Sic dolet

 (Posted to my MySpace Weblog on June 21, 2007) INTRODUCTION Okay, this will be tiresome for some of my readers, but I must respond to a moronically insane, orthographically challenged Bible-thumping shrew who arrogantly claimed on a now defunct MySpace Weblog that "the Pretrib Rapture is just plain logic." The "Pretrib Rapture" is  not  "plain logic"; it is, rather, a contorted, totally depraved misreading of the Bible. Of course, some of my readers would think what my Church, the Catholic Church (which is the one, true Church that God Himself established on earth), considers to be a proper reading of Holy Writ is completely and utterly without logic and only howling lunatics like me would take it seriously. And so my calling a belief of another religion whacky is kinda like Bush calling someone--oh, I don't know--a member of the axis of evil, say. Fine, I understand. Perhaps, later I will write a post about why Catholicism is the paragon of sanity, b...

 Post 1 So, I'm reading Sam Harris's  The End of Faith , a typical Enlightenment critique of religion. Religious people are dingbats because they believe in stuff for which there is just no evidence or proof. The interesting twist of Sam Harris's book is his full frontal attack on the religious liberals who by his lights want to have it both ways: They want to be both religiously devout on the one hand and good, reasonable, and tolerant sons and daughters of the Enlightenment on the other. Well, you can't, thunders Harris. Religion is the dark abyss of irrationality, the Enlightenment is sweetness and light. The two clash and necessarily clash. You've got to choose one or the other, and if you choose religion, Harris will hold you complicit in Faith's attempt to nullify the hard won triumphs of Reason. And if the religion you choose happens to be Islam, well, he might even kill you. See, all religion is insane, but Islam is the worst. Harris has read the Koran a...

FMC:  Hey, I don't mean to offend, but you're a sight for very sore eyes. Woman:  That's not meaning to offend, but what do you mean? FMC:  Well. Woman:  You're blushing. FMC:  Am I that obvious? Woman:  Yes, and before you get your hopes up, I must tell you that I don't go for men.  Sorry. FMC:  Who you calling a man? Woman:  Huh?  You!  Your Adam's Apple is so big, you could lasso a cow with it. FMC:  Whoa!  It's obviously not my place to tell you who you should be attracted to, but I need to call you out on your harmful, demeaning, and violent cissexism. Woman:  Cis-what? FMC:  You think I am not a woman because of what you perceive to be my 'male' anatomy.  That's a cissexist denial of my womanhood and my humanity.   Woman:  Look, dude, and you are a dude-- FMC:  No, no, I am a woman. Woman:  Do you have a penis? FMC:  That's a rude question. Woman:  Do you have a penis? FMC...

 According to the Source of all Knowledge,  Wikipedia : "most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value." The logic of "marriage equality" is thus: Gays and straights must be treated equally under the law. Therefore, it is invidious discrimination for the law to treat opposite-sex couples differently from same-sex couples. Therefore, the dictates of equality demand the legal recognition of same-sex "marriage". But for the law to effect this equality between straights and gays, it must say that the difference between the two is not sufficiently relevant to justify differential treatment. The difference between the two is rather obvious: the former desire to engage in an act upon which the endurance of humanity has hitherto depended and the latter do not. To say, therefore, that this difference is irrelevant in the determination of public policy is to ...

 (Posted to my MySpace Weblog on September 29, 2007) When you hang around libraries as much as I do, even indices become exciting. Some indices are shoddily done, and many books nowadays because of the hectic rush to market do not have any indices at all. After all doing an index is slow and plodding. The only people that like doing it are sycophantic grad students and, of course, German eggheads. The latter actually live for this stuff. Germans have to have everything catagorized, filed, and indexed, even their underwear (after it is dutifully ironed, of course). In fact, the best way to drive a German to existentialist, slit-wristing despair is to take away his index. And then the whole world becomes a disjointed Humean chaos. The index for the German is more than a reference tool, it is the very structure of Being itself, and so it is very important to get it right. A German index  is  indeed a thing of beauty and, of course,  Gruendlichkeit  (thoroughness). ...

 In the penultimate paragraph of his majority opinion in  Obergefell , Kennedy writes, "Their [same-sex couples'] hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions." By "one of civilization's oldest institutions" Kennedy must mean a civilly recognized marriage because that’s the institution from which same-sex couples had been excluded. They were never prevented from co-habitating or even from participating in “wedding” ceremonies. These relationships and ceremonies were not prohibited but simply unrecognized by the state. Even if you are in a relationship, but one that is not recognized as a "marriage" by the state, Kennedy declares you condemned to the outer darkness of loveless loneliness. Okay, well, fine, I was not in a civilly recognized "marriage" with my mother. That means that all the time I thought I loved my mother and she loved me, I was really lonely and incapable of lo...

