The Mystery of Things

My review of Debra Murphy's novel is up over at Godspy.

Obit

Thanks to MCM for passing along word of this obituary for Judith Moore in the Los Angeles Times.

This fellow wrote something as well.

Gosh, thanks.

The Catholic Press Association gave Swimming with Scapulars second place in the First Time Author category. I am honored and grateful - to the Association, and to the folks at Loyola who made the book possible, and made it better as well.

Sonneteering...

Who writes anything with FORM anymore? I'd like to hear from those of you who have read something recently that's been written recently which has a) form b) matter and c) beauty all over.

I'm thinking of Shakespeare's sonnets; Keats' odes; Anonymous' ballads (i.e. Sir Patrick Spense.); but also the classic architecture of a good Henry James novel or even that scarcest of animals: the epic. How 'bout a good ol' fashioned weep till you cry tragedy?

Furthermore: why is "form" so formless anymore?

Henry Adams said that a chaotic age demands a chaotic art. But surely he didn't mean what we have nowadays. (Take your pick: from dung on sacred things to urine on others in the plastic arts - to poems that sound more like Jim Morrison on a bad day and fiction that mean more to it's author than to its readers.)

Admittedly, a jag of sorts in an early corner of the morning's room.

...

Wisconsin IS Middle Earth...

Of course, I only this year got around to reading Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit (I always preferred the Arthur C. Clarke type spaceships and hardware science fiction when I was growing up - and of course regret now having wasted my time on it and not making the acquaintance of Bilbo and Frodo earlier...).

But for those interested in knowing a bit more about my Wisconsin Life and How to Live It: You will be none to thrilled to know that by the sheer accidental allignments of fates and furies, muses and marplots, I was born in NJ. But, to echo Isaac Asimov's own sentiments regarding his native USSR, I rectified that situation as soon as humanly possible.

(Not that NJ is the same as the USSR - although I recall Billy Joel once quoted as saying something to the effect of if you wanted to know what living under Communist bureaucracy was like, just visit a DMV in NJ...)

At any rate, by the sheer drift of my educational career (similiar in plot and character development to one of Spencer Tracy's last films, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.") I wound up in Wisconsin. Many know, via Swimming with Scapulars, that it was the Earth Goddess, my wife Cecilia, who drew me, Belle Dame Sans Mercy-style, into the heart of the Oochcooch Mountains (as this glacially untouched region of southwest Wisconsin is known natively). And with six children, I might add, even today the glaciers know enough to stay away...

After living in NJ, California and Texas, I found Wisconsin, at least this corner of Wisconsin, the best of all possible post-Edenic worlds... I wish I knew how to post pics and I'd show you how I know this fact. We have limited time on this planet, and to find the place where you are, the place where every morning you can wake up to the bracing thought, "Mine," well that's worth at least a bit oof Souchang Lapsong tea in the bottom of a junk.

OK - I'm going to try to explain this better in a poem (yes...I can hear the groans already...)I wrote on this same issue to my wife....


Valhalla, Wisconsin

-for Cecilia

It should have been the very first thing you said,
But it came out only after
We worried enough grooves
In the hard-wood floors,
Made ample memories in the dusty windows,
And put sufficient shadows
On the walls, behind the pictures
We brought there with us.

It should have hit you like a dollop of inspiration,
A saying blurted out
In immediate apprehension,
An unthinking seeing
Of a whole in every part.
“Just imagine it,”
You could have said,
“Part Rhine castle, part Irish cottage -- all Valhalla.”

Yet, it took the time and weight of multiple dynamics,
Of hot and humid nights
Combined with stolid in-laws, screaming babies, etc.
Like DNA blueprints
Layered on one another,
A grafted jungle of family trees,
Drafted ingeniously into genealogies of love,
To really bring it home:

We sat before the Muslim hum of the air-conditioner,
Lights low, kids asleep,
In-laws banished for the night,
A beer between us.
We cashed in our inventories of the day
On our inventory of days,
And you said, “It’s ours.”
Part sigh, part battle-cry, all Valhalla.

Standby...

We're trying to figger out how to git JOB up an' runnin' here at the Godsbody Lab...

JOB's job...

