The Clam Rampant

admin December 12th, 2006

Um…

I don’t quite know how to tell All Headline News this, but this is the first time anyone has alluded to there being a country called “Sambia” - it’s been spelled with a “z” in everything I’ve seen in my 30 years on this earth.

Further research discloses that the German word for Zambia is in fact Sambia, but this is not a German article. Sambia is also a peninsula in Russia, but Milingo isn’t Russian. He’s Zambian. Is anyone aware of some movement toward changing the official spelling of Zambia?

These are the things that drive me crazy. Like when people spell the name “Gandhi” as “Ghandi” or confuse “its” and “it’s”…

I’d also like to know where they got the estimate of 70,000 priests leaving “their posts each year to marry,” as that sounds almost ridiculously high. Maybe that includes seminarians who are still in the discernment process?…

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admin December 8th, 2006

Well…OK.

My cousin, whose e-mails I normally regard with cautionary levels that approach those appropriate for polonium-210, sent me the following message today. After some consideration and research, I decided to post it. I don’t know what the National AIDS Fund’s tactics and priorities are, but if it’s anything short of the bizarro conspiracy theory-type “The U.S. invented AIDS to wipe out Africans” lunatic fringe, then IMHO it’s probably better than nothing. (Just probably, mind you.) I’m still a little wary, but at the very least it’s better than the e-mail I got from my mother this morning (from NARAL no less) asking me to tell all my friends about how safe, effective, and available the morning-after pill is. Gag…

Today, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical monolith that charges nearly $1,000 for a 30 day supply of one of its HIV/AIDS medications, is donating $1 to the National AIDS Fund for each person who simply visits their website and “virtually lights a candle.”

http://www.lighttounite.com

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admin December 8th, 2006

Woohoo!

Curtsy to Christine at Rambling GOP Soccer Mom for these quizzes:

Apparently Christine and I are both grammar Nazis. I actually had a co-worker dub me that…I was his designated proofreader, because I responded to so many of his e-mails with grammar or spelling corrections. (Yes, I know I’m obnoxious.)

And apparently I’m an obsessive-compulsive bookworm, which is funny, because I couldn’t honestly check off ANY of the book groupings.

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admin December 8th, 2006

Zoiks!

Take a look at this.

Apparently London (Ontario, not England) got over two feet of snow in the last 24 hours. I know they’re in a snow belt (lake-effect snow from Huron), but according to Joe it was localized within 20 km (about 12 or 13 miles) around London! Very odd.

So London Transit is shut down, Joe has the day off work, and I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be driving out there this weekend. We’re going to reassess at the end of the work day. He found the pictures linked above on some random London resident’s Flickr page…take a look. It’s wild!

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admin December 8th, 2006

The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

This is a very weird day for me.

I’m still having trouble with Marian doctrine. In fact, if I knew I was going to die tomorrow and had to decide RIGHT NOW whether to enter the Catholic Church, the two things that would hold me up are the same two things that were my biggest stumbling blocks to start with: Marian doctrine and the Communion of Saints.

However, knowing that it was an HDO (even though I’m not bound by Church law yet), I went to morning Mass today. I was a bit late; 7:00 comes early, even only a mile from home. I got in just before the first reading. Wonder if it counts…

Went to St. Joan’s again; it was a little better than last time, but I still felt like it felt rushed. I think it was the lack of ANY singing. One of the (few) things I miss about my old Episcopal parish is the sung parts of the liturgy; i.e. “Let us proclaim the mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again” and “Through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,” etc. But the lack of ANY singing, even for the psalm, and no hymns, makes it feel very businesslike. Ah well - one can’t have everything one wants.

Anyway, it occurred to me that of all the holy days of obligation I know, half of them revolve around Mary: the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption…and I just found out New Year’s Day is the Solemnity of Mary. The Annunciation and the Nativity, obviously, are a two-fer (excuse the flippancy) - they involve Mary, but (I would presume) center around Jesus.

This is thorny for me. I accept that it’s possible for God to have created Mary without original sin; after all, God is omnipotent. He can do anything He deems fitting. But did Mary really go her whole life without sinning? I thought Jesus was the only human being who did not sin.

Eeek…

(And then, after Mass, I went out to the parking lot and saw that, in my hurry, I had unknowingly parked in a handicapped space. D’OH! NOT my intention…please forgive me, any handicapped persons who needed a space at St. Joan of Arc in St. Clair Shores this morning! Honestly, that is NOT something I EVER do intentionally; in fact, it’s a pet peeve of mine. Good reminder to be forgiving of others though…)

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admin December 7th, 2006

Holy excommunicated dissidents, Batman!

Curtsy to Mike over at Waffling Anglican for alerting me to this:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=48072

Now, here’s my whole Clam-tastic take on this: this was long overdue, but thank God it’s happened!

