Politician Apparently Unaware of Paschal Mystery
October 24, 2012 by at 2:23 pm
Politician Encounters Difficulty in Explaining Mystery of Suffering
October 24, 2012 by at 2:21 pm
Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, call your office for your new brand…
October 18, 2012 by at 9:45 pm
Sex and Fiction
September 7, 2012 by at 11:33 pm
The flow of the bottle led me to Jacques Barzun’s essay “Venus at Large: Sexuality and the Limits of Literature.” I was looking for a way to bolster my smudged pontifications on political mumbo-jumbo over a Manhattan on the porch and instead found Barzun’s sober judgment on an earler topic.
Discuss or not, it would be interesting to reconcile, a la the Catholic imagination, the following two quotes:
The student of literature is instinctively loath to set theoretical limits to the art he studies, and so, surely does the writer feel about he art he practices – unless he is a mere follower of convention. But in recognizing this axiomatic freedom, it is one thing to say that sexuality, like any other human power, deserves limitless literary expression; it is quite another to say that literature should find room for ever more detailed descriptions of the sex act. ….At first, then, sexuality, and, later, sex are literary devices to restore respect for instinct, to tap a source of power which can at once abate the disease of extreme self-consciousness and counteract the stupefying effect of the world of machines. For sex is in a curious way the most and the least personal of man’s activities. Used in the novel, it could rebuild the whole man and show his oneness with all men. Again, if literature was to criticize life and lead the revolt against convention, it needed a new element that was indeed elemental and yet was instantly felt as intimate and defining. That element was the sexual, and since in art what is novel in conception requires a striking embodiment, sexuality was bound to move steadily toward an ultimate form in the sex scene.” – Jacques Barzun, etc.
And our Grand Dame of the Grotesque in her 1957 essay “The Church and the Fiction Writer”:
“Part of the complexity of the problem for the Catholic fiction writer will be the presence of grace as it appears in nature, and what matters for him is that his faith not become detached from his dramatic sense and from his vision of what-is. No one in these days, however, would seem more anxious to have it become detached than those Catholics who demand that the writer limit, on the natural level, what he allows himself to see.”
Run, Rabbit, run!
The Despondent Rift: The San Andreas Fault in the Modern Polity
September 7, 2012 by at 7:21 am
Mr. Buchanan, who consistently has criticism enough for both parties, plumbs the depths and spans the width of the fault that now ruptures the country. (Note that both legislating God out of existence and putting common sense up for a national vote are, for vastly different reasons, in the end, two sets in the same game of folly). To paraphrase a recent politico who, I suspect, is probably more at home guffawing with a claque of fellow peckerwoods in a barber shop in downtown Texarkana than on a national stage, puzzled in a small hour and stuck between things, to understand why when he’s with Ohioans he finds himself talking like an Ohioan: it’s the soul, stupid.
Dreher in Percy Country
September 2, 2012 by at 2:13 am
I actually thought Clint’s shtick at the RNC was pretty good theatre and refreshingly unrehearsed. I have my doubts about whether Percy would align with Dreher’s assessment of it as gibbering oration. But I like his refrigerator snapshot.
There will be an extra point
Top three comments in Johnsonville, immediately after witnessing what Wayne Laravee referred to as “The Travesty”:
1. “Russell Wilson: First quarterback in NFL history to win by throwing an interception.”
2. This is how Obama is going to win in November.
3. I thought Giants fans [i.e. JOB] were out of control!
Then to add insult to injury, because points scored by a team in a game are part of the play off calculus at the other end of the season, as the AP reported it, the Packers had to eat their anger and show the stuff of true sportsmen by having to endure a final humiliation:
The game wasn’t over for another 10 minutes after both teams went to their locker rooms and were summoned back to the field for the extra point. But that was just the cap to one of the most bizarre finishes in recent memory.
ADDED: The NFL came out definitively in favor of the rep refs (i.e. Footlocker employees and Lingerie football rejects):
Simultaneous Catch. If a pass is caught simultaneously by two eligible opponents, and both players retain it, the ball belongs to the passers. It is not a simultaneous catch if a player gains control first and an opponent subsequently gains joint control. If the ball is muffed after simultaneous touching by two such players, all the players of the passing team become eligible to catch the loose ball. (emphasis mine)