So, I’ve been given the job of keeping us entertained while our good friend Mr. Lickona goes off and drinks himself silly up and down the California Coast - or whatever it is he's doing (I honestly don't know.)Before we start anything more serious, though, I thought I’d give you a bit about myself. Other than what you may or mayn’t read in Swimming with Scapulars (I might write an essay some day entitled, “I Swam Too…”), I live on 115 glorious acres (12 of which for tax purposes I own) of a farm in li'l ol' Soldiers Grove, WI (about fifty miles south of La Crosse): It's one claim to fame is that we had Agnes Morehead teach in a one room schoolhouse in our town before Orson Welles gave her her big break as Kane's creepy mother.Up here in Badgerland, we have a regular Catholic Commune (I call it "Branch Davidian North" to scandalize the uninititiated) - three sisters and their husbands (of which I am one) and a brother (single, but working on it...) live on a farm with their father, a widower. There's plenty of space for all (150 acres and three houses).There are aspects of our community which might be mistaken for radical - but I can assure you we thrive much better on reactionary karma...We recieve the Wall St. Journal, First Things and New Oxford Review (instead of Mother Jones, High Times and The Nation). Instead of constructing a sweat lodge somewhere on the premises, we have recieved permission to build a private Catholic chapel, complete with the Blessed Sacrament and with its completion (forecast: 2007 cum fingers crossed) we will declare our community experiment truly radical.We're all educated through the Thomas Aquinas College/University of Dallas pipeline and take our faith as seriously as the Hippy community a valley or two over take their pleasure-seeking. Instead of arguing over which Grateful Dead "set" was better, the first part of the 73 Vegas show or the second half of the '84 Boulder show, we have arguments over the New Mass vs. the Old Mass. We listen to Wilco, Jack Johnson, Ben Folds, U2 and Carbon Leaf; but we also listen to Thomas Tallis, Palestrina, Antonio Vivaldi, Archangelo Corelli and Joseph Haydn.We all drink extremely dry martinis and quality Wisconsin Leinenkugel beer (Northwoods Lager especially) and some of us smoke Camel cigarettes. We prefer potato vodka to pure grain. We have a kegerator (the marriage of beer keg and refrigerator in perfect post-Enlightenment technological harmony) in the basement which during the summer is usually full. Bottles of semi-frozen vodka are a regular fixture in the freezer portion of our refrigerators. We "do" alcohol and nicotine. We've never touched anything stronger.We also "do" Christ. We believe in the sacraments and recieve them on a regular basis and find that nothing stronger touches us.E.F. Schumacher and Hillaire Belloc are household names. We consider Chesterton as wise in the things of beer as in the things of the faith. And some of us actually own copies of Russel Kirk novels. Books, in general, far outnumber DVDs, videotapes and CDs in our houses.Every Friday and Saturday (except during Lent) we have an undeclared cocktail "hour" - which usually extends in the spirit of hilarity an hour or two - before, during and after dinner. But we also say family rosaries and discuss current events mostly in light of Church teaching. We are generally content with our lot though not without the usual tics and bugs of community living (it's not Eden!).We maintain a (mostly) organic garden during the summer months, and can and perserve much of it for the winter months. We breathe easier with the first sign of spring; and grope for our blaze orange at the first sign of hunting season (otherwise known as autumn). Our deep-freezers are full of venison (and chicken, beef and pork, all farm raised).Some of us make a living working for the Church (one brother-in-law is a member of the curia for the Diocese of La Crosse and I, of course, work for its paper); some of us make a living working like the Church (my wife's father and brother both took up Joseph and Jesus' occupation: carpenter.) We have presented our scion a total of 13 grandchildren (so far...) - and eschew the notion that so many children are mere population pollution. All the women stay home with their children; all the men work their bones for their families' sake. All children recieve their education at home and the older ones have no problem looking an adult in the eye and carrying on sensible conversation. The girls like to play dress up and the boys will pick up anything even vaguely resembling a gun barrel and start shooting... They're homeschooled normal.Well, if I haven't completely chased off Matthew's clientele, I'll be back again tomorrow with something a bit less about myself.

Gone Fishin'

Honored Readers,
The day job beckons, as do a couple of other projects. I'm putting the blog on hiatus for a while. Should anything earth-shattering happen here at Casa Godsbody, I'll make a note of it, but otherwise, it'll be pretty quiet. Thanks to all who have visited and all who have commented. You guys are the best.

