Week in Review

For the imaginary reader who isn't also Facebook friends with me, I'm going to start archiving some of my statuses and links from Facebook here.

#

The Bad Catholic drinking game.

It will be hilarious when Marc's readers die of catastrophic liver failure.

#

On Monday:

What is wrong with me?!?! While driving today, I noticed the shadow of the car in front of me rotating about the car as it made the sharp turn through the cloverleaf on-ramp to the freeway. My thought, "Oh, real-time
rendered shadows!"

#

Pick a random patron saint for the new year!

I got Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, patron against arthritis and scrupulosity and for final perseverance. I wonder what's in store for me this year?

#

So, after hearing from all my Facebook friends with South Bend/Notre Dame connections about how awesome the football team was, I decided to tune into the game on Monday and they got demolished. They must be seriously overrated.

#

Quote of the Year/Century/Millenium:

‎"The essence of modernity is the death of the spiritual. A modernist is someone who is more concerned about air pollution than soul pollution. A modernist is someone who wants clean air so he can breathe dirty words. 

"A modernist cares about big things, like whales, more than little things, like fetuses; big things like governments, more than little things like families and neighborhoods; big things like states, which last hundreds of years, more than little things like souls, which last forever." —Peter Kreeft

 Good ol' Peter Kreeft, channeling the ghost of GK Chesterton, it appears.

Christmas Letter 2012

I think everyone I love/care about should have this by now, so I'll post this for the rest of you peons.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bx_r0Pcz6kTkZFdFNGhkZGdmSHM/edit

This letter kept escalating. What was supposed to be a quick thing to write the day after Christmas and mail out by that Friday became an increasingly big project, with multiple trips to Office Max for toner, paper, and  more cards (after we ran out!), and to the post office. We finally did mail them before Epiphany, if only just.

Anniversary {phfr}

Pretty

Happy

Funny

Real

Movie Synopsis of the Day/Week/Month

(Spoilers abound)

(The Terminator/Looper) is a movie about an unstoppable killing machine played by action movie star (Arnold Schwarzenegger/Bruce Willis) who is sent back in time (45/30) years. His mission is to change the past by stopping a boy named (John Connor/Cid "Rainmaker") from growing up, because the boy is going to (save the world/destroy the world). Due to a lack of information in the future, there are three people who the killer must hunt down and destroy. He is opposed in his mission by the time-traveling protagonist who is (the boy's father from the future/the killer's younger self from the past), and by the boy's mother who is one tough cookie and willing to sacrifice herself to protect her child. Along the way, the protagonist gets to know the boy's mother and (sleeps with her/sleeps with her). In the end, the protagonist sacrifices his life to destroy the killing machine and save the life of the boy and his mother.

Article of the Day/Week/Month

This article on io9 (slightly NSFW picture at the top of it) hits up some of the points I was getting at here.

In particular, the last paragraph was killer:

But the modern Irene Adlers are morally bankrupt puppets deploying their sexual wiles to lead men into the power of an infernal master - and are justly punished for it. That goes all the way back to Eve. These are deeply, deeply old-fashioned women in deeply old-fashioned stories. Letting them throw a punch or carry a whip doesn't update that archetype. It takes something stronger. But why bother with that when Irene Adler can get naked on camera, bat her eyes at Sherlock Holmes, and be rescued at the end?

In response to one of the comments, "I'm at a loss as to why a woman can't use her sexuality to get what she wants":

The problem with this is that it's about as boring, original, and unstrong as "a man beats up someone to get what he wants." To make a strong character implies taking the hard way. "Strength" is the ability to overcome an obstacle or opposing force—physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. Taking the easy way out is not strong. A woman selling herself short to get what she wants is not as strong as a woman who gets while she wants while maintaining the moral high road. A man just beating up the bad guy isn't as strong as a man who defeats the bad guy without falling to his level (see: "why doesn't Superman just put his fist through Lex Luthor's skull").

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.

A Night Before Christmas.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the place,
The Resident Murloc was running a race.
The stockings weren't hung by the chimney with care,
For last minute panic caused her to despair.

"C'mon sweetie," I mentioned, "let's snuggle in bed."
"No time for that now, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
Now working, now toiling, now wrapping the presents,
All of this work is for you malcontents.

"I've decor to hang up and presents to wrap.
So help me with this or just shut your yap."
Her jaw was clenched firm, her eyes were quite glary,
Her nose blew out flame, the site was so scary.

I thought it might be beneficial to ease
Her stress levels so I gave her a tease.
"You're so cute when your anxious. Did you know your belly
Shakes when you fuss, like a bowl full of jelly?"

More fright'ning than grizzlies, her fury it came,
She cussed, and shouted, and called me such names.
I spoke not a word, but just turned and fled.
Knowing she'd give me something to dread.

Hot on my neck, I could feel her spit spatter.
I sprang under the bed to avoid the whole matter.
But I heard her exclaim, 'ere I dove out of sight,
"I'll get you, I promise, you'll die this dark night!"


Yeah, I'm no Clement Moore, but it's 3am. Gimme a break.