It pains me to give points to my new uber-nemesis Jo[h]n -- although now J. is more angry at Pablo than me even if it was my ingenious stunt that has caused the animosity -- but I did say that the next member of Our Lady of Lourdes who posted in the comments would get two points, and thus Jo[h]n now has two points. Be happy, dude.

---
Speaking of J.: In a subtle act worthy of an uber-nemesis, Jo[h]n asked me to be his interview subject for an English assignment. "Such a nice boy," you are now thinking, but you do not know the kicker: He had to interview someone who was from a different generation. He is only 10 years younger than me. One decade is not a different generation, thank you kindly. How rude.

---
I hope, I do hope, that I have given Beth-Annie the key to getting her journal to live from its current down-and-walking state. We shall see.

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Click here. How swell is that?

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Eight more short notes about television:

1) So that was a blowout, was it not? At Busch Gardens on Saturday, after not watching the game on television, I was wearing one of my Iowa State football shirts, and an employee in one of the stores asked me, "You're gonna beat Nebraska today, right?" And I said, confidently, "Uh, I hope so." I still do not have faith in Iowa State Football, and I still suspect they're going to end up 8-5 after a loss to either Colorado or Texas Tech.

2) For now, my worries about "Scrubs" seem to have been unnecessary: The first episode was just as wacky¹ and moralizing as last season.

3) Speaking of which, the second-best bit of television this month, even though I was expecting it from the beginning of the "Scrubs" episode: John C. McGinley destroying the troubadour’s guitar.

4) First "Friends" theory shot down: That Rachel saying "okay" as the final words of last season was not an acceptance of his proposal but instead just a acknowledgement that he was about to propose. Oops.

5) Second "Friends" theory shot down: That this Rachel/Ross/Joey love triangle would not be straightened out until at least the second and probably the third episode of the season. Oops.

6) Does no one else see how grating Rob Lowe is? The second scene with him in the premiere -- where he was awaken by a call from Josh -- was slapstick at its least stickish.² Dear Aaron Sorkin: Please do not let him crawl his way back on this show.

7) Based on the first episode of the coastal show v. a couple episodes of the original last season, "CSI: Miami" is far superior to "CSI: Las Vegas." I may even watch it again.

8) I saw part of the game with the Eastern Missouri Rams. What has happened to the Rams? I am sad about the Rams.

---
Having now seen This is My Wedding Ceremony and It Is Fat and I Am Greek and The Wedding Is Greek, Too, By The Way twice now, I would like someone to explain to me how this film is so funny because I believe the humor is too [insert some adjective that makes me seem cool and the people who like the film seem lame] for its own good. Two points for the best explanation.

---
Ironically, Von's dis of her school's Drama Club makes me want to join some sort of club or organization myself. Two points to whoever picks the best club or organization for me to join, and an extra two points if I actually join it.

---
I have been more phobic than usual lately: Both my claustrophobia and my bloodophobia came forth this weekend, and although there were catalysts for both situations, they weren't particularly caustic (such as, say, seeing a man with a knife in his gut or being trapped inside a box for 53 minutes). So I don't know.

---
That's all, really.

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1 If not always successfully so; the first Dogme 95-esque³ musical segment was far, far too long.

2 In case you cannot tell, that remark was meant as disparaging.

3 Huge congrats to Kimberly, who came up with that apt description before I did.

I couldn't change the name of my journal without changing the aesthetics of the site now, could I? I'm not completely happy with how it looks, but it'll do for now. Three points for the best idea for this "new," "better" journal.

Due to some issues with the otherwise lovely weblogging service that she and I both use, Beth-Annie is unable to post this certain Big Brother-related soliloquy that will reveal the winner of Big Brother tonight (she hopes). But she has posted it elsewhere, and so here is a place where you can read it. Please do, especially if you are my mother.

Ahem. I did not believe it was necessary to note that Prinsiana Points^TM were not allowed to be sold, bartered with, or used as a money proxy. But then some people just need to be told the obvious, do they not? Minus a quarter-point for Mr. Griffin for selling the soul of Prinsiana, but plus a half-point for his clever riposte regarding my to-be-published book.

And speaking of points, both Von and Pablo have now instituted point systems on their weblogs in a barefaced effort to be more like me. How very döppelgangerish of them.

