While we're on the subject of wine...

...I'll toss out a recommendation:

Casa Castillo, a Monastrell (Mourvedre) out of the Jumilla region of Spain, is reliable year-in, year-out. This year, it's a step up from reliable. I love Mourvedre for its earthiness and tobacco; this one has a solid fruit core as well. I pay about $7 here in San Diego.

Cartoon of the Day

Here.

Sorry for the relative silence.

My boss in the news...

...and I was glad to see this AP story got the last quote just right:

"Jim doesn't want to be the issue," said Sebastiani. "He wants the issue to be the issue."

The issue being the parental-notification initiative that is California's Prop 85,

Cubeland Goes BIg Time

Amy links to Immaculate Direction.

Work/Job

Speaking of Richard Russo, he gave a fine little Commencement Address awhile back:

"Rule # 1: Search out the kind of work that you would gladly do for free and then get somebody to pay you for it. Don't expect this to happen overnight. It took me nearly twenty years to get people to pay me a living wage for my writing, which makes me, even at this juncture, one of the fortunate few. Your work should be something that satisfies, excites and rewards you, something that gives your life meaning and direction, that stays fresh and new and challenging, a task you'll never quite master, that will never be completed. It should be the kind of work that constantly humbles you, that never allows you to become smug - in short, work that sustains you instead of just paying your bills. While you search for this work, you'll need a job. For me that job was teaching, and it's a fine thing to be good at your job, as long as you don't confuse it with your work, which it's hard not to do."

The other rules: Find a loving mate, have kids, keep a sense of humor.

Here Comes the Flood

Back in 1997, when the Internet was just picking up steam, Richard Russo published the wonderful novel Straight Man. It included the following paragraph:

"...the campus rag contains little but letters to the editor, which I scan first for allusions to myself and next for unusual content, which in the current climate is any subject other than the unholy trinity of insensitivity, sexism, and bigotry, which the self-righteous, though not always literate, letter writers want their readers to know they're against. As a group they seem to believe that high moral indignation offsets and indeed outweighs all deficiencies of punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic, and style. In support of this notion there's only the entire culture."

And this was before blogs (Godsbody and its perfectly brilliant coterie of commentators excepted, naturally...)

"God gives you one face...

...and you paint yourselves another!"

- Hamlet

Or, you know, a dozen other people paint it, then work on your hair for an hour or two, then tweak your image beyond recognition on a computer in order to make you attractive enough to sell stuff simply by appearing next to it.

Again, thanks to the Manhattan Reader

What's your point?

Why am I getting recorded-message phone calls from the International Obesity Commission about a wonderful new dietary supplement?

Midnight Clear

Barb Nicolosi, late of Act One, has hopes for this one:

"My sense is that Dallas' films won't be the stuff that will be intelligible or desirable to FOX Faith and Sony Inspirational and Lionsgate 'Whatever they are calling their holy stuff division' and Newline 'Whatever they are calling their holy stuff division'. At least not this week. I think Dallas' style of films is more what the future for Christians in Hollywood will look like. More difficult. More ambiguous. More stylistic. Definitely less Pollyanna and more Flannery O'Connor."

Here's the preview.

I know, I know...

...there's no real contradiction here, but it was still curious to hear the two sentiments so close together:

From yesterday's Responsorial Psalm: The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord

From yesterday's Gospel Antiphon: For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ.

The earth: full of God's goodness, so much rubbish.

Grinding slowly to a halt...

...waiting on things.

Meanwhile, CM checks out Grace Before Meals.

I, on the other hand, am left wondering, "Out of stock? How am I going to fulfill Father's penance?"

And finally, a slightly bawdy but very funny meditation on romance and the familiar: Business Time.

F the Future

Nicholas Von Hoffman goes to town on Wal-Mart's policy of "ordering its workers to be available for duty anytime, day or night, at its nearly 2,000 24-hour-a-day stores." (Never mind its decision to "put 40 percent of its workers on part-time and place a ceiling on what they can earn.") Do read the whole thing. But here's a taste:

"The havoc this must cause in families with children needs no elaboration. How do you arrange for childcare or after-school supervision if you must wait to be told when you’re going to be working? This is not a problem that Sam Walton’s five heirs are likely to face."

...

"We all know that the odds are that the less carefully a child is reared, the more ghastly the adult. And what a moment for the largest employer in the United States to intensify its anti-family policies. I doubt that Wal-Mart thinks about such things—and if it does, it may have concluded that it makes no never mind if the next generation has a high proportion of slovenly brutes, lazy slobs, ignorant boobies, drugged-out morons, kleptomaniacs and just plain jerks. That this is the social equivalent of eating one’s seed corn does not seem to weigh on Wal-Mart’s executives. That its present employees’ children may form the population from which Wal-Mart will have to draw its future employees apparently is a concern to be left to future Wal-Mart executives. The idea is to make all the money you can now and f- the future."

...

"The changes caused by the demands of business organizations took the father out of the home in the 19th century and have all but marginalized the father in the 21st. The same may be happening to the mother. In this century, the home, as a sanctuary from the world or a place in which families decided the shape and content and tempo of life, is all but gone, as the corporations penetrate everywhere and contest with parents over who gets to instill values, standards and taste in children.

Advertising has long since penetrated the schools—once thought to be a place where commerce was barred—and now, with the coming of the iPod, commercial messages with their inculcating beliefs as well as tastes will flow into young heads every minute of the day. Against this, parents with different ideas and other values usually struggle in vain. A family that insists on raising its children its way has little choice but to home-school and live in a manner that will brand it as eccentric and not exactly American."

Euphemism

When you have small children, you are forever inventing:

The Wife, to me: And the liason you're referring to, it was between two gentlemen?

