Monday Blogging

I'm looking for hip Catholic blogs. What do I mean by hip? Hard to say, but here are a few catch words: beatniks, jazz music, James Dean, Elvis, Dennis Hopper, Avant-garde, Pabst Blue Ribbon, White Castle. . . . unconventional. I realize the idea of "hip Catholic" is at least mildly oxymoronic (not a lot of heroin junkie Catholics out there), but I'm hoping to find blogs written in that spirit: the jumpy, the edgy, the cool; something a college kid would look at twice. Let me know. Email link on left.

The Daily Eudemon would not qualify, if you want one point of reference. I talk about my kids too much, and fatherhood is definitely not hip (it's great, but not hip).

You probably saw this over the weekend: A couple are charged with trying to sell a 15-month-old girl for $3,000 and a sport-utility vehicle. It's a crime, but I'm unclear whether the couple was charging too little or too much.

Why must the animal rights people always insist on being offensive? Most puzzling:

A controversial new public relations campaign by animal-rights group PETA proclaims Jesus Christ to have been a vegetarian, and portrays the Last Supper ”“ complete with 12 "disciples" including Beatle Paul McCartney and lesbian country-music singer k.d. lang ”“ as a spectacle meant to inspire mankind to forsake eating meat.

During the warmer months (which have returned; see below) I carry around a small book bag that contains note cards, pens, (shocker) books, and an assortment of other items. It almost always contains a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Yet I still haven't read the entire thing. There's always something else to read. Aurelius is, well, timeless, so I never make the necessary time. This weekend, though, I paid $10 for the audio download and put it on my iPod. I suspect it's the perfect audio book. While surfing for it, I also found free podcasts with generous offerings from Epictetus' Discourses. I listened to the first two yesterday. They were pretty good. I also found free podcasts of The Sermon on the Mount and Socrates' defense.

While surfing, I found this project: LibriVox. Free podcasts of books in the public domain.

The thermometer hit 70 yesterday. My little idiots were all over it:

Tess greatly enjoyed her big birthday present:

Something for Monday Morning

"To labor is to pray."

St. Benedict