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If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!
For those who don't read comments: By the end of Friday, Prinsiana City as you know it will be no more. Or maybe it will. I dunno. But I am going to purchase a domain name for the only part of the site that people use any more, and it may or may not be PrinsianaCity.com. Here are some choices:

prinsianacity.com
howswell.com
howperfectlyswell.com
matthewprins.com
lesemicolon.com
lepoint-virgule.com
neighbourrosicky.com
willacather.net
dumbening.com
ladverbe.com
thesemicolon.com
charlesnelsonreilly.org/.net
jerryorbachsposse.com
thesubjunctivecase.com
thisismywebsite.org
devonswebsite.net
thelmadawn.com

Please, suggest further.

Ha. Not to, ahem, rub it in the face of, ahem, certain siblings of mine who doubted my ability in predicting predictions, but Iowa State is a one-point favorite over the 'Huskers on at least Sheridan's line, with all the others I've found (Vegas casinos, etc.) either being a pick 'em or Nebraska by one point. No chance, Ed? No chance?

---
I think we need some clues on last week's point opportunity. Here's one or two words in each puzzle:

1) O. T.: "Other Than."
2) Uh. Uh. I don't remember the answer to this one right now. Two bonus points to whomever solves it if they figure out the answer before I remember it.
5) First "W": "Whose"; Second "W": "Was"
6) I: "I"; Z: "Zero."
7) F.: "Falls."
8) S.U.: "Should Usually."
13) S.R.: "Square Roots"
14) T. O.: "This One."
15) E.: "Eight."
16) M.: "Man."
17) D. I.: "Doesn't Include."
19) Second E.: "e."
20) V. K.: "Visible Knuckles."

---
Carrots: A Poem

pity the poor carrot with its opaque orange skin, its green unwaggable tail, its volume so easily described as one-third pi r squared h, its unshakable association with an uber-copulating mammal; it can

only and this is the one-and-only only

be glad that it is not

not not even close to being

an onion.

unless it’s one of those onion/carrot hybrids that are on the market right now, of course. those are freaky.

---
Greatest "Law & Order" moment from the Emmy telecast: Seeing (ill? aging?) Michael Moriarty get an Emmy from former "L&O" comrade Jill Hennessey. How lovely the show was back then.

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Second-greatest "Law & Order" moment from the Emmy telecast: Conan making a joke about "Jerry Orbach's posse."

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Greatest non-"Law & Order" moment from the Emmy telecast: In his crankiest voice, Larry David saying the name of his show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm," while driving in a car. That three- or four-second moment was funnier than many entire episodes of "Seinfeld," and the small bits of episodes shown earlier in the telecast looked equally enchanting. (It makes sense: The main deficiency in "Seinfeld" is the stagey, unrealistic performances by four of the five regulars [W. Knight included; J.L. Dreyfus excepted], and so a partially improvised "Seinfeld" -- what "Enthusiasm" seems to be -- could be a logical improvement.) Forget "The Mezzo-Sopranos" and "Making Love in the City"; "Enthusiasm" is the HBO show I'd most like to see.

Especially if Iowa State mauls Troy State (not to be confused with the University of Troy, of course) tomorrow, it is entirely possible that ISU may be favored next week over the visiting Nebraska 'Huskers. I did not believe I would ever see the day.

So the two films I'd most like to see in this year's Virginia Film Festival -- Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. with live accompaniment and Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven -- are not only both programmed at times when I can't see them, they're also programmed at the same time: 7:00P, Friday. How rude. (The film I'd fifth- or sixth-most like to see, Tuvalu, is also the same time, amazingly.)

In what is probably a good thing, considering, this seems to be the least-interesting VFF lineup in my four years here: Beyond the 7:00 Friday slot and a few unseen-by-me canonized classics (Laurence of Arabia, Chinatown, L'Atalante), I'm not even sure what I'd want to watch. Oh well.

Doubtlessly, my second-most anticipated one-365th of 2002 is coming up tomorrow: The public release of the Virginia Film Festival schedule. But tomorrow could go wrong. Dreadfully wrong. There is a crisis. No, scratch that: There are two crises.

Crisis One: The only day I will be able to attend the festival this year is Sunday (which has a shortened schedule; lovely) because Friday evening and almost all-day Saturday I will be learning to be a even more perfect bell choir director. So you know what's going to happen: All the movies I want to see are going to be on Friday evening and almost all-day Saturday¹.

Crisis Two: The first-most anticipated 365th of 2002 is the first day I can get up to D.C. to see the most anticipated new film of my lifetime², Mike Leigh's All or Nothing. You see where this is going: Right now, the film is scheduled to have a limited release (that will likely include D.C.) on the same Friday of the film festival, of the bell directors' workshop, of why can't some of this happen a different weekend? So I'm not going to be able to see AoN on the day it's released, which is fine; however, I may have to make a Sophie's Choice-esque decision on whether to ditch the film fest on Sunday or (sigh) not see Mike Leigh's new film on it's opening weekend. How utterly horrid my life is. Pobre Mateo.