Conflagration

Amy's on fire again.

Poetry, Elsewhere

Familiar voice Cubeland Mystic has gone and plastered a "Please Fire Me, Mr. Corporate Man" sign on his forehead - he's writing poetry. Or rather, he has written poetry, gotten it copyrighted, and is now posting it at Mystical Writing:

Sublime

In the moistness of a purple dawn,
Kitchen rife with semi-light,
A woman wrapped in terry cloth
moves toward the coffee pot.

In the twilight of cognition
The machine gurgles . . .
Steam rises . . .
The window begins to fog.

A shirtless man with baby draped,
limbs dangling,
Abreast his forearm.
Its head supported
by his palm,
Puts a pot to boil.

In the same motion he opens the door.
The dog bounds loudly
into the tall grass and cold,
Squatting daintily beside a stump.

Steam rising from the puddle,
And steam heaves from its lungs in the crispness
Confirming the engine of life.

The dog returns to the kitchen .
Dew wet ears brushing her naked leg.
Dawn is the time of ambiguities.
Roles yet to be assumed.

They sit at the table.
Coffee steaming deep within the mugs.
The transfer of energy.
Cereal steaming deep within the bowls
The transfer of energy.

Steam and silence mix with purple light,
As the baby is draped abreast his thighs.
The dog assumes begging posture.
He leans forward stroking the woman's arm.
She strokes the top of his hand.
Her lips part into a semi-smile.
Words have yet to be spoken,
Yet love is conveyed.
It is the transfer of tenderness within the semi-light.

He is not remembering their first meeting,
The seduction, or the eros.

He is not remembering the good times,
The success, or the prosperity.

He remembers the smoothness of her arm,
And her reciprocating stroke.

Now he weeps under memory's burden.
His grandchild strokes the top of his hand.

Steam rising from his cheeks,
And steam heaves from his lungs in the crispness
Confirming the engine of life.

He is thinking of the coffee.

These are his parting thoughts.
It is his parting memory.
A memory of profound simplicity,
Within the context of lives spent together.

He is stroking his grandchild's hair.
It is smooth.
While he turns from the grave--the agony of an instant.
Within the context of a revolution,
He is consigning his love to eternity,
And the moments when he'll gaze at the stars.

He regrets
Begetting lives.
Knowing that they too will share the agony of consignment.
He reconsiders
Joy is abundant when you look.
He walks
Supported by two generations.

Bliss comes while
He reckons
The moistness of a purple dawn.

Exchange

So First Son, in a rare fit of sweet childlike craftmaking, has learned to crochet. His first project was a necklace, which First Daughter put on this evening.

First Daughter: Hey, look what I'm wearing!

First Son: That's great! It'll make good advertising!

It's Like There's a God

Blogger Dorian Speed suggested recently that I take a gander at Richard Russo's novel Straight Man. So yesterday, my number came up for library duty, and as we're leaving, I take a gander at the "used books for sale" shelf by the exit and...bingo. Hardcover, two dollars!

Of course, I didn't have two dollars. All cash goes to The Wife. So later that afternoon, Second Son pestered The Wife until she agreed to take him to the library, so he could buy me the book.

You take your signs of the divine where you can find 'em...

Funny, Elsewhere, etc.

High-End Handbags Inspired By Horror Icons.

Jukebox

Man, I'm gonna stop that grass
And give up all this drinking
Really gonna make my life last
Clean up my whole way of living
Up until the party last night
I was a different man
But old ways got their way again.

- Neil Young, "Old Ways"

The Percy Project

Via Korrektiv, a fine Percy page.

While I'm at it...

...I should mention Hereditas:

"We therefore hope that when you read through Hereditas you will encounter not necessarily 'the cutting edge of Catholic contemporary thought,' but rather the tradition and heritage that defines us as Catholic families -- a heritage that makes us who we are, and continues to form us as we hand it on to future generations. Our heritage is not one that has been preserved in moth balls and tucked in the back of someone's closet. Nor is it rigid and clunky like some old suit of armor standing rusted in a corner. Rather, our heritage as Catholics is one that has been woven in Love and forged in Truth. It is hard as steel and yet as comforting as a receiving blanket. Because it has formed us, we seek to contribute to it, and to preserve and express the divine Truth within it."

Joey

...is a new magazine published by a few of my fellow alums who want something more out of life than just a blog, by gum. A touch of the McSweeny about it - viz. this issue's letters:

Hey Joey -
Why don't you publish letters every week? Is it because no one writes? I'm guessing that's the reason. Maybe you should ask yourself why no one is writing in?
Sean Williams
***
Joey,
I find JOEY magazine depressing. Are you depressed and unhappy?
Carole
***
Joey -
I was recently watching the TV show Six Feet Under. You should check it out.
Evan
***
Joey -
Do you know what it feels like to be all alone in the world, like no one cares, and you wonder what reason there is to go on? I thought you would.
Love,
Christi

Also viz. this this interview. I'll post more as I poke around.

Phase Two

See, y'all thought this was a joke:

"'Starbucks has completed the coffee-distribution and location establishment phase of its operation, and is now ready to move into Phase Two,' read a statement from Cynthia Vahlkamp, Starbucks' chief marketing officer. 'We have enjoyed furnishing you with coffee-related beverages and are excited about the important role you play in our future plans. Please pardon the inconvenience while we fortify the second wave of our corporate strategy.'

Though the coffee chain's specific plans are not known, existing Starbucks franchises across the nation have been locked down with titanium shutters across all windows. In each coffee shop's door hangs the familiar Starbucks logo, slightly altered to present the familiar mermaid figure as a cyclopean mermaid whose all-seeing eye forms the apex of a world-spanning pyramid."