 Scene: Typical middle-class suburban living room. A woman in her mid-thirties is pacing up and down with a cell phone pasted to her ear. Woman: Hello? Kate? Is Tommy there? No, he hasn't come home from school. It's 5:30. Is Larry there? Has he seen him since school let out? Yes, yes, fine, I'll wait. No? Does Larry have any idea where... (knock on the door) Kate, there's someone at the door. I gotta go. (opens the door. Two Police Officers are at the door.) Oh my God. Has something happened to my son?! Cop 1: (to Cop 2) It insists upon gendering the child. We've got a live one. Woman: What's going on here? Do you have information about my son? Tommy. Where is he? Cop 2: Person, may we come in? Woman: What? Cop 1: It asked if we may come in. May we come in, person? Woman: Why are you addressing me as "person"? Cop 2: Because you are a person, a sentient human being who is capable of Public Reason. Cop 1: Or should be capable, at least. Cop 2: So, may w...

 [Nota Bene:  Lest any reader think that the argument below is evidence of what happens when the American School System keeps its charges in the dark about all things sexual, I would kindly tell him to check out the New Hampshire Case  Blanchflower v. Blanchflower  (click on the link, please; I'm too lazy to summarize the facts of the case here).  The argument I give below was not taken from NOM, any other SLPC-designated hate group, or any seemingly sexually unenlightened group like, say, the Catholic Church.  Rather, the argument is pretty much the same one which was given by the Liberal (and, therefore, enlightened) Majority.  The knuckle-dragging Conservatives dissented!  Furthermore, the Liberal Majority Opinion was a victory for a Lesbian, who was, as co-respondent in the original divorce case, one of the plaintiffs.] The legal recognition of same-sex "marriage" has nothing to do with the societal approval of whatever same-sex couples may do...

The basic principle of Protestantism is sola scriptura, the idea that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith. Now Catholics have always responded, "Well, what good is an infallible book without an infallible interpreter of that book?" To which the Protestant rejoinder has always been, "Scripture interprets itself, so there!" And then followed the Thirty Years' War, which ended in the acknowledgement that where Catholics have the most gunpowder, that region will be Catholic and where the most gunpowder belongs to the Protestants, that region will be Protestant. If guns can't penetrate the hermeneutic circle, nothing can, and several centuries later the debate over sola scriptura is pretty much the same as it was in 1521. This means, among other things, that Protestants still insist that Scripture is self-interpreting. Okay, if this is so, then why do Protestants attend Bible School? What can Bible School teach you that the self-interpreting Scripture ...

 [written in 2008] The following essay is addressed to a woman and was in response to one of her posts on her weblog. The post was about Nietzsche's theory of morality. The woman claimed that Nietzsche asserted that all morality is a result of group think. I refuted this claim and wrote other things as well. It may be of some interest to my readers, or not. Okay,  zur Sache , as the Krauts say. First off, it is wrong to claim that Nietzsche proposed that morality is always the product of group think, if by "group" you mean the unwashed, knuckle-scraping masses of the "herd". For Nietzsche there are two categories of morality, the one of "good and bad" and the other of "good and evil". The former is the morality of the strong and is by Nietzsche's lights the healthy, life-affirming morality. The latter is the morality of the weak, which is according to Nietzsche based not upon love, as its proponents claim, but upon vindictive resentment a...

  [From Max Picard's book  Hitler in uns selbst] During a trip to Germany in 1932, I received a visit from the chairman of a major German political party, who asked me how it was possible that Hitler had become so well known, that he had acquired so many supporters. I pointed to an illustrated newspaper that was lying on the table and asked him to thumb through it. The first page had a picture of an almost naked female dancer. On the second page a battalion of soldiers were doing exercises with machine guns, and underneath was shown some scientist in a laboratory. The third page had a chart chronicling the development of the bicycle from the mid-19th century to the present day, next to which a Chinese poem was printed. The next page had photos of workers from some factory performing calisthenics during their free time, and underneath were the knotscripts of an Indian Tribe in South America. On the opposite page stood some lawmaker, sunning himself on a bright summer’s day. “Th...

(This was posted to my MySpace Weblog on July 1, 2006). This comes a bit late, this commentary of Joan Acocella's review of  The Playmate Book  which appeared in the March Twentieth issue of  The New Yorker . At first I was surprised that the sophisticates at  The New Yorker  would dignify such blatant exploitation by giving it so many pages of analysis. Then again,  Playboy  is very much a cultural phenomenon, and  The Playmate Book  is a very stylish coffeetable monument to that phenomenon or at least tries to be. So, the  The New Yorker  as America's judge of true style has a duty to review this book and determine whether it is truly stylish. The answer is no. The nude playmates are so vapid that they are not even erotic. The whole Playboy culture that Hefner espouses has not extricated itself from Hefner's own fantasy of a brandy-snifting bachelor world filled with highbrow discussions about Nietzsche and good, wholesome devianc...

The anthropology that underpins transgenderism, namely the complete disassociation of the mind from the body, is precisely the anthropology necessary to understand prostitution as a "job like any other". If one locates human identity entirely in the mind, then there can be no parts of the body considered so integral to personhood that they should be off limits to the profanations of commerce. The entire body is merely an instrument, which means that one's "privates" have as much significance as one's arms and legs, and just as we do not think it is any violation of our dignity as humans to put our limbs to work, it should not be deemed below our dignity to put our "privates" to work either because neither our limbs nor our "privates" have anything to do with our identities as men and women. They are all equally instrumental. It is little wonder then that George Soros is funding both the Transgender Movement and the Pimp Lobby.

