The Joy of Suffering

The steeple of the town church was just barely visible over the horizon, about five miles away. That was as far as Giuseppe was allowed to venture on his own. He stopped in the middle of the dirt road, staring out towards the hills beyond, and waited.

The first sun had set a little over three hours ago, and now the second one, further and dimmer, was dipping ever closer to the horizon. A cold wind was blowing from the south, stirring the fields of dry grass and making them look for all the worlds like a beige ocean, waves crashing and white caps shimmering in the waning light. The air was pregnant with the smell of straw.

A shiver caught Giuseppe off-guard. Now that he had stopped, he was beginning to cool off. The antarctic breeze made the small rivulets of sweat feel as if they would freeze to his skin.

The wind carried with it the deep bong of the church bell, sounding the evening Angelus. Giuseppe turned around to look.

You could go back, a whispering voice as cold and subtle as the wind said to him. Papa would understand.

Read the rest here.

Quick Takes - Denver Edition

Snow!

Quick Takes Addendum

Forgot some quick takes yesterday

What do you get when you have a cumulative 9.75% off at Target and a tax return? Everything, apparently. We are proud new owners of everything Target sells.

In our defense, I had been making a list for about two months of the things we needed, in hopes that one day  the gods of crass commercialism would look upon us with favor and bestow the means and opportunity to spend our fleeting wealth. Among the items purchased were:

New dress clothes for Damien. He had no dress pants that fit him. Well, I suppose technically they did fit, but they would have been better-classified as dress shorts at this point. Conveniently, Anthony automagically has a whole wardrobe that suddenly, mysteriously fits him.

A new belt for me. I should take pictures of my old one. It had run the gamut from hilarious, to sad, to hilariously sad.

New undershirts for me. I still occasionally wear undershirts that me dear mother bought for me in high school. You know, the ones I used to wear to dance?

New pillows. I can't remember if the ones we have now were bought new when we got married, 9 years ago, or moved into this condo, 7 ½ years ago.

Whiskey and rum, to end the torment and misery felt when looking up at the liquor shelf, sighing loudly, and muttering forlornly, "why is the rum gone?"

The Murloc also purchased sundries and miscellany. I have learned not to look too closely at the things she purchases. They might bite.

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And Anthony is sick again. Fever of 102°-103° running for the last couple days. He just finished a dose of antibiotics for his last illness/ear infection on Monday. This marks the fourth consecutive Sunday that he's missed Sunday Mass due to illness.

The Murloc went into full panic/remorse mode, wondering why her baby gets sick so often, and questioning, among other things, if he's sick because of her cooking or because she doesn't clean the house enough. Discussing this with a family friend, it was remarked that nobody can beat oneself up quite like a mother. It was also mentioned by said friend that "if not cleaning caused illness, then we'd [her family] all be dead."

Quick Takes

A-yup

It would have just been embarrassing if Microsoft couldn't provide better results for help searches on their own programming language.

 I for one blah blah Google Overlords blah blah....

This bit at the bottom was extra funny, though.

Bing: so bad they have to pay you to use it!

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Brothers

Because, apparently, it isn't Lent unless I've written a short story.

You know in the holos, when the good guy finally catches up with the bad guy and winds up to deliver a solid blow right to the bad guy’s kisser? You know what they never show in those movies? How much belting the bad guy hurts.

That was the first thing I noticed after I sent my brother reeling backwards. Dadgum, my fist stung like it had been slammed in the door of dad’s hovercar.

“What the heck was that for, John?” my brother screamed, blood trickling from his mouth, trying to act all innocent-like.

“You know perfectly well, James!” I screamed back, trying to ignore the pain in my hand.

“Like spit, I do! I’m not some Tellurian mind-reader.”

I scowled at him, as if the look could bore a hole through his head. “Mary,” I said.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re not hung up about that, are ya? What’s the big deal?”

I lunged for him, but didn’t catch him off guard, like the first time. He blocked my jab, but I caught him with my left hook. He stumbled to the ground, and now both my fists hurt like the dickens.

Read the rest here.

A St. Joseph's Day Meditation

I started writing this for last St. Joseph's Day, so heaven help me if I let another one go by without publishing it.

Heaven, it occurs to me, would, for all but the most saintly of us, be a wholly unpleasant place.

