Pestering Works!

Go say hello to Dierdre who has posted something to let us know that her blog is not defunct.

So many people want folks to do this or that, but all they do is complain amongst themselves. If they were serious, they would organize all the local thugs to pay the person a visit and just let the presence of their associates do the work.

The moral: when you really need things done, ask an authoritarian.

Let's Give Grief to Give Tongue...

As a part of Project Sanctimonia, I am going to start giving grief to my blogging friends who keep good blogs, write well, and then abandon us. Deirdre claims that she has started some posts, only to give up on them, because "other people write things like that so much better."

Well, let me tell you something. That never stopped me. And people pay me to write. Hard to believe, but then again, if I told you all I know about the newspaper business you would just shake your head. Believe me, it is much more comforting to think of it as a major, all-knowing, octopodal, Liberal conspiracy. The reality is even more sobering.

Anyway, be sure to pester Deirdre, as she is a good writer, and is neglecting her blogging duties.

Yellow Clad Zombies in Front of White House...Falun Gong is Goofy...My Enemy's Enemy Might Be My Enemy Too!

I heard the news on the radio. "The police have been successful in keeping the protestors at bay, except for one human rights protestor who made it past the police only to be arrested and taken away."

I am pretty familiar with human rights activists. They are the sort of snot-nosed filth magnets from the suburbs who form things like "The Third World Student Coalition" at the university. They start out as bright-eyed, naive and idealistic girls (including the boys), who start the Amnesty International Club on the high school campus and then take the plunge into the world of PIRG or whatever other madness they glom onto in college.

"Will you sign a petition for..."

Then later, they start getting more and more deranged, monomaniacal, their little ideas inflamed by leftist ideologues on the faculty. When they graduate they still have their passion for "non-profit work."

But I knew instantly that this sort was not the sort who was being hauled away on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I knew that it was an older Chinese woman, almost respectable looking, with a glazed look in her eye and clad all in yellow.

Sure enough, when I saw the picture it was all there, right down to the "Falun Gong is Good!" (uh-oh, a demotion. Last sign I saw said that Falun Dafa is Great!) sign.

Of course I saw the usual hand wringing all over the blogosphere about the miserable treatment the China gives to dissidents.

While China goes overboard in dealing with the Falun Gong, and is completely in error in its treatment of the Holy Catholic Church, the fact that they are suppressing Falun Dafa/Falun Gong should not make us lose a wink of sleep.

Again, we cannot advocate killing the poor Falun Zombies, but the use of police force to prevent the spread of this Quatsch is completely in bounds. Would that our government do the same (and expand the program to the Scientologists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnessess...).

Catholics should stand for Tolerance, but in a limited way. Error, which is the foundation of Falun Gong, Has No Rights.

Falun Gong/Dafa is neither good nor great. It is a mind control cult that should be eradicated, and we should applaud the ChiComs, in spite of their brutal treatment of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in their effort at stamping out this Chinese version of Scientology in its early days.

Deo Gratias

We are back in Oakland. Melanie's grandmother has made a miraculous recovery. The internal bleeding stopped, apparently by itself (after about five units of blood were transfused), she lost about 25 lbs. of fluid, and was moved out of the ICU today. She looked better today than she has for years, and is eager to be home, which should happen tomorrow morning. We rushed up to Redding Saturday expecting the worst, and are overjoyed to have the best case scenario play out.

Thanks to all who have offered prayers for her.

Situation and Prayer Request

First, Happy Easter.

Second, for those of you who know us personally and are wondering where we have been for the Easter Vigil and Sunday Mass, we had an emergency with Melanie's grandmother. She is 88 and has congestive heart failure and started having internal bleeding on Saturday morning. We came up here to Redding expecting the worst, but (deo gratias), she seems to have had a miracle of some sort, and the bleeding appears to have stopped, placing the need for a procedure that would require general anesthesia off the table, at least for now. With her heart and fluid retention, causing kidney problems, that could have been more than she could take.

However, she will probably be out of the ICU, which is good, but whether she will be able to come home in the near future (or ever), is up in the air. She has been living with Melanie's parents for the last few years, but she might need professional medical care around the clock.

Obviously, these sort of problems are going to always be there, so any prayers you could throw this way are appreciated.

Since we are in Redding, without DSL and busy with family stuff, any blogging after this post and the quick update, will probably be nonexistent until we get home to Oakland.

I will check email every evening, so if you have a cooking question, as someone did earlier, feel free to ask it in the comments box or to email me. I will do my best to answer it, either personally, if you leave an email address, or publicly, if you don't.

