Happy National Catholic Week! at Prinsiana, at least
In a new attempt to keep this journal interesting, we're going to attempt a new way to keep this journal interesting. (The last sentence illustrates why I don't have more paying writing gigs.) Each day this week, I will be writing about Catholicism: my issues with it, my agreements with it, why "On Eagles' Wings" is a horrific song, et alia.
A bit a background: I am not a Catholic, but I am drawn to them. Of the three women who I'd probably consider ex-girlfriends (though one is iffy, and I know of a fourth lady who considers me an ex-boyfriend), one was baptized Catholic and switched to Protestantism, the second had one Catholic parent and one Protestant parent, and the third was a full-fledged Catholic. This was an intelligent bit of planning on God's part in preparing me for my Catholic wife -- a woman who barely knew any non-Catholics before college. While I have strong ties to the two churches I attended pre-college, I don't have strong ties to my Protestant denomination, so it just sorta happened that married Matthew and Kimberly attended a Richmond Catholic church together.
That wasn't the plan; the plan was that we'd each find a church and attend mass/services like this:
Week 1: Matthew and Kimberly go together to the local Catholic Church; Matthew goes by himself to the local Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Week 2: Matthew and Kimberly go together to the local Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Kimberly goes by herself to the local Catholic Church.
I never found a church that did more for me than Kim's, and I didn't really want to go to two services in the same day, so I became a demi-Catholic. I'm a not a feckless one, either: I attend mass every week, I hit most of the other Holy Days of Obligation, I direct the bell choir and sing in the voice choir, and I now have my own key to the church (in my role as bell choir director). Not only that, but I'm even a disciple of that "dogmatically conservative, politically liberal except on abortion" dogma that most of the Catholic leadership believes.
So. Why don’t I just do the smart thing and become a Catholic?
1) Transubstantiation is nonsensical. Given how much Jesus talked in parables and metaphors, I can't think of one compelling reason to believe that Matthew 26:26-29 is any different. (For that reason, I have no issue with not being allowed to take communion; as a "heretical" consubstantiationist at best, I wouldn't want to take communion that is believed to be the actual body and blood of Christ.)
3) That I would have no choice in believing numbers one and two. There are problems with the "no dogma but Christ" position of the denomination I grew up with, but I consider that better than having one's Christian dogma dictated by a book other than the Bible.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
I will not respond to Josh and Beth's positive dis of my Magnolia this weekend. Promise. (Note from 1/27: an earlier version of this post was mistakingly written without the word "not.")
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
Installment one of "Question of the Week": Matthew Prins' weeklish (maybe) series of answerable questions, probably mathematical in nature
(Let me know if you like this idea or not. Unless you don't, in which case don't let me know, because my fragile psyche can't handle a blow as striking as that.)
I was thinking about football, and it occurred to me that other than the number 1, every other positive integer can be scored by a football team. (Hypothetically.) Any even number x can be scored by getting x/2 safeties, and any odd number x can be scored by getting one field goal and (x-3)/2 safeties.
Thus, a progressively more difficult three-part question:
a) Given a game where the only two ways to score give a team 5 points and 7 points, what is the highest integer score that is not possible to get?
b) Given a game where the only three ways to score give a team 17 points, 23 points and 27 points, what is the highest integer score that is not possible to get?
c) Given a game where the only two ways to score give a team x points and y points, where x and y are relatively prime, what is the highest integer score that is not possible to get?
