Recently in My Life Category

Today I was at a Catholic site which offered some $3 talks on CD. I found one on Halloween, and I thought it would be interesting to hear what they had to say for $3. I was expecting there to be an MP3 download, but no, only CD. I'm thinking, this talk isn't worth $3 plus shipping, more than likely. And what was shipping? $7! Like heck I'm going to pay $10 for this CD! I felt like writing them and asking them to support MP3s for this sort of thing, when I realized that this was probably part of their business plan: A $3 loss-leader that sucks people into buying more expensive sets to justify the shipping. Kind of like my habit of buying additional items at Amazon so I can get free shipping. (Although those are usually items I would have needed anyway.)

Is this the sort of thing a Christian site should be doing? It always irks me when companies try to trick, deceive, or otherwise manipulate you into buying stuff. I feel like I'm being taken advantage of.

Anyway I am going without the $3 CD. I am not giving into this behavior.

Received this image today, which I've mercifully coded as a popup window (as opposed to an embedded image you'd have to look at whenever you come to the blog).

Clearly saccharine kitsch survives in any medium.

The jargon used by businesses today tends to refer to employees as "resources", hence "human resources" and talk of putting "three resources on this project" and "four resources on that project". I've always objected to this as dehumanizing, but I saw something today that positively sent chills up my spine in comparison.

It was a Christmas card from another company, and it identified them as "Consultants in the management of human capital".

Maybe I'm overreacting but to me this conjured up images of cattle cars. So impersonal, so clinical, so dehumanizing.

What I think is weird is that for the most part you could easily replace "human capital" with "employees" or "employees and contractors" and it would sound far warmer and less ominous. "Capital" lumps us in the same category as money and equipment. It reduces us to a means to produce an end (profit). It objectifies the employee (or contractor); rather than being treated as persons, they are treated -- well, like money and equipment.

I wonder if anyone's written a novel along these lines ... not quite "1984" but something like it.

I went today with my church and St. Nicholas Orthodox Church to the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, MA which was just fascinating. It's a private collection of around 200 icons owned by a Congregationalist entrepreneur, who opened the museum specifically to exhibit his collection. There are small icons and large icons from 1450 to 2006. I saw a 2006 icon portraying the life of Andre Rublev (writer of what may be the most famous icon in history, the Holy Trinity) that was in my opinion the most beautiful icon I've ever seen, very vibrant in colors and fine in detail. It cost $6,000 (but of course it was not for sale). I fell in love with it! But it was not meant to be. I am low on cash right now anyway. :-) Anyway they have some of the icons on their website, so check them out.

Ok, I know I've been remiss at posting recently, partly this is due to slow news. News continues to be slow, plus I'm just a bit proud today, so today I'm going to indulge myself and share some of what's going on my life.

I like to cook, though to be honest most of the time this works out as "open the box and follow the directions." This is still better than "open the can" and "puncture wrapper and microwave", or even "Hello, Domino's?" From time to time I do cook from recipes when I have time, but one of my friends is always teasing me about the fact that I don't "really" cook (which for him means totally from scratch). But another friend doesn't even use recipes, so we get a little bit of competition going. Or at least I feel it.

I've made my own recipes, once reconstructing my father's cole slaw recipe (and in the process making my own), reconstructing his rice salad recipe, and other things but I wanted to try to A) do my own thing; B) do something cooked, somehow I felt doing salads (I have three recipes for salad-like things plus a pico de gallo recipe) was not adequate.

So ... after preparing a off the shelf soup mix for beef barley soup (which I love) and being singularly disappointed in it, I set about to make my own beef barley soup. From scratch. Totally.

First task was how to make the soup base. I found a beef stock recipe online, and I learned how to use bones to make the soup base. I didn't even know they sold soup bones in the supermarket, but they do. (For some reason I had never seen them.) However the stock approach was a bit much for me (it takes several hours to make stock, and that's even before you start the soup) so I took a shortcut recommended by my friend Greg K., consummate chef that he is: Just cook the bones in the soup. Well this didn't totally work out and I don't recommend it but it came out OK for me.

For the rest of it, I studied a number of recipes on the net and threw together my own from those (and the advice of Greg), and after all day in the kitchen I had a wonderful soup which is much better than the sorry mixes you get in the store (but which admittedly takes five times the time). The result is what you see above. I was a little surprised at how it turned out; expected something a bit more thick and brown but it was fine. Veggies made it very colorful. There were a lot of veggies but not I think too many. It was positively delicious. Very tender.

Here is my recipe, modified to use beef stock (find your favorite recipe) instead of bones directly in the soup:

1 lb stew meat
1 or 2 potatoes, chopped
2 small carrots, or one large, chopped
2 medium tomatoes (optional)
1 onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
3/4 cup barley (uncooked)
2 tsp minced garlic
Some pasta or egg noodles if you wish
Five drops Dave's Insanity or other hot sauce (if desired)
14 c stock
1/2 c cooking wine (unless it's in the stock)

Brown the meat in a pot with some oil Add the stock and wine and cook for an hour and a half. As that cooks, chop the vegetables. Saute the celery, onions, garlic, and carrots. Add to meat with hot sauce (if desired). Cook half an hour. Saute potatoes. Add and cook 15 more minutes. (Note: This may need to be adjusted. I cooked all the veggies 45 minutes but the potatoes were overcooked; adjust accordingly.) Try adding pasta or egg noodles in last 5-10 minutes of cooking (I haven't tried this yet, forgot to).

