of individuals who issue fatwas independently, especially 'tele-imams' who have grown in popularity on Arabic television."

(...)

"The reputation of Egypt's religious authorities was further clouded recently when a lecturer at Al-Azhar issued a fatwa saying work colleagues of the opposite sex could escape the ban on unmarried men and women being alone together if the woman breast-fed her male colleague five times. The lecturer's rationale was breast-feeding established a maternal rather than a sexual relationship."

***
I wrote about "Dial-A-Fatwa" for the American Spectator in 2003.

"These misconceptions and stereotypes of the Islamic religion have become more common since the American military occupation in the Middle East, and [the conference] 'Engaging Islam: Feminisms, Religiosities, and Self-determinations' hopes to dispel them."

What would really dispel these not-really-stereotypes would be for you to blow up less stuff, stop slicing up women's vaginas, and slitting filmmaker's throats in broad daylight.

Among the conference highlights:

* "Negotiating Sharia and the Secular State"

* Panel discussion with Ashley Al-Sayyad, author of "Queer Muslim Women: Visibility, Disapora, and Islam," and Chris Kelly, "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) Muslim Converts"

"Paris is keen to stretch herself..."

That's some illustration. They got the nose right, too.

BTW: many months ago, in another blog's combox, I asked (again!) why Paris Hilton (aka The Horse Faced Woman) is considered "sexy." Men don't seem to like answering that question. But finally, one young fellow replied, rather meekly:

"Men think women are 'sexy' if they seem like they just might actually have sex with you."

Not exactly Dennis Prager, but still. So simple, yet so profound! You have to be a man to think that way. And a woman to ask the question in the first place.

"The tughra, Klatt explains, is essentially a sultan's signature: It 'contains the name of the sultan, his filiation and a programmatic statement. It is a powerful Muslim statement of dominance over Christianity, symbolizing Islamic triumphalism, imperialism [and] expansionism.' He compares Hassan's calligraphic conflation of the word 'kian' and the tughra with the word 'peace' superimposed on the hammer and sickle."

David Janes writes in:

"Funny, it looks like a whale with a giant nutsack to me."

"Despite the 9/11-level coverage, Larry Craig is merely accused of 'cruising while Republican.' There is nothing liberals love more than gay-baiting, which they disguise as an attack on 'hypocrisy.'

(...)

"Liberals don't even know what they mean by 'hypocrite' anymore. It's just a word they throw out in a moment of womanly pique, like 'extremist' – or, come to think of it, 'gay.' How is Craig a 'hypocrite,' much less a 'blatant hypocrite'?

"Assuming the worst about Craig, the Senate has not held a vote on outlawing homosexual impulses. It voted on gay marriage. Craig not only opposes gay marriage, he's in a heterosexual marriage with kids. Talk about walking the walk! Did Craig propose marriage to the undercover cop? If not, I'm not seeing the 'hypocrisy'

"And why is it 'homophobic' for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital."

"Though outrage over 'racism' is ever fashionable, African-Americans have long had far less to fear from the violence of racist whites than from the mayhem of the black underclass.

"'Do you realize that the leading killer of young black males is young black males?' asked Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan 16 years ago. 'As a black man and a father of three, this really shakes me to the core of my being.'"

***
Is "poverty" the cause? Cuz that's some kinda poverty you got there.  The "poor"  enjoy luxuries the Sun King never dreamed of.

Times have changed and now the poor get fat...

"Most poor children today are, in fact, supernour­ished and grow up to be, on average, one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy in World War II."

Yeah, let's copy what Africans do. Their culture is so advanced and shit.

(Hugh Hewitt: "The Maasai. Those innovators who brought you the Maasai-Pod..." and "Hillary has a Maasai Complex." PS: note the varying volume of the cheers during her speech. Liberals are apparently way more enthusiastic about killing their own babies and other people's than they are about "fighting the terrorists". "How are the children?" indeed...)

You know what Africans really say when they greet each other?

"Man, I wish I lived in America, don't you? I want a big house and an SUV like Al Gore's got. This joint is a frickin' DUMP! By the way, there's a fly on your face. Nope, other side..."

"The school superintendent in Amherst put the kibosh on West Side Story as the annual high-school senior musical after a handful of complaints claiming that the work was racist in its portrayal of Puerto Ricans. (In fact, this modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet story is the most beautiful anti-racism work in American musical theater.)