Installment one of “Once Upon a Time”: Matthew Prins’ weeklyish series of short morality tales
“Ron and Betsy”
Once upon a time, there were two koalas named Ron and Betsy. (Actually, they didn’t have names, as animals aren’t given names unless they have contact with humans, which these bears didn’t. They lived in an uninhabited part of Australia with many trees, but no animals.) (Though if we’re being honest, can an area with two koalas be considered uninhabited? Animals are logical inhabitants of a locale, as the root word of “inhabit” is “habitat,” and this region was their habitat, or home.) (Did I really need to write “or home”? Is anyone reading this not going to realize that “habitat” can be used as a synonym for “home”?) (On the other hand, if there were someone who didn’t know what “habitat” meant, perhaps I’ve helped him. Perhaps there's a 13-year old boy who never liked his English classes much, and the boy stumbled upon this tale. He sees the word “habitat” -- a word he’s seen hundreds of times in newspapers, in textbooks, in spelling tests -- but he doesn’t have the facility to understand the definition of a word through context, and he’s too ashamed to look up the word in the dictionary at his public library. But look here! Here is that word “habitat,” and it is so austerely paired with “home” that he can’t help but to understand the definition of that strange word. This small linguistic spark lights a cerebral fire for the English language. In just a few years, he will be an associate professor at a small Midwestern community college whose first book of poetry, I, Too, Know the Pain of Mortality, will have an initial run of 1,000 copies and will be favorably reviewed by the local biweekly newspaper.) (But now that this boy has read the most recent parenthetical and knows his future, will he want it? He’s still hoping for a five- or six-year career in the NBA, and he’s sure that his impending growth spurt will give him the 10 inches he needs to be six feet tall. Or maybe he’ll even grow 16 inches, who knows! Michael Jordan did quite well in the NBA at 6’6”, and Michael was cut from his high school team just like him, so maybe thinking about a six-year career is too pessimistic. He’ll aim for nine years.) (Now look what I’ve done: I’ve given this brainless, klutzy boy two false dreams that he’ll never achieve. Why didn’t I say he could be happy if he becomes a telemarketer? Why couldn’t I keep his hopes low so that when they are achieved, he has an influx of self-esteem, no matter how misplaced it might be?)
I know, I know. I'm a horrible person for not writing since Friday. I will write two posts today as retribution.
Some of you have already noticed (hi, Beth!) that I have ditched the number grade format that I decided to give films this year for the old letter grade format. The reason is simple: I like it better. I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether I should give Ali a 81 or an 82 when really, when I thought oh so hard about it afterwards, I didn't give a mouse's butt. It's a B- without a doubt, and that's good enough for me. (Secondary reason: I'm starting to write for the Apollo Movie Guide, which uses a completely different numbering system, and I didn't want to confuse/get confused.)
If there are enough people who really, really, really want me to unreturn from the letter grades, I'll do it. But I'd rather not.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
In the spirit of the post a week ago: Every Friday, rather than write some lame prose post, I will "jazz up" my "groovy writing" with what "I will call" the "Poetry Fridays." (I am warming up for poetry with my "hip" use of punctuation in the previous sentence.)
This poem is "found art," somewhat revised and stylized from Microsoft Support Document Q193903.
"cause and resolution"
zero: behavior. behavior!
this can occur if you are not sufficiently free:
swapping determinism for freedom.
one: this can occur if you are not sufficiently free:
restart! restart!
two: control is the key; command is the prompt.
start up those director slashes
and notice the root cause.
three: if you are a single, skip skip skip skip.
***
if you are a polygamist, swap.
type a letter, but do not use quotation marks. hit enter,
and note the swap, the letter, the name, the date.
if you must continue to search, repeat searching --
compare the dates, and go out with the most recent one.
type a letter, but do not use quotation marks. hit enter.
four: remove your path and your name.
five: increase your freedom, while
not forgetting critical information.
check temporary text, and backover old bumps, and
jumping gifford? help.
Perhaps I posted yesterday. Perhaps I didn't. Can any of us really know for sure? Of course not: memory is fallible, knowledge is ultimately unknowable, and...
Okay. If I didn't post yesterday, I may have had a good reason: perhaps I found a new disk golf course only five minutes away from work and 10 away from home, and perhaps I left work early to try it out so that I could finish a round before nightfall. And perhaps I did pretty poorly. Alas, we shall never know, as memory is fallible, knowledge is ultimately unknowable, and...
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
I've been thinking. Now that my sister-in-law has dyed her hair, perhaps I need to do so for the second time. The first time, as many of you know, was a failure; five years ago, an attempt to turn my hair blond using a permanent dye turned my hair, uh, orange. (I'll try to find a picture and link to it tomorrow.) I will not forget my college lessons, however:
1) If I dye my hair again, I will choose a darker color than my natural light brown.
2) If I dye my hair again, I will not choose a permanent dye.
3) If I dye my hair again, I will get a new girlfriend. The last time I dyed my hair was exactly one week and one day before the first dance with my wife. (I don't get that at all, by the way. Did she think it was cute? Her eyesight is bad, yes, but is it that bad?)
4) If I dye my hair again, I will have to dye my goatee, too. It's already lighter than the hair above it, and dying my head hair darker is just going to make the difference more pronounced.
Early ideas for the weekly topics discussed on Friday (some mine; some others):
* As a conservativish liberal, every week you should argue that something should be made illegal by the U.S., state, or local government (smoking, naming children after sports networks, "The Family Circus"). Funny and educational!