But y'all were wrong:

"Yet the chain is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture. 'We’re very excited, because despite how much we’ve grown, these are the early stages for development,' said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks. 'At our core, we’re a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it’s entertainment.'

"Sounding a bit caffeinated himself, Mr. Schultz explained, 'With the assets Starbucks has in terms of number of stores, and the trust we have with the brand, and the profile of our customers, we’re in a unique position to partner with creators of unique content to create an entertainment platform and an audience that’s unparalleled.'"

Inspiration, Redux

I really did think I made up the opening line of my little song:

I'm tying all these loose ends into a noose
Getting settled in my chair so they can turn on the juice

But while I can say with certainty I wasn't thinking of Beck's "Strange Invitation" when I wrote the line, there's no denying that he got there first:

I've been drifting along in the same stale old shoes
Loose ends tyin' a noose in the back of my mind

Sigh. Well, at least it was Beck.

Inspiration

Okay, so the Grindhouse trailer had only a brief stay on the Internets, but it was long enough to geek folks out over the image of Rose McGowan with a machine gun for a leg. Samurai Jack fans, however, merely shrugged - we saw the original.

Today in Porn, Analogue Edition

Toni Bentley on plastic surgery, in her review of Alex Kuczynski's Beauty Junkies:

"How did this practice of self-mutilation, masquerading as a search for beauty, become not only a society-sanctioned addiction but a $15 billion industry? Economic greed and insecure women are such a potent combination that plastic surgery now rivals, economically, the far less disingenuous, much-criticized pornography industry. Which one, you have to wonder, hurts women more? Kuczynski connects the two, proposing that the desire to look like a porn star is one of the most prevalent motivations for the society ladies who indulge in the most cosmetic surgery. 'Beauty Junkies' documents, in morbid detail, an obsession that represents a failure in the 150-year battle of American feminism to empower women. One of the faces of so-called third wave feminism may be the literally paralyzed mask of the surgically remastered woman."

Weak, weak, weak.

I want.

I place a very high value on sitting down.

Exchange

Husband, entering home from office around 9 p.m., speaking to wife: Didn't you finish your wine?

Wife: Do you think I could finish it, sitting on the couch, watching a show with children crawling all over me?

Husband: Use a sippy cup.

Wife: That would probably work.

Evanescence and Insignificance...

...always terrifying to the soul anxious about whether God really notes the fall of every sparrow, are only amplified in cyberspace. A reader writes:

"The Internet: wonderful and frightening. The sheer volume of blog spewage -- as a librarian, it scares the hell out of me, never mind the making of many books. But I suppose that's an extension of my basic anxiety at the vast quantities God has seen fit to create. How can the individual not get lost? So we cling to each other in these little enclaves and try not to lose our bearings."

Sigh.

As someone said to me today, "Remember when this stuff was a fresh shock every time you heard about it?

Today in Porn, Halloween Edition - the Academics Weigh In

Why do some women get tarted up for Halloween? Let's ask Adie Nelson, the author of “The Pink Dragon Is Female: Halloween Costumes and Gender Markers,” an analysis of 469 children’s costumes and how they reinforce traditional gender messages:

"Heroic figures for women or considered icons of femininity are very much anchored in the femme fatale imagery,” she said, adding that those include an assortment of Disney heroines, witches, cocktail waitresses, French maids and an “interchangeable variety of beauty queens.”

Look, I'm not a huge fan of Belle from Beauty & The Beast, but I'm not sure how, exactly, she's anchored in femme fatale imagery. But let's move on to Pat Gill, the interim director of the Institute of Communications Research and a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

Many women think that showing off their bodies “is a mark of independence and security and confidence."

Right. Dolling yourself up as a guy's porn fantasy is a mark of independence. From whom? Men? And everybody knows that the more you show off your assets, the more secure you are as a person. On to Deborah Tolman, the director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University, who actually went and talked to some teenage girls and found that:

Some 30 teenage girls she studied understood being sexy as “being sexy for someone else, not for themselves."

Imagine. Moving on:

When the girls were asked what makes them feel sexy, they had difficulty answering, Dr. Tolman said, adding that they heard the question as “What makes you look sexy?” Many women’s costumes, with their frilly baby-doll dresses and high-heeled Mary Janes, also evoke male Lolita fantasies and reinforce the larger cultural message that younger is hotter. “It’s not a good long-term strategy for women,” Dr. Tolman said. But does that mean women should not use Halloween as an excuse to shed a few inhibitions? “I think it depends on the spirit in which you’re doing it,” Dr. Tolman said. “I’m not going to go and say this is bad for all women.”

Perhaps, say some scholars, it could even be good. Donning one of the many girlish costumes that sexualize classic characters from books, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” “Cinderella” and “The Wizard of Oz,” can be campy, female sartorial humor, said Professor Gill. It can be a way to embrace the fictional characters women loved as children while simultaneously taking a swipe at them, she said. “The humor gives you a sense of power and confidence that just being sexy doesn’t,” she said.

See, it's ironic. That's the beauty part. As a guy, I get to ogle, but since I'm in on the joke, I'm not really just a lustbucket.

Dr. Tolman added that it is possible some women are using Halloween as a “safe space,” a time to play with sexuality. By taking it over the top, she said, they “make fun of this bill of goods that’s being sold to them.”

It may be possible, but it's also possible that they're simply buying this bill of goods that's being sold to them, no? As Dr. Nelson puts it:

“I love to imagine that there’s some real social message, that it’s sort of the female equivalent of doing drag. But I don’t think it’s necessarily so well thought out.”

And of course, it has nothing to do with porn.

