Perspective for the age of President Moloch

I like this one too:

The unspeakable evils of "heteronormativity"

What are those evil purveyors of bigoted children's fare at Disney up to? Why, they've been preventing your innocent children from developing into happy, healthy homos, that's what.

For generations now, Disney and its ilk have been rotting our children's minds and corrupting their souls with cartoons that depict the evils of "heteronormativity," i.e., animated features, such as The Little Mermaid, that "depict a rich and pervasive heterosexual landscape" with "Characters in love [that] are surrounded by music, flowers, candles, magic, fire, balloons, fancy dresses, dim lights, dancing and elaborate dinners."

In other words, nothing short of depictions of "the setting for -- and a link to the naturalness of -- hetero-romantic love."

Now you know!

I kid you not. This is what a pair of University of Michigan researchers, Emily Kazyak and Karin Martin, have ginned up. They've discovered no less than that "These films provide powerful portraits of a multifaceted and pervasive heterosexuality that likely facilitates the reproduction of heteronormativity." (emphasis mine)

Multifaceted and pervasive heterosexuality!! In movies marketed to children!

Read all about it at Lifesite.

The holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

"Judas before Herod!" he said, and struck the Colonel down upon the stones. Then he turned to the Secretary, whose frightful mouth was almost foaming now, and held the lamp high with so rigid and arresting a gesture, that the man was, as it were, frozen for a moment, and forced to hear.

"Do you see this lantern?" cried Syme in a terrible voice. "Do you see the cross carved on it, and the flame inside? You did not make it. You did not light it. Better men than you, men who could believe and obey, twisted the entrails of iron and preserved the legend of fire. There is not a street you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats. You can make nothing. You can only destroy. You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world. Let that suffice you. Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy. It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it."

He struck the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell.

"Swords!" shouted Syme, turning his flaming face ; to the three behind him. "Let us charge these dogs, for our time has come to die."

--The Man Who Was Thursday

Belloc Friday

Myself. "Burn me those men who are afraid of the Flesh ! Water-drinkers also, and caterwauling outers, and turnip mumblers, enemies of beef, treasonable to the immemorial ox and the tradition of our human kind ! Pifflers and snifflers, and servants of the meanest of the devils, tied fast to halting, knock-kneed Baphomet, the coward's god, and chained to the usurers as is a mangy dog to a blind man ! "

The Sailor. "Come, let us take it up ! Hunt me them over the hills with horn and with hound ! Drive them, harry them, pen them, drown them in the river, and rid me them from our offended soil ! They are the betrayers of Christendom ! They are the traducers of those mighty men our fathers, who upon the woodwork of the Table and the Bed, as upon twin pillars, founded the Commonweal."

Myself. " Come, Poet, are you not convinced ? "

The Poet. Of what ? That I should have a decent respect for my body ? "

The Sailor. " Respect go hang itself by the heels until it gets some blood into its pale face, and then take a basting to put life into it ! "

Grizzlebeard. "Do you not know, Poet, that by all these anti-belly tricks of yours you would canalise mankind into the trench that leads to hell ? For there is nothing that cannot be made to serve the Master of Evil by abuse, nor anything which cannot by a just and reasonable enjoyment be made to glorify God. Have you any lack of pleasure in this rush of the clouds above us. Or does he seem to you a niggler, the fellow that rides the south-west wind ? "

The Poet. " What is all this flood of yours, you three? What have I said about or against the Body ? "

Myself. " Nay, Poet, but we will tell you more than you care to hear ! Consider that glorious great tube a gun, whence shells may be lobbed at such as are worthy of the game. Your man that smirks his hatred of war is he that potters into the dirty adventures against the very weak (but by God's providence his aim is damnable), and he is the man that fees lawyers to ruin the poor."

--The Four Men

Join the revolution

For all you Twitterers out there...

Mark Shea tells how to help the demonstrators in Iran:

If you use Twitter, set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30. Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians' access to the internet. Cut & paste & pass it on.

Urgent prayers needed

Please everyone offer up some intense prayers for a family in our parish. Their son, a seventh-grader, caught rocky mountain spotted fever from a tick bite last weekend. He has gone into septic shock. He's currently in critical condition in the pediatric ICU at a local hospital, in a hospital-induced coma. He needs to be flown to St. Louis for special treatment but the thing is, the hospital can't stabilize him for the trip.

His younger sister is in my oldest son's class and his mother is that same son's soccer coach. Please pray for the boy and the whole family. Thank you.

