Guys v. Men

My newest post on MercatorNet, based on this Wall Street Journal essay, and John C. Wright's response to it.

It’s a matter of simple justice for women to have political, financial and educational freedom and equality: but feminism goes well beyond this, to the detriment of both sexes. Feminism has not only emasculated men, but (ironically) denigrated women -- by attacking marriage and motherhood, and by making sexual license a keystone of equality and liberation (something our Suffragette foremothers could never have imagined in their wildest dreams).

I like Mark Shea's thoughts on the matter:

The phenomenon of boys who linger on as "guys" rather than becoming men is endemic in our culture. It's also very very unhealthy. Note to guys: Women like men. Note to men: Guys need mentors and fathers, cuz they often have no idea how to become men.

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Funny, yet completely discouraging

It's not DOH's anniversary, but I read this today, and I can't wait till November of 2013 to post it. From Creative Minority Report, which is a great blog, which I don't have to promote, cuz it has more readers than we do. Here and there I added my own comments in red. And I was just kidding. I am not discouraged.

Reflections On 4 Years Of Blogging


Wow. I can't believe that Matthew and I started this thing four years ago. Them's lotsa blog posts between then and now.


So, anniversaries are natural times to reflect upon how you may have grown and what you may have learned over the years. So, what have I learned? Not much. But I have learned a few things about blogging and these have been codified in some personal guidelines. Further, there some things I have realized which I will now share.


Realization: After four years of writing whatever pops into my head, I can never ever run for elected office. The interwebs has a long memory.


Guideline: Don't fall in love with your posts, because if others don't, you will get bitter. If you write something you are proud of, good, now start writing your next stupid post immediately. Why because....


Realization: The attention your post will garner is inversely proportional to the actual thought you put into it. The posts of which I am most proud have disappeared quicker than cocaine at Charlie Sheen's house.


Guideline: Never ever take yourself seriously. It will show in your writing and always-serious people are boring people. People don't read boring people. Conversely...


Realization: If you don't take your blog seriously, why should other people?


Guideline: No matter what you write, no matter how trivial, seemingly inoffensive, silly, or inconsequential, somebody will call you out in the combox. Typically they will scold you for something you didn't even say. So let it go. Ignore the combox crazies that are just there to cause trouble. [Ted Blurn, that means YOU] Let it go.


Realization: You know that saying "there are no stupid ideas?" That's not true.


Guideline: Blogging after 3 drinks is fine. Four, not so much. [Agreed]


Realization: Blog hits are like love. They are only useful if you spread them around.


Realization: Write about what you care about. Don't try to write what you think people want to read. Be yourself. Don't try to write like anybody else. If you're a sarcastic jerk, be a sarcastic jerk. [Validation/Affirmation at last! I feel a Carey Landry song coming on...] Nobody will buy it if you pretend to be somebody else.


Guideline: Don't argue in your own combox. But if you do, don't write more than two comments arguing the same point or you're now part of the problem.

Realization: If you quote GK Chesterton more than twice a month, you're probably mailing it in. [Rats! Memo to self: strike 'Chesterton Quote of the Day' from list of Ideas For Increasing Frequency and Quality of Posts]

Guideline: Bloggers (in particular Catholic bloggers) are a subset of a subset of a subset. It doesn't matter what Statcounter says, it's just a blog dude. Even if you manage tens of thousands of readers a day, 99.999999999% of the world will never know your name. It's just a blog. Get over yourself.
[Realization: Sarcastic Homeschooling Catholic Mom Bloggers are a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset. Guideline: Spend less time blogging, and more time planning healthy meals.]

Mrs. Beazly, you are welcome to weigh in with your own comments and musings, in the color of your choice.
 
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Thanks, Mrs. Beazly

For posting on Baby Joseph, because it inspired me to write my latest Mercator post, and I even quoted you.

Heh--this is unrelated but funny. The very first comment on my Merc post contains a link to some propaganda from the London Health Sciences Centre. What--do they have some state-paid flunky trolling the net for stories on this topic in order to do damage control? Your "health care" tax dollars at work, Ontario!

The comment is posted under the name of "Concerned". Pardon me--don't you mean "Ruthless Blood-sucking Prevaricating Socialist Healthcare Bureaucrat" (or Blood-sucking Lawyer Thereof)? They even have the gall to state that the parents are not acting in the best interest of their own child--but the bureaucracy is? Oh please.