---
1 Preemptive strike v. Jo[h]n and others: That was not a linguistic error. The parallelism was intentional, so shut up.

2 I swear this is not hyperbole.

Grammer [sic] lesson number one: We all know quite well about the subjunctive verb conjugation of "to be,"¹ which states that if your sentence is subjunctified by the prior addition of an "[singular noun or pronoun] hope[s]" or an "if"² or (occasionally) some other anti-indicative words that directly express a situation other than status quo that, even if the subject is singular, the verb form must instead jive with the plural.³ Simple examples:

"If I were a butterfly, I would fly." (Not "If I was a butterfly, I would fly.")
"I wish I were a butterfly." (Not "I wish I was a butterfly.")

Perplexing example:

"There is something wrong with the sentence, 'Ha ha, I'm serious.' If I [was/were] smarter, I'd know what that something [was/were]."

Of course, the first "to be" verb in the second sentence need be "were" rather than "was." But what about the second "to be"? I'm relatively confident that it's "was," but it still feels awkward having a subjunctive form and a non-subjunctive form of the same verb in the same sentence. Hmm.

I hope I have helped you take a quiet nap.

---
1 Or sometimes other verbs: In "I insist that she kiss me," the verb "kiss" is in the subjunctive case; that's why it's "kiss" instead of "kisses."

2 Confusingly, although, not always. "If he was at McDonald's yesterday, like he said he was going to be, then I bet he got the hamburger Happy Meal" is correct, because there's no presupposition of untruth. But anyway.

3 I suspect that no one except Ed is still reading after this sentence, alas.

As last week's contest seemed to have been the best-received yet, here are twenty more puzzles, each worth a half-point. Like last time, some are tricky bordering on unfair, but I believe and hope they are all answerable. Hyphenated modifiers are given letters for each of the words: Ten-pound steak would be T. P. S., and such. None of these require any knowledge of me, per se -- there’s nothing like 25 Y. S. F. in M. P. L. (years so far in Matthew Prins’ life) -- but one or more of the puzzles may require or be helped by knowledge of the previous contest. Answers will be crossed out as...etc.

1) 6 P. Other Than T. O. and U. and V.
2) 35 C. on the D. P. to the G. B. T. in the S. H. T. B.
3) 100 C. S. in I. B. O. N. N. C.
4) 12360 K. P. H. S. in a M. P. S. S.
5) 3 B. Whose P. Was T. B. G.
6) 1 S. I S. but Zero D.
7) 49 S. A. C. Falls into the P. O.
8) 3 D. in A. F. B. one Should Usually P.
9) 2. S. of R. in E. B. of R. B.
10) A. 16.9 F. O. in a H. L.
11) 2 B. T. O. D. N. if one I. Z. but D. I. N. N.
12) 3 L. T. G. T. T. C. of a T. R. P.
13) 20 Square Roots of P. I. T. A. B. T. and E. N. I.
14) 33 P. B. This One if one I. L. R.
15) 143 S. in Eight F.
16) 0 O. in a Man.
17) 42 A. P. if one Doesn't Include G. C. T.
18) 50 W. T. L. Y. L.
19) e E. in e S.
20) 5 Visible Knuckles on a M. W. I. W. A. G. on O. O. H. H. and H. N. L. A. K. on the H. T. I. N. W. the G.

From a United Airlines e-mail: "We are unable to determine clearly from our records your current intentions regarding the receipt of various e-mail communications from United."

Do you ever have a journal entry written and then you hit the wrong button and bad things happen like the disappearance of your journal entry? That is a very sucky thing to have happen to a very nice person such as myself, I do believe.

---
Clues for the four unanswered questions:

4) This statement has only been true the past ten years.
11) The O. D. is a hyphenate.
12) Replacing 9 with 5 would also yield a true statement.
17) One of moM's guesses had one word right.

---
Without writing anything substantial new and without yet including any of my haikus, I am now at 36 pages in my book comma, out of a hoping-to-get 150. On my to-do list:

* Come up with an ending for "Never Underestimate a Polar Bear."

* Write a few more poems about vegetables and/or spirituality (explanation to come).

* Write a short play or three.

* Write my punctuation reviews.

* Figure out what to do with the 2000 words that I wrote starting my other novel that no one except me has ever seen because it's crap.

* Oh, and also write a short musical. And some more short humorous pieces. And some more Deus ex machina bits. Etc.