"I have come not to bring peace, but a sword."

Today is the feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. The story of St. Thomas More is known to most; the store of St. John Fisher is less famous. Yet they were both contemporaries, and both opposed Henry VIII's unlawful divorce and remarriage, and his usurpation of the Keys of Peter. While More was the lone minister in Henry's government to oppose Henry, Fisher was the lone bishop -- the only one, in all of England -- to oppose him.

Like his one namesake, St. John the Apostle, John Fisher was the only member of the English college of bishops to come to the foot of the cross. And like his other namesake, St. John the Baptist, Fisher was beheaded for his steadfast and loving defense of lawful marriage.

For opposing Henry's unjust divorce from Catherine, and for refusing to recognize Henry's title, "Supreme Head of the Church in England," Fisher was beheaded on this day, June 22, in 1535 (Thomas More, who shares this feast with Fisher, met the same fate a few weeks later, on July 6).

It is said that, as he mounted the scaffold, Fisher sang the Te Deum, the ancient Christian hymn of thanksgiving. It moves me more than I can say to imagine this. It is like a man singing for joy as he approaches his new bride, adorned and waiting for him, on their marriage bed. And how poignant this is when we remember that it was out of love for marriage that Fisher surrendered his life.

To honor St. John Fisher (and St. Thomas more), play the video below and sing along. Lyrics (and English translation) are here.

The holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

This is the first great fact to notice about the speech of God, which is the culmination of the inquiry. It represents all human sceptics routed by a higher scepticism. It is this method, used sometimes by supreme and sometimes by mediocre minds, that has ever since been the logical weapon of the true mystic. Socrates, as I have said, used it when he showed that if you only allowed him enough sophistry he could destroy all the sophists. Jesus Christ used it when He reminded the Sadducees, who could not imagine the nature of marriage in heaven, that if it came to that they had not really imagined the nature of marriage at all. In the break up of Christian theology in the eighteenth century, Butler used it, when he pointed out that rationalistic arguments could be used as much against vague religion as against doctrinal religion, as much against rationalist ethics as against Christian ethics. It is the root and reason of the fact that men who have religious faith have also philosophic doubt, like Cardinal Newman, Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Mallock. These are the small streams of the delta; the Book of Job is the first great cataract that creates the river. In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them.

The other great fact which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.

Thirdly, of course, it is one of the splendid strokes that God rebukes alike the man who accused, and the men who defended Him; that He knocks down pessimists and optimists with the same hammer. And it is in connection with the mechanical and supercilious comforters of Job that there occurs the still deeper and finer inversion of which I have spoken. The mechanical optimist endeavours to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything; "Hath the rain a father? . . . Out of whose womb came the ice?" He goes farther, and insists on the positive and palpable unreason of things; "Hast thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is, and upon the wilderness wherein there is no man?" God will make man see things, if it is only against the black background of nonentity. God will make Job see a startling universe if He can only do it by making Job see an idiotic universe.

To startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. This we may call the third point. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was.

Lastly, the poet has achieved in this speech, with that unconscious artistic accuracy found in so many of the simpler epics, another and much more delicate thing. Without once relaxing the rigid impenetrability of Jehovah in His deliberate declaration, he has contrived to let fall here and therein the metaphors, in the parenthetical imagery, sudden and splendid suggestions that the secret of God is a bright and not a sad one semi-accidental suggestions, like light seen for an instant through the cracks of a closed door. It would be difficult to praise too highly, in a purely poetical sense, the instinctive exactitude and ease with which these more optimistic insinuations are let fall in other connections, as if the Almighty Himself were scarcely aware that He was letting them out. For instance, there is that famous passage where Jehovah with devastating sarcasm, asks Job where he was when the foundations of the world were laid, and then (as if merely fixing a date) mentions the time when the sons of God shouted for joy. One cannot help feeling, even upon this meagre information, that they must have had something to shout about. Or again, when God is speaking of snow and hail in the mere catalogue of the physical cosmos, He speaks of them as a treasury that He has laid up against the day of battle--a hint of some huge Armageddon in which evil shall be at last overthrown.

--Introduction to the Book of Job

Melly Friday

May our Blessed Mother and St. Nicholas, your son's patron, protect your son and bring him home safe from Iraq, Melly. Amen.

Yes, you can smoke your ribs on a Weber kettle

John Kass shows how.