Indeed, this is what the (bureaucratically-appointed) "lawyer for Baby Joseph" has written:

He is a baby and for all of these reasons he needs and deserves to have his parents make decisions that put his best interests ahead of their own. As he has no values and beliefs they cannot base a decision, for him, based on theirs. But, in my opinion, that is what they are doing. I do not believe they are assessing what is in his best interest. If they were, I believe the result would be different and their decision would align with the hospital."

Euphemisms are amusing: "their decision would align with the hospital." ie. they would be OK with their baby suffocating to death after the removal of his breathing tube.

Bureaucracy is evil. I'm almost beginning to think we need a category. Or the Second Coming. Or something.

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And the Oscar goes to...

Mistah Dahhcy, of all men!!

 DOH readers, have you seen any of the Oscar nominated films? 
What did you think of them?

Hilarious essay

By John C. Wright. It's funny because it's true.

Obviously, a girl cannot yield to any man who is only as strong as a girl: he has to be strong enough to protect her, and, in adventure stories, to save her. The idea of romance as a commercial exchange between cautious equals is one I find repugnant, rather than as a knight on a white charger sweeping the fair princess off her feet, slaying her dragons for her.

Women who are normal and healthy want a man stronger and taller than she, and she wants the man to lead when they waltz.

Is this merely some odd minority of women, closet masochists, or submissive and fertile Catholic girls from Ireland and Italy? I think the number of women fascinated with romance, though lower than it was before the de-naturing and de-femininizing programs of the feminists won popular appeal, is still very high.

h/t Mark Shea

Unions are Evil

The Steyn explains why.

That's what "collective bargaining" is about: It enables unions rather than citizens to set the price of government. It is, thus, a direct assault on republican democracy, and it needs to be destroyed. Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters and the snarling thugs of Madison are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a spoiled overclass, rioting in defense of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.

Latest post at Mercator

But it's not on Family Edge. This one is on Reading Matters, a blog dedicated to reviewing literature for children. Do have a look.

From our "Euphemisms are Amusing" file:

Is that what they call it now?

The boss testified he was a qualified Reiki practitioner, which he described as a "vibrational healing modality" involving the transfer of universal life-force energy to the recipient.


He was found guilty of sexual harassment anyway.

h/t BCF

"...I don’t feel I’m in Canada, I feel I’m in some country with no human rights.”

The sad story of Baby Joseph continues.

One wonders about the hospital's aim. They are reportedly threatening to remove Joseph's breathing tube even if another hospital agrees to admit him. The doctors want to let him suffocate, and his parents, who just want to take him home to die in peace, are the ones under surveillance. Behold our superior health care system in action. Now we know that the final days of a little boy's life are worth less than the cost of a tracheotomy, and compassion cannot be had for any price.

Hey, Canada Winter Games Biathlon Team Saskatchewan Fans!

Go here for exciting footage of the action.

O hard condition

Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,
Our debts, our careful wives,
Our children and our sins lay on the king!
We must bear all. O hard condition,
Twin-born with greatness, subject to the breath
Of every fool, whose sense no more can feel
But his own wringing! What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.

In other words, even Kate and William have to put up with Uncle Gary doing the Drunk Uncle Dance at their wedding, and they won't get to complain about it after.

Added by Mrs. P:   ha ha... CakeWrecks mentions variation of  D.U.D
...and tell Uncle Randall to ease up on the Jägerbombs. Or at least stop dancing.

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No, sorry...

She sings like a little girl with talent and potential. This is singing "about eating ice cream with the voice and wisdom of a 40-year-old.":

Let's go get some ice cream
Make it the low-fat kind,
Napkins, yeah, we'll take a ream,
Oops -  left my lactose pills behind.


Chocolate cookie dough?
That'll go straight to my thighs,
The menu font is too small, you know -
Can't possibly be my eyes.


Ow, pecans make my molars hurt!
I think I need a root canal.
Hey, don't wipe your hands on your sister's shirt,
...uh, that rule included her pants as well.


Is there Blueberry Blizzard on my nose?
Time to go home, let's get in the car,
Napkins? Pfft! We could use a hose,
Aaugh - don't let the dog share your Dilly Bar!
No, don't let the dog share your Dilly Bar....