Potter on Percy

The Korrektiv Supplemental contains a good deal of very bawdy humor. It also contains this essay on Walker Percy:

"Why do I feel so at home with Binx Bolling et al, chasing women and God, drinking bourbon and gin, gripped by everydayness and morning terror? Why else but that in the course of any one of his novels Percy some how manages this rare miracle: he hits upon a name for Being and invites me to join in clear ing a space for it.

Percy, his protagonist and I form a kind of triple al liance it would seem, a 'three musketeers' of sorts, wield ing shovels against the excremental pile-up in this 'the very century of merde.' What is the merde? It is all that would obfuscate our senses, dim our awareness (of even the merde itself), deprive us of meaning. It is that abstract­ing and devaluing force which would subsume us and turn us into the living dead."

Today in Porn, CNN Edition

My only question, is Glenn Beck reporting on porn or selling it? "Have I got something for YOU..."

CCH

American Psycho

Everybody knows
That '80s top forty tunes
Make you inhuman

Quentin Tarantino, Jane Austen Admirer?

Odd what lodges in the brain; odder still when it detaches from whatever wall it's clinging to and comes floating up into memory...

From (as if you didn't know) Pulp Fiction:

Vincent: Bacon tastes good. Pork chops taste good.

Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know, 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy m-f-er.

And there you have it: Sense and Sensibility

The Next is Silence

Scorcese calls it:

"His next project could not be more different from the crime stories he is renowned for. It's an adaptation of Shusaku Endo's novel 'Silence' and tells the story of two 17th century Portuguese missionaries.

'It's a small-scale, lower-budget film. I have wanted to do it for 15 years,' he said."

CCH

Infamous

What brought the silence?
The saving of the beloved?
Or his betrayal?

(Ultimately, Infamous is much kinder to Capote than last year's Capote. A weaker piece of art in some ways - the use of the talking heads can probably be blamed on its being taken from a book. But worth seeing, says Godsbody - if you're interested in that whole "artist's relation to his art" thing.)

Holy Crap, Franzen's Been Eviscerated...

...in the NYTBR:

A shot at the form, one which resonates with your host: "'The Discomfort Zone' advertises itself, in a rather optimistic subtitle, as a 'personal history,' and was described during its pre-publication buildup as a 'memoir' — a mischaracterization that further disserves a genre that already suffers from too much approximate thinking and lack of discipline on the part of so many who indulge themselves in it. The fact that four of the six chapters here previously appeared in some form in The New Yorker confirms your suspicion that the author merely padded a bunch of pre-existing occasional pieces on a variety of subjects in order to produce the kind of life-story narrative that everyone seems to want to read right now."

But here's the real killshot: "This project is, however, fatally marred in Franzen’s nonfiction by a flaw that readers of Franzen’s fiction are already likely to be familiar with, which is the author’s total lack of humor — a quality without which, as every stand-up comedian knows, obsessive self-exposure is tedious rather than entertaining or edifying. It’s hard, indeed, not to be struck by the almost willful refusal to consider the humorous — and, indeed, the amusing, the pleasurable, the beautiful — in Franzen’s work: a body of writing in which every landscape is a landfill (all three of Franzen’s novels are, in fact, filled with surreally detailed descriptions of blighted cityscapes), every season is rainy. 'There was something dreadful about springtime itself,' the author recalls here, somewhat astonishingly, of a season in his childhood."

Call a man anything, but when you call him humorless, you might as well call him inhuman. Which the reviewere actually does, though you need to read it in context to get at the sly way he does it: "Who, after all, wants the company of a character so self-involved he doesn’t even realize he’s not human?"

Thanks to my reader in Manhattan for the tip.

Percy on Bourbon

"The pleasure of knocking back Bourbon lies in the plane of the aesthetic but at an opposite pole from connoisseurship. My preference for the former is or is not deplorable depending on one's value system - that is to say, how one balances out the Epicurean virtues of cultivating one's sensory organs with the greatest discrimination and at least cost to one's health, against the virtue of evocation of time and memory and of the recovery of self and the past from the fogged-in disoriented Western world."

- Walker Percy, "Bourbon"

Two things to note here: first, though I'm right with Percy in praising Bourbon, wine will do the trick as well. Last night, our party followed up a fancy Cab with a $5 bottle of Protocolo from Spain, and by the end of it, I had recovered myself - a self plagued all afternoon with abstraction and anxiety - quite nicely. I was grateful, and at home again, both in my own skin and in my own home amid my family.

Second, I had the chance to purchase the 1976 issue of Esquire in which this essay first appeared, and I didn't jump on it. It haunts me still.

Mawage in Twubble?

Marrieds go minority. Which, really, just makes them that much more fashionable.

Go to hell.

In Mammon City!

"For the most part, this production closely follows the look and text proposed by Pastor Keenan Roberts — the Colorado minister who has done much to popularize Hell Houses by selling kits with scripts and design advice. (Suggestion for the abortion sequence: 'a meat product that will resemble as much as possible pieces of a baby.') But there is one significant interpolated scene that directly points the finger at those who have come to scoff.

The setting is the eighth stop on the demon-guided tour of rooms presenting hellbound sinners in action, which has already included men who marry men and a girl who goes to a rave and is gang-raped. Unlike the earlier vignettes, which have involved a lot of screaming and simulated bloodshed, this one looks comfortingly, even tediously familiar.

Three young adults sit in a coffee bar, talking about staples of cultural satire like The Onion and Jon Stewart.

One of them proposes putting together a comedy project about fundamentalist religion, and they begin riffing on the possibilities of parodying Christian rock and portraying Jesus. The conversation is interrupted by a posse of devils, who carry these wise guys straight to hell.