 
I have always being vexed on how to do this. I love my Weber kettle. I will NEVER use or buy a gas grill. As Kass says, the only use for a gas grill is to "use as a table to put all your equipment on while you're cooking over coals."

But it is very difficult to properly cook ribs on a Weber kettle. The coals are too close to the cooking grate for proper smoking, so you have to use direct heat. But you have to keep the temperature reeeeaal low so as not to burn the ribs or cook them too fast. The method Kass demonstrates here (jeez, his job must suck – having to cart a grill and a smoker to the roof of Tribune Tower and spend the afternoon grilling ribs? Oh, the humanity!) looks perfect. The only drawback is that you can only fit at most two slabs of ribs on at a at time. Oh well, that must means a longer afternoon of grilling ribs and drinking beer. By the time the second batch is done we should be hungry again.

Belloc Friday

Grizzlebeard. “And you, Myself, have you ever seen the Fairies?”

Myself. “I do not think so. I do not think I have ever seen them: alas for me! But I think I have heard them once or twice, murmuring and chattering, and pattering and clattering, and flattering and mocking at me, and alluring me onwards towards the perilous edges and the water-ledges where the torrent tumbles and cascades in the high hills.”

The Sailor. “What did they say to you?”

Myself. “They told me I should never get home, and I never have.”

--The Four Men

NOTE: Given that the character Myself most represents Belloc, this is especially poignant. But others would do a better job explaining why.

The restoration of Catholic Culture: the annual Corpus Christi procession

A few weeks ago someone asked me what I meant by "the restoration of Catholic culture," or what, specifically, constitutes it. Well, whatever manifestation it takes, it should be rooted and centered in the liturgy -- the public worship of the Catholic Church. After all, lex orandi, lex credendi: the law of prayer is the law of belief. This not only refers to the necessity of prayer, but the necessity of prayer done well: reverent, dignified prayer. Anything shoddy or frivolous, or narcissistic, such as so-called "centering prayer," results in shoddy and frivolous, me-centered belief. Anyone who's ever witnessed the travesty of liturgical dance knows what I'm talking about.

To that end, feast your eyes on these pics from my parish's annual Corpus Christi procession, from last Sunday. The parish hadn't done one in decades, then a few years ago Fr. David Hoefler (the priest in the pictures) and the former pastor (who is now the bishop of Fort Worth) were rummaging around in a crawlspace and found the gold canopy you see below. Yes, that beautiful silk canopy, stuffed in a crawlspace. So they pulled it out, got it cleaned, and re-instituted the annual Corpus Christi processions. Our parish is Blessed Sacrament, after all, so Corpus Christi is our parish feast day, and we want to do something special. The procession winds around the block the parish is on, our Lord, enthroned in a beautiful gold monstrance, held aloft by Fr. Hoefler. Accompanying him are a platoon of altar servers bearing candles and, of course, the parishoners (see the middle picture). There is lots of incense and four stops along the way for Gospel readings and hymns in Latin and English.

Lex orandi, lex credendi. The restoration of Catholic culture -- and the recovery of our Catholic identity -- starts with the liturgy. Or as Fr. Z says on his blog, "save the liturgy, save the world." Do that right, and the rest of Catholic culture, including the Lost Art of Catholic Drinking, will take care of itself.





(pictures courtesy of David and Jane Cloyd)

When the revolution comes...

...self-serving jerks like Illinois Sen. Dick "Turbin" Durbin will be the first ones up against the wall:

As U.S. stock markets plummeted last September, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, sold more than $115,000 worth of stocks and mutual-fund shares and used much of the money to invest in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The Illinois senator's 2008 financial disclosure statement shows he sold mutual-fund shares worth $42,696 on Sept. 19, the day after then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged congressional leaders in a closed meeting to craft legislation to help financially troubled banks. The same day, he bought $43,562 worth of Berkshire Hathaway's Class B stock, the disclosure shows.

For the rest of us, insider trading. For Dick Durbin, just another day at the office.

The Holy Mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

The real difference between Paganism and Christianity is perfectly summed up in the difference between the pagan, or natural, virtues, and those three virtues of Christianity which the Church of Rome calls virtues of grace. The pagan, or rational, virtues are such things as justice and temperance, and Christianity has adopted them. The three mystical virtues which Christianity has not adopted, but invented, are faith, hope, and charity. Now much easy and foolish Christian rhetoric could easily be poured out upon those three words, but I desire to confine myself to the two facts which are evident about them. The first evident fact (in marked contrast to the delusion of the dancing pagan)--the first evident fact, I say, is that the pagan virtues, such as justice and temperance, are the sad virtues, and that the mystical virtues of faith, hope, and charity are the gay and exuberant virtues. And the second evident fact, which is even more evident, is the fact that the pagan virtues are the reasonable virtues, and that the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity are in their essence as unreasonable as they can be.

