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Issue XII

Well, things have gone well for TWE. Our visitors/hits goals that we hoped to meet by the beginning of Spring have been greatly exceeded. Many thanks to y'all for visiting, reading, and forwarding TWE to friends and family, especially those who don't otherwise enter the blogosphere.

Despite our satisfactory results, we're not convinced we can continue as a weekly blog and attract the desired volume of readers. We have, therefore, decided to go "24/7" (actually, more like "12/7"). We will frequently post news, comments, humor, inanity, whatever. The Wednesday Eudemon will continue its regular format, and we'll still publish The Weekend Eudemon with The Punchy Journal. But now, starting Thursday, readers will see weekday eudemons.

500
Watched the end of the Daytona 500 last Sunday and about ten minutes worth of interviews. We don't follow NASCAR (our full skull of teeth disqualifies us), but it's the Superbowl of the car racing world now that the Indy 500 is tarnished. We found it interesting to hear Dale Earnhardt, Jr. speak. It appears all that money his father earned didn't buy him rhetoric lessons. He speaks with a large measure of redneck Ebonics.

The Passion Still in Fashion
We haven't finished it yet, but so far we're impressed with On the Passion of Christ by Thomas a'Kempis (Ignatius Press, 2004). Readers probably know a'Kempis for his all-time bestseller, The Imitation of Christ (Windesheim at Mount St. Agnes No Press Yet, 1426). Based on what we've read of On the Passion, a'Kempis wasn't a one-hit wonder. Think of an expanded version of St. Francis of Assisi's Stations of the Cross, and you have an idea of what to expect. We ordered our copy from Ignatius by phone and received it in one week.

One excerpt: "Also grant me the grace courageously to overcome my defiant flesh for the benefit of my soul, to cast out all carnal fear, to pray more frequently and attentively, to enjoy your assistance, to leave every outcome in your hands, to renounce my will thoroughly, and to be ready to suffer whatever comes."

Unique Take on an Old Slake
"Beer is a wildly sensuous brew, but most drinkers fail to appreciate the massive range of colours, styles, flavours, textures, carbonations and abvs now available in Britain." That's from the new Beer Academy's website. It's worth a look. Beer never gets old, but a different spin is always interesting.

Side note: We don't plan on drinking Budweiser's forthcoming beer-with-caffeine. If you need to rev yourself up to drink beer, you shouldn't be drinking it.

Beer Experts?
We've read that the Beer Academy will teach beer drinkers to be connoisseurs of beer like wine experts. We're not impressed with that goal. The folks at Modern Drunkard Magazine express our concerns quite well, albeit in an off-color way. Here's the link, but we disclaim responsibility for any offense taken. (TWE is occasionally PG, but never PG-13.) Here are two excerpts for those who don't want to cyber-travel all the way over to MDM:

"When you were a teenager you probably thought all beers were just called 'beer' or maybe 'brewski' if you were feeling technical. But as a beer snob you should be aware that there are many subcategories of beers . . .

"bock: this German beer is named for the billy goat, because, just like a billy goat, it's lively, strong and smells like a billy goat.

"fruit: these flavored beers were introduced to appeal to women and certain men who get very defensive when you inform them they are plainly homosexual.

"malt liquor: some will argue this is not beer at all, but let me tell you something: if it tastes like a duck, smells like a duck and makes you walk like a duck, it is probably malt liquor.

***

"Thirty years ago the only terms you needed to express a beer's character were 'tastes great' and 'less filling.' The microbrew explosion, however, made it necessary to invent literally hundreds of new adjectives to explain how great or non-filling a beer truly is. Fortunately, you won't have to memorize most of them because most are fake words that drunk beer experts made up on the spot and probably winced at when they saw them in print later. What else can explain why grown men are using terms like Chlorophenolic, Balling Degrees, Sparge and Kräusening to describe something that can be purchased in the form of a Party Ball?"

Strays
A handful quotes by or about Mother Teresa. Taken from David Scott's A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa (Loyola Press, 2005). Readers will recall that we highly recommend this stunning and quick read.

"Each time people come into contact with us, they must become different and better people because of having met us."

"Live life beautifully."

"Proclaiming is not preaching–it is being."

"God sent us a saint who not only sweated the small stuff but told us that the road to heaven was paved with it."

"Mother Teresa judged the health of our civilization by our ability to smile or hold our tongues; by whether parents had time for their children, husbands for their wives, the young to listen to the stories of the old."

Calcutta's "teeming millions of poor and homeless, living in gutters and garbage dumps, became for her a symbol of the desolate slum of the modern heart."

"To know the problem of poverty intellectually is not to understand it."

The Excellence of Existential Exile
"The less life is experienced as a captivity the less the soul will be able to see the shining of that veiled, mysterious light." Gabriel Marcel, Homo Viator. Placed on the flipside: The more a soul experiences its captivity, its limitations, and its darkness, the more it is likely to see the light. Illustrated: A person in a lighted room barely notices a lit candle, but for a person in a dark room, the lit candle is piercing. (Don't feel bad if you need to read this twice.)

The Last Word
Misopedia. Hatred of children, especially one's own. "As a father of seven small children, misopedia disgusts me. But I understand it."

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