Friday fun

On the one hand, I'm thinking, this is very funny, but why do some people 'waste' their time doing stuff like this? On the other hand, the Bad Lip Reading folks have 6.5 million subscribers. Allow me to repeat: 6.5 MILLION. On the whole, not a bad way to pick up some pocket change. And besides, it beats 98% of what passes for entertainment on TV these days.

Be forewarned: the tune is very catchy.

Your morning cup of awesome.

Not your typical Thanksgiving post. I give thanks for so many things, the gift of humour among them. The totally epic Jerry Irby. Thanks to my nephew Daniel, who posted this link to horrid Christian album covers on Facebook.



I especially love the evil laugh--it totally seals the deal. Methinks DOH needs a new category: "Evangelization: I don't think that word means what you think it means."
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Every so often, you have to give thanks

...that the Sixties are over. I was watching Sponge Bob Squarepants with my 11-year-old and they used this song on the background track. I'd never heard it before, but of course I immediately recognized the voice, and googled accordingly.

One thing I found remarkable was how natural and incredibly at ease he was throughout the entire performance. Cringeworthy, and it makes you wonder how Simon Cowell would have reacted, had those "Whatzit's Got Talent" or similar shows existed back then. Enjoy. Or not.


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George Orwell, call the head office of your Hymnody Division

Yo, God, I did you a favour and came to church; 

you're welcome.

Anthony Esolen. Oy, but this guy is brilliant. And funny (to wit: "Muddlesome broke out in hives at leadeth and feedeth.") He had me laughing out loud at, "Fetch the smelling salts, Nellie..."

"Rescuing Hymnody from Stupidity":

To Muddlesome, “the vernacular” meant the colloquial: an office memo ending with an amen. That’s all. He’s no linguist; just as the people who vandalized our churches were not painters or sculptors. He can’t imagine that a mother tongue might “contain multitudes,” including the register of the sacred. He’s a subtractor. If peasants want to be courtly in their oral poetry and folk hymns, too bad for them. Drag them into Future Church for their own good.

 So he had to eliminate those pronouns...

Thus openeth the first Can of Worms.

And my, how far those worms can travel. I actually heard an ordained personage (who has been through like, a hundred years of university and everything) say (out loud) from the ambo: "God calls us to Godself." (Not "himself". Godself.) So allergic was he to masculine pronouns, even referring to GOD THE FATHER (is Jesus' testimony in that regard not enough? Gee, I don't think the chain of authority for Christianity goes any higher than that, but whatever), that instead of uttering a grammatically correct statement, he was willing to sound as though he was having a stroke. But I digress. That was a homily, not a hymn. But church "music" has fared no differently. Read Mr Esolen's article if you share my frustration that we began the century* with hymns like this:

 To Jesus Christ, our Sov'reign King,
Who is the world's salvation,
All praise and homage do we bring,
And thanks and adoration.

Refrain:
Christ Jesus Victor, Christ Jesus Ruler!
Christ Jesus, Lord and Redeemer!

2. Thy reign extend, O King benign,
To ev'ry land and nation,
For in Thy kingdom, Lord divine,
Alone we find salvation.
(Refrain)

3. To Thee and to Thy Church, great King,
We pledge our hearts' oblation,
Until before Thy throne we sing,
In endless jubilation.

--by Msgr Martin Hellreigel

ex-pat German priest, *1941, so... a comment on Fascism

And ended the century with campfire songs like this:

Thank you, God, for giving us us.
Thank you, God, for giving us us.
Thank you, God, for giving us us.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiii-ght where we are!
--ex-Rev. Carey Landry

Peace out.


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Call me a music snob

But if there are two phrases that should never ever ever ever ever ever appear together in the world of sacred music (or indeed any world known to God or man), they are "Kenny G." and "Ave Maria." There are simply some instruments that should not be used for Marian hymns and this is one of them. A thousand times, NO.

I should not even be posting this video, but we must remember that Advent calls for some penance as well as rejoicing and whatnot. I dare you to see how long you can listen before your eardrums start bleeding.


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Can this be real?

From the Friday files. I challenge you to watch this without weeping (either with laughter or "Dear God, make it stop" civilizational despair). It's a fusion of the Anti-ABBA, Stark Trek, lyrics that would make The Onion writers blush, and Richard Simmons fitness video dance audition rejects. It makes the Trololo guy look like high art.

And it makes me think we should start a new category on DOH: It's Just Too Easy To Make Fun of the Seventies (IJTETMFOTS for short, not to be confused with the IKEA sofa of the same name).



I thought this had to be satire, but these people are real, and they had a show on Swedish TV in the 70s.  They are Armi and Danny.

h/t my teen nieces and daughters, who (like their aunt/mother) should spend less time online and more time reading Shakespeare
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Thank you: CBW III, feminism, and the Spirit of Vatican II

Because of you, people are all confused about hymns. (Lots more than that, actually, but we can talk about hymns for now). In the old days, people used to memorize hymns. We could sing them without books. The words never changed. Now, thanks to the Spirit of Vatican II, we don't memorize anything, because that's bad. Memorization means your faith is empty. It's all about love and God meeting us where we're at. So now we love hymns, especially anything with a polka beat written by Carey Haugenhaaschutte, but we can't sing them without books. (Photocopying and overhead projection are illegal.)

Many parishes have hymn books of course, but they can be difficult to manage during processions, especially when you are also holding palms and/or children's hands. And furthermore, many parishes now have several different hymn books, with different versions of the same hymn in different books, because the exclusive patriarchal hateful lyrics had to be expunged in favour of the ones with rainbows and unicorns in them. Thanks, feminism and CBW III.

Let us take, for example, the hymn "All Glory, Laud and Honor," which is traditionally sung on Palm Sunday. The CBW III got rid of the word "laud" because it's, like, so Latin and everything. And what is Latin good for anyway (liturgy aside) except every academic subject under the sun, plus spelling. We had to get rid of "thee" and "thou" "thy" and "didst" because that's just archaic language, and it makes the hymn sound all old and horrible, like you're saying a poem or something equally as gross and irrelevant! "Mortal men" had to go for sure, because they're all sexist and dying and everything. (Who wants to think about death? At a happy time like Easter? Bunnies! Candy!) The phrase "mortal men" was replaced with the much more inclusive, modern, relevant and melodic-sounding pronoun "we".

So anyway, the long and the short of it is that thanks to all the forces conspiring to make our liturgy more relevant, more inclusive, more loving and easier for the lay people to be empowered to participate... the end result is that in our parish, on Palm Sunday, no one knew the words to the hymn. No one. And can you blame us? Cuz it really was two different hymns, and frankly, no one knew whether we were supposed to be singing the patriarchal or the unicorn verson.

So instead of re-enacting Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, our Palm Sunday Procession was more like the Awkard and Silent Shuffle into Jerusalem.

Holy Week has begun, and I continue to learn: there is more than one way to live the Passion.
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Marty Haugen: weapon of Mass destruction

Lawks, I just can't stomach about 98% of his 'music'. But it's not just him, of course: Haas, Landry, Schutte (and the whole St. Louis Jesuit gang), Ceasar (as in Buddy, not Julius)--the list goes depressingly on.  

Kevin O'Brien says it best:

Indeed, I personally think the heterodox music of the typical suburban parish is far more the cause of the abandonment of faith than the dumbing down of the translation of the Mass. Marty Haugen and his ilk have the distinguishing talent of having written appallingly bad music that defies genre or classification or description. There's no music this bad, this cloying, this icky, this smarmy anywhere else but inside thousands of suburban Catholic churches every day of the week. Almost no men like this dreck. And it's not even the insipid lyrics that do harm, but the utter narcissism of the melodies. These songs do not even make good pop tunes or Broadway show tunes - they don't make good anything but good distractions.

Then there's Catholic Music: It’s Time to Stop Making Stuff Up by Jeffrey Tucker:

Mandatory enthusiasm for someone else’s project doesn’t go over well in any aspect of life, especially not in music. Many just sit there vaguely and habitually protesting in their minds. So the musicians end up with a feeling of failure and confusion. Or they blame others and end up getting mad about the people and their refusal to go with the program.

I chuckled when I read this passage because it reminded me of a vist to a neighbouring parish where the semi-professional perfomers Music Ministers were trying to bully the congregation into clapping and swaying. As if.
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Spring is...Here?

I wanted to post "Spring, Spring, Spring" from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers", but that's all about sunshine and warm weather and new life. I think this melancholy tune from Nat King Cole is more appropriate.





Spring is here!? Why is the ice advancing?
Spring is here, why are we still ski-pantsing?
No desire, no ambition leads me,
Maybe it's because it's minus 23.

Spring is here, why does the cold breeze blight me?
Stars appear, why does the night frostbite me?
Maybe we should all move to Hawaii?
Spring is here, I hear.
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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....

Ban 'em All!

They tried to ban Mark Steyn. They're partly banning Mark Twain. They've already banned Mark Knopfler. 
Bad time to be a creative guy named "Mark"! (Even if it's a pseudonym.) Look out, Mark Shea!  

BAN 'EM ALL!

They say there's a book with a certain bad word that we shouldn't read anymore
Heavily laden, a time-expired slur, which all decent persons abhor-
There's many a comic who uses this word, how come they're allowed to go on?
It makes no commotion - what's with this odd notion? How come they don't ban 'em all?