As the word "unreasonable" is open to misunderstanding, the matter may be more accurately put by saying that each one of these Christian or mystical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, and that this is not true of any of the typically pagan or rationalist virtues. Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that. But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.

--Heretics

Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the death of G.K. Chesterton.

Melly Friday

If Melly joined a convent...

Belloc Friday

When that dirge had sunk and they, as they sat or lay before the fire, had nodded one by one, sleep came upon them all three, weary with the long day's going and the keenness of the air. They had in their minds, that All Hallowe'en as sleep took them, the Forest of the highland and the great Weald all spread below and the road downward into it, and our arrival beneath the knightly majesty of the Downs. They took their rest before the fire.

But I was still wakeful, all alone, remembering All Hallows and what dancing there was in the woods that night, though no man living might hear the music, or see the dancers go, though the fire-lit darkness was alive. So I slipped to the door very quietly, covering the latch with my fingers to dumb its noise, and I went out and watched the world.

The moon stood over Chanctonbury, so removed and cold in her silver that you might almost have thought her careless of the follies of men ; little clouds, her attendants, shone beneath her worshipping, and they presided together over a general silence. Her light caught the edges of the Downs. There was no mist. She was still frosty-clear when I saw her set behind those hills. The stars were more brilliant after her setting, and deep quiet held the valley of Adur, my little river, slipping at low tide towards the sea.

When I had seen all this I went back within doors, as noiselessly as I had come out, and I picked through the sleepers to my own place, and I wrapped myself in my cloak before the fire. Sleep came at last to me also ; but that night dead friends visited me in dreams.

--The Four Men

The cycle of despair and recovery

The Holy Mysticism of G.K. Chesterton

The creed was like a key in three respects; which can be most conveniently summed up under this symbol. First, a key is above all things a thing with a shape. It is a thing that depends entirely upon keeping its shape. The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness. That is where it differs from all that formless infinity, Manichean or Buddhist, which makes a sort of pool of night in the dark heart of Asia; the ideal of uncreating all the creatures. That is where it differs also from the analogous vagueness of mere evolutionism, the idea of creatures constantly losing their shape. A man told that his solitary latchkey had been melted down with a million others into a Buddhistic unity would be annoyed. But a man told that his key was gradually growing and sprouting in his pocket, and branching into new wards or complications, would not be more gratified.

Second, the shape of a key is in itself a rather fantastic shape. A savage who did not know it was a key would have the greatest difficulty in guessing what it could possibly be. And it is fantastic because it is in a sense arbitrary. A key is not a matter of abstractions; in that sense a key is not a matter of argument. It either fits the lock or it does not. It is useless for men to stand disputing over it, considered by itself; or reconstructing it on pure principles of geometry or decorative art. It is senseless for a man to say he would like a simple key; it would be far more sensible to do his best with a crowbar. And thirdly, as the key is necessarily a thing with a pattern, so this was one having in some ways a rather elaborate pattern. When people complain of the religion being so early complicated with theology and things of the kind, they forget that the world had not only got into a hole, but had got into a whole maze of holes and corners. The problem itself was a complicated problem; it did not in the ordinary sense merely involve anything so simple as sin. It was also full of secrets, of unexplored and unfathomable fallacies, of unconscious mental diseases, of dangers in all directions. If the faith had faced the world only with the platitudes about peace and simplicity some moralists would confine it to, it would not have had the faintest effect on that luxurious and labyrinthine lunatic asylum. What it did do we must now roughly describe; it is enough to say here that there was undoubtedly much about the key that seemed complex, indeed there was only one thing about it that was simple. It opened the door.

--The Everlasting Man

More on (Saint) GKC

This story is getting some legs. What started as a quiet announcement of the English Chesterton Society's upcoming July 4 conference on G.K. Chesterton's holiness was picked up by the Catholic Herald, then me, and now it's in Catholic Online. (Not that I had anything to do with it being in Catholic Online.)

Should the cause be opened for Chesterton? I criticized Aidan Mackey for harboring reservations, and Geir Hasnes gently (and rightly) chided me for it. All I can say is mea culpa. I did not at all mean to disparage so great and tireless and dear a soldier as Aidan.

