Oh look. Hoardes of Teenagers.

I am a few years older than almost everyone else here. Hopefully this gives me gravitas.

I love St. Stephen the Martyr parish. This is the place where my RCIA class was confirmed in 2004. Five years ago ... wow. I am getting old!

Liturgy is a big deal at St. Stephen's. It's the local parish for the Kennedy Center, so all the musicians come here and sing/play. Morning and evening prayer and Mass: beautiful chanting set to organ music. Very nice.

It seems like the perfect mix of "mainstream" with traditional sensibility. Maybe a model parish for what was envisioned by the Second Vatican Council.

And a five minute walk from my apartment. Cool beans.

Off I Go

This week was full of preparations for moving and school.

I'm leaving at 4 this morning.

How happy I will be to see DC again!

Brothers

Brother the Brain left for Notre Dame this morning. I shall not be seeing him agian until Chrismas.

Brother the Beef, on the other hand, has just arrived home from a summer stay at college. He is spending this weekend drilling with the Marines.

Neither of them have any religion to speak of. Although there are shiny points. When he was in highschool, Brother the Beef asked my sister to teach him the Lord's Prayer. Brother the Brain said recently that he wishes he could go to Mass, "just get the bread, and leave." (Because he knows "the bread" is really Jesus, he thinks Holy Communion is all that matters.)

I am hoping Brother the Beef will get religion in a foxhole somewheres. Hopefully Brother the Brain will learn about God at ND. God help him.

Laughing With

by Regina Spektor




No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one's laughing at God when they're starving or freezing or so very poor

[...]

But God can be funny
At a cocktail party while listening to a good God-themed joke or
Or when the crazies say He hates us and they get so red in the head you think that they're about to choke

God can be funny
When told He'll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie
Who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious

Look Closely

That's Ronald Reagan and me. Stuck driving the Conservative Victors around is Norman Mailer. He doesn't look very thrilled, does he.

Have fun with photos of your real/fantasy friends and enemies at:
Yearbook Yourself

Crankiness

Oyyyy (Yiddish slang.) Tiiieennnnsss (French Slang.)

So now we have the anniversary of my entrance into the convent as a postulant, and investure as a novice. I'm not a fan of the word "postulant." Sounds too much like "pustule."

Pustules need to be popped. As a postulant, I often required popping. But I did not like it.

Tomorrow I would be taking my first vows. I am mad. I am ashamed to admit it, but it is so.

Tieeeeeenssssss.

More on Mr. Buckley

(I said there'd be more on Mr. Buckley later, so here is more of
Mr. Buckley now.)

I'm going to University at the end of the month, thank you Mr. Pell. I'm a bit apprehensive. It's been a few years since I last exercised my brain in that particular way, and I'm afraid ye olde cerebellum may be a bit rusty. I was particularly disturbed by reading Archbishop Chaput's book on faith and politics. I barely finished the thing, because I couldn't go further than a couple paragraphs without becoming bewildered.

So, to get my synthesizing juices going, I've been letting William F. Buckley, Jr., give me an education. Mostly reading, but some watching of old Firing Line tapes. Incidentally, Stanford University offers a handful of these for sale. They're real brain food. Both sides of various issues are well-represented and discussed in a thoughtful way.

It also induces a little melancholy to glimpse back to a time when the Conservative movement had real, meaty, intellectual leadership ... as opposed to the infotainment fluff (Ann Coulter, Michael Savage,) that dominates things today.

With Mr. Buckley, I have history, politics, economics, and vocabulary covered. I'm consulting other people's books where grammar is concerned, however. Grammar is impossible enough without having to run for a dictionary.

(Note: Mr. Buckley's 5 million or so published words are stored online here under the auspices of Hillsdale College.)

I hear the "drip drip" of internal bleeding

I noticed the bleeding this morning and thought to myself:
Oh. I am dead.

I called my surgeon to apologize, since as a young, otherwise healthy person, my impending demise would almost certainly ruin his statistics. He was not alarmed, however.

