Archives for August 2005

From the NOLA blog:

HELPPP from writes:

5851. BAPTIST HOSIPTAL EMERGENCY
by Jillybean82, 8/31/05 16:52 ET
Baptist hospital has been taken over with guns. it is horrible. I talked to my friend who is a nurse. she was screaming that is terrible. there are bodies just everywhere. people are stealing all there supplies.

i don’t know how to get this information to the news station. This is first hand information.

there is 25ft of water in the hospital. Please please help.

– Jilljill0782@aol.com

…I cannot stay/I came to say/I must be going…

That’s right – just after traffic has started to pick up ’round the Godsbody homestead, Mr. Godsbody has to go and get fidgety, start talkin’ bout squatters, and head off for parts unlinked…

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be spending a week in darkest Wisconsin, roaming the Hundred Acre Wood, er, Johnsonville compound as it plays host to my 10-year college reunion. I’ll also be doing a lil’ research for Book Two.

IN THE MEANTIME…I’m putting my brother Mark in charge of the blog. Expect an uptick in intelligence, and a certain German density to the sentences.

Ten years…Judas. Dom over at Bettnet has just announced that he’s gonna be the new editor of Catholic World Report, and it looks like he graduated the same time as I did. Oh, I get all goose-pimply just thinking about the humiliations that await me in Wisconsin…

Actual conversatioon with former classmate:

“I read your book.”
“You did? Thanks a lot!”
(Crickets.)

Yessir, gonna be a hoot! Keep those martinis coming, and tell the kids not to put the fireworks in their mouths once they’re lit…

…on the subject of Waugh, Sis-in-Law has a post over at True Motherhood which talks about what broke Sebastian…

Amy’s up earlier than I am – dratted time zones – and she’s first mentioning that Godspy has an interview with David Scott, author of The Catholic Passion: Rediscovering the Power and Beauty of the Faith.

She excerpted one quote; I’ll excerpt another:

***

In addition to John Paul II, which writers have influenced you the most over the years?

In high school and college I read tons of fiction and poetry. I don’t do much looking back, but if I did I think I’d find that Dostoevsky and Melville, who were my favorites, first stirred the religious impulse in me. The Confidence Man and The Idiot were huge for me at one time. When I was coming back to the church, of course, it was John Paul, especially the first two social encyclicals, and the trilogy on the Trinity. Ratzinger’s two letters on liberation theology were important. I read Neuhaus’ Naked Public Square when it first came out. That was powerful. It changed my orientation to the culture and opened my eyes to a whole dimension of the faith that I’d never thought about before.

Dorothy Day was probably my biggest influence. I spent an entire winter in a library every night reading and photocopying everything she ever wrote in The Catholic Worker. A lot of that went into a book I did a few years back. She showed me how Catholicism could be a total way of life. Because she was such an incredible reader and was always writing about what she was reading, she was my gateway into this whole world of Catholic culture-novels, social theorists, artists, poets, philosophers. I wanted to read everything she read. And I’m still trying. In recent years, Daniélou, De Lubac, and Ratzinger helped lead me deeper into the church fathers and the treasures of the liturgy. Mauriac’s novels and prose remain important. At the moment, I’m on an Evelyn Waugh kick.

***

What the poor devil doesn’t know is that what he’s calling “an Evelyn Waugh kick” is really, most likely, the first throes of an Evelyn Waugh addiction. But leave that aside for the moment. I think it augers well for Scott that he can cite Dorothy Day and Richard Neuhaus as influences without even bothering to note the differences in their political bents.

…the messenger bag is cool, the boxers are curious, and the classic thong is just weird. Oh, the post-irony of it all! Just buy the t-shirt.

…deedle deedle deedle deedle deelde deedle deedle dum…

…this might be a funnier joke…or it might find an audience that found it funnier…or it might elicit the coveted groan that really baaad jokes coax forth…

But I’m thinking of a t-shirt that combines pop and literary culture…one that reads:

I Ain’t No Houellebecq Girl

Gad…and it’s only Monday…

[Some salty language in that “literary” link…]

[Update: apparently, this joke has been made before – but only in England. So I think it still counts.]

(Via Maud.)

The Wife: [outrageous statement redacted]
Mr. Godsbody: That’s it. I’m gonna blog that.
The Wife: You can’t do that! I will not be held hostage to that blog! (Or words to that effect.)

In the Blogosphere, no one can hear you obfuscate, exaggerate, and generally proclaim your essential rightness in the face of apparently reasonable opposition.