This segment, titled 'The Ironists,' was inspired by a mock 'Hell House' staged in Los Angeles in 2004, featuring comedians like Bill Maher and Sarah Silverman. But its inclusion in the Freres’ version has a more far-reaching resonance, and for many viewers it will probably feel more personal than any of the grislier scenes. For what 'The Ironists' suggests is that, according to the logic of 'Hell House,' the very attitude that inspired many New Yorkers — the type who wear their eyebrows in their hairlines — to buy tickets for this production is exactly what damns them to an eternity in flames."

Classic

So The Wife is having back trouble. To ease her pain, she will, on the rare occasions that she sits down, lean against some frozen thing - edamame, say, or, failing that, frozen raspberries. But of course, she is never allowed to stay sitting long, and in the course of chaos, she forgot about the frozen raspberries, wrapped as they were in a towel. After a few hours, raspberry juice had leaked out of the (opened) package, staining great portions of the dishtowel deep red. When she discovered the towel during the final house-sweep of the evening, she panicked for just a moment:

"Where are the children? How did this get past me?!"

Rod Dreher, Orthodox.

Mr. Crunchy Con is no longer Mr. Crunchy Catholic:

"I am incapable of being the kind of gung-ho Orthodox as I was a gung-ho Catholic. I've learned my lesson. What I do have in Orthodoxy, though, is a second chance to get it right. To receive the Sacraments as an aid to theosis, and to learn to love the little platoon around me, building up the community and my own family. Had I started out this way as a Catholic, maybe it wouldn't have come to this. But I did, and here I am, and God is merciful."

And further:

"As far as tradition goes, I have moved with my family to a church that I believe stands a much better chance of maintaining the historic Christian deposit of faith over time. To be more blunt, I have moved to a church that in my judgment within which I and my family and my descendants will be better able to withstand modernity. Basically, though -- and this is as blunt as I can be -- I'm in a church where I can trust the spiritual headship of the clergy, and where most people want to know more about the faith, and how we can conform our lives to it, rather than wanting to run away from it or hide it so nobody has to be offended."

Thanks to Cubeland Mystic for the link.

Gosh.

Happy Catholic is kind to the little book.

What a drag it is getting old...

...The Boomers take on the Xers with a movie about what might happen if that wisenheimer Jon Stewart actually ended up President. Only they get a Boomer comic - Robin Williams - to play the part.

Going After God

Dawkins and Harris get all up in the divine grill:

"But when God is taken away, what fills the gap? Sam Harris suggests that we can still use ritual to mark the big moments in life without 'embracing the preposterous.' Richard Dawkins is less conciliatory: 'Maybe life is empty,' he suggests. 'There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.' Instead, he explains, our lives are as meaningful as we choose to make them. He illustrates this point of view with a quote from James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner who helped discover the structure of DNA: 'Well, I don’t think we’re for anything. We’re just products of evolution. You can say ‘Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose.’ But I’m anticipating having a good lunch.'"

Terminology

My brother has, from time to time, made reference to a kind of anti-providence - the perfection of a situation's failure to work out, its utter unfittingness in every painful aspect - as a kind of backdoor argument for God's existence. Only a universe with an intelligent hand on the wheel could ruin things so perfectly, could so completely crush an errant ambition. Simple bad luck has a more random character. Cubeland Mystic, an esteemed presence in the comments box here at Godsbody, recently coined a phrase which catches at something of the same thing, and sounds good to boot: the sinister clockwork.

Rumor Volat

I've received a couple of emails about this:

"The new indult would permit any priest to introduce the Tridentine Mass to his church, anywhere in the world, unless his bishop has explicitly forbidden it in writing.

Catholic bloggers have been anticipating the indult for months. The Cornell Society blog says that Father Martin Edwards, a London priest, was told by Cardinal Joseph Zen, of Hong Kong, that the indult had been signed. Cardinal Zen is alleged to have had this information from the Pope himself in a private meeting."

Amy has more.

Interesting. Very interesting. But still not official.

Wine

First off, kudos to the Register, both for acknowledging the blogosphere and celebrating wine. But you always fisk the ones you love...

It’s October, and that means harvest: corn, wheat, hay, pumpkins. Most importantly for me, it means grape harvesting and stepped-up wine production.

Catholics traditionally love wine.

[Amen.]

It’s the centerpiece of their liturgy on Sunday mornings and, often, the centerpiece of their dinners on Saturday nights.

[Um, just Saturday? Just as there is daily Mass... And it's not the centerpiece; it's the partner, or the handmaiden.]

A Catholic editor once told me, “All good Catholics drink.” He spoke those words at lunch, while drinking Pepsi, so it was no drunken bombast.

[Amen.]

He meant it, though I think it’s fairer to say, “A lot of great Catholics have loved wine.”

[And beer. And whiskey. And brandy. And martinis... Why fairer? The second formulation narrows the loving to wine and to great Catholics. I'm a lousy Catholic, and I drink and love wine. Percy was a great Catholic, and he drank bourbon.]

Read about the early 20th-century Catholic literary revival that biographer Joseph Pearce has chronicled so well. The wine flowed freely — so freely that you might think it was the fuel of the revival. G.K. Chesterton drank it, Maurice Baring balanced glasses of it on his bald head, Hilaire Belloc practically drank a barrel of it during a walking pilgrimage that he recounts in The Path to Rome.

Chesterton and Belloc loved the stuff so much that contemporaries claimed that they had misheard the Creed and thought it demanded belief in “One, Holy, Catholic, and Alcoholic Church.”

[That's pretty funny - which contemporaries?]

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Catholic bloggers write about wine. A lot. My own blog, The Daily Eudemon (ericscheske.com/blog), contains no fewer than 50 references to the vine and dedicates every Friday to drink.

[This is the great thing about being a blogger. You can dedicate a whole day of the week, a day when most folks are still working, to drink.]

