Thanksgiving Humor

From the television series WKRP in Cincinnati, dating from 1978. Skip to 18:00 for the famous part.

"I got it!"

THERE IS A gentleman whose hobby is catching home run baseballs.



While that isn't uncommon, he also takes videos while doing it: with a baseball glove in one hand, and a video camera in the other.

First-World-Problem

The-spacebar-no-longer-works-on-my-keyboard,despite-taking-effort-to-clean-it.

This-reminds-me-of-this-old-posting:

http://www.romeofthewest.com/2009/09/national-punctuation-day.html

Rhymes with Orange

I AM CERTAIN that my gentlemen readers are now busy writing love poems to their lady love in honor of the feast day of Saint Valentine. But we live in such an unpoetical age that the process of poesy may be somewhat unfamiliar.

From time immemorial, poets were celebrated everywhere in the world as the bearers of culture and learning, and famed poets were given great honors, generous pensions and were even invited on The Tonight Show. Alas, by the time that I went to school, the art of poetry had been killed off, with rhyming and versification banned, and poets instead were granted the freedom to write anything they wanted as long as it was not poetical. Now only poets read poetry, and so it is hardly read at all. Gone are the days of the noble warrior-poet who fought merrily and sang sadly.

Without examples to emulate, what is a contemporary love-struck gentleman to do? The simplest structure of poetry is the iambic pentameter, which has five pairs of weak and stressed syllables per line. Here are some examples:

• I want to drink a can of beer in bed.
• My cats do like to sleep by day, not night.
• The Faith is good and full of love and truth
• He drove his car to Texarkana, yes?

Note that we alternate a weak with a stressed syllable five times:

• what KIND of GIRL are YOU to LOVE me SO?

Iambic pentameter is good for you to emulate, because it has a stressed or masculine ending. Your lady, who picks up on subtle clues, may judge you poorly if you select a feminine ending! Hamlet shows his weakness when he says “To be or not to be, that is the question” ending his verse unstressed.

All you need to do is string together a more-or-less coherent collection of verses to get a poem. A string of verses in iambic pentameter is a good enough poem and is a type of blank verse. But realize that the whole idea of poetry, in contrast to prose, is that the text is highly structured in many ways. A common structure is rhyming, particularly rhyming the last word of verses. Rhyming is merely one of very many kinds of poetical tools, and there are several kinds of rhymes. You ought to rhyme your poetry. However, don’t emulate the rappers who insist on rhyming every verse: this is a vice of excess, which is in contrast to the modern poet’s vice of deficiency of not rhyming at all; rather rhyme moderately.

One of the shorter poetical forms is the Limerick, which is precisely five lines long, and where lines 1, 2, and 5 rhyme with each other, while lines 3 and 4 rhymes together. However, the Limerick is not suitable for love poetry, for:

The limerick is furtive and mean
You must keep her in close quarantine
Or she sneaks to the slums
And promptly becomes
Disorderly, drunk and obscene.

(C. Alan Reber)

Rather, consider using the poetical form known as the heroic couplet. This uses pairs of rhymed lines of iambic pentameter, with each succeeding pair of lines having a different rhyme. As its name implies, this is a forceful, masculine form, and your lady ought to respond to it well:

My love for you is strong and will not die;
“I do all this for you” my battle cry;
All that I have to give, indeed my life;
I give to you, my love, to be my wife.

Most poetry, unlike prose, is highly dependent upon its source language and dialect, since rhyming and word stress often varies even among speakers of the same language. Because of this, we can use ancient poetry to discern the pronunciation of words even in dead languages. As you can imagine, translating poetry well is a very difficult art.

Rhyming is an honorable practice when writing poetry, but the problem becomes finding adequate rhyming words for your poem. There are many good rhyming dictionaries online, suitable for the use of the beginning poet. But you may want to avoid some words that have no rhymes, or obscure ones.

For example, you probably do not want to end a line with the word ‘orange’. As far as I know, the only word that rhymes with orange is “The Blorenge,” which is a hill in Monmouthshire, Wales, overlooking the River Usk. Good luck using that in a poem. Likewise, month rhymes only with words of the form hundred and oneth, while purple rhymes with curple, which is the hindquarters of a horse or an ass, and so can be used only with the utmost caution.