---
Once every couple months, by accident, PBS shows quality programming. Last night, our PBS station was kind enough to broadcast "Stage on Screen: Beckett on Film," which is notable because it shows the six-minute experimental David Mamet short "Catastrophe," starring R. Pidgeon; "Catastrophe" has now beaten out "The Heart of the World" as the favorite short film I've seen this year. The Mamet is at the very beginning of the program, and about 40 minutes in is Anthony Minghella's "Play," which is stranger and nearly as powerful. See it. And record it for me.

Kris Kringle and the omnibus post will have to wait until Monday, as I need to speak to you about an investment opportunity. That investment...is me! (CUE: Murmurs of surprise and people whispering "Pumpernickel pumpernickel pumpernickel."¹) Specifically, that investment is my upcoming, untitled book of essays, poems, and short stories. Looking at the stuff I've posted on the website, along with unfinished stuff lounging at my computer at home, along with stuff that I've finished but just never posted anywhere, and along with stuff I'll be writing in the near future, I do sincerely believe that with a couple months' work, I could put together a 150-page book of my writings. Yeah. Maybe.

I've been taking a peek at Print on Demand -- we have a PoD book at work, and it looks pretty swell for being lasered -- and I've figured that for no more than $500 for paperback or $640 for hardcover, I could print 20 copies of my book.² (Additional copies would list for $13/$19, and -- at least on the site I'm looking at -- be available from Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com). I'd make about $2.50 per book sold paperback or about $3.50 hardcover, depending on where they were sold.

So here is what I am thinking. I am thinking of selling 20 shares of my book, available at either $25 if I go paperback or $32 if I go hardcover. If you buy a share in my book, you get a free copy of my book, signed, and you get your name listed in the acknolegementts³. More importantly, you would get 4 percent of my profits from the book. At about 120 copies sold (perhaps do-able), you'd make back all but what you would have normally paid for the book; at about 250 copies sold (not gonna happen), you'd make back your entire investment; at 10,000 copies sold (uh...), you could buy 5000 chicken nuggets at Wendy's.

I'm not soliciting for potential investors yet. I'm just trying to get a feel on how utterly stupid this idea is, so please let me know.

---
1 It's an actor's thing. Just ignore it.

2 I can either go one way or another, not both.

3 That misspelling is to help dissuade you from taking me up on this offer.

Questions one, three, and four go to moM. Question two goes to Alexander. Question five goes to Charles Nelson Reilly. No one got the bonus question, which is still up for grabs this week. Y'all are brighties, so figure out the divvied points yourself. Yes, go ahead. Break out the calculator if you must. It will be oh so much fun, I do promise.

Back in elementary or middle school, I remember Nancy Fleming (I think) giving Josh and I a sheet with about 50 clues like: 31 F. at B. R., or 88 P. K., or 12 N. on a C., where the object was to figure out what letters stood for (flavor, Baskin, Robbins; piano, keys; numbers, clock). Thus, as this week's contest, here are twenty of my own, each worth a half-point. Some are tricky bordering on unfair, but I believe and hope they are all answerable. Hyphenated modifiers are given letters for each of the words: Ten-pound steak would be T. P. S., and such. (Hint: This comes up at least three times.) None of these require any knowledge of me, per se -- there’s nothing like 25 Y. S. F. in M. P. L. (years so far in Matthew Prins’ life) -- but knowing my hobbies and predilections will very much help on three or four questions. Questions will be crossed off as they are answered.

1) 15 C. in S. A.
2) 168 H. in a W.
3) 20 N. in a D.
4) 27 A. to the C.
5) 6,272,640 S. I. in an A.
6) 3 V. on a T.
7) 1080 D. in an O.
8) 14 L. in a S.
9) 1.44 M. on a F. D.
10) 3 W. from a G.
11) 19 O. D. N. if one I. N. N. and Z.
12) 9 D. in S. Z. C.
13) 19 L. in C. N. R. N.
14) 24 L. on M. T.
15) A. 6.3 R. in a C.
16) 25 H. in a T. O. H. C.
17) 6 F. on a H. and R.
18) 10 M. in a D.
19) 3 L. on a T. L. D.
20) 47 H. in a D. if one C. the I. D. L. G. E. B. E. P. M. and M. A. one D. C. any O. T. L.

