Not Available in Stores

There is a foolproof sign of when exhaustion has become equivalent to intoxication. It happens to me while watching the commercials on HGTV. Although the images and text of the commercials cover different subject matter, they all break down to the same basic three stages, and almost certainly employ the following quotes subliminally. Why else would anyone hire a tubby, bearded fellow who shouts and has no credentials other than that he is the perfect cover for the whispered insinuations?

Stage 1: Uncertain cynicism:
"Oh that's just ridiculous."
"But they wouldn't sell it if it weren't worthwhile."
"Well, I suppose it does have real-life applicability and it's not TOO expensive."

Stage 2: Cautious enthusiasm
"They just doubled the offer!"
"How can they afford to do that?"
"Can I afford not to buy?"

Stage 3: Let me at the phone
"They just added a free gift/tripled the offer!!!"
"Act now, think another time!"

I knew someone who shopped non-stop on QVC. She really believed that QVC offered the highest value and quality, and she appreciated the "easy-pay" system which just took a small amount of money out of her bank account each month for three months without bothering her at all. In general, her possessions did have a very uniform and marked theme: gimmicks. Each item justified its existence with one small, well-defined, and generally spurious reason. One shirt could be balled up in a pocket, then worn without being any less attractive than if it had been ironed. One kitchen utensil used a complicated process to turn out perfect little cubes of garlic—and nothing else (of course, they're not crushed, so the resulting dish is not as flavorful).

Now, Charles de Konick says that living things are organic, meaning "having tools." He delights in how a tool provided by nature, such as a hand, was perfectly adapted to innumerable tasks, while a supposedly multi-function man-made tool, such as a Leatherman, did anything poorly. I think of this with perverse pleasure when buying things (especially kitchen utensils) that can be used for as many different tasks as possible.* This combines with love for Lady Poverty to make a wooden spoon (3 for a dollar at Target) a thing a beauty and a joy forever.

QVC is clearly a fan of de Konick but not of Lady Poverty.

*Major exception to the rule: coffee makers.

From Helénè

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Over the Top

Anika not-so-recently posted about the thrills of being single (as opposed to being matched to the available options). It's hard to keep from being struck by the paucity of what society dishes up for the single girl. A recent City Journal article touches on the same topic. It seems like the choice is between a man who has cultivated success in the world to the extreme detriment of his character and a man who has not gotten into drinking, being mean, looking at porn, etc., but has also not done anything other than keep his couch from floating off. And somehow it's not surprising that the girls don't find themselves panting after either option.

Or, said another way, it's like being of the educated class and living after World War I with a dash of a zombie movie. Everyone's fiancés, brothers, etc., are dead—but in this case they're still walking around.

March for Life

The March for Life in Washington DC.
Lord, have mercy on us.
A good day to be Catholic.
A not so good day to be crazy Latin-Masser.
Also a good day to be Orthodox.
From the top of Capitol Hill (the Washington Monument is in the distance).

Amazing Grace

I just saw a movie that makes me feel like both politics and movies are not necessarily garbage-ridden gutters breeding moral filth. I'm not sure I like feeling this way, primarily because I doubt it corresponds to reality (though I wish it did). I suppose this would be cynical idealism. But the movie, Amazing Grace, is worth seeing anyhow.

Advice?

My erstwhile laptop (a Dell Inspiron 600m) may be dying. I have thought this before, and it has risen from the ashes, but it is nearly four years old, which is getting near the honorable age for retirement. It has been everything that one hopes for from a computer and more. In fact, it is more like typing on my best friend. I looked to eHarmony to find another perfect match, but apparently they really just have boys on the brain.

My reservations about this computer is that it is susceptible to viruses and the Microsoft programs wage war on other, often better, programs (here I am thinking of Firefox). In fact, iTunes runs into a startup conflict that I haven't been able to pinpoint, but which has made me shelve my iPod for the nonce. Would it be a good idea to move to an Apple laptop? The cheapest is $1099, whereas a decent Dell runs about $699 (the cheapest is $499—is the extra $200 necessary?).

Here are my criteria:

• Long-lived. I would like it to last at least four years, and to be reasonably compatible with new accessories (like iPods) at the end of those four years.
  
• Durable. I've dropped this laptop more times than I can say.
  
• Portable. I've taken this laptop everywhere and therefore used it more than any other computer I've had. I prefer a smaller, lighter computer to one with a high-quality but heavy wide-screen.
  