Holy Crap, Percy's Going to the Big Screen

Via Maud - The Second Coming is Coming To A Theater Near You. Fascinating that this should be the one to make the jump first. In some ways, it comes across as the least, well, moving - as in, motion. But there's action at the heart of it, and Allison is a fantastic character. I'm all giddy.

Double Sigh.

Actual quote from Hollywood-type person, said to me sometime around 1999:

"What you should write is some kind of religious conspiracy thriller. It's what's hot right now. I keep reading about things like a piece of the devil's horn kept in the basement of the Vatican."

Godsbody - missing the boat since forever.

And so an end to the Code-postings.

Blogfun

Here.

Can We Talk?

About this?

P.S.: Don't miss the link to the trailer at the bottom.

CCH

Kind Hearts and Coronets

The arch of a brow
A slim bridge between drama
And black comedy

Well, the arch of a brow and Alec Guinness playing eight members of a wretched English family...

Keillor Goes Meta...

...doing a movie about the last episode of his radio show, one in which Guy Noir is not just a character on the show, but a real member of the cast.

Great line: "Every night is your last night."

There's a good bio waiting to be written on Keillor - between the New Yorker years, the novels and short stories (there are some truly priceless bits in The Book of Guys), the radio show, the column for Slate, the Writer's Almanac, the anthologies of poetry...the man is a champion of middlebrow culture, and I use that term admiringly.

All the same?

Because nobody demanded it...

Godsbody dares to ask...

Is it just me, or is there a striking similarity between the melody for the line "I'd give you everything I've got for a little peace of mind" on the Beatles' "I'm So Tired" and "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train" on Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train"?

What was that Mitsui was saying about pop culture ephemora a few posts back?

Whit, Mon.

Whither Whit? Something about Jamaican churches. I'll follow, happily.

As usual, thanks to Terry.

Sigh.

So I'm in the vestibule with Third Son at Mass yesterday afternoon, and there on the woeful-looking and vastly understocked (or at least nearly empty) Catholic periodical rack is a small bunch of pamphlets suggesting "Here's how you can stop The Da Vinci Code from becoming a major Hollywood movie." The little form letter you're supposed to sign ends with this "Be sure that if you go ahead and produce the film, millions will react in the largest peaceful and legal protest ever seen."

Sigh.

Kinda makes me wonder about all those Passion dollars. That film had a rather unique subject matter - it gave Christians a chance to see a visceral illustration of a story they've been hearing all their lives.

Less Cowbell, More Guitar

If you like classical guitar (and you probably do) and/or jazz guitar, why not hie thee hence over to William Wilson's site, listen to the samples, and consider supporting an honest-to-goodness young artist? The beauty part: he's good.

Yes.

I don't care if it's a movie based on a chick-lit bestseller. Hearing Stanley Tucci cry out, "Gird your loins!" in his best Metrosexual makes watching this trailer totally worthwhile - for me, anyway.

Mourning the dead.

Judith Moore has died.

She was my editor, my benefactor in so many ways, my counselor...and in some way, my friend. My world has shrunk.

Some of house gathered at the house tonight to say a rosary and the Divine Mercy chaplet on her behalf.

Eternal rest grant to her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace.

"Stop drinking the vampire's blood."

Mitsui takes the occasion of The Da Vinci Code movie to sound off on the consumption of pop culture. It's fairly blistering, but (I think) worth a look.

In Honor of the Code...

...which opens today, and seems to deserve some sort of nod, what with the dust it's kicked up...

Let's make anagrams from the curious code that is "Dan Brown."

I've got Brand Now. Anyone?

Meditation upon the closing of a letter with the words "More soon."

Lord knows, I've done it often enough...

A cryptic rune,
More soon.
In June?
By the next full moon?
Before the time of the annual monsoon?
A tempting tune
To croon
More soon.
Now, like Prufrock, I measure out the time with a coffee spoon.
More soon.

Children's Song

A great favorite here at Casa Godsbody:

I once knew a boy who just liked to eat
He'd walk into the ktichen and sit at his seat
Then he'd roar, roar, roar
For more, more, more
Bring more peanuts, more popcorn, more candy, more cake
More eggs and potatoes, more chicken and steak...

There's more, but that's as far as we ever seem to get.

Letter from Home

Dear Readers,

My parents sent me this, and asked if I would put it on the blog. This subject often stirs heated debate. I would ask that, should anyone feel inspired to respond, we keep a civil tone in our discussion. Thank you.