X -ray of my soul here: I've never felt sufficiently sad, nor sufficiently angry, nor sufficiently any major negative emotion as an aftereffect from 9-11. On the day itself, there was shock/astonishment and fear/apprehension, but for me that never transformed itself to an acute need to get bin Laden (nor, converselyish, an acute need to defend innocent Arab-Americans and to defend innocent civil liberties¹), and for me it also never transformed itself into the obligatory (and rightfully so), immense sadness that the country, sans me², had. Compared to your average American, my word do I feel downright indifferent. The only time I cried over 9-11 -- and this was more of a tearing-up-but-tears-staying-within-the-eye than a salty-water-down-the-side-of-the-nose -- was when I saw Dan Rather cry on Letterman, but that was the result of seeing an venerated newsman lose it on the air, not the result of being emotionally shattered by the deaths of thousands.³ Take away that one exception, and unexpectedly my reactions have all been academic or philosophical: they have not been emotional and have certainly not been demonstrative. I feel...heartless, and one of the reasons I'm participating in my church's 9-11 prayer service is so I can perhaps be a part of this nationwide catharsis. For the past year, I certainly haven't.

In short: I have no right to say anything regarding this one-year anniversary, so I will shut up now.

---
1 It’s not as though I didn’t see the need to get bin Laden or the need to defend civil liberties; they just were not and are not my number one political interests.

2 I was sad, yes, but immensely so? I can't recall any 9-11 emotion of mine that would justify that adverb.

3 It was grief by proxy, I suppose, as I was crying because someone was crying because of the 9-11 attacks.

Oh, so I was gonna be all contrite and crap, because yesterday was the first non-holiday weekday that I haven't written in my journal since August 9th -- over a full month, amazingly. But then I took a look at the weblogs of those people on the right-hand side of this page, and now I feel only aloofness. "Por que?" you ask. Porque:

Devon's journal: last written in three days ago
Paul's journal: last written in five days ago
Beth-Annie's journal: last written in six days ago
Alexander's journal: last written in who knows how many days ago

(You may notice that I am ignoring Opie's journal, because he -- the jerk -- wrote in his yesterday.)

Thus, I am the bloggingest blogger who ever blogged in a blog.

Uh, so I found out this weekend while reading Newsweek that sometimes John Updike, Samuel Beckett and even Anton Chekhov got into these funks where they sought coherence in their Weblogs but they couldn't write articulate posts not only because they did not have the coherent thoughts that day but also because they didn't have the Internet. So what they did is they did these posts where there was no underlying thesis statement but instead just wrote whatever came to mind, but because they had just written a post like that three days prior, they included a humorous, postmodern introduction that made their readership realize what virtuoso authors they were. "The Cherry Orchard" was written just four days after Chekhov wrote a post in his 'blog that he was in a Christmas mood, as is well documented.

---
I am in a Christmas mood. I am unsure why. (Jungian analysis: I would like a little baby Jesus of my own.) (Freudian analysis: I would like a little baby Jesus of my own so I can have more sex with my wife in the attempt.) Regardless of le why, I have now had two December-25th-related conversations in the past two days, and Over the Rhine's The Longest Night of the Year is in my automobile's¹ CD player. Thus, by the end of this week, I will have up my Christmas predilections ("Oh Holy Night") and pet peeves ("Oh Holy Night" sung by an atonal vocalist with no range). I need this list to be comprehensive, so please help be reminiscent.

---
You know what I like about television? You do? Oh. Forget it, then.

---
I have been asked the delay the termination of le contest current until Wednesday at 10:00P Eastern², so I am doing so.

---
Um, so for those of you who are in bell choir and whom I do not think I have yet told, practice is Thursday this week, not Tuesday. If you are the one with a sister, I did send an e-mail to your sister about it.

---
Speaking of which: The first person from Our Lady of Lourdes who is not named Devon or Paul and who posts a comment here gets three points.

---
Ed, Annie: Please ignore my "C" for My Immense Overweight Greek Orthodox Wedding. The more I consider the film, the more it appears like a toned-down, less-clever episode of "My Name is Edward and I Have a Show on NBC". (It's like "Ed" in mood and in tenor, not in content, but I’m sure it's the general cordiality and quirkiness of the show that you're groovin' on, not the bowling and law aspects.) You'll both at least marginally like it, just like ever other American this side of the Mississippi oh and did I mention also the other side.

---
I love listening to Dick Cheney. I really do. He can talk about the Iraq possibly having nuclear weapons and we need to start a war with them, and yet I am tranquil. I can't explain.

---
1 I am not much for admiring the aesthetics of four-wheeled horses³, but the Cooper Mini is, without a doubt, the most capital-C Cute car on the road. Wow.

2 Okay, yes, I mean no, the requester was not quite that specific. I'm a regular Ann Coulter, I am.

3 Um, huh?

Really, I've already done this once this week with the "secrets," but can one truly get enough omnibusness? I do not believe that one truly can. Oh, and I'll work up a cool logo for next week, maybe, perhaps.

