Happy Halloween, thank Goodness they took that penitential vigil out

Relax, KKK dogs will NOT be doing the unmentionable on your lawn. That was last night. Tonight it's ALL about the treats.

I went to Mass this morning. I noted that back in the 20s missal there was a vigil Mass with its own propers. Purple was worn and it was a day of semi-penitential fast. Change can be good! :-D At least kids now don't have to feel guilty about scarfing down all that stuff. I'm betting that even back then Halloween candy didn't break the fast - in the same way that calories from broken cookies don't count -- nor does anything consumed on the run.

Can't wait for D*A*R*K*

'been saving up rotten eggs for weeks. I'm disappointed I can't find any corn fields within 100 miles that I can steal corn out of so I can go tick tacking. So the eggs are just going to have to do.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Gregorian "Shaboom"

Busy last 24 hours...I went along to a lesson in Chant that St. Anne's parish has been holding. [I hadn't had a chance to go before, but there are a few classes left. It's open to anyone in the county wanting to learn. Most of the people there were in various church choirs, about 12-14 in all I forgot to count. The instructor is the parish choir director, very nice.

30 some years ago, I'd had exposure to nume reading - (and I already know how to read standard musical notation, so it wasn't a big stretch.) I was surprised at how quickly what I had been told about it frosh year in college came back - having taken a "General distribution" course in the history of music, the foundations of western music being built on the Gregorian Chant of the monks. Biggest difference is a 4 line staff instead of 5. I rather like the idea of a non-fixed "do." I was delighted to learn that each choirmaster, as a rule of thumb, prefers to fix the "do" to match the tessitura (sweet spot) of the mix of voices that individual choir has. Thank goodness, I was never one of those with perfect pitch, to whom looking at a standard notation "mi" would be hard pressed to sing "re." Don't know if I'll join the choir yet, I'll have a lot of work to do, but some of the tunes were familiar, and having enough latin helps.

I just need to scour you tube for a lot of the common parts of the Mass (8 different possible tones too -- depending on the character of the celebration.) The notation will take some getting use to but personally, in a lot of ways it's easier than standard notation. Hope I got all that right -- there were some nice hand outs too. The church also has a children's choral group.

Also, finally got an eye exam (I'd lost a contact, and my perscription was long out of date.) I went to Mass this a.m., and work, and also swam 3/4 of a mile tonight down at the Kroc center.

Busy girl, so sorry for all the relative radio silence.

New twist on propellar beanies

So help me, I so wanted to take this picture from the side, but given what this guy had on his head I was concerned about him launching some napalm he'd saved since 'nam.

I took this picture downtown after work yesterday. He was not out of place. A fairly young homeless fellow was sitting just outside the Albertson's, perched on a recess of the building near the door. He had a yogi bear style hand muppet, which casually asked me if I had any spare huckleberries. So help me, if I had, I'd have been tempted to give him a few.

The Mop

In case you missed it from Lucianne.com:

What can you say? They got it from sweasel.com -- which appears to be worth exploring a bit!

[Click on the sweasel link -- it's pointed out that when zero, who was raised by two white grandparents, starts dropping his "G"s and using "y'all" and "folks" when said GPs never did means that isn't zero talking, but the "Reverend" White.]

As sweasel notes, if a white person had said something about zero being like a janitor he would have been called a "Racist" in about two seconds.

It Makes for an interesting Mass

I haven't seen too many Masses of the Dead in the EF form yet. But the delightful Fr. Freddy did one this AM, it was a feria with "nothing on" and it had been requested in memory of a parishioners relative. It's pretty cool to hear a "DIES IRAE" in real life, other than a University classroom.

I can't vividly remember going to one of these when I was little grades 1-2, other than I do have a vague memory of one. An All Soul's day Mass, perhaps? I'm sure there must have been the odd school Mass or two when we were present at someone's funeral if the Mass time coincided with the school Mass time (as it sometimes did.)