Don’t get me wrong - I don’t wish for any of the affected people to go burn in Hell or anything. In fact, I hope that they see the error of their ways and become reconciled to the Church, and will add them to my prayer list. Thing is, particularly with Catholics For a Free Choice, they are openly and unapologetically promoting something that is explicitly condemned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I don’t know enough about Church law to know whether a Catholic is allowed to personally disagree with, say, the celibacy rule, provided one doesn’t actively work to undercut it. As far as I know, as long as you submit to the Church’s decision, that’s the most important part, but I could be totally wrong.

So in short, I’m not dancing on anyone’s excommunication order, but I’m certainly not shedding tears that Bishop Bruskewitz has rained on Call To Action’s/Catholics For a Free Choice’s/whoever else’s parade. In fact, I may send Bishop Bruskewitz and Cardinal Re each flowers. And chocolates. And a pony.

Update: I mentioned this to a co-worker of mine (who spent 12 years in Catholic schools), and she was disgusted. Her exact words were “We’re going backwards!” Of course, she takes the line that if priests could only marry, maybe they wouldn’t molest boys. So many prayers, so little time…

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admin December 5th, 2006

Confusion reigns

Let me begin by saying, for those of you who don’t know this, that my saying “I’m feeling weird but I’m not ready to talk about it” is NOT an invitation to play 20 Questions. It means exactly what it says. (Sorry - had to get that off my chest.) So if I ever am in a conversation, electronic or in person, and I say that I’m not ready to talk about something…believe it or not, I’m not ready to talk about it. ‘K? ‘K. Thanks kindly.

I threw away a book tonight. I generally don’t do that. I look for any alternative to throwing away books: I sell them, I give them to friends, I donate them, and if all else fails, I leave them on the street down by campus for someone to pick up. I just hate throwing away books. I don’t like throwing anything away, honestly, but books, for some reason, are particularly a sticking point for me. But the last time I gave away a book that I got rid of for spiritual reasons, I donated it to my mom’s church rummage sale, and felt awful when my mother told me someone had bought it. (It was a book about witchcraft/Wicca, which I had never read.) I felt like I had participated in drawing someone further from God. So this time, I decided to just throw it away.

It was a Peter Singer book. I had bought it many years ago, for one specific essay (on abundance, specifically - essentially he was arguing that the opportunity cost of luxuries was too high, because it meant there was less money for things like famine relief), and I didn’t know about his other views. Over the years I found out more about them, and it (obviously) made me think a lot less of him, but I held onto the book (I’m a packrat of the first order).

But Father John’s talk on Sunday really drove home for me how pernicious Singer’s arguments are, and what he represents. He was talking about the culture of death, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post (well, at least I alluded to it), and he really focused a lot on Singer. And rightly so - after all, he’s a prominent ethicist, and his arguments have really been creeping into the general social discussion over the years. Father John wouldn’t even mention Singer by name, but I knew exactly who he meant.

So today I was consolidating my books (trying to make room in my office for my mother’s piano), and came across the book. I started flipping through it. I found the essay I’d bought the book for; I found an essay on abortion and infanticide; and I found some of the very arguments Father John was talking about, for which Singer is so infamous.

I couldn’t stomach handling the book anymore. I threw it into the trash. I was nauseous just thinking about it.

Have you ever felt like this?

I think, for me, the worst part of the feeling is knowing how complicit I was in all of this (the culture of death). Part of me feels like I don’t deserve to live. (Don’t worry, I’m not about to do anything untoward; in addition to being wrong, that would just be too ironic. I just feel overwhelmingly guilty.) Part of me feels like there isn’t enough penance in the world for me to do.

Right now I’m feeling torn - on the one hand, I know I can’t turn around and pretend like I don’t know what I now know. On the other hand, I’m almost afraid of continuing with RCIA, because I don’t know what else I will find myself convicted of. At the same time, I can’t just stay put. Which means, essentially, that my only option is to continue.

I think I’d better spend some extra time in prayer tonight.

Constructive comments welcome.

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admin December 5th, 2006

I’m trying out the photo-posting feature…

Inspired by Stephanie and her adorable chat Berlioz, who substantially resembles one of my cats, I decided to do a post in which I could learn the ins and outs of Blogger photo posting. Above is my tabby cat, Dodge, who is unimpressed that I managed to find him chilling under the ottoman.

Here is Miko, my tuxedo cat, who looks strikingly like Berlioz.

And here they are together, one of the very rare occasions of a successful Cat Density Test at chez Kasia. (They got like that on their own; no one who knows cats could possibly think they’d let me pose them.)

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admin December 5th, 2006

A gripe about language…

OK. I have no fundamental problem with inclusiveness and accommodation. I actually think it’s kind of neat, when I’m in Canada, to see the French labeling on one side of the package. And on the rare occasions when I’ve seen bilingual labeling here, it doesn’t particularly bother me, especially when I know there’s a substantial minority that speaks the language in question in the area. So if I go to Mexicantown for dinner, I don’t care that a lot of the signage is in Spanish.

However, I just went to buy some personal items at the corner store by my office. I’m in midtown Detroit, so although there are several ethnic enclaves in the metro area (Mexican, Chaldean, Lebanese, Yemeni, Bosnian, etc.), none of them are right here. But even so, when I picked up the package and glanced at it to make sure I had the right item, when I saw that it was in something that looked like Spanish, I thought “Oh, well, it’s got bilingual labeling,” and flipped it over to read the English side.

There was no English side. The other side was Spanish too.

I needed the item, so I bought it and left. Back at the office, I looked more closely. It actually is bilingual: Spanish and Portuguese.

Maybe I’m unreasonable, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for English labeling on products sold in predominantly English-speaking areas of predominantly English-speaking countries. Oh well - I got what I needed, and was able to figure it out. At least it wasn’t Arabic - I would never have been able to muddle through that.

Speaking of Arabic, one other point about English labeling (or any labeling, for that matter): when translating or transliterating something, one should ALWAYS have a native speaker of the second language look at the result! There’s a shop near my house that’s owned by Lebanese Christians. They sell fantastic meat and spinach pies, as well as other Lebanese cuisine. However, their transliteration of hummos is homo’s. I haven’t had the heart to mention it to them. It may be the most faithful possible transliteration of the correct Lebanese pronunciation of the Arabic (I think the apostrophe denotes a glottal stop), but it suggests something entirely different to a native English speaker!

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admin December 4th, 2006

On a lighter note…

…a new meme! Well, actually it was one of those “getting to know you” surveys. But it seems to be a blog-friendly kind of thing…

Getting To Know You Holiday Edition
Welcome to the 2006 Holiday Edition of Getting to Know Your Friends! You know the drill. Don’t be a scrooge!!!

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Hmm…love ‘em both. Egg nog at Christmas; cocoa the rest of the winter.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? I assume everyone here is old enough to know the truth about Santa…but ok. In our house, ‘he’ always wrapped them.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I like both, but my tree presently has white lights.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? Nope. Closest we ever came to that was a tacky plastic sprig. That was enough to put me off mistletoe forever. Plus, it’s probably infested with nargles. (Kudos to anyone who gets that last bit.)

5. When do you put your decorations up? I put them up the day after Thanksgiving this year; it was the first time I’d decorated since moving out on my own. I haven’t decided whether I trust my cats with my crèche yet…

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? Honestly, nothing really leaps to mind, so I’ll say ham. If we’re counting Thanksgiving, candied sweet potatoes.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child: Christmas at my grandmother’s house. My cousins and sisters and I would all go over with our parents, and have a big festive Christmas dinner, and open presents, and my sisters and cousins would tease me that they’d seen Santa flying by and that I’d just missed him. (I’m the youngest…)

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I’m not 100% sure. I have a recollection of telling my mother that I knew Santa wasn’t real when I was six or seven, but I’m not sure how I figured it out. My guess is that my middle sister (not The Big Seester) played a role in cluing me in – she loved corrupting me.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We go to my mother’s for Christmas Eve, so usually yes. (Unless I get coal in my stocking…)

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Very carefully, because I have two very mischievous cats. Since this was to be their first year with a tree, I decided to take it easy: I just did lights and some glittery plastic Martha Stewart ball ornaments that I bought because I don’t trust cats with my glass ornaments. I’ve already been proved right on that one – can you say Kamikaze Kitty?

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love it, but would just as soon stay home all winter.

12. Can you ice skate? Not a lick. The last time I was on skates, they were those double-bladed training skates, so I was almost certainly under 5. I’d like to learn, though.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Hm. “Favorite” can be defined a number of ways. I guess I’d have to say my beautiful edition of A Christmas Carol, which I got for Christmas 1984 (I was about to turn eight). It made me feel special and grown-up to have such a lovely book, and it must’ve meant a lot to me because I still have it.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Christ’s birth and my family, in that order.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Stollen and Springley cookies (which my sister hates because they have anise in them).

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Reading Luke 2:1-14 on Christmas Eve night. The lone Christian tradition in an otherwise avowedly secular home.

17. What tops your tree? An angel that formerly belonged to my aunt, who died six years ago from cancer. I think she channeled her tree-decorating perfectionism into the poor thing; I’m totally dissatisfied with the job I did on my tree and am planning to make notes for next year!

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Honestly, I love both.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Just one?!? My sister can attest to my year-round love of Christmas music. To hear, probably O Holy Night or O Come, O Come Emmanuel. To sing…hm, maybe Silent Night or O Come, All Ye Faithful (English or German for the former, English or Latin for the latter).

20. Candy canes: yuck or yum? Yum for traditional peppermint, yuck for all the other flavors.

21. Favorite Christmas movie? The original Miracle on 34th Street, hands down. I also love It’s a Wonderful Life.

22. What do you leave for Santa? At present nothing, because I’d be leaving it for the cats to get into. If I have children, we’ll probably leave out cookies and milk.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!…or Advent, anyway!

I tag: Stephanie, The Big Seester, The Canuck, DJ, Mrs. DJ, Dr. Mabuse, Fr. Martin Fox, Jimbob, Paul the Regular Guy, and Alexa. Oh, and Mike the Geek, too! (I know The Big Seester did it already - she’s where I got it - but I want her to post on it. :-))

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