Autumnal stuff

Oh, this made me happy. And I'm not the only one.



Also, a friendly reminder: What season is it?

Various & Sundry: Mostly things you're not sick of hearing about

It has been a long time, my friends, and goodness knows there are lots of things I could share with you today. But I will try to contain myself and keep it to the bare essentials, the most important and up-to-date...ummm...updates.

For example, we're all still talking about Miley Cyrus, right? I know there's been all sorts of stuff flitting about but I think all except this one article have missed the real issue, here: the terrible music.

Why do your children listen to knock-offs of Marvin Gaye? Why don’t they just listen to Marvin Gaye? Don’t you have Marvin Gaye records lying around, for crying out loud? Marvin Gaye sang about sex, but in a sexy way. Not in a rapey way. For example: while Marvin Gaye sings lines such as “You can love me when you want to, babe // This is such a groovy party, baby” in “Got to Give It Up”, a song that Thicke acknowledged being inspired by and preemptively sued the Gaye family re: copyright infringement allegations , Thicke sings “You the hottest bitch in the place". Since this is a blog post about shitty taste in music and not about feminism, I will ignore the fact that this is an incredibly offensive lyric and zero in on the fact that “you the hottest bitch in the place” is just plain ol’ incorrect English. Instead of worrying about your children watching scantily clad women being dry humped by men who could be their father, you should be more concerned about your children dropping verbs from their sentences.

Exactly so. May I have my curmudgeon card now?

It's strange that we're still talking about this almost one week later, given this eerily accurate description of the attention span of Twitter:

Also exactly so.

On to even more important things: your acting lesson from the week by Sir Patrick Stewart, who reviews previous lessons on the single-, double-, and triple-take, and moves into the extremely difficult quadruple-take. It is so difficult, he actually flubs it.



I deeply appreciated Jessica Creech's post Goodbye Church, Hello God. I feel like I'm in a similar place, in which going to church on Sundays is often not worth the cost of making that effort. Which is no sign of burn-out or loss of faith. It's...something else.

I wonder what has finally happened to the Bay Bridge Troll. Yes, troll, not toll. I will feel better knowing it has a good home when the new bridge opens next week.

Oh, update: "The troll will stay where it is for now, because there will be workers tearing down the old bridge and they will need protection. (This kind of quotidian witchcraft is quite head-spinning.) Later, it will be removed and put in a safe place somewhere near the bridge." I am relieved.

But you know what's even better than having a guardian troll under your bridge? Having a brand new puppy under your chair. Sam has arrived. Want to say hello?

Sweet Jesus on a breadstick! No more &*#$%@# handprint stoles!

You can buy this on Etsy for $75.
The description says (and I am not making
this up), "adorned with the colorful hand-
prints of actual joyful children!"

I participate in an online discussion group for people involved in Christian formation. Yesterday, someone asked what would be a good gift for the children to give to a new rector. Promptly, someone wrote back to suggest making a stole on which the children could put their handprints.

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, I reacted poorly.

But perhaps this is just me, I thought, and so I put the question to Twitter:

Clergy colleagues, be honest now. It's just between us. Do you want the children of your parish to make you a handprint stole?
— Laura Toepfer (@HeyToepfer) July 18, 2013

The reply was swift and clean:

@HeyToepfer No.
— Penny Nash (@penelopepiscopl) July 18, 2013

But I continued:

Next question for clergy: how many handprint stoles have you received during the course of your ministry?
— Laura Toepfer (@HeyToepfer) July 18, 2013

And when Laurie Brock, aka @drtysxyministry, appeared, things started to get real.

@FatherTim @scottagunn @davidsibley @HeyToepfer I have only one. With two handprints unfortunately placed.
— Laurie B. (@Drtysxyministry) July 18, 2013

@davidsibley @FatherTim @scottagunn @HeyToepfer Yes. Two handprints. Right. There. And. There.
— Laurie B. (@Drtysxyministry) July 18, 2013

@FatherTim @davidsibley @scottagunn @HeyToepfer I call it the Bad Touch Stole.
— Laurie B. (@Drtysxyministry) July 18, 2013

At which point I shared this image, which is something you will see if you Google "handprint stoles" as I did.

As Laurie noted,

@HeyToepfer @FatherTim @scottagunn @davidsibley And I will never be able to unsee that.
— Laurie B. (@Drtysxyministry) July 18, 2013

And you won't either.

Have we learned our lesson, people? It's a sweet thought, but keep your hands off the vestments.

4th of July Safety Tip

Because we care.

Yes, your duty as a patriotic American does not include using any bodily orifice as a launching pad. Just remember that.

