Now Scotch, it tastes too much of peat
And Bourbon, it’s just a hair sweet
But your Saint Paddy’s Day
Won’t gang aft agley
If your whiskey is Irish, served neat

4 Comments Filed Under: bloggerel verse Tagged With: actually i prefer my irish whiskey over ice, I'm sorry bourbon it was just a joke we're still friends right?, lenten bender is in full effect, Ooh that's a burns, scotch you can go right to hell i meant every word

A Pig’s Sphincter is Fair Game

March 15, 2014 by Quin Finnegan at 12:26 pm

Coming to Gerasene ’14 …

4 Comments Filed Under: Earth Tagged With: If a pig's ass can be called "fake calimari" doesn't that make calimari "fake chittlins"?

The Jewish Cardinal

March 15, 2014 by Matthew Lickona at 8:43 am

Oh, look – a film in which religion is taken seriously. In particular, the way that religion influences a person’s identity, and the way experience influences religion. It’s full of the kind of ecumenical politicking that gives JOB gallstones, but other than that, it’s outstanding Catholic Family Viewing. Very fine performances, especially Aurelien Recoing as John Paul II.

34 Comments Filed Under: Catholic with a capital K, kulture klash, me, moviegoing, priest movies, the day job, you

The End of an Era

March 15, 2014 by Quin Finnegan at 3:26 am

Jonathan Potter hosted his last Naked Lunch Break at the Riverpoint Campus of Eastern Washington University.

11 Comments Filed Under: Academentia, breaking into song, Catholicish writers, Diversion, Earth, mccain, reportage and/or commentary, snapshots, the day job, what's on tv

The Mill and the Cross

March 14, 2014 by Matthew Lickona at 9:52 am

Gruesome Fleshpicking

I don’t know if anybody out there has Netflix streaming, but they’ve got The Mill and the Cross right now. There’s some brief (non-erotic but fetching) full frontal nudity, some gruesome fleshpicking, and it’s full of the kind of ecumenical lovingkindness that makes JOB break out in hives, but besides that, it’s fantastic Catholic Family Viewing. For the Lentminded, there’s even a depiction of the Passion. There are moments – one in particular – that are almost (almost) enough to make a soul believe that art matters.

5 Comments Filed Under: Catholic with a capital K, God, moviegoing

March 14, 2014 by Rufus McCain at 9:26 am

Frog legs are fair game.

https://korrektivpress.com/2014/03/26428/

16 Comments Filed Under: food and/or drink

Persephone

March 12, 2014 by JOB at 2:33 pm

For Cecilia

Imagine time the place where shadows grow
Divine, and spread like fans that winnow noon
From dawn and dusk from rotting bones in snow
That marks the melting margins of the sun.

Then conjure thoughts of breadth: from apse
And nave to chthonic crypt, from heaven’s womb
To Hades’ tomb. What fires your cold synapse?
What Aprils march to February’s doom?

Where ice has borrowed, spring is lent away:
A princess comes to live in exile’s realms,
Her pert magnificence at close of day –
Though holding fast – reveals and overwhelms.

The nothing left is less than chaff – a creed
Of stones. What’s gone is everything that lasts:
The bittersweet and many-seeded need
To see beyond the light that darkness casts.

9 Comments Filed Under: breaking into song, clothing and/or shelter and/or weather, Death, Earth, Groundwork, JOB, JOB's poetry Tagged With: and another thing, chthonic

Kidney?

March 12, 2014 by Quin Finnegan at 9:57 am

From Kevin Williamson:

“But Chris Hayes and others of that kidney are so committed to the narrative of helplessness—particularly black helplessness—that they either will not or cannot account for the facts of the case.”

Yep, kidney. From Websters:

3: sort or kind especially with regard to temperament: “a nice helpful guy, of a different kidney entirely from the …” Secret Police, Paula Lecler.

4 Comments Filed Under: word mongering

If

March 9, 2014 by Rufus McCain at 8:01 pm

When Jonathan Webb and I approached the Catholic Church as thirty-something post-Protestant outcasts nearly two decades ago, it was a fine twist of grace–or at least a bit of good luck–that Fr. Michael Sweeney, O.P., was the priest that met us at the door. He himself was standing outside the door, taking a smoke break. Now Fr. Sweeney is President of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology (DSPT) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Check out his Lenten reflections.

2 Comments Filed Under: Catholic with a capital K, Earth, God, me, Things to discuss with Walker Percy over drinks, you, YouTubular

Wise Blood Books Throws a Rock in the Pond

March 8, 2014 by Rufus McCain at 1:25 pm

Dana Gioia’s The Catholic Writer Today sets a mighty finger on the scales of literature: on the one side what matters and lasts, and on the other what’s shallow and doesn’t. This electrifying essay is a guide to the perplexed. Its arguments about Catholic literature could be applied to American writing in general. Without the complications of tradition and history—the history of meaning—what’s left?

– Cynthia Ozick

1 Comment Filed Under: Catholicish writers, Earth, for self-examination, litterachur, Wise Blood Books, writing

True Detective

March 8, 2014 by Angelico Nguyen at 11:30 am

Season Two

23 Comments Filed Under: alcohol, tobacco and/or firearms, backward glances, Catholicish writers, Diversion, what's on tv Tagged With: know your meme, today in pop culture, true detective, WHAT'S ON HBO

The New Yorker on religion: two items

March 7, 2014 by Matthew Lickona at 1:16 pm

First, atheist Lawrence Krauss’s remarkably dumb essay entitled “Why Hollywood thinks Atheism is Bad for Business,” a piece that doesn’t even really care about its headline. What it cares about is making the case for a cultural bias against atheism. Hollywood was just fine releasing the smarmy-funny Religulous, and it paid off: $13 million on a $2.5 million budget. But Krauss is bitter because Hollywood won’t release his documentary on the folly of belief, so clearly they’ve got a bias. Special minus points for this bit of drivel from Ricky Gervais: the actor says that he is regularly told, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so why don’t you just keep quiet about your atheism!” By whom? Certainly not the op-ed folks at the Wall Street Journal. And Gervais’ frequent proclamations of unbelief don’t seem to have hurt his career any. Hell, Hollywood even let him make a movie, The Invention of Lying, in which he got to lay his anti-religion cards on the table. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Gervais himself isn’t worried.

Second, a piece about a book about cloistered Carmelite nuns. Much less whiny. Just go and read.

9 Comments Filed Under: Earth

The Lydia Stone

March 7, 2014 by JOB at 12:55 pm

Condemned to shine, it’s rubbed or cut and set
Within a thorny gallery. Clean to bone,
The chasing hammer cleaves – and eyes forget
Their first impressions, leaving God alone.

With perpendicular inlay of place
And time, such stone is cold as early spring;
Its dogwood winter strikes a lifted face
For silver coins; it sounds the golden ring.

Its standard currency becomes the name
That royalty bestows with spreading palms.
It bites against the grain; it drills for flame
As shadows beg to seize at midday’s alms.

The ancients rightly called it βάσανος
For proving mettle with a tortured kiss.

13 Comments Filed Under: hot house sonnets, JOB, JOB's poetry Tagged With: conceited - conceded