Even so, I must still, respectfully and lovingly, disagree. The concern is that Chesterton "should not be 'owned' by the Catholics." I think canonizing him will have the opposite effect. Canonization is never a bad thing. It is always a good thing, a thing from which countless graces flow. We all have to do our part for it by praying, a lot, for this intention. Things like this relying on human as well as supernatural effort, Geir has spent a lot of years compiling the world's most complete bibliography of Chesterton. I never told him this, but it occurred to me after I met him that God brought him to this work for this very reason: to have, as most complete as possible, a massive body of work for the Vatican investigators to plow through when the time comes. "And what a treat they have before them," Geir says. Indeed!

There is something else we can do: study Chesterton. In any conversation about Chesterton, if you mention his holiness, you really do get a bit of incredulity from some. It really is a case that many people think of him as merely a polemicist, or a jolly journalist, and little more. The "toby jug" image of Chesterton persists. And worse, it is not only in spite of Chesterton fans, but often because of us. Even I had to go and say, "The world needs more fat saints," in my post last week. Again, mea culpa.

It is true that Chesterton was fat, and a journalist. It is true that he liked cigars and preferred the inside of an inn to the outside. But those things aren't the essence of Chesterton. They are, if you'll pardon the expression, merely the accidents, not the substance. And while it is true that this six-and-a-half-foot tall, 300-pound, cigar-chomping journalist isn't what most people think of when they think of a mystic, Chesterton was indeed a mystic, a contemplative. He is the perfect example of what St. Josemaria Escriva meant when he spoke of secular saints -- saints in the world, whose monk's cell is the street, and whose cloister is the home.

We need to start promoting the notion of what I am going to call the holy mysticism of G.K. Chesterton. To that end, I am starting a new series, called, amazingly enough, the Holy Mysticism of G.K. Chesterton. Like the Belloc Fridays, it'll be regular posts of his writings. And I wouldn't mind suggestions and contributions either (Dr. Thursday and Geir, are you listening?). Don't limit yourselves to just Chesterton's apologetics or quotes from Orthodoxy. Chesterton's mysticism permeated everything he wrote, so send me his fiction, non-fiction, newspapers essays, poetry, short stories, economic writings -- in short, everything. And everything else.

And as Dr. Thursday said on the ACS blog, let us not also forget Mrs. Chesterton, Frances, without whom Chesterton did nothing, and on whom he depended and doted his whole life. Wouldn't it be grand to have a double canonization: Chesterton and Frances raised to the altars together!

Melly Friday

Remember Melly...

St. Gilbert Keith Chesterton, at long last?

Or, at least, the beginning of the beginnig. In case you missed it this post last month, the chief topic of the July 4 conference of the newly revived Chesterton Society of England will be the Cause of Chesterton, i.e., discussing his holiness with an eye toward opening the cause of his sainthood:

G K Chesterton's reputation for holiness will be boosted next month when leading scholars meet in Oxford to discuss his Cause.

In this week's paper former Catholic Herald editor and Chesterton biographer William Oddie writes: "It is becoming clear that serious attention needs to be paid in the country of his birth to the question of Chesterton's holiness."

Dr Oddie will take part in a one-day conference on July 4 in Oxford where the speakers will include Dr Ian Ker, Fr John Saward, Fr Aidan Nichols OP and Dr Sheridan Gilley.

He said: "I have thought it possible for a long time, although when I wrote my book it wasn't something I particularly thought of him. But there was a time when no one thought Newman was particularly holy, just a bad-tempered, anti-Anglican polemicist. That's the way we think of Chesterton, as a polemicist.

"It'll be a long time before anything gets under way. The purpose of the conference is to make it thinkable."

Dr Oddie was surprised to find support for his Cause after delivering a paper at the American Chesterton Conference last year.

"I was asked what stage the Cause towards Chesterton's beatification had reached. When I said there was no Cause, the audience showed incredulity," he said.

Dr Oddie added that Chesterton had particular spiritual resonance in today's troubled climate. "As a social prophet he's coming into his own. First Communism collapsed, now monopoly capitalism has collapsed - what we're coming into now is the idea of small economic units, something clearly based in Catholic teaching."

I remember that moment last summer: people were shocked that there is currently no formal investigation into Chesterton's sanctity. Start praying for this intention -- the world needs more fat saints. It also needs more secular saints, and there is no better candidate than G.K. Chesterton.

