RSS MAD

FINAL POST: This blog has moved to a new home

Change your bookmarks, etc. to RelapsedCatholic.com.

Our new host is Blogmatrix, founded by Toronto's own David Janes.

As of right now (Wednesday, Jan 17/07) the RSS feed at the new site is still being fixed, and we have a CSS/font size issue. But otherwise the site is 95% working, so please come visit!

PS: So long, Blogger. It's been a great 6.5 years but your "new" and "improved" platform is icky, and your help forum is worse. Bye.

URGENT: This blog is moving!

UPDATE 2: Cross stays, atheist dies.

UPDATE: I'd recommend visiting SmallDeadAnimals while I'm tied up, for excellent posts on race & culture, "global warming", a Greenpeace founder's moment of clarity and much more. My other daily visits include RightGirl, BloodThirstyLiberal, WesternResistance and GatesOfVienna.

Another place to look for good stuff is the right hand sidebar at Mark Steyn's Greatest Hits page, under "Ports of Call."

***
As promised/threatened: I'm leaving Blogger after almost 7 years because their new and "improved" platform messed up my RSS feed, a situation they can't or won't fix.

Blogging will be irregular for the next few days as I make the transition.

Eventually, the very last (and topmost) post on this version of the blog will tell visitors to go to www.RelapsedCatholic.com from then on. I will redirect that url to the new server within a day or two.

Your patience is appreciated during this change. The good news is that the RSS feed will be working again; you'll have to resubscribe at the new site when it goes live.

David Warren: Baghdad express

"President Bush is at his most Lincolnesque at the moment. Abraham Lincoln made most of the key decisions that ultimately won the American Civil War, over the opposition of Congress, public opinion, and most particularly, his generals. He was depicted in the press of his day much as Mr Bush is depicted in the media of our day: as a simpleton, in over his depth. Which doesn’t mean Bush is another Lincoln. But doesn’t preclude it, either."

PJ O'Rourke's new book -- for $1

Actually, you get 5 books for $1 when you join the American Compass conservative book club.

Other new titles just out include Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home, Clint Johnson's The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South and Dr. Laura's latest, The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage.

(Sorry: US residents only.)

BC Sikhs honour assassin who murdered Canadian official

No wonder we didn't want to let you in!

"If a minority group doesn't like Canadian immigration policy, it is justified in murdering the government officials charged with enforcing it. Now that's multiculturalism with a vengeance!

"Let's be clear. If this article is accurate, the gurdwara is teaching its members to despise the British Canadians who built Canada. I don't believe in 'hate speech' laws, but I do note the inconsistency with which they are enforced. It seems to me saying a murdered Canadian official deserved to die is hateful speech. Assassinating a government official is a terrorist act whatever the circumstances. In honouring this assassin, the Sikhs at this gurdwara are honouring a terrorist.

"Does the gurdwara believe Sikhs today would be justified in assassinating a CSIS agent who was using informants to monitor Sikh extremists in Canada?"

Australia: Muslim group denounces "uncovered meat" sheik

"In the television interview, the sheik labelled white Australians "liars" and said Muslims were more entitled to be in Australia than those with a convict heritage. (...)

"The sheik is on holiday in Egypt in what was supposed to be a self-imposed exile following comments he made late last year during a Ramadan speech at Sydney's Lakemba mosque.

"He compared immodestly-dressed women to 'uncovered meat' and said they were responsible for the sexual assaults they incur."

Well, half of 'em are happy...

Is this a joke?

Guidebooks to Denmark correctly assert that winning the 1992 European Championship in football by beating Germany 2-0 in the final put Danes in such a state of euphoria that the country has not been the same since. This would explain the high plateau of life satisfaction in Denmark after 1992.

Football? 1992? Yet Euros call Americans shallow and stupid.

(Saith Julie Burchill: Show me a man who loves football and nine times out of ten you'll be pointing at a really bad shag.)

Here's one Dane who "slept with a smile on his face":

Lars Hedegaard is the former editor-in-chief of the left-leaning newspaper Information, and still declares himself to be left-wing. He claims that it’s not him, but the lefties who abandoned everything socialism used to stand for, such as freedom, culture, democracy, dignity, science and rational thinking.

