Archives for March 2010

Progress.

First Son: “Well Dad, you were right. Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel was crap.”

Dad: “Thank you, son.”

I mean, it’s not quite on a par with his comment after seeing the new Alice in Wonderland: “I mean, the world of Alice in Wonderland is really topsy-turvy, and they tried to impose this really dramatic narrative over it, and to do that right takes incredible balance. And they just didn’t have it.”

But I’ll take it.

Medjugorje and Science

The majority of the studies conducted on the young Medjugorje visionaries, which have ranged from polygraphs to neurological examinations, psychiatric tests, electrocardiogram, blood pressure and heart rhythm examinations, and electroencephalogram tests measuring brain waves during ecstasies, have supported the integrity of the apparitions. The tests have shown that the visionaries were not lying or hallucinating, nor were they in any epileptic or hypnotic state during their daily ecstasies but, indeed, experiencing something unexplainable, beyond the boundaries of scientific understanding. Furthermore, numerous miraculous healings have also been reported at Medjugorje, many of them copiously documented with abundant medical evidence supporting the claims.

Read the entire article.

See also: Scientific Studies | 1993 Report | 1998 Report

Wow.

“But, in fact, McDonough was sacked because of his refusal to do some heated love scenes with babelicious star (and Botox pitchwoman) Virginia Madsen. The reason? He’s a family man and a Catholic, and he’s always made it clear that he won’t do sex scenes. And ABC knew that.”

Today in Porn, Katy Perry Edition

“Hi! I’m pop star Katy Perry! You know: ‘I Kissed A Girl,’ ‘Hot n Cold,’ ‘Waking up in Vegas’? Anyway, I was a presenter at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards the other night, and I got slimed! And I cannot believe that some people on the Internet were suggesting that wearing a stripper wig and a skin-tight vinyl dress while getting my face sprayed with goo was somehow sexually suggestive? I mean, this is a kid’s show we’re talking about!

I mean, if I wanted to do something sexually suggestive, it’d be more like this, you know? My career thus far hasn’t exactly been built on subtlety.”

Lesson: If you can’t be a Catholic school-girl, a Pastor’s Daughter may be the next best thing!

Wanna Be The Biggest Pop Star in the World? Go to Catholic School!

“A couple times, she came to the studio in sweatpants, and I said, ‘Really, Stef?’ ” says Fusari. “ ‘What if I had Clive Davis in here today? I should call the session right now. Prince doesn’t pick up ice cream at the 7-Eleven looking like Chris Rock. You’re an artist now. You can’t turn this on and off.’ ”

The problem was that she didn’t know how to turn it on: Though she wanted to be a star, she didn’t have a clear idea of what a star was, or where the main currents in pop culture were flowing. It was at this point that she began her serious study. Gaga picked up a biography of Prince, started shopping at American Apparel, and became entranced by aughties New Age bible The Secret, according to friends. As a Catholic-school girl, she interpreted Fusari’s remarks as a signal to cut her skirts shorter and make them tighter, until one day they totally disappeared: All that was left were undies, sometimes with tights underneath.

You stay classy, San Diego.

Garage window and cardboard, 2010. Gotta keep the draft off the chicks.

Benedictus

My Magnificat includes the Mass readings for the day. Today’s Gospel includes Christ’s promise to Peter that Peter will deny Christ three times – a promise made in response to Peter’s declaration that he will lay down his life for Christ. The book also includes this from Pope Benedict XVI: “We have grown accustomed to make a clear distinction between Peter the rock and Peter the denier of Christ – the denier of Christ: that is Peter as he was before Easter; the rock: that is Peter as he was after Pentecost, the Peter of whom we have constructed a singularly idealistic image. But, in reality, he was at both times both of these…Has it not been thus throughout the history of the Church that the Pope, the successor of Peter, has been at once Petra and Skandalon – both the rock of God and a stumbling-block? In fact, the faithful will always have to reckon with this paradox of divine dispensation that shames their pride again and again.”

The Beleaguered Beaver


Today in Porn: Innocent Beaver Bystander Edition

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

~ Wallace Stevens

Powerline’s Two Americas

Posts like this really get under my skin.

The End of Books

… and I feel fine.

Fantastic?

Oof. My man at the Reader nailed it:

“Though the droll result has its charms… it’s not so much for children as a group or adults as a group as it is specifically for devotees of Anderson.”

As in, people who never get tired of father issues. (And I say this as someone who admired The Royal Tenenbaums.) Thanks, but I really didn’t need a film to introduce my children to the idea that dads would rather be doing something else (i.e., besides being dads), if only their wives would stop asking them to make impossible promises (i.e., I will sacrifice my own interests for the sake of my family). Or the idea that dads really value sons only insofar as those sons are extensions/replications of themselves. Basically, the idea that dads do not really love their kids for the kids’ own sakes, and that it screws sons up.

But, you say, Mr. Fox tells his son Ash that he was glad that Mrs. Fox had him. Yeah, and even my 12 year old saw through it. “It had no emotional affect,” he said afterwards. Dad only got really excited when it turned out his son was an athlete, after all.

You Know You Have A Drinking Problem


… when you find yourself chasing a bubble of booze around your spaceship.

Happy Feast of the Annunciation!

‘Twas also, of course, The Wife’s birthday. Above is the image of the Annunciation that First Daughter drew for her mother’s birthday card. Especially sweet was the image of the newly conceived Christ in Mary’s womb:

We had a party. People who were Not The Wife staffed the kitchen. Good times.

Found on my hard drive.

I’ve been down this rhetorical road sweetie. I know all the arguments, all the counterarguments. And I know the stalemate where it always ends.

You haven’t been down it with me.

Tell me that’s not a hand.

Tell me that’s not a widow. Tell me that’s not a burned child.

The people have spoken.

“No,” said the people.

Footnote to "Red Ink XV"

Same theme as George Will’s piece, but a lot more fun.

Douthat on Stupak

The entire post is well worth reading (click on the title), but here is an excerpt:

Here was a politician who embodies what a half-century ago would have been considered the sensible center in American politics — economically liberal, socially conservative — and whose politics represent a good faith effort to live out the social teaching of America’s largest religious body, the Roman Catholic Church. Yet who, in the political arena, really seemed to be on his side? Not the pro-choice left, obviously, which was willing to sacrifice the entire health care bill to the principle that nobody should have to pay for an abortion out of pocket. Not Stupak’s fellow liberal Catholics (E.J. Dionne, the editors of Commonweal, etc.) whose attitude seemed to be, “c’mon, Stupak, just get with the program, and sign up for the compromise that a pro-choice White House wants you to live with.” And not anti-abortion conservatives, who backed him to the hilt not because they wanted him to succeed, but because they assumed that he would fail, and in failing, drag the whole health care package down to defeat.