Permanent Quebec Corruption Squad to the Rescue!

Oh, sorry, anti-corruption squad.

Hey, wait...what  corruption?

The Roots of Their Unhappiness

Via SteynOnline: professional grievance mongers file grievances against fellow professionals. ( I think that's a palindrome.)

It couldn't happen to nicer guy...er, PERSONS, sorry, I meant persons.  This reminds me of the excellent Simpsons episode ("There's No Disgrace Like Home") where Homer and family seek the help of Dr. Marvin Monroe in an effort to discover the "roots of their unhappiness". As an exercise in controlling their hurtful behavior they are given the capability to electrically shock one another, and, what do you know, that's exactly what they do.

I wonder if the tribunal employees will sit around fining, censoring and sensitivity-training one another into getting along? Maybe they should be issued Dr. Monroe's patented Aggression Therapy Mallets.  (Why do they keep popping into the news around Valentine's Day, anyway? It must be all the love that exists in that industry.)

I and Love and The Avetts

Who knew that anything good could ever come from watching the Grammies?

Canada Winter Games

GO SASKATCHEWAN!

From our "Absolutely Beyond Satire" files

Schools in Oz seeking non-religious chaplains.

 Mr Garrett's review of the $437 million federally funded National School Chaplaincy Program confirms that the vast majority of chaplains - 98.52 per cent - are Christian even though only 64 per cent of Australians identify as Christian.

[...]
A discussion paper, released on Friday, confirms that a ''large number of stakeholders'' wanted non-faith-based chaplains because they could help non-religious children and enlarge the available talent pool.

Why, pray tell, do non-religious children need "help"? Their parents have already liberated them from the tyranny and superstition of religious faith.

H/T Mark Steyn

Just one more Valentine's Day treat for the ones I love

To all the probability and statistics experts I've loved before

You know who you are. Happy Valentine's Day!

Get me rewrite.

 I have an idea even better than this : let's randomly choose one word from every language spoken in Canada and sing them to the tune of our national anthem. Of course, we'll have to weed out all the words that refer to any kind of deity or have any gender associated with them...so that leaves out all French nouns...and we'll have to make sure we don't sing a word from one language directly before or after a word from a language used by people that the user of the first language don't get along with...and we'll have to leave moments of silence in the song for people whose religion forbids music...and we should probably not use that touchy word, "Canada", since that might be offensive to MPs whose sole purpose in being in parliament is to break away from Canada....

And voila! Here is our new, "reasonably coherent" national anthem - close your mouth and hum along:

Hmmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmm hmmmmm hmmmmmmm,
Hmmmmmm hmmmmmmm hmmmmmm hmmmmmm hmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmm,
Hmmmmmm, hmmmmmm hmmm  hmmmm,
Hmmmmmm hmmmmm (silence)  hmmmmmm hmmmmmmhmmmm!

That's just a start, you understand. I'll post the rest once I've written it. Or maybe everyone could just sing whatever they feel they want to sing when it's national anthem time, as some of our politicians plan to do:

Bennett said she has no intention to officially alter the lyrics of ‘O Canada’, but that she will continue to sing her version when Parliamentarians sing the anthem each Wednesday.

How very fitting.

Did they check for any sign of a brain while they were at it?

I never look back, darling! It distracts from the now.
                                           
                                                                -Edna Mode


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"A debate no one wants"

At least, no one at the Globe and Mail. But that covers everyone, right? Except for many of the 787 people who had left comments as of this writing....

Though we should always be free to talk about everything – the public square is, after all, the essence of democracy – some debates are healthier than others.

I thought that debate by its nature was healthy. Even if someone advocates something extremely unhealthy, like legalizing pedophilia, debate would allow for a robust assertion of the dangerous immorality of that idea. When we deem it "less healthy" even to discuss some subjects, then we are in real trouble. (And we are in real trouble.)

Mrs. P updates: over 1200 comments now. 1200 "no-ones" who don't want a debate.

I got a charge out of this paragraph:

Debating multiculturalism gives a voice to the angry, the frustrated and yes, the bigoted. It makes newer Canadians feel less welcome. It has the best walking on egg shells and the worst throwing eggs.

Throwing eggs? If only that was the "worst" thing resulting from multiculturalism. What about segregation, gang warfare, mutilation of girls, honour killing? Give me egg yolk any day.  Since when, pray tell, is it not OK to "give a voice to the angry"? Was the NYTimes happy about clerical sexual abuse? Oh wait, never mind...

But bring on the debate.

Update II: over 1500 comments/no-ones
Update III: over 2200 comments

Christianity Lite

We're doing some renovations, so Mr. Pinkerton has been taking stuff off the walls (since said walls are soon to be demolished--callooh callay!). The youngest Miss Pinkerton (6) was examining at close quarters one of our crucifixes, noting how the corpus was attached to the cross, and the relative size/weight of each. Suddenly she looked up and said, "Jesus would be a lot lighter without the cross!" And there, in a nutshell, you have the theology of many a Church du Jour denomination in North America and Europe today. Out of the mouths of babes...

"Jesus in Jeans" by Peter Royle. As I commented on another website last year, it rather looks as though he's just hurled himself from the parapet of the temple, no? And here, indeed is the proof:

The saddest part is that this is a Catholic church.

Something you don't see every day

An Agnostic's Prayer. Posted at Kevin O'Brien's blog. Kevin writes, in the prayer's preface:

A Christian friend of mine requested that I write a prayer she could pray with her agnostic husband. He is, like almost everyone we meet in the world today, turned off by the self-righteousness of many Christians who see Faith as an elite club they've joined, a club they can use to beat other people over the head with. He is, like almost everyone we meet in the world today, pretty sure that "something's out there" but not sure what that something is or if anyone has figured that something out fully.
This is a very reasonable and potentially responsive position and one that calls for prayer; a prayer whose effectiveness Our Lord has guaranteed.

"Crazy Heart" is a great movie.

Read Greydanus's review while you listen to one of the tunes from the soundtrack (on which every single song is a winner). I think Colin Farell and Jeff Bridges should start touring.

Schools are George Costanza

Part Two. (Part One here, in case you're just tuning in.)

A teacher from the school expressed surprise that the assignment had upset parents, claiming that most students appreciated the exercise, which was part of a cooperative effort between the biology, sex and well being, and Swedish-language departments.

(Hey, that sounds like the movie Mark Steyn describes here.)

Must-read Steyn

On "Big Government's Back Alley":

America should be at the very minimum deeply disquieted by these revelations. That it is not - that it is dismissed as a "little thing" - is even more disquieting.  

Just so - a pack of dead sled dogs never leaves the headlines, but this horrific exposure of the truth about abortion doesn't even seem to register.  As I commented on another blog, the same thing that was happening at Kermit Gosnell's clinic is happening in every abortion clinic in the country - it's just that most other places wipe up the blood after a child is slaughtered.

If you make killing pre-born children your occupation, I don't think it is any stretch to slap around a few "customers" or to take it all in stride when someone tells you he's pimping children and wonders if you can help him out with any required abortions. Indifference to human life at one stage breeds indifference to human life at all stages.

I guess this is a good thing...

My latest Mercator post "Should dads lay off baby care?" has been picked up by Washington, DC's Family Research Council's blog "Social Conservative Review." (If only cash could come along with links and endorsement...)

Pizza parties, bowling and laser tag

Sham Christ, part II.

In other words, why 99.9% of church programs dreamed up by bureaucrats are hopelessly... well, hopeless.


Brilliant piece by Fr. Damian J. Ference Why Vocation Programs Don't Work

For a parish youth group to be what it is supposed to be, the first priority of the group must be to make disciples of young people who do not know Jesus, and to make stronger disciples of the ones who already know him. Such a suggestion seems quite basic and even simplistic at first glance, but this is precisely the point. Far too often we as a Church have failed with the most basic principle of discipleship while loading up on service projects and social activities, and the parish youth group becomes just one more line on a young person’s college résumé, without ever calling that young person to real conversion.
[...]
Over and over again we as a Church have fallen into the subtle trap of settling for results that can be easily calculated, photographed, and documented in a parish bulletin or website, rather than getting down to the basics of discipleship.

The new guy on my Must-Read blog list.

You know and love him as Stanford Nutting but he also writes stuff in his normal incarnation, Kevin O'Brien. Here's a quotation from his "Sham Christ" post:

The problem with “Jesus is nice; you be nice, too” is twofold. First, Jesus was not nice. You don’t get crucified for being nice. He loves us, and love is a much more troubling thing than “being nice”.