In the wake of the Motoon affair he — like countless other Danes — felt the scales fall from his eyes. He’s now President of the ‘Danish Free Press Society’ and a vehement supporter of the free word. For that reason alone he’s normally excluded from the MSM, especially national TV.

I don’t know what went wrong that night, but somehow he slipped through DR’s “political correctness filter” and — in his usual calm and commonsense way — gave the assembled dimwits a run for their money.

UK: more on the schoolgirl and the crucifix

According to the Telegraph, the school has a jewellery ban for certain grades; small cross lapel pins are allowed, however. My Catholic high school had a no-jewellery policy too, to cut down on status symbols.

I still don't understand the "health and safety" aspect -- sounds like bureaucratic and legal hoo-haw -- but the school's position otherwise seems reasonable. She should wear the regulation lapel pin instead of her crucifix.

The Gospel According to Oprah

"Winfrey learned all about 'testifying' as a girl back in the Faith United Mississippi Baptist Church, where jealous peers often called her 'Miss Jesus.'

"But here's the irony, noted journalist Marcia Nelson, author of The Gospel According to Oprah Winfrey has become a billionaire and one of world's most powerful women by baring her soul and urging millions of others to follow her example, resulting in what some critics call the 'Oprahfication' of America. However, it's almost impossible to answer this simple question: What does Oprah believe?"

In the 70s, there was always some crazy chick named Annie

I love Foxes and overlook its flaws because even though the release date is 1980, it is a quintessential 70s film that nobody talks about. Mostly because it is such a teenage girl movie; I doubt many men could sit through the whole thing. If Janis Ian's voice makes your life flash before your eyes, if you remember Love's Baby Soft and Bonnie Bell Lipsmackers and scented belted Kotex, you should really watch this movie. It will make you want to dig up your old Holly Hobby diary with the little fake lock on the front, either so you can re-read it or finally set it on fire, while playing "Kids of Tragedy" full blast. And "Magic Man".

A real turning point in my life came when I realised I no longer identified with the teenagers in movies but with the teachers and parents instead. It was like seeing my first grey hair. However, I still side with the teen girls in Foxes because their parents are divorced hippies or bully cops. I was never as free-spirited as these girls. Yeah, I hosted one party like that, jezuz. But I only pretended to understand when other kids (who were probably lying too) talked about acid or angel dust. I didn't lose my virginity until just before my 19th birthday -- wow, that was harder to type than I thought. It's like writing, "I used to have leprosy but it cleared up. Wanna see?" My years of dissipation came later.

So these girls were nothing like me, except the brunette with (of course) the big glasses, just like the ones I wore then. And I would end up with Randy Quaid, wouldn't I. (Was his dad the milkman, btw? Dennis?) I sort of would have loved to have been Cherrie Currie except for that bad haircut (which some women in Hamilton still have). She's so convincing I actually thought she died in real life too but apparently she was in Spinal Tap (?) and is now a "chainsaw carving artist" -- which comes as a gross, embarrassing let down but gets kind of neat if you give yourself a second or two to digest the idea.

Girls had shinier hair in the 70s. This guy noticed it too (we're the same age, and he's gay. His essay about Manhattan made me swoon with nostalgia, a sensation I enjoyed but then didn't. I read his piece first thing in the morning and almost called in sick with Stendhal Syndrome. You've been warned). "Birch plank" is the perfect description of Jodie Foster's hair too, not just Meryl Streep's. You were just more likely to see hair with that blinding Pantene shimmer because I suppose dulling gel and mouse and hairspray didn't come in until the 80s.

Even when she's nervous, Jodie Foster is appealingly self-assured, because she's feeling the fear and doing it anyway. You envy her that, along with that hair and those sharply cut features and how she doesn't have to wear makeup. ("Non-threatening teenage girl"?) She smiles so rarely that when she does you know you must be someone special. Molly Ringwald had that too but something was missing. Jodie Foster haunts you without even trying or meaning to, unlike a Dietrich who's all, "Look how unforgettable I am -- or else!" And you wish Jodie Foster was your best friend. Dietrich would forget your birthday cuz she was too busy skiing with Count Such-and-So.