Here is the info in the July 4 conference.

Belloc Friday

The Poet: "For what, then, is the inn of Washington famous ?"

The Sailor: "Not for a song, but for the breeder of songs. You shall soon learn."

And when he had said that we all went in together, and, in the inn of Washington, we put it to the test whether what so many men had sung of that ale were true or no. But hardly had the Sailor put his tankard down, when he cried out in a loud voice : " It is true, and I believe !"

Then he went on further : "Without any doubt whatsoever this nectar was brewed in the waxing of the moon and of that barley which Brutus brought hither in the first founding of this land ! And the water wherein that barley-corn was brewed was May-day dew, the dew upon the grass before sunrise of a May-day morning. For it has all the seven qualities of ale, which are :

Aleph = Clarity,

Beth = Savour,

Gimel = A lively hue,

Daleth = Lightness,

He = Profundity,

Vau = Strength retained,

and lastly, Zayin, which is Perfection and The End.

"It was seeking this ale, I think, that Alexander fought his way to Indus, but perished miserably of the colic in the flower of his age because he did not find it.

"Seeking this ale, I think it was, that moved Charlemagne to ride both North and South, and East and West, all his life long in those so many wars of his whereof you may read in old books; for he lived to be two hundred years and more, and his bramble beard became as white as sea-foam and as tangled, and his eyes hollow with age. And yet he would not abandon the quest for Mitchell's Ale which they sell at Washington : but he could not find it, and so died at last of chagrin.

" And hearing of this ale from a Familiar, Aldabaran sought Saragossa in disguise, and filled ten years full, planning and devising how to get it from the Emir of El Kazar, who was in league with the Evil One ; then, in the very moment of his triumph, and as he was unlocking that cellar door, a guardian slave slew him with a sword, and his soul went forth, leaving the cask untasted.

" So also St. Offa, of Swinestead in Mercia, fainting at the thought of this ale which tempting demons had let him smell in a dream, was near to missing his salvation. He left his cell and went out beyond Kent, over the narrow seas into the Low Countries, and wandered up and down for seven years, until at last he went distracted and raving for lack of the liquor. But at last he was absolved at Rome."

-The Four Men

Now you know...

Baseball has killed more people -- players (pro and amateur), fans, and umpires -- than any other sport.

Death at a Ballpark: a Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities, 1962-2007, chronicles nearly 900 deaths from more than a century of baseball, everything from balls in the throat to guys chasing foul balls into the paths of oncoming cars in neighborhood pick-up games. I first read the review of this book this morning, then thought of it again tonight when a player on my son's youth team (these are 9- and 10-year-olds) got beaned directly in the head by a wild pitch.

No, I didn't tell the kid's mom about this book, but I joked about it to one of the other dads, who chuckled nervously along with me, lol, both of us beaming with pride that our sons bravely play the most death-defying sport in America.

Simplex Vir at The Lair of the Catholic Caveman thinks baseball is a girly sport. This book is for him. Here are a couple of interesting points:

It's weirdly moving, if not exactly consoling, to learn just how many of baseball's casualties made the play before expiring. There's the amateur shortstop who, in 1902, caught a bad hop in the throat and used his last moments to throw out the runner at first. The third baseman in an Indiana league who, in 1909, tagged out the runner plowing headfirst into his gut, then succumbed to the resulting internal injuries three days later. There's just something about baseball that inspires a kind of heroic resolve.

Indeed! Only in baseball. Order the book here.

Ralph Nader: my new hero

I by no means agree with every utterance of Ralph Nader, but when he says stuff like this: "Today's bankruptcy declaration in federal court by General Motors is an avoidable, crude weapon of mass devastation for workers, dealers, auto suppliers, small businesses and their depleted communities. For GM's voiceless owners -- the common shareholders -- it is a wipeout," he's spot on.

I also like this paragraph:

The bankruptcy and the GM restructuring plan are the product of a secretive, unaccountable, Wall Street-minded government task force that assumed power because of a Congressional abdication of historic magnitude. By all rights, the restructuring plan should have been submitted to Congress for deliberative review and decision.

Honestly, have we ever seen a Congress so totally lay down and die for a sitting President? Is there not a single man or woman left on Capitol Hill who will stand up to the Chosen One? Not even Jesus' apostles followed him so blindly ("You can't let yourself be crucified!" ... "Let's burn that town to the ground, Lord!" ... "You wash my feet?"). What gives with Congress?