I think if a person has ever been to a funeral service for someone they didn't know, you can almost count on that person being Catholic. I can remember in the mid 60s, after the Mass went to mostly English, but with the old form largely retained, before the 69 missal, we went to quite a few funeral Masses. From middle of 3rd grade through 7th, I'd attended two different schools, and we'd normally all go at least once or twice a week to Mass as a matter of routine. Both churches were cavernous -- so the family of the deceased was usually no where near where we sat, even with the whole school going.....which was just as well, given the propensity for the younger kids to stiffle not tears over the casket scene before us, but generally over "Drama queen" soloists. I can well remember a classmate or two being taken to task for getting the giggles. No, it was never me. I'd already been too scared to even so much as turn around during Mass, because our primary school nuns grades 1-3 would have killed us. That sort of nun can help you develop Vicky Lawrence type immunity from breaking out a laugh. Or as George Carlin would say "if you were good, you could whip a face on Rodger, and HE'D get in trouble for laugning, but NOT you. 'Rodger, outside, there's nothing funny here.' IF you were GOOD, you could clear the whole room."

Many of my protestant friends, when Iwas growing up thought it must have been gloomy for us to have to attend these masses. Far from it!! These usually took longer, so we enjoyed the extra time out of the classroom!

[In grade school, 4-5 in Roanoke, Virginia, I had a friend, Teri Jo Myers, who was a genius at getting a nosebleed, which conveniently lasted from the gospel reading to just before the consecration. Guess who would get to go with her to make sure she was okay and didn't pass out? A few years back one of our servers was telling us that in grammar school they LOVED to serve Mass for Fr. Tom P. because "he always told us we didn't have to be in any rush to hurry back to class." I daresay as a boy in Ireland he had a clandestine few extra minutes of bliss away from the nuns with the priest's permission.

What goes around, comes around!

Happy 81st Birthday to the Sainted Father S.

Saw him last night for Mass, and then we had his favorite, KFC. [give him two piece, original, wedge potato fries, and a corn on the cob, and he's a happy man] He also got some chocolate fudge last night too for a chaser.

I took this picture this past May. The lemons he grew were almost as big as oranges.

bizness lingo splained to you

"He's ACTUALLY in a meeting now" means he for sure as hell isn't and has told the recptionist to hold all calls unless from mother, wife, or mistress - and in some cases from the former two of those.

"He's in a meeting right now"- he probably really is.

"I'm on a long distance call right now." No, they're not. They thought you were someone else when they picked up the phone. The "long distance" is a dead give away. Who gives a flip about such distinctions now?

"I'm on another call right now, call back." They really are on another call - call back.

"He's on the factory floor right now" - We can't find him, he's probably skipped off to the nearest bar.

Call a lawyer's office and the secretary lets you right through without trying to play gatekeeper? That means the receptionist is ticked off at the laywer. It's particularly good to call law offices at the end of the day, because by that time the lawyer HAS done something to tick off the receptionist.

49 out of 50 US States + DC Lost Jobs since "Stimulus"

Have you HAD IT with people who sport Obama stickers by now? Shove the following .jpeg in their faces tomorrow. Ask them how the dope with the change is working out for them. Zero bragged that he was going to create millions of new jobs with his porkulus project. The only state to gain jobs from February to Sept (latest figs available) was North Dakota. In other words, about 5 new jobs, because North Dakota doesn't even have 700,000 people living there.

[Click picture to enlarge.]

Full story is here.

The Kenyan Marxist crook was braying that 3.6 million jobs would be created. Well, since then the US has LOST 2.7 million jobs. The dollar may as well be used for toilet paper.

Last week, I didn't mention it on the blog, but as I was gassing up at the local Arco to get to work, I absolutely laid into some son-of-a-bitch who had an Obama sticker on his car. I ripped him a new one and told him I was holding him and his ilk personally responsible for voting for that jackass. This cowering jerk actually started to run for cover to the attendant, then he realized that by doing so he looked like the candy ass he was by doing that. Go ahead, make my day.

I also informed him that zero didn't give a damn about his health as he's written off people over 40. I said I hope his whole family suffers if zerocare passes, and I hoped his 401k is now a 101k.

I*HAVE*HAD*IT.

And I don't feel the least bit sorry for bitching him out. He deserved every nasty word I said to him. I don't care if he'd BORROWED the damn car because his was in the shop. He should have torn the damn sticker off.