Surf around and you’ll find that wine admirers flood the Catholic blogosphere. They love the fruit of the vine, the work of human hands, often citing Jesus’ first miracle at the Cana wedding feast as proof of wine’s goodness.

[I prefer to stick with God giving "wine to gladden the heart of man." It's earthier, more basic, less dressed up. But I will give 'em this: the miracle at Cana does suggest that there is something divine about wine, and also that Christ is a friend to earthly pleasure.]

Take “Kenny” at The Sleepless Eye (kennyignatiusaugustine.blogspot.com). A child of Taoist parents, he’s a convert who has written a fine meditation on Cana, concluding, “God loves wine. If he didn’t, why on earth did he create grapes?”

[This argument could also run this way: God loves pot. If he didn't, why on earth did he create cannabis? But the sentiment is admirable.]

Kenny is also a trained bartender, so it’s good to see that he hasn’t lost his faith in wine. People who are around alcohol the most are often the ones who despise it. The shattering effects of its abuse can deter the most ardent bacchanal.

[The Catholic conscience rears its head. I know this beast well. Guy wants to write a humble ode to wine, but even in the midst of his praises, he can't help but look over his shoulder at the afflicted. It's good to remember the afflicted, but here, it has the effect of standing up at a dinner party to talk about famine in Africa.

Eschewing Excess

The desert father Abba Moses abused the awareness-altering substance during his pre-conversion days as a murderer and brigand. Blogger Karen Knapp (kmknapp.blogspot.com) tells us that Abba Moses once drank 18 pints of wine after robbing a shepherd of four rams.

I like to think that a nasty wine hangover catalyzed his conversion to one of the greatest desert holy men of all time. It’s not surprising that the Bible contains a dozen or so condemnations of excess consumption, which Athanasius Contra Mundum (athanasiuscm.blogspot.com) lays out while examining the Mel Gibson affair last summer (another unfortunate episode in the evil of excess).

[And not just excess - habitual excess.]

Given the potential pitfalls with wine, it’s legitimate and even admirable for a Catholic to abstain totally. Bloggers like The Ironic Catholic (ironiccatholic.blogspot.com) have pointed out that Chapter 40 of the Rule of St. Benedict prescribed a half liter of wine every day, per monk. They fail to mention, though, that the same chapter promises a special reward for those who abstain.

[I like this. It regards drink as the norm, and abstinence as the exception, a special excellence given to a few.]

The thing is, there’s a big difference between teetotalling and abstaining.

[Amen.]

Abstaining is good, as long as the abstainer remembers that wine is good, too. If he forgets, perhaps he can recall a few of the humorous stories that surround wine. There are plenty, like the one about the response of the composer Brahms when presented with a fine wine that his host, lavishing praise on his distinguished guest, called “the Brahms of my cellar.” Brahms tasted it and said, “Better bring out your Beethoven.”

Bloggers frequently mention the pleasure of wine, whether it’s the blogger who recounts his last night before entering the Jesuit Novitiate, saying that he ate good food and drank good wine (higherplane.typepad.com); a blogger spilling wine on a distinguished nun (southwarkvocations.blogspot.com); or merely monologues that recount good wines, conversation, and food.

[Huzzah!]


To Your Health

Wine obviously has a long history in Catholic culture, but Catholic blogger Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti (laudatortempo risacti.blogspot.com) reminds us that it had a distinguished career in pagan times, too, and not just among the Caligulas. He took the time to list more than 20 quotes by classical authors, from Euripides to Horace, singing the praises of wine. There’s this, for example, from Homer’s Odyssey: “Wine sets even a thoughtful man to singing / Or sets him into softly laughing, sets him to dancing.”

You can also find mundane facts about wine in the blogosphere, like the invention of robots that recommend good wines and cheeses to go with it (mirabilis.ca); Christian mutual funds that refuse to invest in wine companies but will invest in companies that donate to Planned Parenthood (cornell-catholic-cir cle.blogspot.com); and the existence of a pro-life wine company, Bogo Wines, which I learned about at theworldimho.blogspot.com. (I should have read the Register more carefully: It turns out this paper featured Bogo in a Prolife Profile some months back.)

This last summer, you could’ve even read that, like red wine, studies have shown that white wine is healthy for you, too (mirabilis.ca again). That’s good news, of course, but drinking wine for the health of it strikes me as similar to living out the marital union for the exercise.

[Oh, that's very good.]

If you want wine critiquing without pretension, check out the Catholic blogosphere’s reigning wine connoisseur, professor Stephen Bainbridge, at professorbainbrid geonwine.com.

Bainbridge is great, but my sentiments are more in line with Greg Krehbiel at Crowhill Weblog (crowhill.net/blog). He says, “In my opinion, the day you can no longer enjoy a bottle of cheap California wine is the day you’ve gone from ‘smart wine drinker’ to ‘snobby, stupid wine critic.’”

[Cue Rant: how much 'cheap California wine' does this fellow drink? And what's his definition of cheap California wine? There are very, very few bottles coming out of California for under $10 that aren't painful to drink. There exists an anti-snobbery snobbery that can keep people from admitting that a wine is loaded with unripe acid and short, bitter tannins, and all but devoid of yummy fruit - just because it's cheap, and by God, they enjoy cheap wine. They're not one of those awful snobs. Don't misunderstand me - I drink Delicato Shiraz from a box. And Bonny Doon's Big House Red is an outstanding value. But if it's good cheap wine you're after, you're much safer with Spain and the South of France. It might take a little more hunting to find such wines, and even a little more research, but if you want pleasure and economy, I think it's worth a little hunting and learning. I've been writing about wine for a while, and I've met precious few genuine wine snobs - people who look down on a wine just because it's inexpensive, or praise a wine just because it's pricey. Too often, the term 'snob' gets slapped on anyone who's willing to listen to his taste buds and say, 'This is swill.' End rant.]