Four years ago, the United States transferred the first “war on terror” detainees—from 35 different countries—to the detention facility at Guantanamo Naval Base, Cuba.
Only ten of the 490 prisoners still held at Guantanamo have ever been charged with anything. The rest have simply been declared “unlawful enemy combatants,” allowed no due process other than review by a military tribunal, in denial of their rights under international law.
Amnesty International reports that torture and inhumane treatment have been “widespread” at Guantanamo Bay. An FBI agent stated that he witnessed detainees being shackled to the floor in fetal positions for more than 24 hours, left without food or water.
A UN report has just called for the closing of Guantanamo Bay, as has Britain’s Attorney General, stating that it has become an international symbol of injustice.
In school, our children study how, during World War II, 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans—62% of them U.S. citizens—were uprooted from their homes and livelihoods in California and forced into barbed-wire camps in remote regions of the nation’s interior. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan officially apologized for the Japanese internment, saying that it was based on “race prejudice and war hysteria.”
A society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable—the sick, poor, disabled, elderly, unborn, and imprisoned.
Someday, our government will be officially apologizing for the shame and sadness of Guantanamo Bay. Lest we have even more to apologize for, let us petition our government to end now this gross violation of the human rights we claim to be defending abroad.
Write the President at White House, Washington, DC, 20500.
Tom and Judy Lickona

CCH

The Rules of the Game

Everybody knows
Money ruins everything
But love most of all

So there's this movie...

...which is simply outrageous in its cavalier treatment of Christian theology. It involves a female descendant of Jesus Christ, a conniving Catholic Church, rogue religious assassins, stunning secrets about the traditional representation of the apostles, and a shocking revelation about the sacred feminine. The name of the film? Dogma, directed by Kevin Smith. Came out in 1999.

All Quiet on the Blogging Front

Apologies. Tough week.

Serenity

Amy Welborn has some of her fiction up for your perusal.

Today in Porn, Sex Sells Wine Edition

This story is so old that it threatens to take the Godsbody motto (Yesterday's News Today!) into the realm of self-parody, but it's too perfect not to include here. Professor Bainbridge tells the story:

"When porn star Savanna Samson decided to get into the wine business, she went straight to the top - hiring Robert Cipresso, who makes wine for the Vatican, to make a blend of Italian red varieties from the 2004 vintage that's being marketed using the Savanna name and a label of Samson posing in a diaphanous gown. When asked why, she reportedly said 'I wanted to do something that my parents could be proud of.'

Well, if she achieved that goal, her parents presumably will be even more proud now that wine guru Robert Parker has awarded her debut wine a tentative score of 90 to 91 points..."

(And hey, we even managed to get a Catholic connection in there - winemaker to the Vatican!)

Not much to add, except to say that were I to describe a wine as 'pornographic,' I think most people would take my meaning: overblown, overripe, lacking subtlety and balance, a character arrived at through manipulation, etc., etc. I'm not suggesting that Ms. Samson's wine is this way, only that the aesthetics of her chosen vocations don't quite match up.

Thanks to my friend the Manhattan lawyer (who lives amid the hipsters in Park Slope) for the tip.

And where is the goat-stag?

The goat-stag was legend in the (now dismantled) 300 dorm at TAC - our own private version of Aristotle's "man-headed ox progeny." Or, our own private jackalope. I hadn't thought of it in years, and then I saw this, and I was sent chuckling happily down memory lane...

(Via Terry.

The best part of waking up...

...is Folger's in your cup! And poetry! From JOB!

Maritime

I. The Cornucopia
Emerging cold and desperate, his whiting breath
Trails behind him like the old ship’s own signature
Disgorged in blunt belchings of smoke from its belly
Through a single squat stack piping up the trying pots.
A wit-starved whaler tells his hunger-angry crew:
Sing for yer grog, bastards! Desire supplies the words.
There’s the sea and he scans it like a line of poetry

With neither depth nor texture, but the hum drum
Of fine syntax, the cadence of experience drawing out
The harpoon’s path, each tine glinting malice and ice.
Fire in the chimney! With gaffs hooks, the laying to, the flensing –
The dribble of blood and blubber filling boots and slicking
The crannies between the ship’s planks – and each step
Comes like a downfall, each needle sting of north wind

Shreds a sail’s whitewashed wish, each strums the rigging.
This would be a whaling expedition to earth’s end,
Far from Mystic, Sag Harbor, New Bedford, where scrimshaw
Shines its dull puritan shine, blued as fingers yanked
From knuckles. Limbs and skulls pay to name the price
In coiled lines that jerk alive, cracking gunwale and spine,
In oaken booms that level the wind at a single swing.