Makes one gallon.

Thanks to Greg for his invaluable help.

Time for my quasi-monthly rant. The topic this time is greeting cards for men. Maybe I am unusual in sending birthday cards to my guy friends but I found it very hard to find an appropriate card for a friend of mine recently (no names mentioned). It wasn't the first time I had this problem. You see, the bulk of the cards seem to fall into two classes: 1) The highly sentimental cards clearly designed for women, who admittedly buy most of the cards; 2) The rude cards that make reference to sex, attractive body parts, drinking, or scatology (clearly aimed at men). Problem is that there are precious few cards to choose from that a man can send another man that isn't inappropriate either because it's vulgar, feminine, or otherwise inapplicable. And Lord help you if you want something meaningful (which, admittedly, probably much less than 1% of men would ever send to a male friend).

I think part of this is because sexual and scatological humor are the low-hanging fruits, and because so much of that appeals to the culture today. It's like how difficult it is to find a clean comedian. They virtually do not exist.

I've toyed with the idea of getting a card designed for a brother, but that strikes me as potentially awkward, even for a close friend. It's obvious it's not designed for the situation.

I wonder if Dayspring, makers of Christian cards, has an appropriate line of cards. They don't even have to be explicitly Christian, just clean (though admittedly the men I send birthday cards to are all Christian men).

Just one more consequence of going against the flow and being a bit out of the ordinary.

The other day I walked into Best Buy and was stunned to see a refrigerator with a television built into the door. Now I may have been vaguely aware of this coming down the pike, but it was still a shock to see. I have to ask: What do you do, stand in the kitchen to watch it? Is it for men who don't want to miss the game during that three seconds between the time they shift their eyes from the television in the living room to the time they open the door? Is there one inside too, to save another three seconds? Actually this one did have two screens, a large one on the right door and a smaller one on the left door. The irony is there was a big label on it saying that it was not capable of receiving the digital signals we'll be switching to in January of 2009. So it's already obsolete. You'd think if you're marking to people who want to watch television on their refrigerator, that you'd want it to last more than fifteen months (at least, without a converter).

Then I saw an electronic jar opener which I had never seen before. Despite my knee-jerk reaction I'm a little more hesitant to declare this a symptom of materialistic excess. Some people, e.g. the elderly, cannot easily open most jars and this would be appropriate for them. Otherwise, if you have room for it in your kitchen, I suppose it's not any worse than an electric can opener.

It does make me think about my purchases though and where I spend money. I think this is important for any Christian, especially one of means, to do. I was thinking of buying a food dehydrator to dehydrate my peach tree harvest. (The peaches look quite unappetizing; this is the first year I've realized though that once you take the skin off, they are just fine.) Part of me just doesn't want another bulky space-consuming kitchen gadget; as it is I've run out of storage space in my kitchen and have started storing things in spare bedrooms. Besides the can opener, I have a veggie steamer (a gift I rarely use, but when you need to do lots of veggies, it's a must), a wok (which I use occasionally), a crock pot (not often but from time to time), a hand mixer, a scale, and a vacuum sealer (very useful for a single guy like me). When does this become materialistic excess? I'd say that all these items — excepting the electric can opener — do things which are difficult or impossible to do any other way, though admittedly I'd survive without doing them. A dehydrator would probably fall into that category; even if I could dehydrate things in the oven (and I have done beef jerky this way), dehydrating a large quantity of peaches would be prohibitive. I have a similar dilemma with a canner, although I might be able to get away with canning with most of the equipment I already have.

Perhaps once I've examined myself to see whether I am being materialistic in my purchases, I can consider, as a devotional I read brought up, how I can use my possessions for the glory of God. I'm not sure I can feed dehydrated or canned peaches to the poor but it might be worth keeping in mind. But that's a topic for another day.

This is your quasi-monthly non-faith-related rant...

With due respect to all you ladies out there, I have had my fill with the breast cancer awareness campaign. I see that stupid pink ribbon freakin' everywhere. I saw it today on a canister of salt, of all things! I saw that and thought, y'know, I'd like to start a blue ribbon campaign for prostate cancer, which, like breast cancer among women, is second-leading cancer among men and second-leading cause of cancer deaths. It is also the fifth-leading cause of death among men over 45. So why is it so important to promote breast cancer awareness and totally ignore prostate cancer? Better yet, why not promote lung cancer awareness, which bests both of them?

I'm waiting for the pink ribbon to appear on quarts of milk.

One of my 8th grade catechism charges cracked me up today. I asked a question, which he got wrong, to which he replied, "It's those guys from the 60s who tricked us." I was ROTFL!

I was listening to, yes, you guessed it, Catholic Answers Live with Jimmy Akin, when he used language that startled me. He referred to someone "overclocking the text". What he meant was that these people were, in his opinion, investing more significance into the language of the Biblical text than he thought was warranted; in other words, he interpreted this language loosely and rather fluidly, rather than taking a rigorous, strict, and narrow interpretation, and that to take a strict interpretation would be pushing more out of the language than was in it.