 For a little while in a roof's shade, Brightly painted horses turn in a band. They have all been taken from a land That hesitates before it fades. A pinching harness keeps them bound, But all have courage in their eyes, A crimson lion terrifies, And now the china elephant comes 'round. Just as in the woods there's a buck, Except that it's saddled and carries A little blue girl all buckled up. And on the lion rides in white a young Boy and holds on with a small warm hand As the animal shows his teeth and tongue. And now the china elephant comes 'round. Bright young ladies are also there, Almost too old for these wooden mounds, In the middle of the leaps and bounds, They look up, around, at us, anywhere. And now the china elephant comes 'round. And so it goes--faster, hastening its end, It circles and it turns and has no aim, A red, a green, a grey sent around, A small inchoate outline of a face, And sometimes we see a smile triumphant And bless'd that sparkl...

Man: Hey, I would like to buy you a drink. Woman: (flashes her wedding ring at him) Man: So? Woman: I’m married, dumbass. Man: So? Woman: Are you really THAT stupid? I’m married. That means that I am off the menu. Get it? Man: Oh, I get it. You think that marriage means the forsaking of all other lovers, right? Woman: Hey, Einstein, that’s not what I think marriage means. That is what marriage means, you creep. Man: No, it doesn’t. That may be what your particular religious tradition says it means, but that’s NOT what marriage means according to Rawlsian Public Reason. Woman: What the hell? Man: Before you throw your mojito in my face—and you don’t want to do that, anyway, because the mojitos here are just scrumptious— Woman: Well, yes, okay, you have to go down to Miami to find any better.   Man: True that. They use their own mint, did you know that? Woman: Yeah, fine, don’t change the subject. Why shouldn’t I throw something else in your face, you creeper? Man: For the simpl...

 Written in April 2021.           A few months ago I was brave enough to venture out to do some much needed grocery shopping.  I was even braver to take mass transit. In this pandemic most people who can avoid riding mass transit for reasons too obvious to mention here have done so, leaving the trains and buses to those who, like me, have no other choice, or crazy people. This tends to make the riding of mass transit a bit hairier than it used to be. My ride back from the store offered a particularly harrowing illustration of this. On the train I sat across from a noticeably unkempt and disheveled man, who was, well, crazy and belligerent. He started a White Supremacist rant with lavish use of the N-word, which he exclaimed as loudly as he could. There were, of course, several black men on this train, and they, of course, heard him.  No one could not hear him. Everyone, knowing he was obviously bonkers, tried to ignore him, but his hateful ra...

 I am often asked with great bewilderment why in God's name Jeanne la Pucelle, a warrior who led a very bloody war, is my favorite saint? Why would God have a person lead an activity that maims, mutilates, and kills people? And, by the way, am I not supposed to be vehemently anti-war? Yeah, precisely. The Catholic Church won't let me be dogmatically anti-war. I must allow at least for the possibility of a Just War. And the story of Ste. Jeanne tells me exactly what a Just War should look like. It should be one led by a nineteen year old Virgin whose visions have been exhaustively documented by an ecclesiastical consistory and found to be consistent with Holy Doctrine and Writ, and if it's not, then it's evil and I have a sacred duty to protest it. Thanks, Jeanne!

 [This is a scene from a play that I never wrote. Actually, I just wrote this scene, and it's not very good. I include it here because it does have the merit of explaining why I would never be a Protestant. The play was supposed to about Marlene Nowotniak. She is a very bright 16 year old girl and a very beautiful one as well.  She likes to frequent a used bookstore, owned by Friedrich Nietzsche (I just decided to put Nietzsche in for the hell of it), who has as his indentured servant a very bizarre but orthodox Catholic, Ken Silenus.  Ken tries to convince Marlene of the need to believe in Catholicism to understand  Shakespeare properly.  Marlene will have none of it, though, saying that she likes Shakespeare just fine as an atheist.  Much to Ken's horror, the charming and elegant and witty Marlene falls head over heels for a quaterback from her High School.  His name is Scott Coiler, and he is a grunt, the type that thinks poetry ...

  (The scene is a college dorm room.  It is typically furnished:  A desk, a loft bed so that the resident has more floor space for a guitar and other stuff that makes sense only to an undergraduate, a compact refrigerator, and a poster of a Schiele Painting because Klimt is just too cliché.  An earnest young man is sitting at the desk, tapping away on his laptop.  There’s a knock on the door.) Ernest Young Man:  (not looking away from the screen)  Come in, it’s open. (A young woman enters in a t-shirt and very loose dungarees.) Young Woman:  You wanted to see me, Zak? Zak:  (still not looking away from the screen) It’s Cherrie, right? Cherrie:  Yeah, that’s my name.  Don’t wear it out. Zak:  (finally swivels his chair toward Cherrie). Would you shut the door, please? Cherrie:  Well, okay, but… Zak:  It's just a routine interview, but it has to be confidential.  I don't bite. Cherrie:  Okay.  (shuts the ...