---
I never did tell y'all what Kim and I did for Labor Day weekend, did I? We went on a historical amusement park adventure! You don't want to hear the gory details, but I will say that (a) there is a certain fear in being in a ride where they need to balance the sides to ensure (presumably) that the ride will not tip over and splat the paying customers; (b) I get dizzy too easily; (c) roller-coasters in pitch-blackness are freaky, especially when the cars turn randomly; (d) Pittsburgh is not that exciting of a town; (e) Tennessee's Civil War Memorial:Gettysburg::the Arthur Ashe Statue:Richmond's Monument Avenue; and (f) yes, everything on the East Coast does seem to be within six hours of Richmond.

---
See Possession. Any movie that both Kim and I like can't be too bad, can it?

---
I missed the Blue Jays' weekend games in Baltimore this year. Oh well.

---
For those who don't read Beth-Annie's journal, here's my take on Sixpence's new song.

---
Aimee Mann's new album, Lost in Space, is suitably good, if perhaps not quite a Bachelor No. 2 or a Whatever; it isn’t as brazenly melodic as either one of those albums, a mistake since Mann’s strength is in her barefaced tunes. Also, I am now more sure than ever that Mann either is or was a druggie, notwithstanding the absence of the habitual Aimee-looking-zonked-out album picture. (It’s a drawing, and she looks quite normal.)

---
I am not attending the Toronto Film Festival right now. How dreary.

---
Is anyone else having trouble getting to the journal when they forget to type a "/" after the "prinsiana/journal"? I am.

---
I feel like Larry King right now.

---
I need a haircut.

---
Okay. This needs to stop now.

Even Prinsiana succumbs to peer pressure. I have heard complaints (fine, complaint) that recent contests have been geared more toward the quick than the quick-witted, and that Prinsiana City should hold itself to higher standards. Hmmph. What a stupidhead that person is.

Regardless, we will try something new. Five answers. Best question for each answer by Monday gets one-and-a-half points. For the remaining two-and-a-half points, explain why an earlier post started with the phrase "zip, zip, zip" and why I'll need to start out another soon-to-be-posted post discussing the underwool from the Arctic musk ox.

If comments cease to work again, e-mail them to me.

Zip, zip, zip I went today, finishing up my 3K in about 26 minutes. If I were to move my feet that quickly for 26ish miles, I'd finish a marathon in just over six hours, which is the maximum time in which one is allowed to finish the Richmond Marathon, so I'm practically ready, am I not?

I've also come to the odd realization that I'm not nearly as hungry on days when I've run than on days when I haven't. Is there some sort of biological theory behind this? After all, I should be more hungry, as I am burning up calories that my body would like to replenish, so I am not sure if this is psychosomatic or what, but I know next-to-nothing about biology, so hmm.

Catholic Inquiry -- essentially the kindergarten of the Catholicizing process -- has been reasonably futile for me, I'm afraid. It's not as though I haven't found the sessions sporadically appealing, or that I haven't been educated about particulars of the Catholic faith; it's just that the class is taking a more "this is what Catholics believe" methodology than a "this is why Catholics believe what they believe" approach, and this does not help me make a resolved pro or con decision on me ever becoming Catholic. Further, the underlying question of my nonbelief -- essentially, "What right do Juan Pablo and his Spanish friends¹ have to dictate the beliefs of Christianity?" -- has never² been discussed except in the vaguest of terms. (Vaguest of terms = "Well, Peter was the first Pope, and, you know, there's this unbroken line, this line, from Peter of Popes to John Paul, and so...what was the question again?")³

I cite this because when one considers it, there's only one question separating Catholics from Protestants: "Does the Catholic Church have the right to dictate the dogma of Christians without exception⁴?" Seriously, that's it: Everything else in Catholicism proceeds from that question. Example: Let's say you're a Catholic. (No, no, even better: Let's say you're a Hispanic Catholic.) You have some doubts about the Immaculate Conception of Maria. You go visit Padre Gonzalez, and you say, "Padre, I am not sure I believe in the Immaculate Conception of Maria, which by the way is talking about Maria being born and not Jesus' birth, as you certainly know, being a Padre." And Padre Gonzalez says, "Yes, Hermana, I was aware that the Immaculate Conception was about Maria being born without sin, and also I can tell you why the Catholic Church believes that she was born without sin." And so Padre Gonzalez goes into a speech about how...well, I don't know, because I don't know why the Church believes that. Something about capital-T Tradition, no doubt. Anyway, so you've listened to the extemporized homily, and you say to Padre Gonzalez, "Padre, I still don't believe in the Immaculate Conception of Maria." And then Padre says, "Yes, Hermana, you do." And you go, "Huh?" And Padre says, "Remember? When you became a Catholic, you said that you were accepting the authority of the Church in matters of dogma, and the Church believes in the Immaculate Conception, and so thus so do you, or you are not truly a Catholic."⁵ And you go, "Oh."