Scott Baio rides a skateboard in this movie. Again, you're been warned.

And that is Laura Dern at the sliding door. So there's hope for everyone.

Devine and the ridiculous

Yes, as you had heard, a 13-year-old Catholic girl in the UK has apparently been banned from wearing a crucifix because it violated "health and safety rules." After all, she could put someone's eye out with that thing...

All the stories cite the same Daily Mail source, word for word. I will watch for more detailed stories as they come out.

I thought of this story too but Karen beat me to it:

Years ago, I was at an Act One dinner where keynote speaker Randy Wallace shocked the room by saying, "I have never worn a cross around my neck and I never will." Then added, "Unless it becomes illegal, in which case, you can bet your ass I'll be wearing one the next day."

What a Canadian Celebrity Big Brother might look like

"...who among us, be honest, doesn't harbour a homegrown Celebrity Big Brother fantasy cast? I shuffle my lineup almost every week. (I recently added Myriam Bedard and dropped Michael Ignatieff.)

"Mainstays include: Adrienne Clarkson (for storytelling around the fire); Douglas Coupland (for instant cool insights into the experience); Spenny from Kenny vs. Spenny (needs to break out on his own); Ralph Klein (unless the rumour is true and he is tagged for CBC's Dancing with the Canadian Stars); e-Talk's Tanya Kim (by all appearances, half a beer away from naked trampolining); The red-haired quirky gal who's in all those commercials (seems fun; somebody to root for); The Bountiful, B.C., polygamist Winston Blackmore (the requisite Lothario); And worldy wit Mark Steyn (for snark, game strategy and, on drunken nights in the hot tub, wicked anecdotes about real celebrities).

"Sometimes I stare at the blank TV screen and see them all wrestling in Kraft Dinner..."


***
I literally shuddered just then, didn't you?

My American readers don't realize that everyone up here knows who the "red-haired quirky gal" is, because there's some kind of Canadian union law that only 5 actors are allowed to be in TV commercials during any given era. Right now it's her, one of The Illustrated Men, and The Fat Guy. A few years back, it was the Tall Balding Guy with the Moustache, the Dude with the Pockmarked Face, and both McGraths. Don't ask me why.

Shut up about those damned little no-neck monsters!

This sounds like me about 10 years ago, without the Western Civ bits, which never would have crossed my mind at the time. I've mellowed considerably, thanks to exposure to other people's kids. Still, none of my own, though. Too late. And you should all be as thrilled about that as I am:

I find it so reassuring when Our Dear Democratic, Progressive, Tolerant, And Did I Mention Democratic? Leaders drop their masks and admit that they think that no woman is fully human unless she has had a man put his seed in her and borne his spawn.

(...)

I am sick of hearing about the wonders of childbirthing and how we-uns should all get in the stirrups and shoot five or six out for the cause of Fambly, and if we don't we are selfish old shrews who will destroy Western Civilization and the Muslims and their twenty children per wife households will take over the world. Never mind that Western Civ is currently too weak-willed to do what it really takes to save itself* -- it might upset The Chillllldren™!

It gets better.

For many Gen-X females like me, the very thought of having children is too foreign to entertain. Maybe your mom matter-of-factly got you on The Pill for your sixteenth birthday, the way girls today get boob jobs and Mazdas. You watched Mary Tyler Moore and Police Woman. Worse (and you'd be surprised by the number of people who've told me identical tales) you were traumatised by movies like The Omen, Rosemary's Baby and all the others. (See: someone else noticed those release dates, too -- PS: Roe v Wade was 1973. There's an evil parasitical thing growing inside you that must be destroyed before IT kills YOU!!!)