Most of you are probably looking at your monitors quizzically saying, "Overclocking?" Precisely the reason his language startled me. This is an obscure techie term. It refers to hacking a computer's processor to work faster than it is rated to go. It's a bit like putting your computer on amphetamines or steroids. [Detailed, optional explanation follows in next paragraph.]

A computer does its work in what are called clock cycles, which are like measures in a piece of music. If you speed up the tempo of a piece of music, you can get the same notes played in a shorter amount of time, and if you speed up all your music, you can save a lot of time. Similarly, by increasing the clock rate of a computer, you can get more work out of in per unit of time, and it works faster. But just as an orchestra can only play so fast, the processor can only work so fast. Pushing a processor beyond its (conservative) manufacturer-guaranteed limits is called overclocking. Just as you can exceed the speed limit with varying degrees of risk (with virtually no risk on the low end and a lot of risk on the high end), you can overclock at a low level without a problem but can also face some challenges at higher speeds.

Ok, you may or may not have been interested in my lengthy explication of overclocking, but at least you can understand both what Jimmy meant (they are pushing the text too far) and why it's so surprising he would choose to use this language which so few of his listeners would understand. But as a geek, I had to rejoice.

Another five minutes or so off my fifteen minutes of fame: I finally got on the "Who Wants To Be An Apologist?" gameshow on Catholic Answers Live. I've had a lot of problems getting on this game show in the past, but the secret, as with all the shows, is to call several minutes before it begins.

The show can be tricky. They have a "Box of Easiness" (three questions) and a "Hat of Difficulty" (two questions) and even the easy ones can be hard. One that was asked of someone before me was which son of Adam was Jesus descended from. I guessed "Shem". Shows you how much I know (Shem was son of Noah). Then there are the tricky true-false questions.

I got easy easy questions, and aced them all. This won me $50 (plus the mug that all participants get). To win another $50 I had to answer two difficult questions.

The first difficult question was, who was the last Catholic monarch of England? At first I thought it was the king before Henry VIII, but then I reasoned that even Henry VIII had been Catholic. Maybe it was a trick question. I neglected to consider though that Henry did not put a total end to Catholicism on the throne of England. I should have remembered Bloody Mary, but even she wasn't the last one. The last one was someone I never would have guessed in a million years, James II.

But hey, I was thankful to have placed. My big fear was getting a tricky easy question and failing there. I was the first one on the program to move to the Hat of Difficulty.

The ironic thing is that I had just placed an order the day before. Fortunately I was able to get them to retroactively apply my $50 winnings to the order.

Warning: This entry is rated XC for Extreme Catholic content. If get the heebie-jeebies from the thumbnail do not proceed to photos!

So I was praying the Divine Office this evening, that is, the evening prayer of the church from the Psalms, which by the grace of God I remembered in time to do, which, sadly, happens only every few months or so. When I pray the Office, I like to go all out and set the mood. I like to light candles with the lights off, sometimes incense (both grain and stick), cross myself with rose water, and so forth. I love the ambiance. I admit it's also sometimes fun and distracting. Maybe the following inspiration was a distraction too, but I thought, this is really cool, I should try to get a photo of this; I've never tried to do this before. I thought the photos came out pretty darn good, especially for the low light. (Naturally I had to go get my tripod.)

This doesn't show all of my icon wall, and many holy cards have fallen, but it shows part. Here is a catalog which I believe to be complete of all of the icons from Holy Transfiguration Monastery that I own (which is 90% of them).

Someday I want to get oil lamps, and maybe a censer. But I am not sure what I'd do with the censer; maybe play altar boy. I'd probably just put a burnt hole in my carpet. Granular incense is so hard to burn anyway, especially if you have smoke detectors.

I am a few days behind ... I went camping here this past weekend and had a great time, then had to attend to my final peach harvest (shown). As you can see there are a lot of peaches to harvest. Tonight I went to an event celebrating the reunion of two churches: The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR, also known as the Russian Church Abroad, RCA). On display was the miracle-working Derzhavnaya Icon and performing was the respected Moscow Sretensky Monastery Choir. The church where it was held, where I have been once, is a beautiful church. It has icons on nearly every square inch of its interior.

The interesting thing about this icon of Madonna and child is that it was interpreted as "a witness that the ultimate authority over and care for Russia had passed to the Heavenly Queen Herself." Strangely enough, this is just three months before Mary appeared (so they say) at Fatima, in which she said that people must pray for the "conversion of Russia" or she would "spread her errors throughout the world". It is also the very same day of the year that visionary Sister Lucia died. Food for thought.

After the 17 hour trip, our van stopped in front of the carport, which was walled in with bubble gum and baling wire to serve as a sort of gazebo for outdoor entertaining. I went inside dropped my bag at the foot of the cot that I would be sleeping on for the next week and surveyed the room. Instead of drywall, the inside was walled with outdoor siding. The ceiling sagged and the pieces of siding joined at odd angles. All the furnishings came from the thrift shop that Msgr. Ralph Beiting ran. Despite the non-traditional style — in some ways typical of the region — it was quite a homey place during our stay. To think that everything we used was a gift from some loving donor filled us with both a sense of humility and poverty.

