Tonight, I have nothing to do. After tonight? Social, service, or family obligations nine out of the next ten days. One is very pleasant (tree decorating with the family), but the rest are simple time consumers (committee meetings, take care of house and children while Marie is out, a perfectly painful Christmas party for children, […]
I saved the best for second: Mark Steyn’s obituary in The Atlantic Monthly. It’s the best regular feature in the magazine, and in the December issue he has cranked out his best one: funny, anecdote-filled, disconcerting, with a Catholic kicker at the end. It’s about journalist, secularist, leftist, Muslim hater Orianna Fallaci, who said shortly […]
The Atlantic Monthly came yesterday. All sorts of good stuff. The issue revolves around the most influential Americans of all time. There’s the top 100, plus a bunch of sidebar articles on the most influential poets, filmmakers, etc. A few great blurbs: Hitchcock eventually edged over into horror—see the move from Vertigo to Psycho—and introduced […]
Ah, my favorite weekend of the year has ended. Most sad indeed. But I have Cyber Monday to perk me up. Today is the one of the biggest online shopping days of the year. People go to their offices and shop online. I think I’ll pass. I have my wife to cover my shopping back, […]
Marriage implies the negation of self, and the negation of self is an invitation to God. When married, the individuals are no longer two, but are one flesh. Mt. 19:6. The self-centeredness that is the essence of the flesh is, by the very act of marriage, crippled. The self-interest that drives the individual receives a […]
Ah, peaceful Saturday morning. It is the Saturday of Eric (not to be confused with the Summer of George, but dang close to the same thing). What’s on my schedule today? Blog, buy a CD organizer, read, clean the kitchen floor, study, nap, research, exercise, write, decorate my study for Christmas, read, and watch the […]
Yes, a black eudemon. It’s not my effort at multi-culturalism. It’s a simple recognition of a day that has grabbed America and continues to puzzle me: Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, shin-bleeding day. I understand a little better now: stores put out great bargains to lure the […]
It’s been a very good year. For that matter, it’s been a very good life, and I think it’s because things didn’t go as planned. I live in a small town: not NYC, where I had planned on living (my girlfriend turned fiance turned wife slowly weened me from the idea, though, if I were […]
The Thanksgiving celebration starts early. My brother arrived from Mississippi last night. I go to a client’s this afternoon for food and drink. I meet family and friends at the honky tonk later this afternoon. It’s my favorite secular day of the year. I’ll drink beer and visit with no fewer than twenty family members, […]
Another late evening for me, and there’s not much blogging material out there. I found this humorous, though: A spurned Malaysian woman is taking legal action against her former lover, claiming that he had coerced her into having sex a total of 31 times with the false promise of marriage, a news report said on […]
Light fare today. I went to Casino Royale last night. Good movie, but long. Fully modernized: spy-like use of cell phones; siliconed women; hard-body Bonds; Texas Hold ‘Em, not Baccarat; Terrorists, not Kremlin agents; M a female, not male. If I had to do it over, I’d probably wait for it to come out on […]
Humility is the safeguard of chastity. In the matter of purity, there is no greater danger than not fearing danger. When a person puts himself in an occasion of sin, saying, “I shall not fall,” it is almost an infallible sign that he will fall, and with great injury to his soul. We must specifically […]
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