And who would you rather be in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? Liz Taylor or the ugly woman with the rude, homely offspring? Is that even a question? (UPDATE: Andrea interprets Maggie's behaviour differently. I say she's just really -- understandably -- hot for her husband, yet doesn't want kids of her own. I was gonna say because she'd ruin her figure but can't recall any lines that would support that. I'm the one who doesn't want her to ruin her figure because that would be a bigger tragedy for Civilization than her not having kids. It would be like blowing up the Venus deMilo...)

What good were children, you wondered? Don't they just make lots of noise and dirty diapers and cost lots of money (that's what your parents were always saying about you. My job in my family was to go buy cigarettes for my stepfather when he was too drunk to go himself. You have to "earn your keep" somehow.) Don't they just get kidnapped, in million-selling novels and in real life?

(What was the name of that huge bestseller with the off center drawing of the house on the cover, and the pre-tornado sky and the one red mitt left fornlornly on the front lawn, with a title like Have You Seen the Children?. Everybody had a copy of that book in their bathroom and just the cover scared the holy hell out of me. UPDATE:Thanks, James, for reminding me -- Where Are The Children. I used the original cover rather than the 30th Anniversary one you sent. Isn't that so "Dick & Perry then sped off"?)

Or hit by cars, like your babysitter's son? Or else you end up with some Go Ask Alice trouble maker.

Maybe, like me, you learned an unintended lesson from being taught by nuns of varying degrees of hip coolness from nursery school to Grade 13 (that's how old I am).

I admire women my age who finally went ahead and did it -- I can appreciate the daunting mental and emotional work involved, un-brainwashing yourself like that. I guess it helps if you have a maternal instinct and I don't think I do. "Would you like a real little baby like that when you grow up?" someone asked me when I was three and playing with my Raggedy Ann doll. "NO!" I screamed back. Another real kid would just wreck all my toys. Or something. I can still hear that "No!" I knew what it meant, and I meant it.

No wonder he lives in Toronto (but only when it's sufficiently warm and "interesting"

We haven't heard much from Toronto/Iranian blogger "Hoder" for a while; time was I thought Jeff Jarvis was going to start an official fan club for the guy. 2002 seems like a long time ago.

He fits right in around here, as you'll see from a this Hugh Hewitt interview:

HH: Hossein, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There are no radical Christians running around George Bush who believe in ushering in the End Times by the occasioning of chaos. That’s just not true. Do you have any names to go with…

HD: But the evidence is suggesting something else, actually.

HH: No, actually, it’s not. There isn’t anyone. Not one. You name me one name of a radical Christian…

HD: It doesn’t matter who is close to Bush or who is not. The policies that they’re doing, the invasion of Iraq, the whole rhetoric of you’re either with us or against us, and lots of other policies that come from that ideology, suggesting that they also believe in that, and it’s even more dangerous, because they’re more popular than this small group of Iranians who are supporting Ahmadinejad.

HH: Hossein, if, in fact, anyone believed that, and they believed in ushering in the End Times, they’d have had six years to start it by now.

HD: I don’t really know, but the evidence that I’m seeing from the Bush administration is much more dangerous than anything that you can see from Ahmadinejad’s government.

(...)

HH: When will you be back in Toronto?

HD: I’m not actually sure. I think Europe is much more of an interesting place than the freezing Canada, these days, in this winter.

Well then why don't you just sod off, then, sonny boy? The cost of living is pretty high in this city. I wonder where he gets the money to do so much galavanting. Those tacky pop-ups on his site surely don't generate that much revenue.

The weird thing about that "Canada" line is: we've had an unseasonably warm Toronto winter. Today's high is F51, which means among other things that all the young dudes in Boystown will be cruising the park in cutoffs this aft. In here, I had to shut off the heat. So "freezing" is the last word any of us would use to describe this winter's weather. Nice powers of perception, guy.

His warped ideas about US Christians and so on make him the perfect Torontonian otherwise.

I'm with See-Dubya; don't trust a pothead's geo-political musings.

Coren: Little Mosque is "visual drudgery"

"The usual visual drudgery. Awful Canadian actors mouthing lamentable dialogue packed with cliches and telegraphed attempts at humour. The bland leading the bland. And all paid for by your tax dollars -- including the huge advertising campaign for the project. Public money that could otherwise have been spent on something trivial like a nurse in an intensive care ward.