Ok, I coined that term (no clue if I am the first) but I think it is apt to describe an experience I had today.

I overheard a woman make one of those warm but potentially loaded comments strangers make to people. She told a man towing two children, "My, they must be handful!" to which the man replied, "Oh, only one of them is mine." Now I had passed by them and when I saw them, they were behaving just fine as far as I could tell, and the whole conversation in my mind seemed to revolve around how many they were ("Oh, no, only one of them is mine"). Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions, but it seemed to be she was saying, "You have more children than I would expect", i.e. a subtle way of communicating that you may have exceeded your quota of children by prevailing cultural standards.

If so, it would seem to be surprising, since last I checked two was pretty much the standard. (I believe in the U.S. the average is 2.1 children.) I might expect this comment with four. I'd overlook it with three. But two? I'm wondering if I am missing a trend.

Were I to have a quiver-full of children, and strangers made rude remarks to me about them, I would quote Mother Teresa: "How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers!"

Or maybe I'd tell them my children would be paying their social security benefits. But that would probably be rude. :-)

I just heard what may be the funniest true story I've ever heard, at least one of the funniest. I heard it from a caller on Catholic Answers Live, a Catholic apologetics call-in show.

Seems this parent called with a dilemma. He and his wife had just had a baby two weeks ago, who joins their eight year old son in the family. Now the eight year old son was very devout, and loved his new brother and was very excited about him, and did what any devout eight year old who fervently loved his brother would do: He baptized him.

Now for those who are not familiar with Catholic teaching, Catholicism teaches that water baptism can be performed by anyone with the right intention using the right form, and once performed, cannot be repeated. The kid certainly intended to baptize his brother. And he used precisely the right form. How did they know? Well apparently the kid tried to do the baptism verbally in the hospital, and his father helpfully corrected him, explaining everything to him, that water was necessary, and the invocation of the Trinity, and so forth, apparently omitting the fact that they were saving the baptism for the church. D'oh! So the guests on the show concluded that it was in all likelihood a valid baptism (though they'll probably want to get an official ruling on this). Baptized by my eight year old brother. What a hoot.

What they recommended (which is what I decided too) is that they go forward with the church baptism but do a conditional baptism. This is like a regular baptism except they add "If you are not already baptized ..." to "I baptize you...". I wonder if the priest can do this sotto voce to downplay the irregularity. :-) Preferably do this before you get a ruling (likely not hard) since there is at that point still a small doubt about the validity.

I was rolling on the floor laughing when I heard this. I had to turn my iPod off to compose myself.

So I wonder what date they'll put on the baptismal certificate. :-)

Not being a parent, it's hard for me to judge how an eight year old thinks. The scenario of this happening with childish innocence strikes me as something befitting a five or six year old, maybe even a seven year old. I won't claim that an eight year old can't do this totally innocently, but they're getting kind of old. An eight year old I would argue is old enough to be capable of thinking, gee maybe this is something that mom and dad should take care of. They start to gain faculties of judgment and so forth. Of course that doesn't rule out a lapse, or maybe delayed development for this individual. I mean, kids do stuff. Just that it's cute when a five year old does it, not so cute when an eight year old does it, but if I were the father, I'd have a tough time not laughing, and a tough time punishing him. I'd have serious a heart-to-heart talk with him about good judgment and responsibility though.

I got a solicitation recently from a major Catholic charity which was entitled "2007 Annual Renewal". (Yes, I am a bit behind.) I assumed this was a normal pledge-type thing, where you promise to give them so much money throughout the year, and then enclose your first installment. This charity used that model before, I think. But on the response slip (I threw the accompanying letter and other material away a long time ago) "pledge" was not mentioned, and in fact it was worded with the expectation (it seemed to me) that you'd send in the whole amount. ("My gift to renew my annual support is enclosed for [list of amounts]")

So I'm trying to figure out exactly what it is I'm supposed to do. Am I supposed to give my year's worth of support in one gift? Can't be true. That would mean they wouldn't solicit any other gifts this year, and you know that's not true. :-) Is this a way for them to determine who is going to give this year, perhaps to prune their mailing lists? I doubt they'd give up so easy. More than likely, my theory is it's a gimmick — nothing more, nothing less. An attempt to elicit a response by making it sound like a more important gift than the multiplicity of gifts they'll solicit throughout the year. It doesn't really mean anything different to them; they will still send me the same solicitations whether I respond to this one or not. In that case, I'm wasting my time scratching my head and speculating on how I should respond.

Gotta love these charities' marketing.

But at least it's not as bad as the Publisher's Clearinghouse. Somehow they started appearing in my mailbox again this year. Can't remember the last time I saw one. I decided to play ball. Oh vey! The absurd and pointless things they make you do! I wonder if there is a name for when marketers instruct you to take a sticker and put it somewhere (I should ask Yahoo! Answers), but these folks have it down to a science. Naturally, many of the stickers are embedded in the pages where they try to get you to buy stuff. And of course the copy is breathless — telling you how close you are to winning, and be sure to meet the deadlines (speeds up the orders, of course). And the attempts to sound personal and important — entry numbers, "one of these has won" with your name listed, occasionally so deceitful you could argue they are actually claiming you've won. Not to mention the artificial sense of urgency. In a way it's amusing to read.