Exactly. If you are a Catholic wannabe, you may have an intellectual curiosity that needs to be satisfied on issues of faith -- you may wish to know why the Catholic Church believes what it believes -- but honestly, as a Catholic wannabe, it doesn't do much good⁶ to consider the differences between transubstantiation and representation, or the love of Maria, or whatever dogmatic issue that you may disagree with the Catholic Church on, because (a) those beliefs won't bring you one millimeter closer to becoming Catholic if you won't differ to Catholic authority, and corollaryly (b) if you differ to Catholic authority, you won't have to fret about those beliefs. In fact, the only way that one can argue that looking at these "auxiliary issues" is at all valuable is if discovering that the Church is right on these issues brings you closer to admitting that the Church is right on everything, and that's spurious logic; there is a 40-kilometer chasm between believing that the Catholic Church is right about most everything dogmatically and believing that the Catholic Church is right about everything dogmatically.

Thus, that is my new and only Catholicism focus: I need to understand why there is a belief in the infallibility of the Catholic Church regarding issues of faith. There is only that one question.

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1 Hi. I am quite aware the the Pope is Polish, but I think Pope Juan Pablo is a superior identifier. Also, I know that the Vatican is not Spanish. Okay? Okay.

2 Well, until a guest speaker spoke on it last night, which is why I’m writing on this today.

3 That is slightly unfair and cruel; no one at Inquiry has been that incoherent.

4 By without exception, I do not mean that the Catholic Church must dictate all of a Christian's personal dogma; I mean that all the dogma that the Church does dictate must be followed by every Christian.

5 Padre Gonzalez is a bit blunt, but he is speaking the truth, I think.

6 I mean good in the getting-closer-to-deciding-whether-or-not-to-self-Catholicize way, not good in the learning-more-about-the-beliefs-of-the-denomination-that-your-faith-is-born-from way.

Because the comments have yet been corrected in a manner that would fix the problem -- "The Internet sucks, Craig," would be Beth-Annie's apposite colloquialism¹ -- I do believe that now would be a good time to tell people ten secrets² about myself, secrets that no one else knows except for probably half the people reading my journal. But the important thing is, the other half doesn't, and now is the time to cry my tears publicly.

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Once, when I was about 10, I had to take a tablespoon of orange³ Triaminic, and it tasted really good, so while Mom and Dad weren't looking, I took another tablespoon, and I thought that I was going to get really sick.

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I have not shaved in five days. (It's a secret if you haven't seen me in five days, right?)

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I have a mole on my right thigh that is about as big as a nickel.

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The only recurring dream I can recall from elementary school is that there was this guy who parked in front of our house and then he started chasing me around the house. That's all I remember, basically.

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In high school in Ames, I had three different girls who told me (either in person [one] or by proxy [two]) that they had a major crush on me (either during the fact [one] or after the fact [two]), only one of whom I ever went out with.

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I was once with my crush-at-the-time doing a school project, and she went to the bathroom, and she, uh, I don't know how to explain this, but she let off this series of farts that, wow, these were something, and I sorta kinda temporarily lost interest with her because of it⁴.

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So Southeast didn't have an e-mail directory, so I was starting this volunteer e-mail directory at school, sending random e-mails to addresses in the form [letter][letter][number][number]stu@semovm.semo.edu to get them to sign up, but then I got an e-mail from someone at the administration saying that they had just started an official e-mail directory, so I was disappointed, but then I looked up Kim's e-mail address in the directory and, ahem, "randomly" sent her one of the e-mails I was sending out to get people to sign up for the directory.

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I will go to my grave swearing that I did not intentionally spill the milk out of my cereal bowl at the Flemings' house. I did not.

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I went two full years drinking soda only (I think) three times.

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I do not know what I want to be when I grow up.

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1 I am using big words today because I am insecure about my writing ability. Maybe. I dunno.

2 Perhaps the phrase "unfamiliar detail" would be more correct; as secrets go, these are awfully noddy⁵.

3 As I do not have to tell Josh, yellow Triaminic is the most vile liquid on earth; it (seriously) tastes like fluid ear wax.