(...)

"The non-Muslim caricatures, however, are repugnant. Especially if they're cops.

"You know cops. The poor fools who have to put their lives on the line during a terrorist attack. A terrorist attack which, naturally, could never have anything to do with Islam.

"By the way, in the month of December alone there were 249 jihadist incidents around the world, resulting in 1,794 deaths and 1,589 people being critically injured."

A brief and very funny history of writers' feuds

"With great sadness we learn that the Colombian Nobel prize winner Gabriel García Márquez and the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa, after a thrillingly long and bitter feud, are patching up their differences. (...) Writers have always conducted colourful feuds, and the García Máarquez-Vargas Llosa vendetta was one of the best. Once they were the closest friends. García Márquez was godfather to Vargas Llosa’s son. Then relations cooled, their political paths diverged, and three decades ago, for reasons that have never been fully explained by either side, the friendship came to an end with a fierce fist-fight in a Mexican cinema."

(...)

"Norman Mailer, the veteran fighter-writer, is another who upholds the long-established tradition that if you can’t beat ’em, thump ’em. Mailer sat on Truman Capote, headbutted and punched Gore Vidal, and stabbed his first wife with a penknife when she called him a 'faggot'. He wrote to William Styron, after a disobliging review: 'I will invite you to a fight in which I expect to stomp out of you a fat amount of your yellow and treacherous shit.'"

(...)

"Revenge should be served not only cold, but with the most elaborate garnish. Bevis Hillier recently served up such a dish to A.N. Wilson, his rival Betjeman biographer, by planting on him a fake letter from an invented mistress in which the first character of each sentence spelt an offensive message.

"Vladimir Nabokov and the critic Edmund Wilson fell out after a quarter-century of close friendship over the precise translation of a single Russian phrase in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin."

(...)

"The joy of Cook and Mailer was their eagerness not only to give but to take offence openly; to respond to an original slight, whether intended or not, with overwhelming and disproportionate rudeness; to hone resentment over time, and deliver the insulting punchline immediately after the punch. 'Words fail Norman Mailer yet again,' said Vidal, after Mailer had floored him with a single blow in a television studio. The remark was far too brilliant to have been spontaneous.

"These are the hallmarks of the truly great feud. Never forgive or reconcile. Never back down. Land the first blow and extract the last laugh, even if that means chiselling it onto your headstone. ('I told you I was ill!' wails Spike Milligan’s epitaph.) Above all, take the fight to the enemy. In 1936 Wallace Stevens the poet, drunk, accosted Ernest Hemingway at a party and sneered: 'So, you think you’re Ernest Hemingway?' The resulting punch-up left both writers battered, and even more famous."

Paul Tuns: 10 Things I Don't Care About

Yeah, I'm citing him a lot; he's been on a roll. I was just thinking of making a list like this, but he beat me to it and said most of what I'd say anyhow:

9. Quebec -- Although I find the effect of Quebec on Canadian politics fascinating, I don't care whether Quebec remains part of Canada or not.

8. Aboriginals -- I think they got a bum deal. Get over it. It's time to join the larger society.

6. Space exploration -- The issue is not at all interesting to me. I understand that there is important research (military and civilian) associated with the space program. Let me know when they find something.

3. AIDS in North America & Europe -- My heart goes out to women and children in the developing world who contract AIDS/HIV; the socio-legal realities in many countries make them innocent victims of not just a deadly disease but the injustices (abusive and philandering husbands, the devaluing of females, the helplessness of children, etc...) that permit the disease to spread wildly and indiscriminately. But for almost all North American adults suffering from the disease, it is a result of lifestyle choices and I'd rather see society's time and energy used to curb the social pathologies that lead to the spread of AIDS than wasting one second fretting about not-so-innocent victims.

I'd add: The Environment. It's green and brown -- two ugly colours that don't even match. Also it smells. I'm moving from indifference to all-out hatred the more I have to hear about Nature. What good are 5,000 extra polar bears unless we can train them to fight terrorists? Swiping them with their big paws or something...