This is what I sent to OCN (who run The Ark, see previous post):

(Note: When I say "I love Orthodoxy" I mean it in the sense that because it is so close to our own faith, there is a lot that I can learn from it, and in general I love the Eastern perspective on things. It does not imply I am flirting with the Orthodox Church, though to be sure it would be useful for them to think that I am.)

So I've been listening recently to The Ark, which is a contemporary Orthodox music Internet radio station. (It's billed as "Orthodox Christian music" but a good 50% of it is Evangelical music.) It's the closest thing to a contemporary Catholic music I have run across. Besides, I'm Eastern, anyway.

Anyway, today I heard my first ad on there targeting Catholics. The argument ran like this: Take away the last 1,000 years of changes from the Roman Catholic church, and you have the Orthodox Church. If you have been seeking a church that removes the last 1,000 years of change in the Roman Catholic church, come join the Orthodox Church.

Now I don't have a problem with someone who wins a soul away from a church through fair and square convincing them that your faith is the true faith. Christianity is an evangelistic religion, and I do not begrudge anyone who believes that someone cannot be saved unless they know the truth as they know it, and so proclaim to someone their perspective on the truth so that they might be saved. At least such people have strong convictions and I respect that. Also, we are responsible for evangelizing and catechizing our own people. If we don't do that well, and someone from another church does it better, then I have absolutely no sympathy for us.

That being said, the Orthodox tend to throw a temper tantrum any time we gain converts from them. There have been many conflicts over this. To be fair, in some cases we induced conversions through material goods (and sometimes cold, hard cash) and that's not right, but I don't think this is true of every case that the Orthodox complain about. So I consider it hypocritical for them to complain about our "proselytizing" while trying to steal our sheep.

(I suspect that the people who run this station have strong links to a group of Evangelicals who independently reconstructed something like the Orthodox church, and then when they realized the church they were seeking already existed, converted to Antiochene Orthodoxy sometime ago. I guess I'd call these the the Franky Schaeffer group, only because he's the most notable convert of that period. This would explain the emphasis on evangelism, which frankly is a concept pretty foreign to Orthodoxy.)

But in any case, let's address their claims. They say that if you take "Roman Catholicism" (and of course it is always "Roman" Catholicism), and remove one millennium of changes, poof, you'll get Orthodoxy. This is being disingenuous. Both faith and practice have been distinct between the West and the East from the beginning. Compatible, yes, but distinct. If you said remove 1,000 years and you'd have the Western half of Orthodoxy (a Western half that does not genuinely exist today in Orthodoxy), I might agree.

But what I found quite amusing that they were specifically appealing to Catholics who thought that we needed to strip 1,000 years of changes away from "Roman" Catholicism. Frankly I haven't run across too many such people who think, "Gee, I love Catholicism, but if you stripped away half it's history, it would be so much better." I'm not going to go so far as to deny that there are such people, but I'd argue that they'd have to be so far convinced of Orthodoxy anyway, that their invitation is probably not going to have a big impact on the outcome.

But let's address this issue of the 1,000 years of "changes" in Catholicism. Orthodoxy is a religion that prides itself on its tradition; in fact, if it were possible (and I'm sure your average Western religiously-educated person would be agog to hear this), Orthodoxy is more tradition-bound than Catholicism. Orthodoxy is also resistant to change, even more so than Catholicism. To use an example, the cycle of readings in the Byzantine rite is so old that it excludes the book of Revelation because its canonicity was still in doubt when the cycle was fixed. The last major reform of the liturgy was around the 4th century, when St. John Chrysostom redacted the liturgy that bears his name. Now what I find remarkable is that the practice of the Orthodox Church has changed much less now in that past millennium than it changed during the classical period of Christianity. In other words, Orthodoxy is stagnant. In the past 1,000 years, not only hasn't Orthodoxy changed like Catholicism, it hasn't changed at all; not to adapt to new technologies, not to face new challenges, nada. I do not see this as a virtue. But they don't have a choice; they have no leader who can approve, coordinate and execute such changes. Catholicism is dynamic; Orthodoxy is static. I wouldn't be bragging about being stuck in the 11th century (really, more like 5th or 6th).

Your Lenten penance

My favorite quote: “We’re not scientists.” Precisely.

I love their argument for why they can't be forgeries. It obviously never occurred to them that they could have been forged in antiquity.

(Thanks to my friend Daniel)

It's time for another rant.

Ever heard of the brand Wild Oats? They sell — condoms? No, they sell health food. (I suppose you wouldn't be sowing your wild oats with a condom on anyway). Who approved this name? Who thought it would be a good name for a line of products, given that it is a euphemism for living a life of unrestrained youthful immorality? I cringe every time I run across it, and today I saw they just went over the top. Apparently they introduced a brand called "Wild Oats Living". Why not just call it "Profligate Dissipation"?

Are these people just not aware of the connotations their brand invokes? Do they not care? Worse, do they know and are they using it intentionally to appeal to the profligate dissipation set? (Seems doubtful.) I mean, is this expression far narrower in usage than I think? Is it a "Christian" expression that the secular world has forgotten?

