The Weekend Eudemon

Guy Fawkes Day, and I'm celebrating it sober. Which is fitting, since I'm Catholic. It's also the 400th anniverary of the infamous Gunpowder Plot. If you're interested in it, you may want to check out a good essay that Catholic Exchange ran this morning.

For me, November 5th is important for a different reason: It's the day I met my wife. November 5, 1986 in the evening, 8:00ish, in an Ann Arbor bar where I was drinking beer with the help of a fake i.d. provided by my brother. Marie and her friends--college Freshman from Eastern Michigan University--needed someone to buy drinks for them, so my roommate and I obliged. Marie and I started talking and, as the cliche lovers would say, the rest is history.

Yes, yes, I know, the whole evening is tainted with crime: my underrage drinking, fake i.d., aiding and abetting another person to break the law. If it makes any of my disgusted readers feel better, rest assured, I'm paying for my criminal ways with a lifetime sentence. I'm also told the total fines will approach $1 million (seven kids x $100,000 each).

Malcolm's Messages (What's this?)
Chapter 5: Malcolm Speaks of Dark Things

Then one day Malcolm came to the Lunch Place. The sun was not shining, but neither did the rain come. The sky stood still, giving way to neither water nor warmth.

The assembly was there, enthusiastic, though the ambivalent sky kept many away, especially the children, whose parents feared the rain. And some of the assembly had left Malcolm after he spoke of the Beautiful Beast. They would never return. That, Malcolm said to himself, is the worst thing about killing the Beautiful Beast: Once mounting it, it becomes the sole means to the Great Things and, if it is willfully killed, the rider cannot attain the Great Things without great effort and with a strength that few possess.

And Malcolm looked at the remnant and knew they were strong and ready, so he spoke to them of hideous things that made him tremble. . .