Amen to that. And praise to the world of wine and the Catholic bloggers who write about it.

Thanks to Father Stephanos for the link.

Never Vacuum

That's yesterday's lesson of the day. Third Son took his big cookie - the one Nana, visiting from Kansas City, bought him at the local Jewish SuperDeli - out of the kitchen and into the family room. This was in direct violation of family policy. Crumbs were spread. Third Son was ordered back to the kitchen. Third Son left the field of vision, then halted in defiance. Gentle justice was meted out. Third Son was sad. To help restore familial harmony, I suggested he help me clean up the crumbs via vacuum cleaner, a suggestion he happily accepted. We cleared the floor of the family room for vacuuming, which meant putting the ottoman for one of the chairs up on top of the chair itself. Third Son vacuumed vigorously. Dad offered to finish the job. Third Son promptly joined First Daughter in a game of Perched Ottoman Death Leap, and promptly broke his arm. The Wife, who knows things, was not home. The Husband, who knows nothing, took Third Son to the local Emergency Room instead of Children's Hospital. Fast forward to 4:30 a.m., eight hours and two hospitals later, when the Husband had a moment of bull-moose full-blown Enlightenment: Never Vacuum.

Freedom of Expression, Baby.

So a friend who lives on a well-traveled street (about a half-block from a freeway onramp) put out four signs in his front lawn in support of California's Prop 85, a parental-notification proposal. Less than 24 hours later, the signs were gone.

What Doesn't Work

After a while, a body gets weary of religious music that openly attempts to manufacture devotion through a kind of emotional force. I'd like to believe there's a real difference between that and music which disposes the will toward piety.

Dept. of Child-Related Terror

Even when you find a show that Third Son will actually watch for more than two minutes (Dora the Explorer, Superbabies Edition), you have to worry that the lad will take Second Daughter, whom he adores and plays with, and test out her own Superbaby capabilities by dropping her out the window to watch her fly...

What did you expect?

Mary is expecting.

Sigh.

T-Shirt of the Day...

...All that typing does make for dextrous digits...

(Thanks to reader Zachary.)

Wait a minute...

...I thought the Evangelicals had finally figured out how to make Christianity hip:

"While some critics say the statistics are greatly exaggerated (one evangelical magazine for youth ministers dubbed it 'the 4 percent panic attack'), there is widespread consensus among evangelical leaders that they risk losing their teenagers.

'I’m looking at the data,' said Ron Luce, who organized the meetings and founded Teen Mania, a 20-year-old youth ministry, 'and we’ve become post-Christian America, like post-Christian Europe. We’ve been working as hard as we know how to work — everyone in youth ministry is working hard — but we’re losing.'"

Exchange

Me: Wouldn't it be cool if I could somehow [media-related idea redacted]?

The Wife: Would you need to be funny?

Chesterton on Drinking

"Once in the world's history men did believe that the stars were dancing to the tune of their temples, and they danced as men have never danced since. With this old pagan eudaemonism the sage of the Rubiyat has quite as little to do as he has with any Christian variety. he is not more a Bacchanal than he is a saint. Dionysus and his church was grounded on a serious joie de vivre like that of Walt Whitman. Dionysus made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. Jesus Christ also made wine, not a medicine, but a sacrament. But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad. 'Drink,' he says, 'for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace.' So he stands offering us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of Christianity stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine. 'Drink,' he says, 'for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this is my blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where.'"

Exchange

Third Son: Mama! Mama!

Daddy: Third Son, Mama needs a break

Third Son: No, she doesn't. Mama doesn't need a break.

Update

A few new links in the sidebar, including Blessed Among Men, a New England answer to Testosterhome, written by one Suzanne Temple, whom I knew at school.

Dept. of Questionable Taste

Godsbody, lowering the bar since 2005...

Maybe it's because I've got a couple of friends who are nurses, but it strikes me as a remarkably unfelicitous decision on the part of a local car dealership to advertise, in huge letters across the top of its flyer, "Citywide Forced Elimination Event!"

That just sounds awful.

Hey! That's my Uncle!

Second from right.

Not the NYT photo-op a body might hope for, of course...

Today in Porn, Writerly Edition

How have I not heard of this before?

"Enter Mason Novick of the management firm Benderspink. 'I don't know exactly what I was doing on the Internet, but ... we'll call it what it is,' he says. 'I mean, yes. I was reading her dirty, dirty blog, and it was funny.' Novick eventually cold-contacted her, discovered that she had a memoir lying around and got it to a literary agent, who sold 'Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper' for six figures a few weeks later."

Six figures. Urgh. And the capper:

"But the real lesson here, as Novick has proven, is that surfing porn at work can no longer unilaterally be written off as unproductive."

Jukebox

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles brusied by a lady in black
And I held my toungue as she told me
"Son fear is the heart of love"
So I never went back

- Death Cab for Cutie, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark"

Really, Death Cab? A nun in habit, bruising your knuckles with a ruler? Telling you that fear is the heart of love (as opposed to the beginning of wisdom)? Been awhile since I heard that one.

Saint Francis...

...whose feast is today, is often depicted in proximity to a skull:

"El Greco no longer depicted the saint, as was previously common, at the moment of his stigmatization, that is, his miraculous reception of Christ's wounds, but in the process of musing over a skull. The founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola, had recommended the use of a skull in meditational practices in his Spiritual Exercises."

Someone to turn to when the fear of death creeps over the soul...

Talking of which...

Catholic novelists (and please do correct me if I'm wrong):

Evelyn Waugh: drank heavily, took a lot of tranquilizers, once suffered a psychic break of sorts.

Walker Percy: drank rather a bit (see his essay "Bourbon"), struggled with depression

J.F. Powers: dunno much, but he was certainly grumpy: he once said, "Betty and I weren't meant to have children. Our mistake was getting mixed up in that Catholic business called Family Life years ago. That was for farmers, not for us, but we didn't know any better." And also: “There isn’t anything the Church can do that it hasn’t already done to disillusion me, but I still think it’s it.”

Graham Greene: barely hung on to faith, drank rather a bit, spent the last few decades of his life with a couple of women other than his wife.

Flannery O'Connor: seems clean - there's one in every crowd.

And yet, we cast our lots with these souls - and rightly so, I think. They saw things.

Ooh, I like that.

"The novelist with Christian concerns."

It's not that what O'Connor says here is a new idea around Casa Godsbody, it's just that it seems a precise turn of phrase - more precise than "Catholic novelist."

Today in Porn, Indie Edition

Shortbus:

"Unlike traditional hard-core features, in which the sexual encounters interrupt the story like a number in a 1930’s Busby Berkeley musical, the carnal interludes in 'Shortbus' are integrated into the narrative, much as the singing and dancing are in 'Oklahoma!' This integration goes a long way to normalizing the sex, making it seem matter-of-fact, natural, and it also normalizes watching this kind of material in the kind of public space where you don’t need a roll of quarters to keep the images flowing. Mr. Mitchell sustains this sense of everyday ease even when the characters start frequenting Shortbus, a sex club with the relaxed vibe and noise level of a nice restaurant, albeit one with condoms on the menu rather than small plates...

Mr. Mitchell finds his happy ending in raucous music and warm caresses, in an oceanic feeling in which everyone is free to be freakily you and me. His idealism is pleasingly touching and just maybe a bit naïve."

And the people all said...

Amen.

Spy

We once purchased an issue of Spy, the super-brilliant, paradigm-shifting, consciousness-altering, so-funny-you-couldn't-laugh-because-your-breath-was-taken-away-in-awe magazine of ironic smartitude. (Actually, it really was funny.) Jenny McCarthy was on the cover, dressed as the New Year's Baby. The sales gal, perhaps more familiar with Ms. McCarthy than with Spy, asked us if we'd like a paper bag. Oh, but we were mortified - so mortified that we fell into the use of the royal we in the writing of this post.

Yes, it was delightful satire, Spy was. But, you may ask, who will satirize the satirists in this, the age of meta? Well, we've got your answer: Radar. Serves the Spy folks right - they opened themselves up for attack when they gave into nostalgia and published a book about their own bygone wonderfulness.

Anyway, the parody is pretty delicious reading for anyone who's pestered desperately for access...and for other folks, too.

Your Children Are Yours...

...but they are also their own. Sometimes, this is a grand thing. Sometimes, it is heartbreaking. If they think Jar Jar Binks' antics and humor are uproariously funny, then there is nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.

Dappled Things

New issue is up.

Shannon Berry has a piece on discernment:

"The desert presses in though these red stone walls and marble columns, the sand pouring in through the stained glass, until I am no longer kneeling on wood and cloth, but on earth so hot I know I am making a penance. It is the loneliness that gets me, the silence, the unbearable aching to feel God, and the knowing that I am not feeling anything but separation, distance, longing. Doubts slither through the sand, leaving trails and markings on my soul: Is this really the one true Church? Should you be praying to Mary, honoring her, even though it is not worship? What about the saints? Are you sure Christ was the Messiah? Are you sure the stories are true? What if he never died? Never rose? Are you sure you are right? What if you aren’t? You can’t even believe the basics, what makes you think you could be a nun? Or a wife and mother, teaching her children?"

Sigh.

The plight of the artist, part infinity:

"For the past four decades Mr. Jost, 63, has been making films on shoestring budgets with no-name casts that almost nobody outside of European film festivals ever sees. Perhaps the closest he has come to popular awareness was 'All the Vermeers in New York' (1990). Since then he spent a decade in Europe toiling away in relative obscurity and then moved to Montana, where for four years he scrounged from garbage cans and lived with a single mother and her daughter in one room with no heat or running water.

His latest address was Portland, Ore., where he stayed at the house of one of the actresses he cast in his most recent film, 'Homecoming,' which he is still trying to find a festival home for domestically — forget about distribution. His income, such as it is, comes principally from selling DVD’s of his work on the Internet.

'I can’t say I’m happy not making a living after 40 years in the business,' Mr. Jost said. 'I’m not independently wealthy. I’m independently poor.'"

Perspective

Reformation Tours: giving the faithful a chance to see where it all began.

The Little Flower as Saint Joan

Amy's already linked to it, but I'll join in, as this is one of my favorite images of the saint who, after St. Joseph, bears the brunt of my pestering. Oddly enough, the woman who made the Little Way her hallmark has yet to grant me everlasting fame and wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

Happy feast day, St. Therese of Lisieux!

Here it comes.

Deliver Us From Evil.

Corruption

So last night I'm marveling at the grosteque depths plumbed by children's songs:

They take you out
To the family plot
And there you wither
And there you rot

They wrap you up
In a big white sheet
And lower you down
About six feet

And all goes well
For about a week
And then your coffin
Begins to leak

The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle
On your snout...

I'm thinking a song like that has got to be easier for a child - a person who has yet to grasp their own mortality. Me, I got all twitchy just thinking about it. And then I get this in today's Psalm from Magnificat:

He knows that wise men and fools must both perish
and leave their wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes forever,
their dwelling place from age to age,
though their names spread wide through the land."

Thanks a lot.