• What I actually use a computer for is the following:
  
  
  
  • Word processing and spreadsheets
    
  • E-mail and blogging
    
  • Music, videos and pictures (but I'm really not discerning about sound and video quality, and I like it that way because I can be happier spending less.)
    
  • I do like to be able to run a lot of programs at once.

As you can see, I clearly do not need something state-of-the-art. However, I do use it a lot, so probably don't want to go completely bare bones.

Boys on the Brain

I got a CD in the mail Saturday and asked J if she'd like to open it for me. She did, and when she pulled the CD out and saw the picture of the band on the front (four guys looking intentionally geeky—I'd given in to temptation to revisit the early 90s) she said, "Boys, huh? You've got boys on the brain!"

That night we went to Catholic Underground New Jersey. One of the singers during the coffee hour was a handsome young man, and he dedicated a song to M. When we were leaving, M (an always bubbly 40 something resident) gushed goodbyes to him and finally made two big kissy noises to him. He looked shocked and then turned bright red, while she continued to overflow with her natural ebullience.

I guess I'm not the only one with boys on the brain.

Apology to St. Paul and the Angels

Mrs. Bear's rebuke recalled me from crankiness inspired by the whole St-Paul-and-man-and-woman thing (a problem because I am still worldly in my identity) to my initial intention in posting about chapel veils. What I was thinking was that there must be some reference in some other part of the Bible to angels and glory which would be a clue as to why women should cover their heads for the sake of the angels. Off hand all I can think of is that angels veil their glory constantly for our sake. Whenever they appear to humans, their glory is so great (and even there their appearance is not as they actually are) that the humans are terrified and the angels have to tell them not to be afraid.

Any ideas?

Gaurdian Angels

On Sunday I told the girls about guardian angels. K was bemused and delighted that the someone had been protecting her ever since she was born.

Does anyone know anything about "naming" your guardian angel? I read somewhere that a saint recommended it, and although it sounds a little presumptuous, it might help K have more of a relationship with her guardian angel.

Bulk

I just finished reading "The Count of Monte Cristo." My primary feeling is that there was a lot of it. It's like a man that I could have had a passionate (but short-lived) love affair with if he just weighed 800 pounds less.

Hmm

Today someone put a chapel veil in my mailbox. It had my name on it (misspelled, but only slightly), a holy card of St. Catherine of Sienna, and nothing else. My housemate who is also a young woman and a parishioner did not receive one, at least not that she mentioned. She's not super communicative, though, so it would not be shocking for her to listen to my fount-of-off-the-cuff-information-on-chapel-veils and speculation as to the mysterious donor without volunteering that she also received one. The chapel veil itself is pretty. It is white and about large enough to wrap a midget in. I like to think that the beauty of my "long luscious hair" (quote from a New York subway story that is percolating through the blog filter) prompted the gift. Someday I'll have to comb the men out of my hair, but for now the residents love playing with it.

But this brings me to the bigger problem of chapel veils. St. Paul says "That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels." (1. Cor. 11:10). Now, not to be disrespectful, but if St. Paul were my student, the paper would be returned to him marked "unclear causal link." The preceding verses explain that man prays with an uncovered head because he is the glory of God, woman with a covered head because she is the glory of man. The angels thing was evidently the ace up his sleeve. I don't mind covering my head for the sake of the angels, I'd just like to have an idea of how they got tangled up in the God-man-woman thing.

I might go ahead and wear it. I've thought about it before, but haven't carried through and parted with actual cash money for the thing. Someone in college also said that you shouldn't wear a chapel veil if it would be a distraction to others, but I'm starting to feel like the others need to take some responsibility for their own distractions. This reminds me of another story caught up in the blog filter, about the phlegmy man who sat behind me and spent all of Mass trying to clear his airways. He had an ingenious two-step process in which the mucous was torn from its foundations by being alternately sucked in and blown out (but apparently never removed from his system). Over and over again I found myself marveling that any woman was willing to countenance such noises, especially since a production like that while upright bodes ill for the nocturnal experience. Then my sinfulness (for having such thoughts in Mass) would smack me in the face, and I would pray fervently to the Divine Mercy until the phlegm was shaken from its home again, when it all started over. All in all, I reflected as I left the church, it was a pretty successful prayer experience.

