dockwalloper n 1 : a loafer about docks who picks up casual employment 2 : a freight handler on a dock
Archives for November 2005
Word of the Week
New Game: Who’s Sunk Lower?
Jeremy Irons in Dungeons & Dragons or Ben Kingsley in Bloodrayne?
What is it about Oscar-winning Englishmen and the lure of playing evil tyrants in wretched fantasy movies?
Department of Squeaky Wheels
Yeah, you’ve seen it already…
…and yeah, you’ve heard the argument before, and yeah, it’s just too darn smooth, but gosh all, the good people at JibJab have a good time with Big Box Mart.
Two Years Old
You’re two years old,
You’re all done with one,
You’re bright and bold
Like the moon and the sun.
You’re terrible two
And wonderful, too,
Sweet as sugar glue,
And I am stuck on you.
You started out in Mommy’s belly,
A tiny little girl were you.
Mommy ate lots of peanut butter and jelly
And you grew and grew and grew.
Then one night we got the sign
So we drove down to Sacred Heart.
At 4:57 on November 29,
You landed in our apple cart.
At first we started counting up from zero
The weeks and months that passed
And all the while you were our hero
For spitting up and moving on fast.
You liked the butterflies that danced above
And any dog you could see.
You liked the songs we made out of
Things like poop and pee.
At the age of one you started to walk
And then you started to run.
With a Nanno and Dat you started to talk
About things you thought were fun.
With Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa
And Mimi and everyone
You turned on the charm and fixed it with a saw
That cut through the clouds to the sun.
You’re two years old,
You’re all done with one,
You’re bright and bold
Like the moon and the sun.
You’re terrible two
And wonderful, too,
Sweet as sugar glue,
And I am stuck on you.
Something in the air…
…maybe it’s that document. I don’t have much to offer, but this morning, I did just happen to put on the one shirt I own from International Male, and I thought a few words of explanation might be in order.
I started receiving the International Male catalog when I was around 14, living at home in a small city in upstate New York. I do not know quite why I started receiving it – I was usually a Land’s End/J.Crew kind of catalog shopper, and then only rarely (i.e., back to school clothes shopping with Mom). But I leafed through it as I would any other self-conscious 14-year-old, hoping to find cool clothes to cover a deep-seated (ahem, document, ahem) lack of cool. I did think the banana hammocks a little odd, but I was something of a naif, and didn’t give it much thought.
I did, however, find a pair of jeans (Code Bleu!) and a button down shirt that I really liked. When I called to order, the gentleman on the other end of the line must have been surprised by the youthful timbre of my voice. “How old are you?” he asked.
“Fourteen.”
“Well, if you ever want to talk, just call me, anytime.” I think he said his name was Steven.
Now, I’m not about to ascribe predatory motives to Steven. I think he probably thought he had a young homosexual on the line, possibly a young homosexual who was confused and frightened. He probably wanted to help me. At the time, I just thought it was really, really weird for this sales dude to be letting me know that I could call him if I wanted to talk.
The jeans wore out – I got holes in the knees (having fun yet, Matthew?) But the shirt, which I purchased some 18 years ago, is still with me – the cotton is somehow both fabulously tough and fabulously soft.
Dear New York Times…
…we are so sorry. Just two posts ago, we called you mean. What’s worse, we called you dull-witted. We take it all back. As fine a send-up of media hand-wringing over its recent failures, combined with a sly self-laceration over the fixation on gossip (guilty as charged) in times of crisis, as we’ve read. And so dry!
(Link via The Transom.)
"You have to look at U2 as a multimillion-dollar, multinational media company…"
Given Rocco’s devotion to both The New York Times and U2, we here at Godsbody can’t help but wonder why he hasn’t posted about this. He must be distracted by that document that’s getting talked about in some circles these days.
(Last link via Amy.)
Lolly-Blogging
Score One for Dale Peck…
Dear New York Times Book Review (click on Multimedia),
If you’re going to be mean, it helps to be witty about it. Or stylish, or clever, or funny, or whatever, just something besides just blunt-instrument mean. Even people who hate Dale Peck must be cringing with embarrassment over this.
Ain’t In It For the Money
Teachout has a sobering number to share with the would-be Catholic novelist…
Ogden Nashing of Teeth…
There is little that can top, for quickness,
The dramatic reordering of priorities and general emancipation from worries about the mortgage or your childrens’ future brought on by an acute bout of intenstinal sickness.
Put another way, when you’re hunched over a midnight toilet,
It doesn’t matter too much whether the addition of another stanza will serve to perfect the poem you’re working on, or, more likely, to spoil it.
December Approaches…
…which means my oranges are finally getting ripe. Life could be worse.
T-Shirt of the Day…
…courtesy of glarkware. Of course, they are doing their whole post-modern sarcasm job on the notion, but that’s where the loony Catholic can trump them with his own brand of post-post-modern literalism and sincerity! On the other hand, if the good people at glarkware had any idea of the glories of NFP, they would see the silliness of this sentiment. For virgins? That’s only the beginning…
Folk
Attended Mass yesterday (Thanksgiving) at the chapel of the Little Flower Haven, a Carmelite convent/convalescent home. The chapel is a box, nothing too great, nothing too awful. The old chapel is now Little Flower Hall. There’s a picture in the hallway of what it used to look like. It was gorgeous. Sigh.
Smallish chapel + very enthusiastic guitar group up in the loft = the temptation to actually put my fingers in my ears so that I could pray after Communion. As they busted out
We have come to share our story
We have come to break the bread
We have come to know our rising from the dead
…the same song, incidentally, that we droned again and again when our parish made a magnificent Eucharistic Procession through Little Italy (they had some classic Eucharistic hymns on the song sheet, but the people with the guitars kept repeating that one)…
anyway, as they busted that one out, I thought, “Maybe I was wrong. I always used to complain that this stuff was faux-folk, crafted in some Frankenstein hymnlab. But it’s been a generation now, and it’s what keeps getting sung. It’s what I heard when I grew up. It’s what my kids are hearing as they grow up. Maybe, whatever its origins, it’s becoming the true folk music of the American Catholic Church. There’s certainly nothing competing with it, nothing offering an alternative musical aesthetic. Sigh.”
“Thank God for the gift of music,” said my wife as we left Mass. She’s a sharp one.
Cashing In
Reese Witherspoon is our generation’s Holly Hunter.
Go watch Raising Arizona again. Then The Incredibles. Then go see Walk the Line.
Stopping by Blogs on a Frosty Evening
Whose blog this is, a neo-con,
His book is available on Amazon.
He will not see me lurking here;
My comments all will be anon.
My online friends won’t think it queer
If I blog while drinking a six-pack of beer
Between dinner and the ten o’clock news;
It fills my comments with good cheer.
My wife has the spouse-of-a-blogger blues
And asks me if I’ve noticed her cues.
The only other sound’s the click
Of mouse and key as I peruse
This blog and the next one till I’m sick
Of beating a dead horse with a stick
And another evening’s burned its wick,
And another evening’s burned its wick.
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