More details on the fraternity brother (natch) who established this timeless truth here and here.

Have a wonderful 4th of July, wherever you are.

h/t to legal eagle Laura Talley Guyer for sharing this story.

Tabernacle! and other curse words

Over the weekend, I read Still Life, a mystery by Louise Penny set in Quebec. I kept wondering why they said "Tabernac!" (or, in Quebecois, 'Tabernacle!') but didn't think much of it until I read

'Oh. My. God.' was heard a lot, as was 'Holy shit' and 'Tabarouette'. 'Tabarnouche' and 'Tabernacle' bounced off the walls. Jane's living room had become a shrine to multilingual swearing.

Hold the phone, here! Swearing? Tabernacle is a curse word? Why, yes!

“Tabernacle” is one of Quebec's most popular French swear words, one usually employed, as with cursing in general, to express irritation, pain, discouragement, outrage, anger, joy and/or excitement.

Other Quebec swear words include slightly modified forms of the French for baptism, chalice, Calvary, and other religious terms; the umbrella term for Quebecois profanity is sacre. Which gives you an indicator of how well the Catholic Church did in Quebec.

The Washington Post had a great article about this from a few years back, explaining the whole sacre phenomenon. It was news to me.

Oh, the book...I wish I enjoyed it more than I did. 'Salright. But I'm not sure I'll go to any lengths to find the next one. Though I liked Chief Inspector Gamache, I never really believed he was anything other than a fictional character, a Dalgliesh-esh sensitive inspector type.

The thing, strangely enough, that got under my skin was that too many characters knew too much poetry. Really, no one I know quotes poetry in daily conversation. In a murder investigation, in a small town, to have several people quoting great swaths of Auden seemed a bit much. So that was my sticking point.

But at least I learned something. Tabernac!

The theory of universal comic punch lines

In my blog posts labeled "somewhat inappropriate," this has to be in the top 5, but I still thought it was funny. Robert Sinclair, a SF-based art director and communication designer, writes,

It was recently theorized that all New Yorker cartoons could be captioned with “Christ, what an asshole” without compromising their comedic value. 

I discovered this is true of virtually all comics, old and new:

et voila --

I will never see Family Circus the same way again.

Various & Sundry: Politics, Fabulous Women, and Snark

I have an ambitious Saturday to-do list, so let's get the important stuff out of the way: this week's compendium of stuff I found interesting, curated for your pleasure and edification.

I didn't watch the debate on Wednesday. Neither did Lance Mannion, which didn't stop him from posting something that I think captures the essence of the debate. Meanwhile, Brenda Peterson wrote why Romney's performance was a turn-off for women.

And the take-away image is of Big Bird getting the axe; in response, anibundel has "rounded up Exhibits ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (that’s pronounced “ab-key-deaf-gher-jeckle-mer-nop-qur-stuv-werx-yvs”, for the uninitiated) as to why Sesame Street is one of the greatest programs on television for children." Starting with Big Bird learning about the death of Mr. Hooper.



Hope you had your Cool Touch (TM) Kleenex handy. And if you have time, check out her wonderful compendium of Sesame Street videos.

A couple of bloggers review the Letter from 2012 in Obama's America that Focus on the Family wrote before the 2008 election -- a letter that describes the world of October 2012 in a way that, shall we say, is apocalyptically wrong. They were 0.5 for 34, getting half of one prediction right for correctly seeing that Obama would repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. A great insight:

Re-reading the Focus letter four years later, what strikes me most — besides how utterly wrong they are about everything — is how parochial their imagination is when attempting to envision a political dystopia. The horrors they predict are almost all narrowly targeted at and tailored toward them. I’ve read a ton of dystopian stories, good and bad, and this is the most cluelessly self-absorbed vision of its kind that I’ve ever seen.

For a final note in our political coverage, Patton Oswalt wonders what would happen if everyone voted. Wonderful post about, you know, participating.

In the Fabulous Women's Obituaries department, two great ones this week: first up, Lavender "Pinkie" Barnes, champion table tennis player, palm reader, and advertising copywriter ("Veet. It's always summer under your arms.")

Then there's the amazing Vanya Kewley, an utterly fearless documentarian.

"She worked from Chile to Saudi Arabia, via Vietnam, producing early profiles of controversial international leaders such as Colonel Gaddafi (Soldier for Islam) and General Ojukwu (The Man Who Made Biafra). Though she stood just over 5ft, dictators held no terrors for her.  

"She was beaten and imprisoned in Uganda when her crew were mistaken for mercenaries; clubbed unconscious when living on famine rations among the Ananaya “freedom fighters” in South Sudan; and threatened with death by North Korean soldiers."