* Movies.
* Cheese.
* Every week, talk about someone you used to know but haven't seen in at least a year.
* A chapter in your novel, which otherwise will never be finished because you seem to refuse to write further chapters.
* A short play each week, which all together you can use for your first feature film.
* Anna Nicole Smith and why she is so ugly.
* A word of the week.
* Poop.
* You should have a guest columnist once every week.
* Kim should write once a week.
* Thelma should write once a week.
* A plastic coaster should write once a week.
* Poetry.
* Something in the style of David Mamet. Or Woody Allen. Or God.
* Scanning disk surface (data area)...cluster 284,553 of 1,186,478. Yeah, something about that.
* Cheese. (A different kind of cheese than the first.)
* The Eastern Orthodox Church.
* Every Friday, you could ask for suggestions on some topic. Then when no one replies, you could write, "Early ideas for the weekly topics discussed on Friday (some mine; some others)," but come up with all the ideas yourself. The parenthetical would be a lie, of course, but the final bulleted remark would casually let the readers know that it was you who wrote all the suggestions, despite those references to yourself in the second person.
As I haven't written any humor pieces in a while for Prinsiana, I've been working on an I.Q. test. I'm about halfway through, and I thought I'd post one of the questions and its answer. Enjoy!
--
2) Name the number that comes next in the following series: 1, 1000, 1000000, ___
a) 1
b) 1000001
c) 1000002
d) 1000003
e) 1000000000
--
Answer for question 2:
A (1). The series is a repeating pattern that cycles through the trio of numbers 1, 1000, 1000000.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
You'll notice that in yesterday's post, I didn't say, "More later today." I was going to, but didn't wish to raise the hopes of my 14 loyal readers.
I've decided this everyday-writing-thing would be easier if I had daily topics that I'd go back to week after week. That's worded poorly, but what I mean is that every week I would write on the following topics:
Monday: the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Tuesday: gross bodily functions [above navel].
Wednesday: the olden days in Iowa Falls and Ames.
Thursday: gross bodily functions [below navel].
Friday: potpourri, but post must be written as a palindrome.
Suggest.
On my two promises for this week:
1) I'm going to write a 1,000-word review responding to the question (as Kim puts it), "How can Ghost World be your favorite film of the year?" (To clarify: she doesn't dislike the film, but she doesn't understand how I can love it so much. Memento, conversely, she gets my love for; like my dad said, it's easy to think of Memento as a great film because he [and Kim, and I] never would have thought about creating a film like that.)
2) When I said "I'll share a couple ideas on this tomorrow" regarding what modern ideals will seem "near-horrific" in 2052, you'll notice I didn't say my ideas. I had none. I was fortunate to get a couple responses to this question, though:
"Abortion won't stay in this 50/50 split for another half-century. Either it'll be widely considered America's Holocaust or it'll be the hip thing to do." [Wrong, I'd say; during my lifetime, abortion will always be legal, and about a third of the country will be vehemently against it. It's been like this for 30 years, and I don't see any catalyst for change.]
"In 50 years, Canada will take over the US and [we'll] all speak like those people in Fargo." [We can only hope.]
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
As penance for missing yesterday's post, I have uploaded the original, Shockwave Prinsiana logo that some of you have been requesting for a time.
The most interesting parts of the Disney DVDs Kim got for Christmas -- one a collection of 30s Mickey Mouse shorts, one a collection of programs promoting Disneyland -- are two incidents that never, never, never could make it into a Disney production today:
1) Goofy is going fishing, and he uses chewing tobacco as bait. The fish chew the tobacco, savor it, then spit it back at Goofy.
2) On a live TV program at the opening of Disneyland, an interviewer is talking to a female celebrity who is driving around one of those kiddie racetracks. After the celebrity drives away the interviewer says something close to, "Like on the real road, we have to give these female drivers a little extra room."
The artifacts are amusing, but here's the kicker: it's certain that there's a number of ideals that seem quite normal in 2002, but will seem at least near-horrific in 2052. (Tobacco in a kid's show certainly would seem full-fledged horrific today, though that cartoon's a bit older than 50.) No, wait, here's the kicker: We have no idea what these beliefs might be. Obviously, the mainstreaming of gay society over the past 10 years will show a difference in attitudes between, say, 1970 and 2020, but what statements that I make today will look (at best) uncouth or (at worst) bigoted after 50 years of reflection and progress?
