I particularly hate mosquitoes because mosquitoes particularly love me. I've been in provinces where mosquitoes proliferate, around the campfire, and literally, everyone else would be left alone while I would get eaten alive, in spite of repellant.
I thought it was pretty random of the mosquitoes.
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I listen to Beethoven sporadically when painting. I listen to his piano stuff mostly when I do listen to him. Do you ever find...now, how does one put it? Do ever find the sheer - and I mean in a very physical sense - do you ever find...sometimes...the sheer tonal vibrations...to be...threatening to drive you insane?
That's when I say, "Alright! Time for Rachmaninoff!"
Is there any modern composer greater than that Russian genius? To people who say he's "overblown" I say: maybe it's time you should put away the Mozart and the Raffi and start listening to real music, yes?
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Anyhow, LOL. Mozart was a genius. I'm JOKING. And I listen to Mozart. Not Raffi.
But as it turns out, two long years before Duck Dynasty was a glint in A&E's eye, that show called Swamp People was letting us see those Cajuns - whose ancestors were exiled from Canada - giving alligators' heads hefty doses of Cajun spice. By which they mean putting bullets into the heads of alligators. Ten times more real than Duck Dynasty, Swamp People, which documents the 300 years' tradition handed down from father to son, is still going strong, though I haven't watched any of the later seasons.
I hate to say it, but Duck Dynasty is sooooooooo fake. And that's saying it after all the expected fakeness of reality television is taken into consideration and accepted. Fakeness is inevitable with reality television, where unscripted life scripts itself. Or rather, where scripts are drawn from life as it is becoming aware of itself as a television show. But Duck Dynasty...holy crap - it's almost as lame as this blog.
That being said, a lot of Americans really like it. That's fine. I don't care to try to know why - just like with Croustillant Crème and Christopher West and "Save the Liturgy, Save the World" bumper stickers and Imperialism in general.
Though really, I do know. It's because of the characters. You gotta love them. I totally love Uncle Si and Godwin! They do crack me up.
Man, I love that show.
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What's up with the white man's fear of immigration anyways? It's clearly nothing but the inevitable fruit of sterility - of deciding to not have children, but to have sex - and then if a child does come, then killing the child.
The fear of immigration is nothing but the fruition of this mindset, of this way of sterility. It doesn't mean you have to be the one using birth control either. You wonder if there are Catholics who don't use birth control and who speak against it but are secretly thankful for those sinners who do use birth control, even if they don't articulate it to themselves, amplified by the fact that they don't adopt. Self-satisfied and complacent, they enjoy thinking of themselves as the Remnant. Contracepted. Producing no life. The Remnant.
You notice how some Americans are all gung-ho about having their troops in other countries but no sir, no immigrants in their own country? Without the immigrants all your parishes would be getting shut down more than they already are. The white man is sterilizing himself out of existence. The white man thinks he can tame sex like the way he plans everything else. So many Catholics have bought into the world's
Our only life is the body of Christ. And you cannot take the body of Christ into yourself while you contracept. You are, in essence, contracepting Christ. Just like you want the sex without the life that follows, so you take Christ - on your own grounds. You drink judgment upon yourself. You have contracepted your own parishes - drunk judgement upon your parishes. They are now getting shut down.
People do not believe in the world to come. So likewise, they don't believe in any generations to come - including immigrants.
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The crisis in liturgy was already going on prior to Vatican II. Just read Ratzinger to find that out. Crisis of liturgy includes "pre-reform" times.
If that weren't obvious enough.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: life goes by like a bird flying past a window.
That's what a dying woman said on her deathbed. An old Italian priest I know repeated her words in his homily once.
"My life has gone by like a bird flying past the window." Those were her words.
If you think about it, if you live to be 130 years old, all what it takes is for you to be on your deathbed, and suddenly those 130 years are like a bird having flown past your window.
LOL. Death: that thing which only the Catholic Church can give you before it comes for you.
In dying before death comes for you: that is the only place you will find peace.
And it is dying to your entire old self.
It's scary.
We find new life scary.
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One of the things I love so much about Pope Francis is the hysterical, banal hand-wringing from conservative reactionaries, sickened unto death with their own afflictions - to the point that they will actually say he is espousing Statism. LOL. It makes you think. It makes you say: well, what IS it that has got up their noses so bad? It's interesting. Holiness has that effect upon a man: it will reflect back to him his own faults with nary any effort.
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Fukishima happened in what, 2011? And here we are in 2014...and...
this cannot be good
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Blogs are so passé?
2 comments:
+JMJ+
You've probably tried more solutions to the mosquito problem than I will ever hear about, but just in case you haven't considered citronella-based repellent, let me add it to your collection.
I also read somewhere that military men who are getting ready to do immersion training in the jungle don't use soap, shampoo, shaving cream, aftershave, deodorant, etc. for three days before leaving. And then the mosquitoes leave them alone. No one has done any tests on citronella-based soaps, shampoos, shaving creams, aftershaves, deodorants, etc.--which is, I must say, a shameful omission in modern science's research record.
Now, believe it or not, I've been thinking about immigration lately in the light of that other issue I'm always turning over in my mind. It recently hit me that converts wouldn't be such a "problem" if cradle numbers weren't so low to begin with. For convert celebrities aren't the cause; they're just another symptom. Catholics who brag that the Church is growing because more and more people are converting to Her are either blowing smoke or still entrenched in Protestant thinking. The proper way to grow the Church is for the married members to have more than two children per couple--which we all know they would, if they didn't indulge in artificial contraception. It's too "judgey" to ask, "How many children do you have?" but I suppose that the question "How many siblings do you have?" will make the point just as well.
But this isn't what you're talking about! =P While there's some practical truth in a big native/cradle population "helping" the immigrant/convert population to assimilate better, this issue isn't Group A vs. Group B. The issue is One Body, Many Members dealing with some huge changes that aren't necessarily bad. And while it's understandable that we'd all act to save the status quo, we often forget that the status quo is not good in and of itself. We also conveniently overlook the main reason that status quo is in any danger. See paragraph 3 again. How can we pass on traditions to a younger generation that we're not having? Maybe it's ultimately a good thing that we're being crowded out . . . #perishthethought
Thank you for the recommendation! In fact, I do remember one night in which a citronella-based repellant got passed around and it effectively worked for me. That is interesting about what military men do when going into the jungle - totally contrary to what one would intuit!
But the truth of the matter is that since I live in S.W. B.C., I've never had to seek out mosquito solutions. We're spoiled in that regard.
Totally agree with your third paragraph, especially:
"Catholics who brag that the Church is growing because more and more people are converting to Her are either blowing smoke or still entrenched in Protestant thinking. The proper way to grow the Church is for the married members to have more than two children per couple--which we all know they would, if they didn't indulge in artificial contraception."
Not at all off topic! A friend mentioned something similar when he expressed cynicism towards the booming numbers of a parish here: he said, "But those numbers are all immigrants! That's not a true growth sign!"
The thought has occurred to me before, and keeps occurring to me, that the only way tradition and traditions will be passed on in the near future will be through cross-pollination. Not as an option, but as a necessity. Maybe that is the only way they ever have been passed on.
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