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 shoppers (though it seems to me that they were luring shoppers just fine on the day after Thanksgiving back in the 1970s, before the Black Friday hysteria started). With all the great bargains, I can see why people feel beckoned. Still, is the immense investment of time, the anxiety ("Will I be first?"), and the surly feelings of competition with your fellow man worth saving money on a big screen TV? There must be more honorable ways of saving/making $200. Like homosexual prostitution and passing off tobacco as marijuana to gullible sixth graders.
As for me, I'm staying home . . . by myself. My wife took the Seven to Detroit this weekend. It's our annual divorce, though we keep in touch by cell phone. I sometimes go with her, but not this year. This year, I'm hanging out with out-of-town family. I'm also going to Mass, reading, writing, and enjoying the quiet. I feel like the boss came in and told me to knock off early . . . at 9:30 in the morning.
I don't have much to post today, but I'm suggesting two Neuhuasian items. The first: Fr. Neuhaus's blog post today. It's excellent, top to bottom. Excerpt:
I still have occasion to visit psychiatric wards from time to time. They are generally much smaller and quieter places now, since most of the patients/inmates are heavily drugged. Pharmacotherapy is now the treatment of choice. It is too bad that Thomas Szasz's frustrations drove him over the top. His argument is still pertinent in a society that doesn't know what to do with people who, for whatever reason, refuse to live by its rules. Most of them are not criminal and they are not sick in any medical sense of the term. They are intolerably eccentric. Over the centuries, societies have been perplexed about what to do with such people. They have been locked up and warehoused. The Nazis preferred euthanasia. Given some alternatives, drugging them may seem more humane. There is, however, another long tradition, also in Christian history, of respect, even reverence, for the “holy fool.”
The second one was sent by a friend. I searched the First Things site for a link, but I couldn't find it. Because the person who sent it to me is more reliable than a cold beer in July, I'm reasonably certain that it's an authentic Neuhaus, so I'm posting it:
“The ACLU continues, with considerable success, its campaign to eliminate any reference to Christmas from the public aquare. And now a little counter-campaign is stirring, which could turn into a very big campaign. It is suggested that millions of us send a Christmas card to the ACLU. Not with anything rude or crude, of course, which would not be nice and Christmas should be nice. But something with a very specific reference to Christmas as distinct from 'Happy Holidays.' Since they don't know which of the millions of envelopes might contain donations, they'll have to open all of them. You might object that it is not nice to be a nuisance. But think: it will give the folks there multiple occasions to think about the meaning of Christmas. And of course you really do wish them a merry Christmas.”
American Civil Liberties Union
125 Broad Street
18th Floor
New York NY 10004
Finally, I'm looking for humorous blogs to feature in a column I'm writing. Preferably, Catholic blogs, but I'll take anything, as long as it's not profane. I'm looking for blogs that are frequently funny and, preferably, urbane (blogs heavy on pictures of middle-aged folks at a costume party and pictures of toddlers with chocolate on their face don't interest me). Email link on the left.
