Chess Patch 4.5.2

Hm, power cards and XP sounds interesting. May need to add those to CPM2DOB whenever I get back to working on that one.

Video of the Day/Week/Month

Please watch the following video. I'm sure you will agree with me that it is, without a doubt, the most brilliantly insightful satire of the wymyn's ordynatyon myvemynt ever created. The way they so keenly point out what, exactly, is necessary for women's ordination—such as the requirement to ignore St. Paul and the view of the vicar of Christ and successor to Peter as an obstacle—to pointing out that wymyn's yrdynytyn requires a certain glibness about separating oneself from the mystical body of Christ through excommunication, to demonstrating what is, at its heart, a self-centered desire to conform the Church to myself, rather than conforming myself to Christ, that lays at the foundation of the yyyyn's yryyyyyyn myvymyny, is nothing short of divinely-inspired.

(Think I could separate the subject and verb of that last sentence anymore?)



It wasn't until I was about two-thirds of the way through the video that it occurred to me that the makers of the video might possibly be unaware that they were making the 21st century's most brilliant work of apologetics for a male-only priesthood. Oh well, the Holy Spirit moves in interesting ways.

Korean Drummer Sighting

Remember this guy? He's been spotted again!

Bell and Whistle Contest

Turn up your volume and play the following video. You may not pause it. You may not look away. You may not turn down the volume. You may not switch windows. You may blink no more than once per ten seconds.

If you are not comatose, Cthulhu-level insane, or dead from a brain aneurysm by the time the video ends, then you will have won. But was it all worth it? Was it?

Probably not.

* * *

Recipe for fun. Get a cheap cell phone. Make this the ring tone. "Lose" your cell phone in a crowded, public, and somewhat quiet place (such as a church or library), with the volume set as high as possible. Call it repeatedly.

So THAT'S What They're Saying!

Put down the coffee.

Two Oxford Professors Go for a Walk in the Woods...

Brought to you by Kevin O'Brien, who you may know better as Stanford Nutting.

(H/T Why I am Catholic)

Science Discovers Cure for Too Many Brain Cells

I'll just go ahead and leave this here.




Special guest brain cell killing by Barats and Bereta.

Nothingness, I Embrace You!

Best comment on YouTube: "This ideological propaganda for the bourgeois is disgraceful. Gene Roddenberry's collaboration with Camus had fundamental authenticity, subtle but evocative artistry, and phasers."

(H/T Mike Flynn who H/T's Mark Shea)

April Fools

Friday LinkDump.

I officially have too many web socializing services. With two blogs, twitter, and fazebōōk (as Fr. Roderick says), I'm never sure where I should post a link that I came across. Do I tweet it? Link it on Facebook? Post it here? All of the above? Then what of those poor people who follow me on Twitter, are friends on Facebook, and subscribe to this blog's RSS? Do I just force them to suffer through the same content 3 times?

My general philosophy is that I created my twitter feed for a) Damien's birth and b) to replace the headlines on this blog. The old system involved me directly editing the page code, and once I deleted a headline, it was forever lost to the mists of time. Twitter was supposed to just be a replacement for that, so I prefer not to put links there.

The Other Blog is supposed to be purely literary issues, so it's not exactly the best forum for funny ThemTubes vids. And I've been trying to get away from the lower forms of blogging on this space, and only most, insightful, informative, or funny (original) things here (which is why I haven't posted anything of late). That sort of leaves Facebook, but since most of you losers who read this aren't FB friends of mine, you're not able to indulge in my fine and high quality links (I said that with a straight face!). And I don't think most of my old friends from college are too terribly interested in the random things I come across on the intertubes.

So what do you think. Should I go ahead and post stupid links to odd things I find here? I have this mental image of people seeing that FU-News has been updated in their RSS then getting here and seeing just a link and thinking "aw, I was expecting an insightful, informative, and funny post about how to apply operations research to create a Cross Sums puzzle for Condo Shopping Space Pirates that speak in Olde Englishe." (Actually, that's not true, I also have this mental image of half my readership not caring less about Space Pirates... hence the Other Blog.)

Well, anyways, I need to post something, lest I forget how, so while I'm writing an informative, insightful, and funny post (I've got one coming, I swear!), here are, in order, the five lowest forms of blogging.