The next paragraph then describes how she deserted a tour group to trek 4,000 miles through Tibet with a hand-held camera. Formidable would be the word that comes to mind.

Meanwhile, closer to home, Tim Schenck reminds us that October is Pastor Appreciation Month. He offers a few suggestions of what pastors might appreciate being appreciated with. As he notes,

Most pastors don’t have nearly enough crosses in their lives. Usually only fifteen or so hung up in their offices plus countless others in their homes. What they really need is one more with “Pastor” written across it to remind them of Christ’s self-giving sacrifice on Cavalry.

You know what else coincides with Pastor Appreciation Month? #snarktoberfest.

You know what else was being celebrated on Twitter? The social event of the year: the My Little Pony wedding, aka #mlpwedding. Well, all right, it happened a while back. But Nancy Davis Kho and Wendi Aarons are just getting around to apologizing to Hasbro for their inappropriate tweets.

For instance, we realize now that tweets like “CARAMEL IS ONLY MARRYING KNIGHT SHADE FOR THE GREEN CARD! #MLPWedding” and “WHEN PLASTIC HORSES CAN MARRY PLASTIC HORSES, MAN MARRYING DOG FOLLOWS RIGHT BEHIND! #FamilyValues #MLPWedding” forced you, a non-partisan toy company, into debates on illegal immigration and same sex marriage that you had probably hoped to avoid when you planned your wholesome My Little Pony Twitter Party. We thought Nancy’s contribution of “THANK YOU #VERMONT! NOW DESERT ROSE AND DAISYJO CAN MAKE IT LEGAL! #MLPWedding” added balance to the discussion, but we see now that it falls into this category as well.

I'm not sure they sound truly sorry. They still want to know why the couple registered for a whip.

Having been led from their letter to Wendi's open letter to the brand manager for Always Maxi-pads, and on to the rest of McSweeney's Internet Tendency, it is also all their fault that I am ending with this completely profane article that I am compelled to include for its timeliness and best use of seasonal vegetables. Because it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. And I've got things to do.

Obit du jour: Dr. Ruth Etchells

Let us take a moment to celebrate the life of the remarkable Dr. Ruth Etchells, former Principal of St. John's College with Cranmer Hall, Durham. Take it away, Telegraph:

A kind, humane person, she was endowed with considerable pastoral skill and as capable of setting a shy student at ease as she was in dealing with a bishop. A special gift for friendship widely extended her influence.

These gifts were no less valuable when she became Principal of St John’s. Women had still to be admitted to the college, and the male ordinands were unaccustomed to having a woman as their head; she soon won their confidence. Another five years would pass before women could be ordained to the priesthood, but admission to the diaconate became possible in 1987 and candidates for this office were admitted for training. She spoke powerfully in the 1992 General Synod debate when the admission of women to the priesthood was authorised.

The obit in the Guardian calls her "the best female bishop we never had."

It would be nice if the Church of England could take its head out of its collective ass--oh, excuse me, "arse"--so it could actually have some of these women bishops instead of eulogizing them once they're dead.

Although I have to think she was probably better off never needing to wear the purple.

Still, the principal of a college has got to have a high degree of tolerance for bureaucratic indifference and administrative tedium. And it would have been wonderful if she'd had the friggin' option!

Deep breath.

In calmer news, I love that she called ordinands "my lambs."

I'll have to check out some of her books. She wrote several books of prayers along with her scholarship. This is the only prayer of hers I could find in a Google search:

Father of all…, make the roof of my house wide enough for all opinions, oil the door of my house so it opens easily to friend and stranger, and set such a table in my house that my whole family may speak kindly and freely around it.

Amen.

Sunday Funnies, August 12

I do love this, even though I probably shouldn't.

Found via Twitter.

Sunday Funnies, July 15

Let's celebrate the opening of The Dark Knight Rises with the Dark Knight in religious art, shall we?

h/t Anglobaptist

Source: matthewpaulturner.net via Confirm on Pinterest

Don't know where I found this exactly.

This transparency for home or church use can be found here.

bonus image (because I cannot resist) found here:

Let us now say Amen.

Various & Sundry, May 26 Mostly images and literary snark

Whew! It's been a busy week. I'm glad to take a moment to dump post lovingly about some of the interesting things I saw in passing this week.

I missed the solar eclipse last weekend, but someone took advantage of it rather romantically.

Please note that this is a composite photo; they weren't actually able to get this in one shot. Still cool, though.