Some words cannot be rhymed at all, or are imperfectly rhymed, such as angst, bulb, gulf, sculpts, angel, chimney, elbow, engine, husband, neutron, monster, penguin, polka, secret, animal, citizen, and logarithm. However, local dialect may allow for some rhyming, so let your ear be the best guide.

Scatter Us Out

IN THE 1960s the hymnody of Holy Mother Church was made relevant to youth by adopting the folk-music style of that generation. That music is still with us today:



This is illustrated by a unique depiction of the Sacred Heart.

Hello? Hello?

I AM EASILY amused. I often get phone calls from a friend — and all I hear is shrieking children, obviously having a good time, with a parent in the background demanding “Give that back to me. That is not a toy.” Now if I attempt to talk back — “Hello hello, can you hear me? Helloooooooooooo?” the kids laugh even louder. I'm surprised when I do get a legitimate call from them. “Oh, it is you.”

My old reliable phone finally broke after many years of good service, and I got a new one, a free upgrade. Now many manufacturers attempt to copy the market leader (in this case, the Apple iPhone), but being short of funding, talent, intelligence, or common sense, this is often a failure. Some features are really hard to get right, and so a competent simplicity is no vice. Incompetent complexity is a vice. The touch screen display, for example, works, sort of, when I want it to (its actions are rather coarse and imprecise), but it also works far too well when I don't.

I take my phone with me wherever I go, and keep it in my pocket where it belongs. I got my first hint that something was wrong when my father called me several times — saying he was returning my call. I didn't call! At least I didn't remember calling — or did I? My memory must be failing on me.

Then I got a call from an acquaintance, who left a very lengthy message on the only possible reason why I would have called, and why I failed to leave a message. Kind of embarrassing, actually. But then I knew that there was a problem with the new phone. I managed to find the outgoing calls log, which showed me some of the recent self-dialing incidents. The phone dials itself when it moves around in my pocket, like when I'm walking. My sincere apologies to anyone I may have called by accident (especially at 3 a.m.)

This problem continued for several days. One day, the telephone dialed up four different people, some of whom I haven't talked to in years (I really do need to prune my phone's address book). I mentioned this problem to a friend, who suggested that it probably has lock screen feature. It does! I programmed the phone to not dial until I type in a short code. Problem solved.

However, what good is a cell phone if you can't use it in an emergency? That is the main reason why I have one — I've got the basic voice plan with no data services. Thinking of this eventuality, the phone maker thoughtfully allows anyone to dial the emergency number — 911 in the USA — even if the phone is locked.  So instead of randomly dialing friends or family members, the phone randomly calls the government emergency response number! That is so not good. As the 911 operators can determine my location precisely through the cell phone, I imagined firemen smashing through my front door, or the highway patrol chasing my car. I quickly turned off that feature.

I sort-of solved the problem by leaving a fairly innocuous menu item on the screen before I turn it off and put it in my pocket. I have a feeling that I won't be keeping this phone for very long.

Gifts of the Magi

THIS EPIPHANY MORNING, I awoke to discover my yard vandalized, or rather, decorated.



These say “Let it snow.” Snow is in fact forecast for today.



29 tubes of candy canes. Anyone have a sweet tooth?



I know the culprits of this deed! What a delightful way to end the season of Christmas!

I Believe in One Holy Apostolic Vatican-Sponsored Network

CLICK HERE.

Danger - No Swimming

A sign, warning against swimming in the Missouri River, at Washington, Missouri.

National Punctuation Day

WITHOUT GOOD PUNCTUATION THE UNITED STATES WOULD NOT HAVE WON WORLD WAR II ALTHOUGH THIS IS LIKELY AN OVERSTATEMENT CERTAINLY THE INVENTION OF PUNCTUATION HAS MADE WRITING A MORE PRECISE ENDEAVOR HELPING INCREASE COMPREHENSION AND THE TRANSFER OF KNOWLEDGE CLEARLY THIS IS DONE BY BREAKING UP THE STREAM OF WORDS INTO LOGICAL COMPONENTS THEREBY REDUCING AMBIGUITY AND ALSO BY RELIEVING THE READER OF THE NEED TO CAREFULLY PARSE TEXTS INTO ITS COMPONENTS WHICH CAN OFTEN BE PROBLEMATIC DOES THIS NOUN GO WITH THAT VERB OR ANOTHER ONE IS A QUESTION THAT IS RESOLVED WITH PUNCTUATION CONSIDER THIS AMBIGUOUS PHRASE WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING WHICH CAN EITHER MEAN THAT A WOMAN NEEDS HER MAN OR THAT A MAN NEEDS HIS WOMAN BUT WE CANT TELL WHICH MEANING WITHOUT PUNCTUATION ANOTHER BENEFIT OF PUNCTUATION IS THAT IT CAN CONVEY SOMEWHAT THE PACING OF SPOKEN SPEECH AND OCCASIONALLY THE TONE OF VOICE AS WELL AS DISTINGUISHING QUESTIONS FROM STATEMENTS READING ANCIENT MONUMENTS IS OFTEN A FRUSTRATING BUSINESS DUE TO LACK OF PUNCTUATION AND EVEN WORSE ARE EVEN OLDER MONUMENTS THATDONTEVENPUTSPACESBETWEENWORDS THE EARLIEST EXAMPLE OF PUNCTUATION CAN BE FOUND ON THE MESHE STELE OF THE 9TH CENTURY BC AND GREEK DRAMATISTS USED PUNCTUATION TO DISTINGUISH THE VARIOUS ACTORS PARTS IN THEIR PLAYS THIS USAGE DATES FROM THE 5TH CENTURY BC ROMANS ONLY ADOPED PUNCTUATION IN THE 1ST CENTURY BC THE CHURCH GREATLY INCREASED THE USE OF PUNCTUATION AND AN EARLY SYSTEM WAS DEVISED BY SAINT JEROME IN HIS SCRIPTURE TRANSLATIONS PUNCTUATION BECAME STANDARDIZED AFTER THE INVENTION OF THE PRINTING PRESS WITH MUCH MODERN PUNCTUATION BEING INVENTED BY ALDUS MANUTIUS IN THE 15TH CENTURY PUNCTUATION CAN ALSO MAKE A TEXT MORE BEAUTIFUL AND THE ART OF TYPOGRAPHY HAS CAREFULLY CONSIDERED THE USE OF PUNCTUATION MARKS AND ESPECIALLY THEIR GRAPHIC DESIGN AS A WAY OF EASING COMPREHENSION AND ARTISTIC APPEAL A SIDE EFFECT OF PUNCTUATION MAY BE THE LOSS OF INFLECTION IN MODERN LANGUAGES SINCE PARTS OF SPEECH NOWADAYS ARE RENDERED BY LOCATION WITHIN A SENTENCE SET OFF BY PUNCTUATION MARKS BUT THIS IS JUST A SPECULATION ON MY PART LETS ALL CONSIDER THE IMPORTANCE OF PUNCTUATION ON THIS NATIONAL PUNCTUATION DAY

Wants Attention

One of my cats really wanted attention last night.

Enough Already! The Final Word on Harry Potter.

I'VE HELD MY tongue, figuratively speaking, on the whole matter of Harry Potter until now. The amount of bad commentary on Potter lately forces me to (figuratively) put pen to paper and (literally) blog about it.

Here I will consider a controversy that is of such a sensitive nature that I recommend that children stop reading, now. This is for mature adults only.

Regarding the controversy on the use of magic in the series, I have nothing to say that hasn't been said in great detail by those of far more competence than me. Neither will I consider the view that Potter is at its core a Christian tale, especially since its authoress J.K. Rowling is an active member of the Church of England (C of E, LOL), or if it is instead fundamentally pagan.

But there is a controversy of far higher importance. I am sad to report that even the most learned of theologians and highly respected laymen get it wrong. Way wrong. But at the risk of being appearing prideful, I claim that I am right, I know I am right, and I can prove that I am right. Those who disagree with me are certainly wrong. Everyone, it seems, from teenage fanboys (of the female variety) to tenured college professors make the same shameful error.