See, I was very sick when he cut me open. Therefore it was too dangerous to have me laying on the table for half a day, and so what is typically a single operation had to be divided up. (This I knew.)

In view of this, my surgeon left a certain part in me, which had to stay, because it is a necessary part of the future slicing wherein things will be finally sorted out. (This I did not know.)

Some people might find it incredible to undergo a major operation and be unawares afterwards about what pieces are missing and which remain. I do not find it incredible, since my whole life is one big Keystone cop caper.

Anyhow, the disease has returned to the remaining portion of my guts. Although it is not a dreadfully debilitating thing now, merely Annoying.

Is This Hell? Or Is This August?

The heat index hit 100 this afternoon. The house has central air, but it is either broken, or we are too poor to run it; I am not brave enough to inquire which.

The Internet has fizzled, something wrong with the router.(I'm typing this on a word processor.) The television is drooping today, too. Three channels come in, two of them those awful home shopping things.

The whole house is sweating; everyone and every thing in it. The hard wood floors, this keyboard, the pages of my books ... all icky with stickiness.

If I were rich, I'd be off to the movies. If I were an epicene hippie, I'd be parking my tush at the local coffee shop, sipping fair trade brew whilst typing away at a Mac. Usually I'd pass the day at the public library; but today is Sunday and the library stays mostly closed on Sundays.

There is only one last air-conditioned respite remaining. It is this to which I am reduced: wandering the aisles and perusing the vast and sundry merchandise on offer at the local Super Wal-mart.

The activity was not without its amusement however. Where else can a person pick things up and put them down, sit in clearance patio furniture and people watch, munch on free samples and chat up employees, all without feeling obligated to buy anything.

It makes me think: What did people do in the heat of August? How did civilization function ... before there was air conditioning? Before television and Internet? Before ... Super Wal-mart?

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

My home is just over the border from the city of Twinsburg, Ohio.

Twinsburg was founded a couple hundred years ago by a pair of identical twins. Nowadays the town plays host to the "Twin's Days Festival", which is the largest gathering of twins in the world.

Every year they pack 5,000 twins into a rectangular shape, hoist a photog on top of a crane, and take a big aerial picture.

Are you seeing double? No, it's Twins Days! Har, har, har.

When we were younger, my sister and I attended the festival, if only to enter the "Twin Look-Alike" contest. Mother was always deeply offended when we didn't make it past the second round of cuts.

Since I've gotten older, I've been less interested in this annual celebration of twinnyness; but we still get to particpate in the wierdness of the festival. All those twins have to run around and buy stuff somewhere, after all..
Today while running my errands, I was surrounded by identical faces, clothes, and umbrellas.

The two behind me in line at the hardware store were talking in identical French.

It Was a Windy Day

The Allies meet at Yalta (made of FAIL):

The Allies meet at Crocker Park (made of excellence):
From left to right: Elizabeth Patricia (me), Elizabeth the Birthday Girl, and Shannon Elizabeth. 100% Elizabeth, 0% Socialist

I am wearing my favorite shirt, which says: "Don't Let Them Immanentize the Eschaton!" (A Buckleyism.)

The leaders who met at Yalta made a mess of things because they were, in diverse ways, attempting to immanentize the eschaton. My shirt admonished us not to make the same mistake. Thanks to the shirt, the birthday celebration was a success and we secured peace for our time.

Immanentizing the eschaton means: "to cause to inhere in the worldly experience and subject to human dominion that which is beyond time and therefore extraworldly. To attempt such a thing is to deny the transcendence of God; to assume that Utopia is for this world." ~Mr. Buckley

Mr. Buckley might say that I have overused the ":," and that, perhaps, because I no longer have a colon to call my own, I am compensating via wanton grammar abuse.

More on Mr. Buckley later.

Hello August

I miss July already.

Before this season is out, I am going swimming. Kapeesh?

I've had my Muslim Swimming Suit sitting in my bureau drawer this entire summer. Enough is enough! Time to scandalize the cultural wasteland of suburban Ohio with my exotic modestique.