If zero trips off the Truman balcony and breaks his neck, call me up, and we can dance in the street together. To borrow a line from Ronaldus Magnus: "The economy will recover when he loses HIS job." The sooner the better.

[IIRC, my opening salvo was "I can't believe anyone still has a f***ing Obama sticker on their car." It went downhill from there! And it was a "salvo" given I could probably have been heard as far north as Orange County and as far east as the Imperial Valley. People in Cabo San Lucos said "Que Paso?" and the tsunami should hit Japan soon. If the kangaroos were unusally active last week they were probably reacting to the shock waves sent through the earth's mantle, unless the death rays set off from the satellites were triggered inadvertently. I'd been saving that particular blast for months now.]

Holding pattern

Ever had one of those weekends where you were going to get things done but didn't but it's okay anyway, because you can do them later, and what you did do was relaxing?

I'm having one of those weekends. Mass shortly with the Sainted Fr. S. His birthday is coming up soon on the 26th of the month, so keep him in your prayers, he will be 81. And say a prayer that the data from one of his hard drives, which just crashed, can be recovered.

Question for my UK readers

[And anyone else in the know]

This last week Blessed Fr. Blake of Brighton (may peace be upon him, I don't know why he's not a monsignor by now) had a post regards all the broken up stuff he had under his sancturary. My first impression was a) how bone idle lazy whomever the people were who modified (or destroyed, whatever your point of view is!) the sanctuary some years back.

Then after musing about it, it's since occurred to me, that rather than cart it off, "the powers that were" figured they may as well bury it in the church rather than pay someone to haul it away.

Which then brought up THIS query for all of you: Have '"archeologists" or various historically minded people in the UK ever done a survey of what is buried under the flooring of many UK churches? [The churches "they" stole from the Catholics, anyway?]

It occurs to me that when anti-Catholic forces in the UK were stripping those altars and being iconoclasts and destroying everything they could, I wonder if they were as lazy sods as the people in relatively present day Brighton were? i.e. Perhaps they just threw a lot of it under the flooring -- unlike the US it is pretty common over there to have people buried in vaults under the church floor --- have "they" looked , just for the heck of it (or perhaps when certain churches were bombed in WWII) and found old statues, altars, fonts, etc. in some of those vaults under the flooring? Maybe they don't all contain the bones of the dead, but more than a few things thought too heavy to bother moving that they wanted gotten rid of?

I'd LOVE to get a look under the floor of the little church in the Tower of London, for instance. Along with Thomas More's body, I wonder what else was flung under there?

Robert B. Reich: We're going to let you die

[Robert B., for my foreign readers, and US folks with a short memory] was a Clinton hack and a Zero supporter. Here's the "money" quote, in case you missed it in the last few days:

""We're going to have to, if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It's too expensive...so we're going to let you die."

Caught on audio too UC Berkeley, Sept 2007:




Let's not forget Zero's avowed purpose is to eventually force everyone into a government plan, where THEY will decide who lives and who dies.

Vacant or Pensive Mood? CHECK!

Some beings intuitively understand Wordsworth's line about "when oft upon my couch I lie, in vacant or in pensive mood" and take it to heart.


Somehow, I don't think they are thinking about daffodils, but perhaps rawhide chew toys or figuring out a way to make you pet them 24/7.

Our dogs think we are their gods!!!

Last night I was listening to the delightful Fr. Freddy in the parish hall of St. Anne's. They are giving a series of talks about the sanctity of the Mass.

Father was going into the notions of sacrifice in the Old Testament. He mentioned that the inferior being (man) has through natural law acknowledged a Supreme Being and man offers the best gifts as an oblation.


In a flash it occurred to me that perhaps when our dogs (in particular) bring us a bone and drop it at our feet they consider us to be their god! They tend to treat us that way. They wait for us to come home - they bring us things they kill (nothing major, in my case, but lizard halves!) -- they sit at our feet, and follow us everywhere.



Now CATS, otoh.....fergeddaboutit...they want us to worship them! They'd never pull you out of a burning building, for instance. Never mind they can't. They still wouldn't want to.




[Photo: Maggie the wonderdog, now angel dog. I miss her more than I can possibly say.]