I just don't understand...

I had a remarkable experience today. You know how sometimes Christian charities give you the opportunity to write prayer intentions on donation response forms? I figured they just took the forms after processing and piled them up in bulk on the altar during Mass or a prayer meeting or something, and then burn them or otherwise dispose of them. Which would be fine, God still hears the prayers. But imagine my surprise when one such organization (Food For The Poor) actually had a member of their prayer group call me up and read my prayer intentions back to me and say they were praying for them! That's pretty darn remarkable! You can bet I'll remember that ...

I saw a bumper sticker with the above saying on it the other day. At first it sounded like a New Age-ish thing but the more I thought about it, the more Catholic it seemed.

Catholic doctrine &mdash basing itself upon the first chapters of Genesis — refers to human beings as co-creators with God. This is because God commanded us to "be fruitful and multiply", thus bringing new human beings into the world, indeed participating in the creation of new souls. (This is why we refer to it as procreation rather than "reproduction".) It is also because God put Adam in the garden to till it and take care of it. In other words, work is a form of co-creation.

God, in essence, created us to participate in the work of creation. He called us to fill the earth and subdue it, which is a participation in his own sovereignty. We are made in the image of God, and we are called to rest as he himself rested, or rather, his rest was a pattern for us to imitate. We have reason and intellect as God has, and use that in our work.

So in a sense, a call to co-create our own reality is a call to be aware of our role as co-creators, to raise our work and family to a divine level, and to apply the theme of co-creation to what we do.

I have no idea if the bumper-sticker makers (or the car owner) had this in mind. In fact, doing a Google search for the phrase does in fact bring up a bunch of New Age stuff. But I think it's a valid idea when understood in an orthodox fashion. St. Paul said to cling to whatever was true. Here is a perfect example.

Yahoo allows you to create an "avatar" — basically a cartoon representation of yourself — on your account.

Despite the wide array of apparel, hairstyles, backgrounds, accessories, and so forth, I was disappointed that I could not add a Van Dyke to my face. (A Van Dyke is a goatee with a moustache.) There are only two choices for facial hair, both of which are attached to certain faces: one is a five o'clock shadow with a face that looks like he's about to machine gun a crowd, and one is a face with an artiste-looking tuft of lower-lip hair who at least doesn't look like he's up for killing anyone but who doesn't smile either (and doesn't fit my facial features anyway).

And so, if you see me on Yahoo! Answers, you'll find I am uncharacteristically clean-shaven.

I got a solicitation from Voice of the Faithful yesterday.

I returned the card and wrote on it in big letters, "YOU HAVE THE WRONG MAILING LIST."

I was in a grocery store today and saw a sign that people who looked younger than 50 would be carded for alcohol or tobacco (16 in our state) purchases. I have seen such signs that say that everyone will be carded regardless of age.

Now let's think about it. It makes sense to card those who look under 30 because some under-21 people look much older. But can they look 50? Are there any 15 year-olds who would pass for 70?

I dunno, I get this feeling that someone thinks they can prove they are hard on underage smoking and drinking merely by raising the age one is carded at. "Doing something" without actually accomplishing anything useful. And inconveniencing a whole slew of people in the process. All pain, no gain.

Your government bureaucracy at work.

The Lord convicted me of something recently (we'll see whether it sticks) and I thought I'd share it.

As I've mentioned before I tend to be a bit of a complainer. Lately my spiritual life has consisted mostly of complaints about why the Lord is allowing this to happen or why he's allowing that to happen. (In particular, I wonder why it is that I want so badly to be holy, but feel like I'm going so far in the other direction. I also complain that I can't see God working in my life.) Sometimes I feel like my prayer is just a litany of complaints.

I started to think about the Israelites in the desert. They complained. And God was not at all happy about it. They had seen his mighty works, but when the going got tough, they stopped trusting in him and complained.

What did they complain about? Well, for one thing, there was the menu. Manna. For forty years.

Hmmmm.

What would I do if I had to spend forty years eating manna? I'd probably complain, too.

After about a week.

What else did they complain about?

Lack of water. You know, one of those luxury items. Totally unreasonable to want that.

Suddenly my track record is not looking so good. I'd really hate to think what I'd be doing if I were back then.

I think about the wonders that God has done in my life. And how I've forgotten them. And how my trust in God has become a bit strained. Not unlike the Israelites. And then there is the complaining. Yep, just like the Israelites.

Sigh. And here all along I thought the Israelites were pretty stupid.

Well I'll try to learn from this to avoid complaining. It's going to be hard, because there is a lot I don't understand, and a lot of frustration I feel. By God's grace may I be at peace. And, Moses, pray for me!

Only one in five Catholics attends Mass. One guy comments, "I don't think you're going to die and go to heaven and hear, 'Frank, you didn't go to church for 15 years.'" Hmmm: Why not? If you can't spend regular time listening to the Gospel being preached, worshipping and meeting together, and participating in the Eucharist, what makes you think you have enough of a relationship with the Lord for Him to receive you into heaven? That's a little like not spending time with your wife for 15 years and expecting to have much of a marriage left.