1) Congratulations to the winner of last night's Rose Bowl: BCS supporters.
2) I saw Memento for the third time on Monday. I'll see Ghost World for the third time this weekend. If I'm lucky, I'll be more confident on which one truly is my favorite film of the year.
3) There's the OpEd columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch who, to my recollection, has never written a piece that covers only one topic. I hate that.
4) I didn't really want to do a column like that today, as they're lame ways of expressing opinions without having to, oh, back them up with facts or stories or humor, but it's late and I don't want to miss a day of writing.
5) This is really stupid. I'm so sorry. Why are you reading this? Go away until Monday, when I'll write something better.
6) No. Leave. I mean it.
7) I hope we get a DVD player soon, so I can watch my new DVDs for Christmas.
8) Puppies are cuter than kittens.
9) I love Popsicles. They're much better than those fudge-covered ice cream things on a stick.
10) Look. I just posted three lame, inane, sub-Larry King items that should have led you to click in Explorer’s address box and type "www.espn.com" or the URL of some other site superior to this debris. Why didn’t you? Are you obsessed with me? Are you obsessed with my writing? Are you my mother? (If you are my mother: Uh, hi Mom.)
11) Look. (Yes, I’m repeating myself; you expected better?) My writing is passable at times. This ain’t one of those there moments. I’m sorry you scrolled all the way down here, and I wish there were some reward I could give you for reading all this. Wait. Here’s my reward: if you e-mail me at mdprins@yahoo.com before 8:30 Eastern on Monday, I’ll work your name into Monday’s column, which I promise will be better. At least a bit. I hope.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
There is an odd rhythm to newscasters reading off school delays and closings. Initially sent through the air with the same slight urgency that media personalities give to a homicide or a cat stuck in a pussywillow, the voices of the 'casters eventually break down into quick monotony. Strangely, it's a bit calming, and it gives me happy memories of days sans school in Iowa. It's missing something, though: the human interest angle.
Think of the Olympics: about one percent of one percent of Americans have an interest in curling, and NBC needs to get more eyes watching the exciting Bulgaria/Ukraine gold medal match. What to do? Ah ha! The Ukraine curling co-captain just lost his wife's big toe to severe frostbite, and yet he's managed to overcome that obstacle to get to the Olympic finals! NBC puts together a seven-minute, overproduced documentary-ette, curling apathy throughout America diminishes (as they have someone to cheer for), and volia! A 36 share!
So we have little Johnny at Ackley Middle School. Johnny's brother Paul has just been called up from the Army reserves, and yesterday was the last day Johnny got to spend with his brother. Johnny knows that family is more important than school, so he went bowling with Paul instead of finishing his algebra. Now he sees the yellowness of the sun glistening off the while snow, and he prays, "God, please bring back Paul safely. I love him so much. I thought about asking You to cancel school so I can finish my homework, but I would like to put all my prayers toward Paul, as he needs his life more than I need a C+." There is a live camera focused on Johnny; sitting to his right, his parents; on the table to his left, a framed picture of him and his brother. "Johnny," the reporter says, "I have some important news for you." Johnny looks straight into the camera with moist eyes. "All Ackley-Geneva schools are cancelled." Johnny cries. His parents cry. The framed picture gets condensation around the edges. "Thank you, Superintendent Williams, thank you!" Johnny yells. "You'll never regret this! You...you saved me!"
The camera lingers on Johnny for a time, and then there is a cut to the newscaster. "Thank you, Patrick, for that touching story. Now, lets go to Melissa Randolph in Boone, where a girl named Lisa is hoping she won't have to be teased in gym class today..."
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
No matter that Mr. Griffin wouldn't take up my gentleman's challenge. Here is my resolution for the second year in the third millennium: I shall post something to this, this thing every weekday. I don't care how banal that day's item is [1], but I shall write. Be struck down, dear stasis!
This is a subset of the main resolution, which is "writing more"; other subsets include writing at least 200 words on every film I see and producing at least one 2500-word item every month. All thirteen of my readers will keep me to this, will they not? It would help if you would occasionally tell me how much of a stupid idiot I am sometimes. [2]
[1] An obvious lie, but I will need to use lies to write something every day. Truths are too few.
[2] "[S]tupid idiot"? "[O]ccasionally tell me...sometimes"? Yes, this'll be great. Oh dear.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
these are comments, absent.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