And in fathoms that lie in wait for the call to overhaul.

II. The Troubadour
Emerging hot and desperate, his grizzled breath
Poisons the air in front of him; sweating, half-naked,
So drunk so long on rum, his eyes only know a blur
And night’s dark relief from sunlight. Doldrums
Dead ahead, sirrah! And a cabined retreat, so sweet….
The jarring chains and cuffed bangles are singing out,
Bling bling bling and sound tracks up from down

Below, rhythm carried queer on a flat sea yo yo yo.
Every voyage sheers the braided cordage of his will,
Enslaved to gold coin that collects religious dust
At the counting house upwind from every port –
Typhoons dash his chances like a prow swallowed
Under full rage of sail. The ranks of human passage draw
A belt across the ocean’s belly, taut as patience

At its breaking point. The slaver captain’s mind
So used to its own state of mutiny, economically
Discounts at once the black hurricane that broils
Beneath him, dismissed, dispatched by muskets, pistols
In sudden volleys of unceasing sulfur prayer
To incense the fetid hold with its trenchant stench.
Meanwhile, the astrolabe turns on a lazy pivot

Like a ship in irons, dangling food for Leviathan.

***

Poetry...good, and good for you.

God Bless the English

Historical Englishman: Dash it all! This little ball is flying back and forth across the net much too quickly for my drunken, middle-aged waddle! There must be some way to slow it down, make it float high in the air so I can settle under it... Ah! I have it! Feathers!

Without the insight of this drunken, middle-aged genius, last night's splendid session of Mixed Doubles Midnight Badminton at Casa Godsbody would surely never have been possible.

Godsbody - where history is made up.

Telling

Visiting Child, upon beholding toy blender: What's a blender?

Second son: It's something you use to make margaritas.

Novel

If I were a uniquely talented writer with loads of cred and connections and some actual published fiction to my name, AND I had a writer's uniquely involved-yet-observant perspective on the utterly fascinating world of Catholic Homeschooling Moms Who Practice NFP Yet Have Large Families and Live in SoCal, I would be all over that novel. I.B. Singer had his Yiddish communities...

But alas, I am not such a writer. But maybe, just maybe, such a writer reads this blog?

Roth Risen

Sheesh, Morrison may have won, but the drumbeat still sounds: Roth, Roth, Roth, Roth, Roth, Roth. But hip hip hooray for JK Toole! Viva Ignatius! Hot dogs for all!

Calvary

Daniel Mitsui has finished his most ambitious work to date. Score one for the revivification of Catholic art.

"A really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa..."

Wow.

Song

Loose Ends

CHORUS:

Tying up these loose ends into a noose
Getting settled in my chair so they can turn on the juice
Make amends with my friends
To prepare for the end
I got the last thing on my mind

Entropy's got the best of me
Think I've been spread too thin
Whatever I gather just gets scattered
Out through the split in my skin
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust
They got me crawling back into the mud
And so I'm...

CHORUS

Angels are stunned at the things that I've done
I'm probably damned to hell
But if the things that you've known are what's close to the bone
It's probably just as well
I got pride and envy and anger and lust
These things get into the blood
And so I'm...

CHORUS

I'm way too far gone on this road that I'm on
Too weary to double my tracks
And no mourning or grief will bring me relief
From the devil that hangs on my back
But I know too much now to wish I was dead
And my hopes all hang by a thread
And so I'm...

CHORUS

The Brother is putting music (harmonies, vocals) to it as we speak...

Funny!

Whatever your take on Stephen Colbert's routine at the White House Correspondent's thingy...the man is not without humor.

From the NY Observer's profile of the Time 100 party, celebrating the magazine's Time 100 issue, which in turn celebrated the world's most influential people...

“Me and the Pope, basically equal,” Stephen Colbert said, leafing through the magazine during his dinnertime comedy routine. “Equal footing there.”

Nicely done. Biting the hand that helps to feed you your celebrity status, but making them laugh while you do it.