4 See, I am glad that the comments are not working so I will not hear the responses about how utterly unfair this not-liking-someone-as-much-because-gosh-how-horrible-it-is-that-they-farted is.⁶

5 Doesn't "noddy" work better as an adjective than a noun? I'm going to start using "noddy" as my all-purpose "stupid" replacement, even if it isn't grammatically correct.

6 Oh, not that I'm going to tell you who it is, but I will say that it wasn't Kim. I think Kim would appreciate that.

The beginning of the school year is a sad time for those of us who have school-age chums yet are not school age ourselves. We have free time; they do not. We have "Friends" and "Law & Order"; they have Chaucer and Calculus. We have the wisdom of the ages; they have the intelligence of a school of salmon, digested¹. Et alia.

Oh, how I miss you, dearest school!

And that, that is why I have started another in a series of short-lived serieses at Prinsiana City. In this series, titled "Matthew does other people's homework," I will do other people's homework. It's symbiotically apt, methinks: They have too much of the homework, and I have too little of the homework, and so here is a chance for amenable mutualism.

I will start today with an assignment Devon received on her first day of English class². The assignment, as Devon relayed it to me, was as follows: "Write a paragraph on your name." Von slipped me the fiver after choir, as is required -- she bargained me down from $15³ -- and now, here, is Dev's English assignment:

It is disingenuous to consider the nature of one’s name, as names are merely unfathomable oddities forced upon us by society’s status-quo requisite need to “identify” and “classify” all substances and thus by definition persons. I am not my name; I am not this “Devon Gray”; I am not this flesh and blood machine, the accidents my true substance uses to navigate this world; I am nothing except Who I Am, and that Who I Am cannot be cataloged for the sole reason that my Who I Am is unclassifiable, as is your Who I Am. Nonetheless, there is a sense of irony in my last name as that name, Gray, epitomizes a perception of moral ambiguity, an awareness that good and evil are tangled in a yin yang figure, that capital-T Truth is unknowable, that complexity does not beget simplicity, that there is morality in ever heinous act, that there is heinousness in ever moral act. And thus it is ironic that Gray is my last name because I am the one who came up with the main theories behind the current study of moral ambiguity in a past life as a philosophy professor at Oxford in the late 1800s (much of my drudgery is lost to the ages, alas), and so I do speculate that the Conscious of the Universe had a superior and hearty laugh when he made my father a Mr. Gray. (I will query the CotU on this matter and provide you an riposte by Monday.)

Matthew, er, Matt Prins has now made it through one day of his joyous marathon training. On this first day, he walked and jogged about 3K in a little under a half-hour (slowed down by trying to look at the Innsbrook walking trails signs and estimate exactly how far he had walked. An inauspicious start, to be sure: some people can walk 3K in thirty minutes.

But anyway, he's taking today off, because it's 91 degrees and because he couldn't find a decent pair of shorts to wear this morning in a still-sleeping self-dressing and because he's lazy and never is going to walk and jog again in his whole life which is a long time never to walk or jog again if you ask me. But he did make a cool logo for his webpage, so perhaps that will inspire him.

Also, perhaps he will talk again in the first person. He hopes so.

Good morning. My name is Matt Prins. It used to be Matthew Prins, as some of you well know; however, today I am what I will call a "new man." You see, I am a relatively normal guy: I have normal music tastes, I have normal film tastes, I am of relatively average intelligence, fine, yes, I'm lying, whatever, but I'm trying to lay the groundwork for this obscene statement I am about to make, and it will seem even more ridiculous if it seems like I don't have these obscene and strange statements fluttering in-left-ear-out-right every hour of every day, which I do, but this one stuck somehow and I almost like it and I almost think it's a good idea and I, well, I don't almost think it's doable, but I don't know, why the heck not.

This is my idea: that I should run a marathon.

No. Please. Stop with the hurtful laughing. Do not mock me. I am becoming sad, and I may very well cry. This is, this is me putting my heart out on the line for my friends and family and random people looking on Google for "wet tees," and I would like your support, and I am not feeling your support right now. I am thinking that you are thinking that while I am certainly in better physical shape than I was two or three years ago, I am still not in the peak physical condition of my late high school days, and even in those late high school days I could not run a mile in under eight minutes. That is what I am thinking that you are thinking, and I am also thinking that you are thinking that I do not even particularly like running and "why Matthew Prins er sorry Matt Prins would you run a marathon that is not making the sense why do you not I don't know play Ping Pong instead."

I do not know why. I will no doubt give up my training in three days. But I am going to start, at lunch, today. I have two months. Or, uh, a year and two months.