Fifth Lowest Form of Blogging: Link (with comment).

(Also, obligatory John C. Wright reference.)

On the Misery of Modern Women.

QFT: "Feminism is the daydream of a sexual predator come true." (That could never be construed as offensive in any ways, could it? Of course not! (Can anything Mr. Wright says ever not be taken to offend?))

Reminds me of Mom's saying: "feminism is the best thing to happen for men."

John Wright does, of course, clarify that he's not talking about simple equal rights: "Feminism, in its modern form, has little or nothing to do with Suffragettes, or those who sought legal equality between the sexes. It has everything to do with Marxism as it applies to sex. Marx analyzes all human relationships as power struggles between collectives, which always are assumed to enjoy a perfect unity of interests."

And in that quote, he perfectly put into words an idea that had been floating around at the back of my mind, but had never been able to express. In my conversations with my feminist co-worker, there was always something present—if not overtly at least subtly, in the background—in her world view, and the larger feminist world view that always just seemed wrong to me: that feminism is, at its heart, a Marxist power struggle.

After reading Wright's post, it made me note all the other places I'd seen this idea, such as in my Sociology text book in college (which was largely Marxist). It suddenly struck me that there's my problem with modern, third-wave, whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it pseudo-feminism. True Feminism shouldn't be looking for a power struggle. True Feminism shouldn't see taking the power men have as the desirable goal, the final outcome, and that therefore women need to shed the shackles of femininity and become like men. True Feminism ought to be, as Feminists for Life puts it, about seeking dignity and equality for all persons. Femininity is part of women's dignity and casting it to the wayside does not serve their purpose.

So what is the great triumph of the modern feminist movement if they have not even won happiness for women? What does it profit women to gain the entire world, but to be miserable? As Dennis Prager would say, Happiness is a Serious Problem.

Fourth Lowest Form of Blogging: Baby Pictures!

(Baby feet pictures, actually.)

Dino feet!

We've got zee lions, only in Kenya!

Third Lowest Form of Blogging: Un-commented links.

O Come, O Come, Liturgical Blue.

(Be sure to listen to the song.)

QUAERITUR: What rubrics to follow at Mass in case of gunfire?

Key quote: "I believe there is a little known rubric which calls for the deacon and subdeacon (who in any event should be packing) to take out, reverently, their 9mm and return fire. As I read it, they are to recite the Maledictory Psalms while firing. At the change of a clip/magazine, they may bow, or duck."

Second Lowest Form of Blogging: YouTube vids.

(Gotta bunch for you here)

(From Word On Fire)

Fr. Barron has a series on YouTube that I have recently become a follower of, where he comments on all sorts of topics from modern culture. Check it out. Some of his good ones include:

Protestantism and Authority.

The Vatican Investigation of American Nuns.

Comments on District 9.

Senator Edward Kennedy.

Answering the Skeptics (this one's good; relates to John Wright's post).

Comments on Angels and Demons.

Why is there so much disorder in the universe?

On "The Audacity of Hope".

Hallelujah Chorus as sung by monks with a vow of silence.

(H/T Everyone on the Internet. If you had not seen this previously, congratulations, you are officially the last person to the party.)

Lowest Form of Blogging: Lolcats!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Obama's Home Teleprompter Malfunctions During Family Dinner

My Head Asplode.

This commercial caused my brain to crash.

After it rebooted, all I could think was "fuh?" followed by "buh?" and finally "wuh?"

Why are there Pringles in Silent Hill? What's Lara Croft doing in Silent Hill? Why is she carrying a blow dryer, a spatula, a tape measure, a tennis racket, and a feather duster? Why does she have a Rubik's Cube in her bra? Why, dear lord, WHY?

(Why does she look like she's about 16 years old?)

Forced to ponder so many imponderables, forced to piece together so many disparate pieces, my feeble brain is forced to come to one inescapable conclusion: Brain made this commercial. Yes, who else but the World's Smartest Mouse, who else by the power behind the plot to build the world's largest clothes dryer and entrap everyone in static cling, could come up with such a fiendishly confusing commercial. I'm sure his plan looks something like this:

1) Confuse the world's gamers with a commercial of utter bizarre-ness.

2) In the ensuing chaos, TAKE OVER THE WORLD!