Ten Years After

She cooks with the cook's touch, the knack for adjustment and timing that some people have. The dinner table after the children have eaten and departed is the highlight of her day, and mine. I eat like a god.

She gardens. The orange trees and tangerine trees are doing well enough after a little pruning - two crops a year - but we put in the lemons and limes. She maintains the lavender, rosemary, oregano, sage, basil, chives, mint, etc. among the flowerbeds that surround the house. The vegetable garden thrives, as does the childrens' vegetable garden. The sunflower patch is coming along. Only the cherry tree seems to be stubborn.

She manages the household.

She teaches the children.

She is most often more than half of my aesthetic assessments, especially movies and restaurants (I did a little criticism once). She delights in my talk - and there is lots of it, since we both work at home.

She is funny as hell. Yesterday: "I know you want to be a novelist. You need to crush that dream right now. No one can see how crazy-brilliant you are."

She is a help in my own work, often making suggestions/comments that start me on the path to actually getting things done.

She thinks of me and my happiness, and she is made happy by me.

She is patient with me.

I could go on, but I'll stop now before the violin music swells. You see where this is going. Ten years in, I'm a lucky, lucky man.

Memento Mori

Let's forget for a moment about Philip Roth talking on Fresh Air about facing oblivion in utterly matter of fact tones...and even about his citing our poet Milosz about the spark of lust in the body far too old to catch fire...

Let's just note that there was a wonderful old woman who lived in the house that backed up to the back of our backyard, and that she loved to watch our children play (and fight), and that she let them pick her Roma tomatoes and her sweet peas and snapdragons and even her roses as long as they had grown onto our side of the fence (which they did, plenty), and that her husband had died just before we moved in, and that she recently told me she was going to be leaving, and that now she is gone.

Reading

Godspy interviews Jonathan Englert about his book, The Collar: A Year of Striving and Faith Inside a Catholic Seminary, and also runs an an excerpt. Very much worth checking out.

Today in Porn, Sherlock Holmes Edition...

...and no, I'm not talking about some lousy slash fiction...

[SPOILERS AHEAD.]

Fascinating that Watson should call The Adventure of the Illustrious Client "in some ways, the supreme moment of my friend's career." For one thing, the success of the case hinges on Holmes' committing a crime - theft. For another, what he steals is not evidence which proves any sort of criminal wrongdoing, but rather, moral wrongdoing. In order to convince a woman that the man she intends to marry is in fact evil, he steals the man's little black book. One of the victims of his charms puts it this way:

"I tell you, Mr. Holmes, the man collects women, and takes a pride in his collection, as some men collect moths or butterflies. He had it all in that book. Snapshot photographs, names, details, everything about them. It was a beastly book - a book no man, even if he had come fromm the gutter, could have put together. But it was Adelbert Gruner's book all the same. 'Souls I have ruined.' He could have put that on the outside if he had been so minded."

Trent Reznor on the Iraq War

What if this whole crusade's
A charade
And behind it all there's a price to be paid
For the blood
which we dine [sic]
Justified in the name
of the Holy and the Divine

- "The Hand That Feeds," Nine Inch Nails

If I hear one more pop-culture diatribe about how oppressed/mollified we are by the so-called "powers that be" (e.g., V for Vendetta, another song like this one), I just might puke. Now, materialism (and its appeal to our irrational appetites)--that's what makes slaves of us all. Government doesn't control us; if anyone does the corporations do (directly--in their appeal to and their manipulation of our appetites--and indirectly--by way of their virtual control of government; they may even be the reason for the war in question here).

Write a song about that, Mr. Reznor.

(Or Mr. Lickona.)

"The enemy is materialism."

So says new blog Immaculate Direction:

"The Immaculate Direction is a journal about how to become self sufficient amidst the dominant materialistic culture. It will chronicle how our family achieves this self sufficiency. The reason we want the independence that self sufficiency brings, is because the dominant culture forces you to embrace materialism. This is counter to our Roman Catholic faith."

"...But which type of materialism? Hey, name your poison. I don’t want to spend a lot of cycles parsing definitions. Suffice it to say, like pornography most of us know it when we see it."

"This blog will address topics like sustenance, shelter, healthcare, education, spirituality and many other important topics that one faces along the way. The goal is not to drop out of modern life or become simple agrarians, but to offer an alternative direction."

And of course, pornography is its own sort of materialism...

Hello...

Yes, still on the NYT jag. Did I ever get off it?

Wood takes on Brown's life of Flaubert.

The review includes this delicious little detail: "For most of his writing life, despite the animadversions of his friends, he kept on reworking his first love, 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony,' a gaudy, almost kitschy fictional account of the trials of the desert saint."

I do believe I've seen that book down at my favorite local bookstore. I do confess a certain gaudy, almost kitschy curiosity...

Oh, and by the way...

...says the Grey Lady....

The opposition to both abortion and contraception? Folly:

Contraception use has declined strikingly over the last decade, particularly among poor women, making them more likely to get pregnant unintentionally and to have abortions, according to a report released yesterday by the Guttmacher Institute.

The decline appears to have slowed the reduction in the national abortion rate that began in the mid-1980's.

"This is turning back the clock on all the gains women have made in recent decades," Sharon L. Camp, the president of the institute, said.

"Putting sex back into the box...

...as something that happens only within marriage," says William Smith, vice president for public policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

I'm a little sheepish about linking to this NYT Magazine story on the anti-sex, er, anti-contraception people, because I'm not sure I'm gonna finish reading it, and because it's been linked to death already. But link I will.

Fun bonus quote:

"The hope many people had for the drug was tied to an ugly number: 21. That is the number of abortions in the U.S. per year per 1,000 women of reproductive age, which puts the country at or near the top among developed nations."

Why is that an ugly number? Is abortion an aesthetic evil?

Saw Match Point [MAJOR SPOILER]. Liked a lot of things about the film. One rather appropriate bit: Nola refused to abort the child. It's not that she's opposed in principle - she's had two abortions before. Maybe she just acknowledges the trauma of it. Maybe she sees it as Chris' attempt to avoid responsibility for his actions. I don't think it's because she sees the baby as a meal ticket. She refuses money. She wants Chris, and she doesn't want an abortion. "Not this time. Not again."

It felt like an honest moment. Good fiction tells the truth, and doesn't let ideology get in the way.

And of course, there's the condemnation Chris receives from the ghost at the end, for killing his (innocent) unborn son. When he replies that Sophocles said that never to have been born may be the greatest boon of all, it's chilling, despite his palpable emotion.

Today in Porn, Ancient Edition

This week in my paper's Reading column, Judith Moore interviews Jeffrey Henderson, who edited the Loeb Classical Library Reader:

"You don't get the raucous, obscene, colloquial, sexy kinds of stuff in the older translations. It was illegal to publish a straight translation of Aristophanes until the late 1960s.When the Supreme Court decision -- the Potter-Stewart obscenity -- distinguishing artistic obscenity from pornography, there was that famous line of Justice Stewart, that he couldn't establish a 'standard differentiating the two, but I know it when I see it.'"

The conversation gets pretty blue, so be forewarned. But, Henderson notes:

"Every society has its rules and norms, and they just happen to be different in various societies. The Greeks were actually pretty prudish, except in some contexts, they did allow open expression of sexuality in some religious context and in comedies. They didn't have a sexualized culture in the same way that we do.

"It's always in service of larger themes. But it must have been all the funnier because the outlets were so restricted. I think that modern western culture is overloaded with erotic imagery in advertising and sexual situations in literature and television and films. It's just not special. Among the Greeks, twice a year, you could see comedies that had a pretty open expression of sexual situations and language, but only then."

Everyman

There's more to Godsbody than sex and liquor. There's also sex and death.

Charm

Whatever else you can say about Third Son (who threw a bunch of bill payments that The Wife had left on the bureau into the trash on the same day we found out about his dump truck expenses), he's got charm. When he trots into the room waving a stuffed bunny in front of him and says, "See? Godzilla-bunny!" and then roars...charm.

I have scene the future...

...and it's not terribly bright.

There's a newish (one year or so) lifestyle mag here in SD - you notice these things when you write for a weekly, even if you don't have a lifestyle. It's called 944. I'm not about to take a shot at the competition, merely their advertisers - or at least, their advertisers' copywriters. An add for Xavier's Bar and Grill touts the place as "The Newest Edition to the Gaslamp Quarter."

Edition, Addition, whatever.

Of course, you have to consider the possibility that this is some kind of play on words. But I'm not seeing it.

You can't put a price on beauty...

...and if you try, you're liable to break down in sobs...