If you are just wondering what my Easter menu was, since I had already purchased all my food, we did have the planned Easter feast, we just had it up here. The menu was pretty close to what we had last year: green garlic soup, pasta with peas, pancetta, balsamic vinegar and reggiano parmiggiana, roast leg of lamb with a yogurt/herb crust, ragout of fava beans, sauted pea shoots, asparagus, and colombina with strawberries and creme chantilly. If you need recipes for any of this, please look in the archives. If the recipe you would like is not there, drop me a line and I will oblige.

Happy Easter and God Bless.

Have a Blessed Triduum

If I were you, I would not bother coming by here looking for updates, as I will not be doing any until Sunday night at the earliest.

Of course I say that, but who knows?

So, come by if you want. IF you have nothing better to do on the Triduum than go around surfing the Internet, looking for entertainments and suchnot. Go right ahead. I'll pray for you.

The advantage of coming by is that if I am, say, posting something this weekend, and you are checking to see if I have posted something, well, we can just give each other those knowing glances.

What is the difference between the Jews, the Greek Orthodox, and the Baptists?

The Jews don't recognize Jesus. The Greek Orthodox don't recognize the Pope. The Baptists don't recognize each other in the liquor store.

Fast. Eat. Go to church a whole lot.

Ah, there is an inflitrator in my house...

So I was beginning to write a little rant on virility: on the need for Catholics to stop whining like that little twit Donahue and to instead take action when a-holes like Savage get out of line: you know, the old broken pool cue and castor oil treatment. I was planning on writing about how modern man has become soft, unwilling to resort to fisticuffs, even when one is dealing with an irrational, unrepentant heretic. I wanted to write about the restoration of virility in the public sphere: for men to wear beards, to eat roasted meat, to hunt and fish, to smoke cigars, to drink single malt Islay Scotch, and to listen to the music of Bach and Scarlatti, shunning the fussiness of Mendelssohn.

And then I realized that I was wearing a necklace made of little pink, purple and yellow plastic beads, and that a purple unicorn in a onesie was sitting on my lap. I immediately realize that I have an enemy agent in my house, one trying to subvert my plan from the inside. Right now she is riding a Pegasus rocking horse.

You have to watch that little one.

Curses.

Since I have started to discuss matters like Universalism and Hell with Mr. Riddle, and since I am supporting my almost Feeneyite position (as opposed to Mr. Riddle's almost Universalist position), I am going to have to drop Project Sanctimonia, since I want it to be clear when I am poking fun of a rather rigorist mode of thinking and when I am indeed supporting a different sort of rather rigorist thinking.

Because it would be fairly easy (although inaccurate) to make the leap from my view that Hell is quite packed full of many of the most decent and respectable sort of people, to my spoofing of the person who runs around touting her own holiness while picking nits at others, I am going to have to drop project Sanctimonia for now, which is too bad, because I have some really good ones.

Anyway, Julie, never fear. I will still pray for you. Lentil murderer.

Self-Improvement Time

So, here we are at the end of another Lent, and as I take stock of how well I used this season, I see that it is another pretty cruddy Lent. Better than last year, but still a long way to go. I probably cheated on Lenten "giving ups" fewer times this year than last, went to Confession one more time than last year's Lent, but still did not manage to make it to one extra daily mass (this has been the failed goal for three years in a row. Maybe next year), etc.

So, in reflecting, I have decided to make one big personality adjustment: I have decided to be more sanctimonious. No longer will I let any little lapse on the Catholic Blogosphere pass without "fraternal correction." I see now that I have been appointed by God to keep the rest of you from degenerating back into savages. I will pray for you.

So, to start with I am going to be making a visitation of all Catholic Blogs and leaving little comments like:

"In the last ten entries, you have used the word "I" thirty-two times. You might want to reread the Gospel and consider how sincere your commitment is to it. I'll pray for you. Have a nice day (smiley face)."

OR

"Since you obviously only use your faith as a badge for social advancement in your little circle of "friends" I barely see any point in discussing this matter with you. Your mind is made up, and no matter what I might say, you are not going to change it. I'll pray for you. Have a nice day (smiley face)."

OR

"That sort of thinking might make sense to a mass-murderer, but I really can't understand what you see in it. I'll pray for you."

OR

"Fine. Go ahead and celebrate your graduation with some fancy cheese and champagne, and maybe you can toss a couple of thoughts towards the millions of people who will not only not get to eat fancy cheese and champagne, but will go to bed without even a good meal. You can keep Marie Antoinette good company in Hell. I'll ask St. Jansenius to pray for you."

See? Sanctimony is fun. Try it.

"While you are making fun of people who are trying to help steer their brothers and sisters in the faith, you could show a little charity. I'll pray for you."

"Isn't it a little hypocritical to make fun of people as pharisaical when you are just doing the same thing by making fun of them? I'll pray for you."