Ban 'em all, ban 'em all, American, Briton or Gaul,
Ban all the poets, the rappers, songwriters,
Ban all the authors, 'cause they're mostly blighters,
We'll say goodbye to them all, to their dark, grotty garrets they'll crawl,
They'll get no permission for verbal emission, so shut 'em up, lads, ban 'em all!

They say if you work hard you'll get better pay - we've heard all that before
Clean up your sentences, polish your prose, rework that verse just once more.
There's many a songwriter's taken great care - his hook line and lyrics we'll maul
'Cause now it's verboten to sing what he's wroten, so ban all his songs, ban 'em all!

Ban 'em all, ban 'em all, Flannery, Twain and St. Paul,
I'll grant you there are no bad words in Ephesians,
But they have, we're certain, some very good reasons
For saying good-bye to them all, world lit'rature we'll overhaul,
You'll get no Colossians 'twixt any two oceans, so cheer up, my lads, ban 'em all!

Now they say that the censors are very nice chaps, oh, no truer tale could you tell!
Ask them for leave to speak just as you please, you'll be shown to a nice padded cell.
There's many an author has blighted his life through writing rude words on the wall
He'll get no promotion this side of the ocean when we've banned him once and for all!

Ban 'em all, ban 'em all, here's a guide to make each judgement call:
If your tone is all wrong or your meaning's abstruse,
If you're not gay enough for the phrases you use,
We'll be saying' goodbye to you all, down the memory hole you will fall,
Harper Lee, Alex Haley, the list will grow daily - but they'll stop sometime, after all -

Nobody would ban any words that we use - so cheer up, my lads! Ban them all!

A Valentine Card Addressed to the Human Rights Commissions

      I see that the balrog which is the Canadian Human Rights Commission  is rumbling  again deep within the bowels of our government bureaucracy. What perfect timing! Valentine's Day is almost here, and as an organization that is committed to eradicating hate, the CHRC has surely planned its latest head-rearing to fall near  this day meant for lovers. Maybe they have taken to heart this nugget from Rex Murphy : "Not every article in every magazine or newspaper is meant to be a Valentine card addressed to every reader's self esteem," and they intend to do something about it.

      After thirty-odd years of HRCs toiling away to make us all be nicer to each other, I just cannot understand why everything you read, hear and see is not  like a candy heart from your sweetie. Rather than focusing solely on stamping out hatred,  I suggest the HRCs also mount a proactive campaign to foster a great, big bumper crop of Canadian love. We could all use more warm fuzzies, good vibes and happy feelings in our interactions with other human beings, don't you think? Perhaps they could create an entirely new government body and call it the "Warm Tingly Fuzzies Commission".  It would be an excellent follow up/companion bureaucracy to the HRCs. After hatred and unpopular opinions are forever rooted out of human minds and hearts, (and who better than members of a plodding bureaucracy to complete that task?) the WTFC could step up to help in those awkward moments when we can't quite express our super niceness. You'd just have to shake your head three times, say, "WTF...?" and they'd be there. Kind of like a verbal Bat Signal.  After all, who hasn't been lost for words, especially when faced with someone who might take offence at yours?

    Just imagine that you have hurt someone with something you wrote. You may not know the person or even have a clue exactly what the harmful words were, but you know that warm fuzziness levels between you and your offended one are dangerously low, because your HRC has told you so! What is your next step? You've already done everything the HRC asked. You've wiped your blog off the internet or used your final newspaper column to recant. You've ceased communicating about the banned subject in private emails and you've sent off a check wrapped in a forced apology. You may even have given up your job or small business to show how full of love you are. Yet for some reason, you still don't feel any better. You're standing there like a non-hate-struck teenager, casting shy glances at the person who has drained away the last three, five or ten years of your life and wondering how you can make it up to him. That's where the WTFC gives you the right words, and you start singing their tune. You don't have to be Judy Garland. Just sing it with feeling....

They Made Me Love You

Dear HRC Plaintiff, I am singing this to you
And I hope that to my tone you won't object;
My heart beats like a hammer
Please don't throw me in the slammer
From now on all my thoughts will be correct.
I guess I'm just another hatemonger
From now on I'll be more circumspect.


They made me love you!
I didn't want to do it; HRC forced me to it,
They made me love you,
And all the time you knew it, you complained so that they'd do it.


My opinions, dear, made you feel quite pained,
The HRC refuted them: "Shut up," they have explained.
They made me sigh 'cause
I didn't want to tell you,
(Turns out they can compel you)
I think four grand, from me to you, ought to do, free speech eschew, 'deed I do!
I must tell you what I'm thinking
The very mention of your name sends me o'er eggshells slinking!
You know they made me love you!


I don't care what happens,
Let the whole world end, 
I'll never write or say or think something that might offend
'Cause you know they made me love you!



Happy Valentine's Day, everybody!