Another said he "avoids the heavy-handed pronouncements from the pulpit that he says turn off today's Catholics." Not that I'm saying this is right, but when was the last time you heard a "heavy-handed pronouncement" from the pulpit? (I suspect he is speaking metaphorically, i.e., pronouncements from the Church itself, not necessary in the parish on Sunday.)

I have a personal prayer request to ask of you.

I was laid off — together with 45% of the company — two months ago, and I have been looking for a job ever since. I have had 14 years' of experience doing what I do (embedded software development engineer) in my industry (telecommunications), which unfortunately tends to narrow my scope. There aren't many job opportunities in the telecom industry in this area, and I've gotten virtually no bites from the rest of the embedded world, probably because of my narrow range of experience. If this continues in this vein I will have to either relocate (which I am strongly averse to doing) or change careers (which not only will be hard to figure out how to do, but will likely bring in much less money, which I may or may not be able to live off of with my lifestyle). I have heard some frightening stories from my industry; one of my peers was reduced to working at Lowe's because he couldn't find a job.

So, pray for a job, pray for peace, pray for discernment. And who knows, maybe the Lord is calling me to the religious life. That's something I have to consider. Where, I have no clue.

Alas, it's a slow news day (or two). No news clips today (gasp!). Instead I will muse on random things.

Today was the March for Life. I did not make it (as is customary for me, though I did go last year). I hope it went well. I did see some news articles about it which is a good sign.

A friend of mine wrote me email urging me to call my senators (ahem, Kennedy and Kerry) and asking them vote for Alito. Now, really, how funny would I feel to do that? It would be like calling the Vatican and urging the Pope to convert to Islam. If you do it with a straight face, you half expect them to laugh. Maybe if you admit it's funny, you'll have a chance of them listening to you. Or maybe they'll take you less seriously. I just don't know how to approach it. This is how I feel about most issues I care about. This is where I really hate being a Massachusetts resident.

This is totally unrelated to the faith, but I think it is cool, and this is my blog, so I'm going to post it. I've been perusing an interesting site, http://www.familytreedna.com. It's a site that will analyze your DNA for you and tell you who you are related to. As an engineer, I have to admit, I now know how other people feel when we try to explain stuff to them. The site is full of the arcana of DNA, and as they go on and on about clades and base pairs and DYS values, I find myself not only lost among the trees but inundated with details about pine needles when what I really want is to see the forest. They even go into details about the DNA base, and provide a complete base sequence for you as your results. Everything they say is well and good, but I find myself asking, so how am I supposed to use this information? Like the technophobe who just wants to get things done with a minimum of fuss, I know what I want and what I want to find out is if the test tells me what I want to know. I really don't care about guanine or thysine, base pair numbers, DYS numbers, or alleles! Just tell me what ethnic groups I come from, and who I'm related to. To be fair it's quite clear it provides that information, but wading through everything is a bit of a mess.

Maybe this will help me explain things better to my users. Aim at getting them where they want to go.

Oh, by the way, the JP2 coin came, and it looks really good.

Ah, here's a news article I am too lazy to post now that I've already written most of this entry (and it's bedtime for me): Michael Schiavo got remarried. I'll give him partial credit for waiting ten months, but the official mourning period is a year, thank you very much. Not much else of interest to the event, except that it was apparently in the church (!) and was both private and not private. Private in the sense that it was held secretly, not private in the sense that the media managed to weasel an amazing amount of information out of people nonetheless.

When spam comes through with a subject line that says "Your neighbors lost their alarm clock", what the heck does it mean?

This is my rant for the day.

I just called my credit card company to find out why I wasn't getting "Reward Dollars" anymore. Upon completing that exchange (turned out I had reached the limit), he informed me that due to my good credit, I had been specially selected to receive a special balance transfer rate. I replied that I had no balances to transfer, whereupon he assured me that I could simply deposit the check in my checking account and spend it on whatever I wanted. I told him I had nothing to buy. He emphasized what an incredible opportunity this was, talking it up to beat the band. Then he said, "What would you do if I sent you a check for $15,000?" I told him I'd tear it up. There was virtually no deterring him. I did my best polite "no" and forced the conversation to an end.

I couldn't believe how the whole conversation he's acting as if I should just go on a shopping binge and spend this money that's conveniently available, as if it were free. Sorry, but I don't spend $15,000 without very carefully thinking about it and planning it, and then only if I have a compelling justification for it. I don't just say, "Hey, a $15,000 loan dropped into my lap, let's spend it!" God help anyone who does that! It's no wonder our country is screwed up when people are being encouraged to go into debt like this.

I pass by a church on the way to Bible Study that has a sign that says:

... which leads me to wonder if I'm supposed to feel guilty if I don't show up! Kind of has that "You will show up, Mr. Ewanco" foreboding type of ring to it.

These pathetic specimens (click to zoom) are the first fruits that I've partaken of from my garden. This garden has been a difficult one this year. Nothing from a whole row of green beans sprouted. I got a row of green peppers, but not even any flowers yet. Out of a whole row of corn, I got two plants, which yielded one ear each, what you see here. (And a row of lettuce which was quite successful.)