Nesting

I am extraordinarily tired right now, but it is the exhaustion of virtue. Someone donated a small bookcase to our house, and I snatched it up immediately. Initially I stored the bookcase in the center of my room, but today I did massive rearranging to put it in the perfect spot, and it is now filled with good measure of books, packed down, shaken together, overflowing. (These books had previously been in boxes and piles on every horizontal surface, and were hard at work finding a way to take up space without a base). I dusted everything (including the baseboards but not the ceiling fan), vacuumed every bit of floor about three times over, and moved every single piece of furniture. In the process I found a broken outlet plate behind a bureau which left a hole large enough for a whole parade of mice, which explains the Christmas biscotti that had already been eaten by the time I turned up hopefully holding a cup of coffee. I also found a live spider and beetle (the beetle is a stupid, cow-like kind that tends to fall off walls) which I escorted outside, and a number of dead beetles (same kind) which I interred in the Oreck. I am now doing my laundry, which had spilled out of the closet and engulfed my chair. The chair (and its ottoman), a partially-broken CD player, and a donated floor lamp complete my free and fabulous abode. I feel about as happy as a cat in a basket that was originally intended for someone else.

On Saturday a really wonderful family (with five adorable children) came to visit, and when I took the wife around the house I carefully avoided my room, explaining suavely that it was a disaster. But I forgot to warn my boss, and when she took the husband around, a couple of the small children ran into my room exposing it in all of its glory. I comforted her by saying that it wasn't as bad as it could have been (the bed was more or less made and there were no visible undergarments), but she didn't seem consoled. Somehow she doesn't seem to relish my letting my room become a disaster so that I can have the pleasure of effecting a major change in one afternoon of cleaning.

Ms. Fix It

I successfully downloaded iTunes using my neighbor's wireless (with their permission and with the password, and this was not sticking it to The Man, since my house does have its own fully paid for wireless). This brought up a new problem, which is that iTunes wants to maintain a music library identical to the iPod on your computer, which is actually just what I wanted to avoid since my computer is a bit venerable and has some trouble with its memory anyhow (but then again, don't we all?) This problem can be avoided by choosing not to automatically "sync" your iPod to iTunes. You can then delete CDs from iTunes without removing them from your iPod (application of information I'd already discovered, courtesy of Guy Crouchback). So that's all looking pretty good. The next problem is that the first CD I add goes fine, but then when I try to switch to a second, iTunes freezes up and the entire computer has to be rebooted. At Mrs. Bear's advice, I used Housecall to do a free scan and found there were no viruses. (I'd previously deleted all old programs, including my out of date Norton Antivirus, and then defragmented the harddrive in hopes that that would clear up the problem. You don't have to waste disk space on Housecall, but you do have to visit your neighbors to use their internet.)

I was at a loss for what to do next, so I tidied up my music files, and discovered that Windows Media Player actually works just fine for files that are already on my computer. So now I have located one of my problems: the CD driver needs to be fixed. I don't think it's a mechanical problem, as DVDs still work. I have to wait to go next door (to download updates for the device driver) to put my theory into action, but I'm pretty pleased with myself for figuring this out. I love this little laptop, and like imagining myself capable of taking care of it independently.

In other news, my jokes about The Man have Not Gone Over Big around here. I wish I could say that this has kept me from making them.

Frustration

We have Verizon FiOS here, and it is almost non-functional. FiOS employs a total of one serviceman, and the little kid on the TV ad* "kept him," so he's not able to come fix our connection. A friend came and spent an untold amount of time getting it to function partially, so now basic tasks like checking e-mail and blogging are possible. And really, I've been pleased enough about this that I have been honestly thankful for the connection and haven't bothered over its failings (other than warning poor fools who are thinking of "upgrading" to FiOS). The problem is that any large download makes it disconnect. This is okay when you're trying to watch a video (as long as you're patient), as you can watch it in segments. It's not okay when you're trying to download a program file or update.

The reason that this matters more to me today than it did seven months ago is that I finally became affluent enough to purchase an iPod, and I've been eagerly watching the mail, regretting my choice of "super saver super slow shipping," and imagining myself able to listen to all my CDs. The iPod is less extravagant than it may seem, as I don't have a CD player and Windows Media Player is in a permanent funk since I refused the update to WMP 11, which requires you to go to their website and get a license to play each individual song that you put on your computer from your own CD. And don't even try to use Mozilla Firefox in this process. Of course, I can listen to CDs when I'm alone in the car or no one else is around the house CD player. The iPod is in my hand, the CDs are next to me, but only about 7% of iTunes can download.

This morning instead of cursing the day for coming, I awoke to sing along with my imagination's version of Johnny Cash's cover of Solitary Man. But sounds like tomorrow will be back to business as usual.