Are you part of a book group? I'm not. But if I were, these are some of the questions I'd be asking.  For example,

3. Several people have noted key differences in structure between the modern bestselling novel and commercially successful classic literature. Who do you think these people are trying to impress? Can we all acknowledge that these people went to Brown so we can move on?

Questions like these are the reason I'm not part of a book group.

On the other hand, I have nothing but the highest admiration for Philosophy Bro who reads and summarizes philosophy texts in frat speak. Behold, one of the less profane sections of Plato's Apology. (Actually, it's not one of the less profane sections, because I couldn't find one. So, yeah, bad language, you are forewarned.)

I'm not going to disobey the gods just to avoid death; why the fuck would I take the risk into account when trying to decide whether or not to do the right thing? Were the soldiers of Troy inferior because they said, 'Death? I don't give a shit, as long as justice happens on the way.' Spoiler Alert: No. Besides, I don't know shit about what happens after death, so how can I be afraid of it? You want me to not do a thing that I know is awesome, just so some mysterious thing I know nothing about won't happen? Yeah, fuck that noise.

That is exactly how I imagine Socrates talked.

I want to know what Socrates would have to say to the frat boys who might have accidentally burned down their frat house when they engaged in the year-end frivolity of burning their textbooks. Oops.

You know who else was a smart-ass? Mark Twain, who had this to say when he learned the library allowed children to read Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn:

I am greatly troubled by what you say. I wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn for adults exclusively, and it always distresses me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean; I know this by my own experience, and to this day I cherish an unappeasable bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again this side of the grave. Ask that young lady—she will tell you so.

Although I enjoyed the obituary about the competitive croquet player, obit of the week goes to Evelyn Johnson, aka MamaBird, who logged more hours flying than any other woman and died at the age of 102.

The record for hours flown is held by Ed Long, who flew more than 64,000 hours surveying power lines and whose last words, before his death in 1999, were supposed to have been: “Don’t let that woman beat me.” 

She made a valiant effort to do so, despite the onset of glaucoma and a car crash in 2006 which forced doctors to amputate her leg — she complained that it was not the flying that was the problem, but “getting the prosthesis into the small planes”. Though eventually forced to give up before beating Long’s record, she continued to manage the airport until the age of 101.

That's someone to admire.

Phillip Oliver, who blogs at Dirt Therapy, has been posting lots of wonderful pictures of gardens in Asheville this week. I particularly loved the ones from Christopher Mello's garden with its "dazzling array of bottle trees and found objects including old rusty shovels and Tonka trucks (yes Tonka trucks!)."

I found another great photographer this week: a high school classmate of mine who now does wonderful digital photography, mostly close-ups of flowers, such as the one below. I encourage you to check them out and enjoy them all.

Peas, baby by Glo Photography

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Sunday Funnies, April 22

From the Tumblr Theology Ryan Gosling.

h/t Facebook friends Annie P. and the newly-priested Rachel K., who don't know each other, but probably should.

Happy Easter, Ryan.

Easter Sunday Funnies

Well, more like an hour fifteen.

h/t Scott Gunn who posted about this grand collection of honest church signs.

Sunday Funnies, April 1

April Fools Day and Palm Sunday?  Here are some...appropriate selections from the Twitter hashtag Easter Pro Tips, collected by David Hansen.

1. Palm Sunday Tips:
2. Share
   “

   On Palm Sunday, use sour wine at Communion, served from a sponge on a stick. Side piercings are optional. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
3. Share
   “

   #EasterProTip Enhance your Palm Sunday atmosphere by annointing folks with coconut-scented suntan oil on the way in.

   Ellen Cooper-Davis

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
4. Share
   “

   Palm Sunday processional: Black Eyed Peas, Let's Get it Started #easterprotip

   David Hansen

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
5. Share
   “

   For your children's sermon, make sure you have a Passion Jesus action figure, complete with lash, spear, blood, and water. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
6. Share
   “

   For a more exciting Passion gospel, use (@TheAuthorGuy) Christopher. Moore's LAMB, rather than from the bible. #EasterProTip

   Undercover Nun

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
7. Share
   “

   #EasterProTip Do you have a rain date for your Palm Sunday procession? Just fine to have it on the second Sunday of Easter!

   David Hansen

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
8. Share
   “

   #EasterProTip Film Sunday morning's video reflection using marshmallow peeps. Consider a Passion Play!

   Ellen Cooper-Davis

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet
9. Share
   “

   Palm Sunday Sermon: "Is Jesus on Your Ass?" #easterprotip

   David Hansen

   a day ago

   ReplyRetweet

Be sure to check out the full Easter Pro Tip storify for further tips for Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter!