On "Dark Stuff"

I try not to be lazy, but it happens. I haven't been this lazy before—not lazy to the point of actually reposting something from the StAR blog here, or vice versa—but today is the day . . .

Laziness is only part of it, of course. This is an issue about which I care very deeply, as the following will hopefully make clear.

"The Gods Too Are Fond of a Joke"?

"Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit."

I have been remiss in writing for this blog lately, though not, I hasten to add, remiss in writing in general. Indeed, my general excess of activity in that area probably has something to do with my slacking here. Why spend the (little and it seems eternally shrinking) time I have to write in writing essays when song lyrics and snappy bits of dialogue are popping in and out the rabbit holes of the head? Why worry about the nature and destiny of man when the obvious problem at the moment is finding the right rhyme for "changes"?

Our Mother Stood

For some time now, I've wanted to devote an essay to the laughter of Christ. Somehow, that just didn't seem appropriate during Lent! and as I procrastinated and the season grew later it became even less so. Hopefully come Easter week I will have something on the topic worth posting.

In the meantime, and in honor of the Holy Week we are about to enter, here are some thoughts on the "Stabat Mater."

Let me remind you briefly of how the hymn begins. In the Latin:

Stabat mater dolorosa
juxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.

The New Imperialism

Report

From: Mork

To: Orson

Re: Speech given by President Obama, March 28th, 2011, concerning the conflict in Libya

Sir:

What follows is a rough translation of the transcript of the American President's speech to his people. Although the speech was delivered in something that sounded like English, I found it perplexing at the time (despite my long experience among these people) and was forced to resort to a translator who interpreted the Fearless Leader's thoughts with Orkan clarity. I may say that I found his interpretation enlightening, and trust that Your Immenseness may think the same.

Translation:

Of Difficult Answers

What on earth is the use of an anonymous (or semi-anonymous) blog if you can't occasionally sound off about something that has riled you to bursting point?

The world is full today of people who are wrong, terribly wrong, about all kinds of things—things as important as abortion and as trivial as the number of piercings a woman should tolerate in her young man. (Answer to the last, in case you were wondering: None.) People who are wrong don't usually trouble me; at least, they don't put me out of temper. You can pray for them, laugh at them, argue with them or about them. You may not change their minds, but you can try. People who are wrong are rarely occasions of sin, qua being wrong. The ones who are intolerable are the ones who are sure they're right.

The Foresight of One Gabriel Marcel

Recently (through a chain of circumstances that is probably completely irrelevant to anyone reading this blog) I found myself embarked upon a first reading of Homo Viator, the large, wordy, and occasionally weighty tome of the Christian existentialist Gabriel Marcel. (I believe, having gotten perhaps a third of the way through, that he deserves the name "existentialist," his own protests to the contrary not withstanding.) I call this a first reading, and it has been worth while; but I find myself rather hoping against ever having to perform a second: existentialism is neither psychologically nor philosophically appealing. It also seems to me that with Marcel, as with Kierkegaard and Pascal, this ceding to the enemy of huge territories at the start—this refusal to fight for the premises upon which older western philosophies were based—is a rhetorical and tactical mistake of the first order.

But I come not to bury Marcel, but to praise him—praise him in a limited way, but praise him nonetheless.

Noblesse Oblige

Among my many debts to Dorothy L. Sayers I must include my introduction to the phrase “noblesse oblige.” I was reading her novels as a young teenager, and the concept was as new to me in reality as the name was. It was only in college that I ran suddenly up against (and became convinced of the reality of) class distinctions.

How Cold the Night

How cold the night, how still the air
That wraps and chills these empty walls
As cold as stones on hills that wear
Their crowns of blades of grass once fair,
Now shriveled in the winter air
Foreboding winter falls.

Another Kind of Economy

Will someone please tell me what is wrong with capitalism?

I find the antimony between the pro-market Catholics and the Distributists puzzling. I hope I am not the only one. There are two problems with capitalism: its friends and its enemies; and the same may be said of Distributism. Distributists (may their number ever increase) insist on the importance of family over finance. They believe that human beings are best served by an economy wherein private ownership of land is widespread and working for wage, renting, and borrowing are the exception rather than the rule. I do not think they are wrong. But the Distributists insist on presenting their truths as if they were practical—which is silly. What is practical depends entirely on what you want to get in the end; and if one wants to make money (as most Americans do) then Distributism is not practical at all.

The Plot

Everyone knows (I hope) that eerie sensation when the repetition of a word, however simple, leads one to suspect its spelling. Even the most common and phonetic of words strike us strangely when they rear their heads too often—our very a’s and the’s begin to achieve a Hopkinsville look. It’s still more disconcerting when the experience happens with faces—when you begin to notice, for example, the curious shape that an eye has, or a nose, or a chin; when for an instant you see in your own race the characteristics that are blindingly obvious to members of other races or, more frighteningly still, when you begin to see the oddity and uniformity of your whole species with the eyes of a preternaturally conscious dog or cat.

The Anniversary

Today is approximately the one-year anniversary of the day when I started this blog. As with most blogs (I suspect) not everything’s turned out quite as expected. For starters, politics appeared far more often in posts than I had intended it too. That’s as it should be: the year has been a strange one in DC and consequently, everywhere else in the country. Some of the top news stories of the year:

English über alles?

As a grownup, I rarely read the comics any more. Oh, the occasional volume of The Far Side or Calvin and Hobbes—maybe, maybe, if you push me, Get Fuzzy—but I don’t pick up a newspaper to read them. I have something much, much funnier: The Wall Street Journal’s “Personal Journal.”

Mothers Have a Right . . .

The Daily Beast has a column out on a slight uptick in home births. Hey, in this economy it's got to be a lot cheaper having a midwife come over than it is arranging for an epidural and a hospital stay!

In all seriousness, though, who wouldn't choose a home birth if they could be sure there would be no complications? At least one of my friends (a young mother who recently had her first son) says she's thinking about, *ahem*, telebirthing the second time round, particularly if her second pregnancy is as uneventful as the first one was.

Joe Sobran, R.I.P.

I learned this morning that Joseph Sobran passed away on Thursday. He was a grand old paleocon, perhaps a little more libertarian (certainly in his foreign policy) than I; he was a controversalist, a contrarian, an Oxfordian in matters of Shakespeare, and a Catholic journalist.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him; may his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

Which Witch?

So, in recently broken news, we learn that Republican Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell "dabbled in witchcraft" while she was in highschool. Ms. O'Donnell's proof that she has repented of her dabbling: If she hadn't, then Karl Rove "would be a supporter." One for the lady . . .















In related news, John Dennis's anti-Pelosi campaign reveals what we've suspected all along: The Wicked Witch of the West didn't really die. At the very least, "You can always get them back!"

















What a world!

The Mosque at Ground Zero

As a young person born under Reagan and raised during the Clinton era, I remember three events as defining my childhood. The first was, sadly enough, the Lewinski scandal, about which the less said the better. The third was the death of John Paul II—a sad occasion in and of itself, but one marked by a tremendous sense of pride at being Catholic and joy at the grace of God, Who gave us for so many years so great a pope. Between the two events there was another, a more confusing and disturbing one, which (to my mind) has had and will continue to have far greater effects on us Americans than the end of either a papacy or of all presidential respect. Even great men must die, and in our culture it was only a matter of time before we elected a president worthy of being called “the Impeached”; but the events of September 11, 2001, will continue to have ramifications for years to come.

Show Me the Salsa

Let me first make it quite clear: I am no fan of Mexican food. Having attended college in the Southwest, far from my natural habitat and preferred haunts, I learned to loathe Mexican food much in the way those noble English prisoners must have done while rowing in the slave galleys run by the black- and greasy-haired whip-wielders of the Spanish Inquisition. Beans and rice with lots of spice. Grease in place of meat. Meat, did you say? From what animal did that come? I’m sorry, but when you put on enough taco seasoning, lamb, cow, and pig all taste the same. Forget venison, and those delicious Bambi-burgers one gets back home.

Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City--and It Ain't Lookin' Like Kansas No More

So . . . Ann Coulter is speaking at a gay conservatives' conference (GOProud’s “Homocon”). While I'm not surprised, I admit to being profoundly disappointed.

In related news, I was running a 1960 Stanford-Binet test on a young friend of mine today. In the “Verbal Absurdities?” section, I came across the following question:

“In the year 1915 many more women than men got married in the United States.”

What is it about us in 2010 that most adults would flunk a fourth-grade intelligence test?

Fill in the -Zona

I've been wondering why the anti-anti-illegal immigration protesters have taken to calling Arizona (which is a border state) "Nazi-zona." I mean, "Aryan-zona" would have been so much cooler, and displayed a greater knowledge of history, while getting the point (?) across just as clearly. Besides, "Aryan-zona" actually sounds kind of like "Arizona", and so by adopting it as their diffemism of choice the protesters would demonstrate a punnish flair for words and a greater sensitivity for language and sound.

But maybe I'm supposing that the protesters do have a "knowledge of history", a "punnish flair for words", and a " sensitivity for language and sound". My mistake.

The Secret of Harry

After spending a week reading criticisms and critiques of the Harry Potter series, I must confess myself shocked that the obvious truth behind the books has not so far been stated in any prominent place. It is one of the more astonishing features of this series that it has been able, by dint of some slight and subtle misdirections of the author (aided, one must assume, by a willing media) that these books have not been unmasked before.