I had this revelation one night while rocking Damien to sleep. While holding him, I remembered something a commentor had said on John C. Wright's journal. The commentor (I don't remember who it was) mentioned that one of the first things he did after holding his newborn for the first time was to call his mother to ask if that's how much she had loved him.

While I never called my parents, it is a thought that had occurred to me several times. "Is this how much my dad loves me?" It is at once a heartening and discouraging thought.

There are two proper responses for any sane and normal human being, upon realizing the love that has been showered upon him. The first is, of course, gratitude. All but the most sociopathic person can't help but feel a profound sense of thankfulness at having been blessed in so generous a way. The second is—perhaps a bit counter-intuitively—shame and guilt.

What I thought of, that night I held and rocked Damien to sleep, feeling a profound connection with my own parents who had done the same thing and felt the same way towards me so many years earlier, was all of the times I had not returned that love. All of the times that I talked back, disregarded, disrespected, or failed in one way or another to show that proper gratitude for that love.

And that brings us to heaven. The unique thing about the Christian God is not that God is simply loving, or merely the source of love, but rather that God is Love. Like, the very concept of it. Which means that heaven is simply the state of being face to face with Love. Not some fallen or imperfect being that shows love, but with infinite, perfect Love Himself. Who could bear that? Who could possibly stand to face God, overpowered by such radiance, and not cower in shame and guilt? Only the most perfect being, polished to a mirror like shine, who can reflect Love back with intensity commensurate to that received. The tiniest imperfection would burn in agony.

Hell, I get. Hell makes sense. If God is Love, and we have free will, surely we can turn from Love. Hell is merely the state of willfully depriving oneself of that perfect Love. We can see hell in this life. Hell, I can see it in my life. Hell is simply choosing not-Love.

Heaven, I don't get. I mean, I get it in concept, but not in practice. How could one be comfortable in heaven? How could one be at peace in the face of the divine Love, knowing all one's imperfections and flaws? Knowing what is required, it still seems unobtainable, in spite of divine forgiveness. Yes, God never tires of forgiving, but we often tire of trying to get it.

So my view on heaven has changed. I don't think of attaining salvation by just "not doing bad things". There's so much more to it than that. One could go through his whole life without outwardly committing a sin, and still be miserable in heaven. What is necessary, then is the will and desire to Love. That, simply. Nothing less and nothing more. Note, not the ability to love, for one could very easily be capable of doing something and simply not choose it. Instead, the final, ultimate question is, "do I Love?"

Pope Takes

Pope Francis Covers Women with Blankets!

(I wonder if that's a substitute for binders full of women in Argentina?)

According to a new item posted by Fr. Z about the Latin Mass in Argentina, "Regresó la misa en latín, con mujeres cubiertas por mantillas," which plugged into Google Translate means "he returned the Latin Mass, with women covered by blankets." This is obviously oppression, suppression, impression, and linear regression of women! This just goes to show that the eeeeeevil Church patriarchy isn't happy unless all of the fairer sex is smothered under layers of covers!

All kidding aside, remember my wish list for the new pope? Someone encouraging of the Latin Mass? Well, Fr. Z posted this article. Apparently, within 48 hours of B16 (bingo!) signing Summorum Pontificum, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio arranged for a regular Latin Mass in Buenos Aires.

From other reports, it doesn't sound like he, personally, will be pushing hard for the EF Mass. However, I don't think that's really even his duty, at this point. So long as he allows it to continue and grow, it's really the job of the people to promote and further it. In SP, B16 (bingo!) said that priests everywhere had permission to celebrate the Latin Mass wherever the people demanded it. The onus is on the people to demand it.

Brick by brick, as Fr. Z says.

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Habemus Papam!

I've gotta say; this is wreaking havoc on my Lenten resolutions.

Compare and Contrast

Remember last year when we tried to get Damien to say "please"?



Well, here's Anthony, a full year younger:



Anthony was drinking from a straw a full two weeks before Damien. Both boys are on antibiotics for ear infections. Damien screams and fights the medicine—unless he sees Anthony taking his first.

There is a very strong reason to suspect that Anthony may be potty-trained first.

Quick Takes (whatever day I finally post this)

...and I'm sick once again. I should just schedule blogger to auto-post an "I'm sick" post about once a month. It would probably be right most of the time.

The entire family is dying of the Lung Crud. This time, Anthony was patient zero, and I followed shortly after. Odd, though, that Anthony got sick on Friday, when he hadn't been out of the house since the previous Sunday. How are these germs getting in?