* Actually, this video plays with no problem. Analysis: it's a conspiracy.

The Egoist's Miscellany

I caught bronchitis within two hours of the beginning of my Christmas vacation. I'd thought my body was past being able to do anything with any level of excellence, but it showed me that when push comes to shove, it can put my nose to the grindstone and produce something really spectacular.

I was given a hair clip for Christmas, and the giver pointed out that it could be used to hold chunks of hair out of the way while blow drying other chunks with a round brush. I'd lost my enthusiasm for that subject. Then I felt badly because she'd gone out of her way to purchase this very useful gift for me, and it's not her fault that the Death of Flannery comes for me with a blow dryer, so I ought to just use it. I devoted 30 to 40 minutes of my morning to the subject yesterday, and it did look great for about five minutes, which really worried me. Like Mendel's pea plants, too much change causes me to revert to type, i.e. my 10-year-old belief that bathing is a waste of time since one just gets dirty again anyhow. Luckily my hair looked just the same as ever within an hour, so I have an excuse for not pushing my luck.

I found myself in the kitchen today thinking of Solzhenitsyn and humming, "I've got your love to keep me warm."

I produced 21 thank you notes in an hour and a half this morning, and not all of them used the formula "Thank you for X I love it and you."

Super Model

Today as I drove back from the bank, I reflected happily (but with a sober recognition that this could lead to strange new places) that I was now a high-maintenance woman. I’ve been wearing makeup (eye makeup because face makeup makes me suffocate) almost every day for ages, and I totally plucked my eyebrows a few weeks ago. Not totally in terms of no eyebrows left, but in terms of I almost totally tidied them up—I put off finishing them for tomorrow, which fortunately hasn’t come yet. But the pièce de résistance was that I blew dry my hair using a round brush this morning.

Now the beauty industry has tragically suppressed the fact, but 87.3% of women younger than 40 who have died of old age have done so while blow drying their hair. (All blow driers have a “Warning” tag to this effect, but the real danger is hidden under the highly unlikely possibility of dropping the thing in water). I’ve never been the kind of person who takes unwarranted risks (unless it involves jettisoning all aspects of my life and moving across the country), so I’ve taken this warning to heart. When I feel myself within time’s bending sickle's compass come, I click the Machine of Danger off and head out into the rain, secure in the knowledge that I’m not going to be any the worse off for a few more pints of water in my hair.

But today I really amazed myself, and almost expected to be wearing pointy shoes and haute couture by the time I got out of the van. My boss failed to notice right off, though, and I started to wonder if I’d wasted my ten minutes. I pointed out how beautiful my hair was (to help her along), and explained.

“Ah, yes, I see you dried the front and not the back."

“What?!” Outraged at this base slander, I reached back to exhibit the silky softness but found my enemies had substituted chunks of damp hair.

Oh well, I don’t like dating rock stars anyhow.

Dont Cha

I just spent a couple of days with my brother. At one point he told a hilarious subway tale (initially observed by a friend), but he prefaced it by saying that this friend's stories were always unable to be beaten. But them's fightin' words, so we may have a spate of stories from my time commuting on the Seattle public bus. I felt a little sad over the scant opportunities I have for gathering such stories now. However, I've been good lately, so God felt it was time to reward me. The blessing sat on the seat in front of me on the train ride home.

She caught my attention by emitting deep-throated groans at irregular intervals. At first I was concerned for her well-being, but then realized that the groans were somehow influenced by the music we were all listening to (she evidently felt that the ipod was intended for communal use, and had it set to an appropriate volume, after a brief interruption at the insistence of the conductor). In the end I figured out that the noises were her involuntary and uninhibitedly sensual response to the music, which let all of us know she was One Hot Mama. She didn't seem to feel that this image needed to be restricted on a need-to-know basis, so we all got it full in the face.*

She had a channel-surfing approach to listening to music, being not so big on finishing any particular song as she was on returning frequently to it and then singing along with the chorus ("She used to be the sweeeetest girl/She used to be the sweetest girl Ev-AH!") The first leg of the trip was spent with the Inland Northwester wrestling with the tricky subject of Northeast public transportation etiquette. The girl exuded more attitude than sexuality so I opted for not asking her to return the device to the volume the conductor had requested.

Her cellphone screen saver (held up high, so it was easily seen from the seat behind her in accordance with her Share Me With Everyone policy) was of a cartoon elf, from the perspective more generally seen by a toilet than by me. Then we returned to the music sampler.