Of course I speak of the romantic relationship (or rather the lack thereof) between Harry and Hermione. Untold amounts of figurative ink has been spilled on this literally fictional relationship, and everybody got it wrong until now.

Harry likes Hermione. Hermione likes Harry. He is the hero of the series. She is the heroine of the series. They are always together. They work together well. They are strongly matched in abilities. They look so cute together. It is logical that they ought to be together. WHY DON'T THEY HAVE A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP???!!!?

Teenage girls wail literal tears at this injustice. Holders of Ph.D.s from storied universities claim this is a serious plot deficiency.

Total rubbish. In utter refutation, I give you one word: Chemistry.

Pascal wrote in Les Pensées, « Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. » “The heart has its reasons that reason knows not of.” Chemistry is that je ne sais quoi, a subjective quality that sometimes involves actual chemicals, which is poorly represented either on the page or on the screen. Chemistry is poorly understood, involving subconscious psychology and obscure biology. Quelle horreur! How would you know if a character has actual chemistry with someone unless you actually are that character?

OK. Last chance for sensitive readers to bail out. You are warned.

Chemistry is something that I would not expect either a teenager or an academe to understand; for it colors, influences, shapes, and distorts the logic in a relationship, and can be imperfectly understood only by being in, and reflecting on, a number of relationships. For all we know, and I am being as blunt as possible, maybe Hermione's B.O. smells — to Harry — just like the body odor of Harry's Aunt Marge. Ewwwwwww. That is a total relationship-kill. Since nothing is stopping them from getting together, and they greatly enjoy their Platonic relationship, their impediment to a romantic relationship must be chemistry.

In times and places where marriages are arranged, a reasonable matchmaker would take chemistry into account. Likewise, a couple of virtue who do have chemistry, but realize that their relationship would cause problems, would not continue the relationship for the greater good. The head and the heart ought to coexist harmoniously, and ought not be opposed to one another.

Why Formal Portraiture Was Invented

TOO EMBARRASSING for words.

Awkward Family Photos.

Link courtesy of Carolina Cannonball.

Get Them Before They Get Us

AMERICAN PAPIST TELLS us Why Catholics need to eat fish on Friday - because they are trying to eat us.

For generations, fish knew their rightful place in God's creation because faithful Catholics observed the tradition of eating them en masse every Friday.

Of course, Catholics are ordinarily prohibited from eating meat on Fridays. According to the Code of Canon Law:

Can. 1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

I bet you thought Vatican 2 got rid of that. Nope. Well, OK, it is a bit nuanced:

Can. 1253 The conference of bishops can determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence as well as substitute other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in whole or in part, for abstinence and fast.

So what penance do you substitute on Fridays? What, you didn't know you had to do penance?

I must admit that I rarely eat meat, but I absolutely crave thick juicy steaks, barbeque, gyros, bacon, and humongous hamburgers on Fridays, so abstaining from meat really is a penance for me. And the traditional Friday substitute dish hereabouts was fish.

The American Papist article says this lack of traditional piety has consequences:

Anyway, fast-forward to 40 or so years after Vatican II, and it's clear that fish have forgotten our deal. The new generation of fishes, in fact, are now systematically, actively "testing the waters" to see if the time is ripe to have their turn at the top of the food chain.

I, for one, do not welcome our new ichthyic overlords. Here in the Saint Louis region, we have an ideal opportunity to both further Catholic piety and to solve the problem of invasive Asian Carp in our local rivers. This introduced fish species is driving out native fishes, and they are a hazard to river navigation because they are big and they jump right into your boat, as these men demonstrate:

These carp are tasty, easy to catch, and environmentalists hate them. Let's have a Friday fish fry!

Nominated!

For the 2009 Carolina Cannonball Catholic Blog Awards, over at The Crescat.

Voting starts May 3^rd. Some of Carolina's categories are um... interesting, like Carolina herself, who said she would be greatly displeased if anyone voted for Rome of the West instead of The Crescat for Best Visual Treat. (Hell hath no fury....) Also, I am not worthy of the nomination in the Spiritual Treat category.

Easter Parade

Pig statues dressed in holiday finery near Washington, Missouri.

Photo courtesy of my parents!

The Merton Chapel, located on the banks of the River des Peres in south St. Louis. This tiny but innovative church won numerous design awards.

