Monday, October 15, 2012

I am converting to Islam.



I am building a giant cybernetic war badger in my basement.

I love the music of Marty Haugen.

I am receiving locutions from Krishna.

I think Obama is the only permissible electoral choice for Catholics in 2012.

I don't think women should ever wear pants or breastfeed in public.

OK--they can do the latter if they're wearing only pants.

Janeway is way better than Kirk and Picard combined.

The Dallas Cowboys are going to win the next three Super Bowls.

Or the Washington Redskins--whichever you hate more.

Yes, that outfit makes your ass look fat.

The best Stooge was Shemp.

Only Anglican orders are valid.

--I mean, seriously--is this thing on? Traffic is allegedly going up, but I'm feeling like a performance artist here.


18 comments:

  1. You forgot the one about donating money to Call-to-Action.

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  2. I feel that way a good bit of the time. But most people like to silently read aka lurk without commenting.

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  3. and Jar-Jar Binks is the best character in the whole Star Wars saga.

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  4. What are you complaining about? You actually get comments every now and then.

    And Captain Jonathan Archer was the finest Captain. As a plus, with the new Star Trek alternative timeline/ reality, he is the only captain who is certifiably canon. I mean, now that the only thing Kirk has done is shove a Romulan down a black hole.

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  5. Janeway did come closer to acting like the commander of a military vessel than the other Star Trek captains. Not that she was close to reality, but closer.

    (Yes, I am this big of a Trek nerd.)

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  6. Okay, number one question:

    Are you a Trekkie or a Trecker.

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  7. Kirk was like part of the reality of being a military commander. The extremely pulpy extreme versions of several military commanders all smashed into one.

    Like the whole "I will now grab the station from Sulu or Chekov and do it myself." I was reading a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and darned if some destroyer captain who was famous for warning off Soviet subs wasn't also famous for grabbing the controls away and doing the depth charges or the steering himself. Everybody tolerated this, because he was supernaturally good at figuring out the enemy, and not so good at ordering people to do it as fast as he thought. His officers ended up very good too, mostly thru observation. A lot of people say that Roddenberry either knew this guy or knew about him, and turned it into part of Kirk.

    (And of course, Kirk is sort of like Hornblower, and sort of like Patrick O'Brien's captain, both of which series were read by Roddenberry back then, and sort of like various other real life Navy heroes and famous fictional Navy guys.)

    Janeway and Picard are more like ordinary, semi-heroic individuals, and less like a culture hero vision of Heroic Space Navy Captain.

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  8. So is the war badger remote controlled, on-board computer controlled, or driven by one of the kidlets? (I seem to remember you mentioning one who reminded you of John Bell Hood, after all.) What kid wouldn't love to operate a war badger?

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  9. Just haven't had much to say. Sorry. Busy with work, feeling overwhelmed by life.

    And wondering, with all the praise for V2 in the Catholic press these days, if the Orthodox aren't actually in the right on the question of Papal Monarchy.

    Glad y'all have found a good place, even if the renovators have no clue where the altar is supposed to go.

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  10. The thought of one of the kids driving the War Badger doesn't bear thinking about. I retain full control at all times. And, yeah, I think Louis is pretty close to a model of Hood--ignite hair, charge. Works until it doesn't.

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  11. Flambeaux:

    Yeah, I hear you. Similar issues drove the Long Silence. Problems haven't been solved, but they've improved/stabilized. Our Family Flag has been planted, and we're proceeding from there.

    The Orthodox have their own troubles, alas, even without king or council. As to the Pope and V2, you might find this cheering:

    http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1204282.htm

    A helpful reminder that it was just a Church council, with all that implies, positive and negative.

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  12. Oh, I realize they have problems, too.

    But they definitely seem to do a much better job on the parochial level of not making a mess of liturgy and catechesis.

    And I'm really coming increasingly to hope that, since we'll never get a repudiation of V2, perhaps we can at least forget about it once the V2 generation dies off.

    Also, I must report that the Ordinariate doesn't look like it will help much. Between low church aesthetics and a creeping episcopalianism I'm resigned that it will have no positive effect on the Church at all. Which is a shame. There was a lot of potential there.

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  13. You have a point on the liturgy, but I don't see that they do a particularly great job with catechesis, at least in the U.S. They seem to be secularizing at a solid clip.

    Perhaps not in certain subgroups--the Antiochians, ROCOR. But I don't see that the grass is all that greener to the East. If we compare the best of Orthodoxy to the worst of Catholicism, then, yeah. But on average, I don't see it.

    For me, the jury is still out on the Ordinariate. Let's give it a decade before we declare failure. At a minimum, it seems to be working much better than the Pastoral Provision. But the Piskies are so thin on the ground in my neck of the woods that I don't if I'll ever see an Ordinariate parish.

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  14. All sensible points, Dale.

    I hope you're right about the Ordinariate.

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  15. I hadn't even seen any of those search terms. I just thought it was time to come back and see if you'd made a mess. :-)

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Be reasonably civil. Ire alloyed with reason is fine. But slagging the host gets you the banhammer.

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