But then we headed into the express portion of the trip, and I grew desperate. As the conductor walked down the aisle one last time, I caught his eye, smiled, and pointed to the seat in front of me. He kindly went back and asked the lady to turn her music off. She stared blankly, so he repeated himself a couple of times, finally slipping in, "music isn't allowed if it disturbs others." Seizing the important point, she interrupted to say, "Some-body comp-LAIN-in?" The conductor returned to his purer theme, and after the same amount of time had passed as before her initial response, she turned her music off.

I spent the rest of the trip debating my immortal soul over which was the wrong side of the tracks (for the most part they are indistinguishable) in blessed silence.

*Whereas the response I'm hoping for from passersby is a combination of "My, isn't she clean" and "Hellooooooo Mild-Mannered."

Jesse Tree Pictures

List of Jesse Tree Symbols (in roughly chronological order, from creation to the birth of Christ.)

Week I
Sunday: Introduction (Isa. 11:1-10)
Monday: God—Creation
Tuesday: Adam and Eve—The First Sin
Wednesday: Noah—The Flood
Thursday; Abraham—The Promise
Friday: Isaac—Offering of Isaac
Saturday: Jacob—Ladder to Heaven

Week II
Sunday: Joseph—God's Providence
Monday: Moses—God's Leadership
Tuesday: Israelites—Passover Lamb
Wednesday: Exodus—Pillars of Fire and Cloud
Thursday: God—Giving the Torah at Sinai
Friday: The Ark of the Covenant—Prefigurement of Mary
Saturday: Joshua—The Fall of Jericho

Week III
Sunday: Gideon—Unlikely Heroes
Monday: Samuel—The Beginning of the Kingdom
Tuesday: David—A Shepherd for the People
Wednesday: Elijah—Threat of False Gods
Thursday: Jonah—Doing God's Will
Friday: Judith—Faith in Action
Saturday: Isaiah—The Call to Holiness

Week IV
Sunday: Jeremiah—The Exile
Monday: Habakkuk—Waiting and Watching

Dec. 19: John the Baptist
Dec. 20: Mary
Dec. 21: Zechariah and Elizabeth
Dec. 22: Joseph
Dec. 23: The Magi
Dec. 24: Jesus
Dec. 25: The Christ

Okay then.

Today we were in the studio audience of "Emeril Live." It was kind of interesting to see how these things work. Among other things, there is a professional rabble-rouser who tells depressingly slick jokes to try and get the audience all revved up. The commercial breaks are very very long, and the band plays a crucial role in getting the audience through them. At no point did I feel like the person jollying up the crowd found any actual enjoyment in the presence of the great unwashed.

The food looked okay, most of it being of the Triple Bypass variety. Emeril used ham hocks, but didn't explain how to serve them (I just cooked one and ended up throwing it away after a half-hearted attempt to decide which parts were edible—of course most of the good stuff had already cooked into the soup.) I didn't sample the food (which was a relief), but somehow the whole experience served up a super-sized portion of existential ennui.

Jesse Tree

Two years ago I came across a friend frantically shaping ornaments out of Sculpey. I immediately found out enough about the project to be waist-deep in it, and it was only after I'd finished that I realized the question of "whether this was worthwhile" could be asked and may even be assumed by others to have been answered in the affirmative. The project was a Protestant/internet take on the medieval Tree of Jesse. The medieval form is a genealogy of Christ, but the modern form is more of a summary of salvation history from creation to Christ. One makes an ornament for each day in Advent (it turns out that felt is a more common media than Sculpey, which just proves the existence of Fate, as I never would have taken a second look at stupid chunks of felt.) There are lists of suggested symbols, and EWTN provides a Catholic version (though not enough entries for the entire season).

I had so much fun that Stalin would have started World War III just to be able to stop me, and I am relying on my impenetrable blogger anonymity to protect me from the Al-Qaeda's fatwa. My only regret is that I couldn't include ninjas. The ornaments have now been liberally coated with Sculpey varnish—in the vivid world which is my imagination, this will not only make them shiny, but also protect them from breaking when they are accidentally thrown across the room. And although reality and this world may not overlap as frequently as my friends and well-wishers might desire, I have never been unhappy with it, and I expect great things of the shiny unbreakableness. When the ornaments dry, and when I feel like the great effort required, I will take pictures and post them so people can guess over which is my favorite (and where the ninjas would have been most at home). Done.