APRIL FOOLS - This is a wastewater pumping station.

"Women less tolerant of each other than men are, study finds"

SEE THE ARTICLE Women less tolerant of each other than men are, study finds, from the Telegraph.

The research, published in the US journal Psychological Science, found that women formed a negative view of their peers much quicker than men did...

They wrote: "Women may simply weight negative information more heavily than men do, because negative information disrupts the establishment of intimacy, which serves a more important function in same-sex relationships for women than for men...."

I have a different theory.

Most boys, starting from about the age of reason, get into fights with their peers constantly, and puberty only makes the fighting worse. This habit of fighting typically ends with age, or prison.

Now, the fighting was initially only gameplay: when I was a boy we would play Cowboys and Indians or American GIs versus Nazis, but as I got older we just got into fist-fights or wrestling matches, and these generally started over trivial matters.

Even the most liberal and pacifistic of parents — who would never give violent toys to their boys — are shocked when their sons imaginatively turn yardsticks into swords, and bananas into guns, which they use to pretend fight with their friends. Ultimately, the best any parent can hope for is eventual maturity and good health insurance.

As I mentioned, my fights with my friends would often be started over the most trivial of matters, usually over some fine point of honor. None of us actually enjoyed the fights, which usually drew blood and sometimes broke bones, and so we quickly learned how not to get into a fight. Every man usually has ‘hot buttons’ which will nearly guarantee to start the fists flying, and so most men will learn, from hard experience, what buttons not to press. 

In the interests of self-preservation, young men who do not end up in prison learn to be gentlemen who treat other men with honor and a certain amount of tolerance.

Most girls do not learn this lesson. Cat fights are extremely rare — I've seen only two — and so girls can dishonor each other with impunity since they don't risk bloodshed. I'm often shocked at how badly women treat each other, but they can get away with saying things that would give a man a fist in his face. It is for this reason that boys were once taught the old rule that you never, ever hit a girl under any circumstance, and likely the reason why men tend to ignore most everything a woman says. It keeps things peaceful.

‘Enlightened self-interest’ is a low level of morality, and most men don't get beyond it. Women are more likely to attain higher levels of morality, spiritually based on duty and love, so we can expect that women may eventually show higher honor and tolerance for their peers as they get older. Being a ‘lady’ is rather superior than being a mere gentleman.

Rosaries

I HAVE QUITE a collection of rosaries. No, I'm not a collector: I wore these out.

But please don't misunderstand me — I am not a prayer warrior — I don't pray 15 decades every day, and I may not even do 5 decades on some bad, distracted days.  These rosaries wore out because they were poorly made.  Cheap cheap cheap, even if they were expensive.

One particular rosary has beads that pop right off the chain.  Once I was visiting the Shrine of Christ the King in Chicago — back when it was just an empty shell of a building — and a bead popped off, bouncing noisily across the floor, the echo of it reverberating throughout the church. Other beads were lost down dark streets in central California, while others are perhaps somewhere on my bedroom floor.

Chain breakage is a problem with another rosary.  Of course, I would repair it with wire, which left sharp points.  Ever hear of anyone shedding blood by praying the rosary?

The crucifix fell off of another rosary.  Bead breakage on another.

Most rosaries for sale are rather girly, with jewel-like beads and bright colors.  So few are available in basic black, and the really nice wood ones, like the ones Religious often use, are too big.

Now I got a very nice old rosary, in perfect condition, from my parents, and this one was of excellent quality and very durable.  Alas, I lost it on election night.  A very bad night, indeed.

I must admit that I didn't pray the rosary when first I became Catholic.  Must be my Protestant upbringing.  Maybe I was too proud for this humble devotion.

However, once a priest gave me as penance 1,590 Hail Marys and 180 Our Fathers.  "What did you do?" a correspondent asked, "Blow up a bus full of nuns?" No!  But Father was distressed that I did not pray the rosary daily, and asked me to pray it every day for a month.  Yes, it worked, I became devoted to Our Lady.

Two Complaints

1. Much sacred music is difficult for Baritones to sing.
   
2. Fluorescent lighting makes it hard to photograph colors faithfully.