Monday

Miscellaneous Rambling

I've heard from good sources that it's acceptable to bring a notebook to Mass and take notes, if it helps keep you engaged. Can a person bring a Bible to Mass and read from it? Maybe a spiritual book? I'm really struggling with my attention during Mass these days. I'm wondering how much flexibility a good Catholic has. Any suggestions, my email address is on the left or comments box below. * * * * * * * I can't remember if I've mentioned it: I've finally found a genre of literature I like to listen to: the biography. I liked a biography of Johnny Carson. I'm now listening to one of Jack Dempsey and the Roaring Twenties (a decade that has long interested me, partly because of my respect for Albert Jay Nock, who reached the height of his fame then). * * * * * * * Quote from Ben Stein: "Most of the thousands of blacks killed by gunfire each year are killed by other blacks, usually in gangs. (Naturally, Mr Obama never mentions the black people's real enemies, the Crips and the Bloods. He only cares about black deaths when he can whip up black people to hate white people. Gang violence is irrelevant to that subject.)" Got me thinking: Is whipping up dissent the overriding theme of Obama's presidency? Has he done this on purpose: the black-white hatred, promoting the incredibly-divisive LGBT agenda (when we know he doesn't really support homosexuality), Obamacare? It's almost as though he has purposefully, for seven years, pulled off every stunt he could think of to rouse passions and hatred. Has his goal been to distract us from the economy without using the traditional means (pushing the U.S. into war)? Is he merely the prologue for greater evil to come? Is he like those arrested development sorts who just like to cause dissension for the sake of shaking things up? I really don't know. * * * * * * * I've noticed that middle-aged women seem particularly susceptible to that personality plague: the desire, in conversation, to be disruptive, to make people uncomfortable, to shake things up, to be argumentative. Why is that? I'm talking in particular about women ages 40-65, and it seems especially acute among women who didn't work in the job market once they had children. Is it a need to assert their psychological toughness? An inordinate desire to "engage" intellectually with others because they weren't engaged intellectually while staying home? I really don't know. I can rattle off ten women I've known who suffer from this personality flaw, whereas I can think of, maybe, one or two men. Fortunately, neither my mom nor wife suffer from it. * * * * * * * Stumbled upon this Saturday night while watching Arena Football and playing Trivial Pursuit with the kids (talk about multi-tasking):