[...]
If all the Christian faith is is “be nice and tolerant and feel good about yourself and others” then let me be the first to say – and I meant this quite literally – to hell with it.

[...] God reads our hearts; we cannot read one another’s hearts. But at the same time we are to know the true from the false among us by their fruit, and when a Church retains only one out of six, and when probably more than half of those one out of six have any serious understanding of who Christ is and what He taught, and when the best among us, our young people who have a desire to love and serve Christ, are not loving or serving Him in any way that can be distinguished from the well-intentioned secularists who surround them, then something is very very wrong.

And yet more, from another post:

And when people in their hearts really don’t believe, then at Mass you find bad music, insipid homilies, desecration of the Eucharist, and priests devoted to the sin of sodomy. You find Catholic Schools run by female principals who have no principles and who bully parents to shut up about their kids being taught to love the great Earth Goddess in “faith” class. You find normal people avoiding church and power-hungry volunteers with miserable home lives trying to take over the lay council and run things for their own agendas.

Side aching with laughter...

But changing diapers is your job, Honey

"Should dads lay off baby care?" The answer is no.  And that doesn't make me a feminist. My latest post at Mercator Net.

Conformity is in the bag.

The enviro-freak's answer to the stock and pillory.

I only have one point to add - according to the article, it was actually a ham sandwich. If it had really been the widely banned PB&J, the poor kid probably would have been expelled instead of just losing out on a teddy bear.

Via SDA

Candlemas

Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word in peace;

Because my eyes have seen Thy salvation,

Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:

A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.

Groundhog Day!

I once heard a priest give a homily in which he referenced the movie "Groundhog Day". It was near the beginning of Lent, and he posed this question: are we content to 'live the same day' over and over, committing the same sins, or are we resolved to use the penitential season to effect real change in our lives - to wake up to a really new day?

Everyone loves a good story of redemption. Here are some of my favorite scenes (and my favorite Ray Charles song) from one of my favorite movies.



Mrs. P. weighs in: I love this movie too. Here's an interesting tidbit of info (or geeky trivia, as the case may be). It's been estimated that in order to learn everything he had to learn in the film, Bill Murray's character would have been stuck in the repeating Groundhog Day loop for (wait for it) about 34 years. No wonder he tried to kill himself so many times. It should give those of us who believe in Purgatory food for thought...

I think they've got it! Or at least, they had it, for a second.

Finally, via SteynOnline's "Ports of Call", the last word on What You Can Do About Being Too Fat. You really must read the whole thing so that you'll know the following gems are actually in the article and not lines from the SNL skit, "Don't Eat Stuff Your Body Does Not Need".

“For them to have said ‘eat less’ is really new. Who would have thought?” said Margo G. Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “We should have been saying ‘eat less’ for a decade.” 

I am so thankful there are governments in this world who will unwrap for us such mysteries wrapped in enigmas wrapped in tacos.

“If companies don’t change their practices and reformulate their products, people don’t have a chance of following the dietary guidelines,” Ms. Wootan said.

...

...the government needed to help consumers, particularly those on food stamps, get access to fruits, vegetables and other foods recommended in the guidelines.

So true - it's not like the raw ingredients of food are readily available in some kind of large building where you could just go and pick them out yourself, for less than a dollar a pound in some cases, and then take them home and prepare them in a way that allows you to control the amount of sugar, fat and salt you are eating. No, we must have a government body help us "get access to" carrots. Even as they blunder toward common sense, someone is thinking hard about how to delegate the application of said common sense to a government body.

Next I hope we can get some government guidelines on whether we should buy stuff we cannot afford - 'cause I hear they're real good with money. It probably won't go anything like this.

Planned Parenthood shows good business sense.

Because after all, if you can "streamline" the processing of a whole stable of prostitutes, imagine how lucrative that could be for your clinic! And if some of them are a little on the underage side, well...they're just products of conception that happened 13 or 14 years ago, right? And obviously they're unwanted, or they'd be living happily with their parents instead of being forced to have sex with strangers for someone else's profit. And we can always treat unwanted products of conception in any way that is most convenient to us. 

The manager in this video has been fired for her "repugnant" behaviour. Callooh, Callay. Now that that's taken care of, PP can get back to the much less repugnant business of destroying the lives of pre-born babies and their parents.

via LifeSite News