"'Political correctness,' writes Mr. Keller'is the signature cultural statement of the ruling elites, undermining their moral authority and driving a wedge between them and the working class far more effectively than any right-wing demagogue could hope for.'"

(...)

"Mr. Keller has a few ideas about what Massachusetts should do to make itself more appealing. Almost all of Mr. Keller's recommendations are broad-brush matters of political style, such as his admonition to boomer liberals to 'pack away political correctness in the attic alongside that box of Spirit and Iron Butterfly LPs' ...

"Mr. Keller does a fine job of cataloging the 'politically unappealing traits' -- such as aloofness, arrogance, entitlement, condescension and hypocrisy -- that beset the bluest of blue-state politicians, but he does not try to investigate the traits' origins. For that, he might have taken a look at the "Sociology of the Intellectual" section of Joseph Schumpeter's great 1942 work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Schumpeter believed that capitalism was the only system that produced the seeds of its own destruction by nurturing intellectuals, a class thick on the ground in Massachusetts.

And 9 Other Things You Didn't Know About Hitler

"But then I realized she was really saying clown..."

"Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption 'targets.'"

Must be read to be believed. Jaw dropping.

See the debate in the combox.

"It is not uncommon -- especially in California, with its large illegal immigrant population -- for hospitals to have to shut down because so few people pay for the emergency room care they receive.

"There are, of course, people with huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. Believe it or not, that also happened back before the modern welfare state.

"Some hospitals -- whether public or private -- could absorb such costs, with the help of donors. There were people with polio living in iron lungs, which is why rich and poor alike gave money to the March of Dimes.

"But that is very different from hospitals being stiffed every day by emergency room users whose only emergency is that they want to keep their money to spend on fun, instead of on doctors.

(...)

"People who are urging us to follow other countries that control the prices of medications seem uninterested in the fact that those countries depend on the United States to create new drugs, after they destroyed incentives to do so in their own countries.

"Since it takes more than a decade to create a new drug, a politician can be elected president by hyping price controls on drugs, spend eight years in the White House, and be living in retirement before people start to notice that we no longer get the kinds of new medications that successively conquered deadly diseases in the past."

“You should listen to and obey your ruler even if he was an Ethiopian (black) slave whose head looks like a raisin.”

Bush shall not be mocked!

PLUS:

halp uz Jonh Kerry! we R stuk in Iraq wit hot blonde chix! 

My Catholic frumpiness post spawned a surprising number of emails, most of the "don't quote me" variety.

However, Patrick said OK, so here's his message:

"I attended one of the centers of the "Catholic Revival" Franciscan University of Steubenville. These are my observations.

1. Effeminate, obviously gay men that naive Midwesterners think are just gentle spirits.
2. Denial. A complete unwillingness to speak about the "Ladies of Trent" that surround the entire "revival." (There is a reason they like all the fluffy stuff.)
3. Arrogant, ego maniacal, emotionally crippled, weak men who use religion as a means of controlling people; especially women.
4. Denim jumpers, turtle necks, wool socks, Birkenstocks.
5. Haggard home schooling moms and their precocious, narrowly educated, poorly dressed, children. This one gets me especially angry because I am one of 13 children and despite our lack of money we -- and my parents-- were always well groomed and clean. There is nothing virtuous or noble about not caring how you look. High waters and dirty faces are not saintly.
6. Women who refuse to dye their graying hair and see it as a statement of spiritual conviction. (Again, my mother was adamant about maintaining her appearance. A quick dye job in the bathroom, run the brush through her hair, lipstick, etc and out the door.)
7. Professors' wives. See #s 4, 5, and 6.
8. A tendency to focus exclusively on spiritual things. We used to call them the SS, the Super Spiritual.
9. Blind adherence to every nutty Marian "apparition." (If the apparitions are intended to "draw me to Jesus" and I've already been "drawn" can I just ignore the damn "message of the apparition?")
10. Three days of darkness...
11. Abuse of the sacraments to ensure all your ducks are in a row in case the Big Guy comes to take you home.
12. Idealized, unrealistic notions about marriage and family life.
13. Glib, unreasoned, passive theology. 

"If a child is traumatized by a goat before age five, he/she is five times more likely to become some form of social deviant."

So we're having candelight vigils for car accidents now. I guess I'm not a CC on the Decline of Western Civ memo list anymore.

Your daughter wasn't killed by Ted Bundy, and come to think of it, I don't think they had candelight vigils then either. When did that stuff start, anyway?

CITY-TV dutifully showed up to broadcast this unsightly display of public grief. Wonder if they fought over who'd get to be "family spokesperson" and therefore get the most air time. I didn't know this poor girl and neither did 99% of Toronto, so why is her accidental death on the news? And if I did know her, why would I want to watch this anyway? Local news is such crap.

Dear Godless, Overly Emotional Everyones:

We are all sick of your cheap sentimentality, your ugly carnations and dead wreaths cluttering up every other lamp post. No one else cares about your dead relative, ok? Sorry, but that's the truth. People die. That's life. Get over it in private.

From a member's only blog, somewhere out on the intertubes -- I feel so validated! Nice to know I'm not the only one getting weary of that stuck upm Wife of the Cult Leader look, and the overall boringness of so-called Catholic "culture". To hell with ETWN -- give me a nice Roger Corman boxed set any day...

"Things that Drive Me Nuts about the "Catholic Revival"

"I just don't understand the frumpiness that seems to grip so many of the young orthodox Catholic women of today...

"1982 drab turtle-necked nun-chic with a single dab of ill-chosen colour in the middle of her squinty, tight-lipped pucker.

"One of the things that I'm most fed up with about conservative catholicism is the pervasive styleless-frumpiness-as-moral-virtue meme that runs through it. You meet so many of these hags parading around in wretched flowered turtleneck t-shirts and polyester skirts with sneakers blathering on about their brilliant and horribly maladjusted homeschooled children...

"It's like a variant on the anti-intellectualism that parades itself as the moral high ground in the pro-life movement. It just makes you want to quote Aristotle in front of them even more. Same with the shapeless-plaid-jumper people. Makes you want to invest in a Balenciaga suit and silk stockings. It's a shame you never met me in the winter. I have the most gorgeous black wool coat from the 50's that I wear with a BIG fur collar and a very expensive black hat. Scares the hell out of the pro-lifers. Makes me look very glamourous in a kind of New York socialite-as-murderess way. I just need a long cigarette holder and a pair of stilletto heels I'm ready for the next national pro-life conference"

OK. I used Spring Cleaning to dump the foreign language files from my "big" Mac and magically my system folder was replaced by an Applications alias and was "corrupted". Also, a bunch of applications had just up and disappeared, etc. When I tried to do a clean install, the machine ate the CD-ROM. This is my weirdest Apple experience since the mid-90s.

If I seem surprisingly calm, esp. after the wiped out email crisis LAST week, it's because I have a brand new Macbook as backup. However, I've got tons of RSS feeds on NetNewsWire Lite on the big machine, not this one. So if I link to you a lot and suddenly stop, it's because I haven't re-subscribed to your site from the notebook and haven't read your blog in a few days. I won't be taking the big Mac into the shop until this coming weekend.

The new blog: FiveFeetofFury is being constructed, complete with fancy banner from a regular reader. Everyone who sent in a design will be thanked in the first post -- you guys are amazing!

I'm still editing the Rabbi's new MS.

All this to say: blogging may or may not be spotty the next few days. Lots of good stuff here, though.

All the terrorists have to do is throw peanuts at us.

PLUS: your kid may not have asthma after all. Sorry to ruin your sense of conformist specialness.

"What does it say about me, a 52-year-old man, that you're telling me about this new show and my eyes are welling up with tears of excitement...?"

I'm hooked on the Dennis Miller radio show, and no wonder. Here's a guy who goes up to Martin Short's cottage every summer, where they play Valley of the Dolls and sing along with Helen Lawson.

Last week he spent a very long time describing a scene from Dodsworth (1936) that is completely visual, very subtle and the essence of not-radio. That reminded me that I had the film on the PVR. So I watched it finally and was really, really impressed. Like The Best Years of Our Lives, this is a movie for grownups. I heard about it growing up, in books about classic movies, but it doesn't exactly air often and was never shown at the rep cinema down the street. A good thing too because I never would have appreciated Dodsworth if I'd seen it at 18 or 30. Who cares about these rich "old" (middle aged) people? 

Well, now I'm a fortyish woman like both female leads, been more or less married for almost 10 years, and keenly aware that I'll never be a wrinkle- and cellulite-free, (very-occasionally)-sexually-attractive-to-other-men, size 0 ever, ever, ever again. So Dodsworth really resonated with me, complete with ouches of recognition, like when the wife unsuccessfully lies about her age. Plus you can finally see Walter Huston do something besides slapping his thigh and yodelling about "gol durn gold!" And you finally understand why the younger Huston (mis)cast Astor in the Maltese Falcon a few years later, even though she almost ruined that movie; he must have wanted that irresistible luminosity in his "femme fatale" but instead (who knows why--she just got that much older?) got brittle and frigid.

Highly recommended.

So. Gary Sinese. Is that a toupe?

"Our protests ranged from the absurd to the insane, calling for Big Ben's clock face to be turned digital, Parliament Square to be made into a circle, the Thames to be filled with Tizer, and Humans and Fish to co-exist peacefully. Obviously the point of the day was to highlight the insane nature of protest law in the UK, rather than attempting to make serious political points to the passers by.

"However speaking of passers by, many had heard of the SOCPA laws and were in full support of our efforts to ridicule the laws."

"Bartlett, an accountant from Dundalk, said he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs."

One of whom is evidently Tomaz, God of Donutry.

"Nobody guesses sequential numbers..."

"A vehicle pulled up with some relatives and as the light came on I had to laugh as I had just beat the piss out of my grannies son, his sons and a couple of her other random grandkids. They had broken into her house to go drinking as they figured she wasn’t going to be back. In the meantime between popping down Lysol shooters and smoking crack they had destroyed the inside of her home.

"A few months prior she had received compensation from the federal government for attending reservation school and had refurnished her house with some pretty decent furniture, new TV, etc. (...) She is in her late 80’s, has recently been diagnosed with cancer and I don’t think she’s going to make it to the end of this month.

"Seeing the damage inside which also included many gifts from me I went back outside and beat the piss out of her kids and grandkids some more until the band police showed up and whisked them away in a paddy wagon."

"Living in Berkeley California, a city tainted by the communist hippy era, I cannot walk the half mile to school without being mobbed by dead beats and alcoholics looking for a handout. They are enabled by people who actually believe they are helping them.

(...)

"There is this old Asian homeless dude I see when I’m walking home from school that never asks for a dime. He is always busy collecting cans and cleaning the sidewalk. He's out earning his quarter. Despite his living situation, he is doing what is within his means to contribute to society. That’s a man worthy of his hire. If he stopped, wiped the sweat from his brow and said 'Hey man, you spare change for water? All this work make me thirsty.' I’d be like 'Fuck yeah, you earned it Chong-Li.'"

Turkish PM declares the phrase "moderate Islam" offensive.

"I didn’t get a degree that told me I could do it. I didn’t get permission. I just went ahead and did it, gatecrashed the party and took it over."

But yeah, nice story. "What would Mohammed do?" indeed.

"I held Oriana Fallaci's hand as a priest, as a bishop, asking the Lord to look upon her with great mercy, if for no other reason than that she suffered so greatly, because she was so alone, and because in her last years, radically and with deep conviction, she defended the idea that this country belongs to the West. She defended like few others the profoundly Christian roots of the civilization to which we all belong, including the faith that, let's not forget, God forever offers to us as a great gift. We have to remember this woman for what she did, for what she said and wrote. She was a great woman, a great Italian, who deserves to be viewed with respect, and who now belongs to the history books." 

Also she didn't sell waterproof g-spot vibes! That we know of...

Maybe I should become an atheist again. Yeah yeah the prodigal son's brother. Shut up zzzzzzz....

Or be like Paul Johnson and get papal audiences on demand even after everyone finds out his mistress spanks him.

The Church warns us every year, like clockwork, about being seduced by "the glamour of evil." Yet Catholics can be the biggest star fuckers around and the hierarchy is no exception. My trouble is I'm obviously not famous enough!

"And so we have the bizarre situation of a United States senator convicted of the crime of brushing his foot and placing his carry-on luggage in the only available space of a men's room stall."