Just got the bill for Third Son's adventure with the dump truck, the one we rented to haul dirt to fill The Wife's birthday flower box. Insurance decided they'd rather not pay. It's amazing what a four-foot roll into a garage can do to a six-ton truck.

You can't put a price on beauty. You can't put a price on beauty. You can't put a price on beauty...

Contraception Redux...

Given that this post is rapidly approaching the comments record currently held by the notorious "Philistine" post (no, I don't have the stomach to link to that debacle), I'm thinking that the readers of Godsbody may be interested in nothing this. Hat tip to Eve.

Poetry Corner, Milosz Edition

Nonadaptation

I was not made to live anywhere except in Paradise.

Such, simply, was my genetic inadaptation.

Here in earth every prick of a rose-thorn changed into a wound.
Whenever the sun hid behind a cloud, I grieved.

I pretended to work like the others from morning to evening,
but I was absent, dedicated to invisible countries.

For solace I escaped to city parks, there to observe
and faithfully describe flowers and trees, but they changed,
under my hand, into the gardens of Paradise.

I have not loved a woman with my five senses.
I only wanted from her my sister, from before the banishment.

And I respected religion, for on this earth of pain
it was a funereal and a propitiatory song.

- Czeslaw Milosz, from Second Space

(I really wanted to post this, but I find myself wondering if I have violated his copyright in doing so. What say you all? If it comes out that I have, I will remove the post.)

Department of Rejected New Yorker Cartoons

Father bursting into teenage son's room, his expression of mixture of shock, anger, and horror. Son lying on bed, reading an issue of the New Yorker. "It's okay, Dad. I only read it for the cartoons!"

Hell to the No.

Should authors have blogs?

Except maybe. Sometimes.

Overheard at Widow's Haven...

...sometime around 11:30 last night...

"It's all going to hell, anyway. If people aren't willing to make distinctions - to say, 'This is trash, and I will not have it' - then the trash will spread and become the rule. I'm just gonna sit here and read my Sherlock Holmes."

Cheers!

Bible-Thumper Hates Bush...

I mean, who else would take such a painstakingly crafted tableau so far over the top by putting the Number of the Beast on the man's crown?

And all this time, we thought it was godless liberals who hated Bush...Godsbody, getting it wrong since 2005...

Today in Porn, Legal Edition

(Re: the comments regarding the responsibility not to lead one's neighbor into sin, and the particular lure of porn. Amen to both notions. So what am I doing? This is me, poking fun at the dragon. If there's one thing porn cannot abide, as Martin Amis once noted, it's a sense of humor. If there are those for whom even this is too great an occasion of sin, then I would ask them to exercise prudence and avoid this blog. I'll try to exercise prudence on my end as well.)

Anna Nicole Smith's attempt to get what she says is coming to her can continue, says the Supreme Court.

But here's the comic gold - such dry wit from the Times:

The marriage ended with Mr. Marshall's death on Aug. 4, 1995, by which time the stage had been set for a showdown between the widow and E. Pierce Marshall, who had worried — rightly, it seems — that his father would be as generous to his young wife as he had been to a mistress, who died in 1990 while undergoing cosmetic surgery.

Shades of Brazil. Some kinds of generosity...

"Honey, I'd like you to get these solid gold implants."

"But won't they make it hard for me to breathe?"

"Maybe you didn't hear Big Daddy..."

What Would Jesus Drive?

Saw this on a big ol' white Lexus license plate today:

GDS LXS

Who knew? I mean, the pope rides in a Mercedes...

Tums...

Way back when, when advertising was still in its 80s-era innocence, Tums came up with a memorable beauty about Sodium. Sodium, the announcer informed us (and his tone let us know that sodium was probably at least as dangerous as arsenic, and maybe moreso), could turn up in the unlikeliest of places "...even in your antacid tablet. YOUR ANTACID TABLET." The horror! I was so grateful at the time to know that my grandfather took Tums for his digestive troubles - he would never be a victim of Hidden Sodium Assault.

I thought of that just now when I went to do a search on Google and saw an ad below the results page indicator which suggested that I "Crack the Code: Play the DaVinci Code Quest on Google." Cue announcer: The DaVinci Code can turn up in the unlikeliest of places...even in your search engine. YOUR SEARCH ENGINE."

sigh. Smart marketing, tho. I tip my hat.