Mr. Death: so how does it end?

I had to take a call half-way through Errol Morris' Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr..

Does he come to realize what a goof he's being? Doesn't sound like it.

What I did get to see was a finely wrought meditation on vanity and its many traps.

I also beheld a living example of my conspiracy-theorists-are-borderline-autistic theory. But my theory may be just as silly as Leuchter's, right?

Why I hate Canadian electoral politics

(LINK FIXEd)

"Today was the second day in a row a Tory staffer has said this to me: 'No snow, no election.' The Conservatives, they both said, can't win if people in Ottawa and Toronto and southwestern Ontario can't remember snow on the ground sometime between now and the March break because it gives credence to the idea that global warming is a fact and that it is getting worse under the Tories.

"Now, a good snow between now and mid-March doesn't disprove global warming any more than a green winter proves it. Weather patterns change and have abnormalities without man's fingerprints being all over the big weather machine in the sky. And even if man is reponsible, it can hardly all be blamed on the government in power since last January. But none of that matters. Suburban middle class voters can't go skiing and will take it out on Stephen Harper's Conservatives if they don't get some quality time at the various ski resorts..."

Peggy Noonan: Neither Iraqis nor Democrats seem ready to do what's required of them

"The question that suddenly began to crop up in all the talk after the speech was: What will fill the vacuum if America simply says, 'We gave it our best, but the Iraqi people didn't seem to want to cooperate in their freedom, so we will have to leave'? The talk was grim and believable. Ethnic cleansing, religious warfare, geopolitical machinations potentially harmful -- almost certainly harmful, and deeply so -- to America and the West. One argument seems tired and not true. It is that if we leave Iraq, the terrorists of the world will have a safe place in which to gather, coalesce, plan and move. They already have such places, in the Mideast and outside it, and maybe here. Terrorists hide, and the world is full of hiding places..."

For updates on the US Embassy bombing in Athens...

I'd recommend Michelle Malkin's blog; guests like Mary Katherine Ham are posting there while she's in Iraq.

Hitler Meets Christ: A Michael Moriarty Film

"Hitler Meets Christ was a recognition of how deeply performing in Holocaust affected Moriarty, who won a Golden Globe for his role as Nazi Erik Dorf in the landmark 1978 TV mini-series. 'I had to write Hitler Meets Christ to try to understand why such evil can exist. My role in Holocaust was most intriguing, because the author (Gerald Green) really captured a human being turning rotten in front of your eyes."

(...)

"Moriarty says Hitler Meets Christ is 'a comedy inasmuch as it allows the audience to laugh at Hitler, and a tragedy in that he's really a poor homeless man trapped and imprisoned by the soul of Hitler.' Even as a subject for debate between two of society's outcasts, the possibility of Hitler's redemption for his monstrous crimes is a theme that is bound to stir controversy."

In other news:

Golden Globe, Emmy, and Tony Award winning actor, writer, and musician as well as conservative patriot, Michael Moriarty recently announced his interest in running for President of the United States in 2008. He's doing it to take on Hollywood's liberal-left establishment and the Globalists.

"If a Hollywood star denigrates the war on terrorism or promotes gay marriage, he or she is welcomed with open arms by the Oprah Winfreys of the world. But if he or she holds views that are considered conservative or libertarian, doors begin to close," said Moriarty.

The "Globalists"? Urgh.

14 Carter Center advisers resign

in protest over Jimmah's book.

"I don't know what J-school Kinsella attended..."

"...but at the one I went to, the instructors, all former journalists, said there is no such thing as off the record. I generally think that the decent thing for a journalist to do is not to use the comments. And frankly Nicholas Kohler was kinda silly to actually quote the 'off the record' part of the quote.

"But sources shouldn't trust journalists because journalists have a certain obligation to report pertinent facts they know are true -- and a person's statement about his or her impression of what a friend is likely to do is a reportable fact. The understanding of every person dealing with a journalist is that their comments during interviews are fair game. If you don't want it appearing in print or being broadcast, don't say it."