This seems to be matching my spiritual life: seemingly fruitless, or very nearly so. Nothing I can see but desolation. Well, OK, so there is the opportunity to persevere in faith in the absence of consolation and the presence of adversity. Yay. Well, then again, what is love when it comes easily and is enjoyable? Real love is love in the face of difficulty and adversity. So I slog through it, knowing one day perseverence will be rewarded. I pray that the fruit of my life will not correspond to the fruit of my garden! Lord, make us fruitful.

The local grocery store already has a Christmas display up.

I think this is a record for me (I'm sure others have similar stories).

I have a Yahoo news alert for any articles related to the Pope. The following headline came up today:

Pope suspended for violating drug policy

I wondered what kind of drug it was His Holiness had decided to take when I saw it really referred to Kendyll Pope of the Indianapolis Colts.

Relieved, but amused.

I was in the supermarket the other day and had a chance to sample some Aidell's Cajun Style Andouille sausage. It was really good so I bought some. Let me tell you, this is absolutely the most awesome sausage I have ever tasted! (No I do not get any marketing kickbacks ...) Very spicy (which I like), so much so I didn't even want to dip it into mustard (as is my wont) as it just conflicted with the perfect flavors. It didn't need the additional spices.

It comes pre-cooked, too, so no muss, no fuss there.

Check their website for less spicy flavors.

Well discovered my first confirmed tourist ripoff yesterday.

I bought — for one and a half euros — a small liqueur glass meant for Lemoncello that said "Amalfi Coast" on it. Put it in the diswasher and the Amalfi Coast part just disappeared. Well, I guess what do you expect for 1.5 euros?

The photos of my trip are ready.

Today we left for home. Talk about a grueling day. Got up around 5:30 (which was certainly better than 12:30 as we did to come to Rome), and didn't get home until 2am Rome time. On the flight back, the computer power connector on the seat worked this time, and I started to play my DVDs, only to have a flight attendant interrupt me and advise me that it was against their policy to play DVDs! Can you believe that! Especially odd given that they offer free movies which play on an individual screen at each seat. Figure that out for logic. So I brought five DVDs with me to play and only got a few minutes through one of them. (That's OK; I watched it during my layover.)

I forgot to convert 20 euros on my way back. Now I'm gonna have a tough time getting rid of them (my credit union doesn't deal in foreign currency). Oops! I have a friend who may buy them off of me.

Today is the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, which is a big deal here. Unfortunately it meant that the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel were closed, and I never got to see either, nor did I get a chance to buy a necklace that my stepmother had asked me to buy. I feel bad that I failed in buying it, but they have given us very little time to explore the Vatican. Today was the first time, too, that I was able to wander around St. Peter's Basilica. I was looking for the statue of St. Peter I hear so much about but that must be elsewhere. I'm a bit disappointed — actually quite disappointed — that the Vatican was not on the tour schedule. Fr. Peter assured me that there would be enough time to visit it, but there was not. Humph.

Oh! I got to see the Pope today. We went to the solemn liturgy of the Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul. I only got a blurry photo of him though (darn auto-focus) and he was about 20 ft away from me. I also had a nice photo of him at the altar — nice except that the auto-focus again picked the back of someone's head to focus on and left the subject completely out of focus. (Manual focus is useless as the screen is too small the see the kind of detail you need to see to determine if it is focused or not. Here is where an SLR would probably come in handy.)

Communion was weird. One side of our section of chairs — the inside &mdash had a barricade. The priest simply came up to the barricade from the other side and gave communion to all those at the barricade. If you were not seated next to the barricade, you simply elbowed your way toward the barricade and streeeeeeached out your hand for the Eucharist. Why can't they do this in a more organized fashion? I know — they're Italians.

Then we went to the Catacombs — specifically, the St. Sebastian catacombs. I was a bit disappointed for several reasons. First, no photography was allowed. Second, there were no bones and virtually no inscriptions to see. They had cleaned the bones out. It was as if someone took a graveyard, emptied it of all its bones, removed the headstones, and cleaned everything up, and then gave tours of empty, unlabeled graves. What's the point? I wanted to pray with the ancient martyrs. Sheesh.

We were supposed to go to St. Paul's Outside-the-walls where St. Paul's bones are buried. I opted not to go, in part because someone told me they saw the Vatican Gift Shop open (which I now believe was false), in part because I wanted to see St. Peter's, the Colosseum, and the Forum before I left. A couple of others bagged out of it too so we took a cab back. I got to do my wandering around St. Peter's, then I took a cab to the Forum and the Colosseum. The Colosseum, alas, was closed for entry by just about an hour. (Of course I could still look at the outside.)

Discovered that pepperoni pizza doesn't exist in Italy. The term "pepperoni" to them means some mixture of bell peppers. I was disappointed. They did have a pizza with some sort of sausage on it but the one I had wasn't too tasty.

Today we traveled the Amalfi coast (famous for its beauty) and saw the blood of St. Pantaleone in the Cathedral of Rolello. This blood, held in a monstrance-like reliquary, is normally opaque and dark brown, but on his Feast Day (27th of July), it turns translucent ruby red. Lamentably my attempts to get a photo of it were thwarted by the glass on one side (which just reflected my flash) and the grille on the other side (it's very hard to get the focus right when photographing through a grille since the auto-focus thinks you're photographing the grille). I did end up getting something, though.