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Stations of the cross have been particularly penitential this Lent. I have somehow managed to always end up in front of a family who follows along at their own pace, disregarding the tempo set by Father when intoning the Stabat Mater, and who somehow always end up out of sync with the entire rest of the congregation when reading the other parts. It is a special kind of hell, when you are trying to sing or read and someone else is speaking right in your ear at a completely different speed. It's akin to the torture room described by C.S Lewis in That Hideous Strength, which had patterns of dots on the ceiling and floor, which didn't quite line up. It seems designed to break down your will.

I wonder of the CIA has ever tried that as an "enhanced interrogation technique". That or smearing potential terrorists' backs with bacon grease, waiting a couple days, then popping any back pimples that form. Cause gorram that would make me talk in a hurry.

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Let's Code - CPM2DoB Part 3: Purpose

There are 2,771 results for "Chess" in the Google Play store. Googling "Chess app for Windows" returns about 10 million results. There's even several open source chess engines. So why am I writing a chess program again?

Well, aside from "for practice", I wanted to do something different. What if the pieces had different moves? What if queens could move like knights, or knights weren't limited to one hop and could continue to move along their path, like bishops and rooks? What if the pieces started in different arrangements? What if they were in a wedge formation, rather than abreast? What if all the pawns were replaced with queens? What if the victory conditions were different? What if you had to capture both king and queen to win? What if the board had special properties, like wrap-around edges, or was 10x10 instead of 8x8? What if it was a hexagonal grid? What if pieces had health and damage? What if it took several attacks to kill some pieces? What if others could heal their teammates? What if pieces had auras that would enhance the abilities of pieces near them?

By now we're hardly talking about chess, but some strange turn-based RPG strategy game hybrid that just happens to have chess pieces. Oh, that's a good idea, too. What if you could change the look of the pieces?

That was the idea behind a Chess Pirate Mercenaries 2D of Battle. I wanted to write a chess program with user-definable pieces and moves, that could handle all sorts of different board configurations and rules. So now, I can show you the rest of the Options dialog that I fuzzed out in the last update:

Quick Takes (3/1/2013)

Greetings from the couch!

Apparently, telling your wife that you don't believe in this whole "period" thing, and that she's just making it up, doesn't get you any brownie points.

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The Murloc wants to move to Mission Viejo. I want to move to Lake Elsinore. The Murloc has pointed out that Lake Elsinore is far from everything and everyone important (sorry, Blue Fox). This got me thinking:

Median sales price for Mission Viejo (Nov-12 to Jan-13):
$480,000

Median sales price for Lake Elsinore (Nov-12 to Jan-13):
$214,775

Price of a Cessna Skycatcher ≈ $145,000

The choice, it seems, is clear.

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Damien has reached the phase where he is now pretending to be things that he is not. He has previously pretended to exist in other states (such as pretending to be asleep, particularly when we're yelling at him, as if he can't get in trouble if we think he's asleep), but now he is pretending to be other creatures. After showing him the Simon's Cat videos on YouTube, he pretended for the rest of the evening to be a cat, and crawled around and meowed. He plays the act very well, since he will refuse to talk when he's a cat, and only nod or shake his head in answer to questions. After we put him to bed that evening, we would occasionally hear little mews from the bedroom. Just the other night, we gave him a piece of cheese, and while eating it he declared that he was a mouse, and began squeaking.

I'm sure child psychologists would talk about this being an important development milestone and indicates some form of cognitive step towards abstraction and the ability to reason. However, like a physicist explaining the colors of a sunset in terms of the light refraction caused by the interaction of different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum with atmospheric dust, they would simultaneously be entirely correct and entirely missing the point.

You simply can't explain joy through science.

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Speaking of Simon's Cat, you can watch all the films here. They're short and cute:

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Colloquialism of the day/week/month: "As satisfying as bacon on a Saturday morning during Lent."

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Right now:
The Murloc is sewing a dress for a new friend's little girl's birthday. She likes to listen to her Aerosmith station on Pandora whenever she is sewing. It makes me feel like I'm back in college, rooming with Whale Biologist Tom Adams. Perhaps I should ask her to buy me a coke, for old times' sake.

Let's hope AJN and ECN don't get word of this cute little pink dress with pearls and lace, or The Murloc might have to start a home business!

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A spoiler/preview of CPM2DoB: