etiquette notes

Continuing in my series of etiquette notes.

1. People with Ph.D.'s are not addressed as "Dr". That title is generally only used for medical doctors and, sometimes, if they insist loudly, D.Div.'s, but they really shouldn't be indulged, since the only point of getting that degree is to be called "Dr" when your tradition doesn't let you be called "the Rev. Fr".
2. Never inquire about or discuss somebody else's diet/fast [EDIT: or your own, especially your own]. The first rule of fasting club is not to talk about fasting club. And it simply isn't polite to ask if somebody is reducing.
3. Quite fortunately, you're not really obligated to get anybody a Christmas gift. But don't go cold turkey: gradually alienate your friends and family first.
4. Don't take off your jacket when, for example, wearing evening attire unless you absolutely must [say, if you have to assist a woman giving birth, though if you're qualified to do that, you should've gotten a jacket with cuffs that actually unbutton: it's what they were originally there for]. You're supposed to keep it on.
5. Don't throw up on the train. Try to at least make it to the next stop and jump out to the platform.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: Added "Contraception and Chastity" to the links and created a facebook group about the immorality of contraception.
EDIT: Revised the first point.

good times

First, I finished The Hobbit. Then I went back to where I live, got a little lucrative project, had a great day at work that'll tide me over for the rest of the week, and am now contemplating eating a delicious sandwich. RESOLVED: life is good.

What is not good: sleeping in instead of going to church today. That it's going to be horribly cold. That's pretty much it.

trilogy: finished

Again. Now the problem is that I really can't talk of anything other than heroism and bizarre details of Tolkien's mythology. Or about how inadequate the movies were in comparison to the book, despite the occasional ham-handedness of Tolkien. They were decent enough movies, if you ignore all that blasted computer-generated drek and the occasionally poor acting, but they simply fail to catch all that can be portrayed in the book. All movies must be selective, true, and I think they made some very fine selections, but I'm just going to say that the books really can't be adequately captured on film. I digress! But seriously: I hope I don't wake up enlisted in the Navy accidentally or something worse as a result of this influx of bold and chivalrous thinking. I'm not sure what could be worse than the Navy, though, since you can't, say, suddenly wake up married or monkish these days from a sudden burst of chivalry.

I am Beren

LATE THURSDAY: A delightful day, after 1.5 glasses of wine, a pint of ham, and a quick tear through The Fellowship of the Ring, I'm having the time of my life here. And I do declare, the movie really does fall precipitously short of the book on re-reading.

Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.

Mucky poetry, but a ripping good yarn.

on Screwtape

Since I am back at the parental abode for the Thanksgiving holidays, I thought I'd take the time to rummage through the old records to find some... records, I suppose is the word I'm looking for. I didn't quite find what I was looking for or even things that would be particularly helpful: I found my PSAT scores [80, 80, 69], hundreds of pages of notes on translating the Mahaabhaarata, well-scribbled-on photocopies of pages of Aristotle's De Caelo, my 2001 pay stubs, and the copy of The Screwtape Letters I used when they decided to have a student-led reading group at my high school evangelical "youth group" with me and this other guy as the student leaders, but none of the various other important documents I really wanted to look at or would at least have been interested in finding. So I sat down and reread Screwtape.

One thing which always struck me was how the demons didn't particularly care for what exactly was going on in the war or in politics except insofar as it related to the state of the man's soul. In most cases, it didn't particularly matter which side of a matter the man took, so long as he used it to divide himself from others and perhaps define his faith in terms of it, with luck beginning to only use his faith as a convenient prop for [viz] Pacifism. Which is, by the way, why such pieces as this one are utter tripe, as it seems to have gone dangerously far down that very path. Even a 16-yr-old could be made to see that.

on silence

I stole this from an article referenced on the neepeople web-log, but I thought it was interesting and moving, or whatever words those annoying sorts of people use when they run into something involving monks.

She believes that one of the reasons fewer women choose to enrol is a growing inability to sustain an "inner life". "We have been robbed of our inner resources; elevator music is all around," she says. "All the silences are covered. These days it is considered cruel to have a quiet classroom for children."

Is there too much instant gratification? She nods vigorously. She says that the women who came to the monastery but did not stay, did not "know what to do sitting in a room by themselves".

This was written 4 years ago, and I think it has gotten even worse today, with portable mp3 players and such being the order of the day. Contrast this with a couple generations ago, when the ability to have music which wasn't live was a bit of a novelty, three when it was a luxury, and four when it was an impossibility.

Yesterday was, by the way, No Music Day, making today, "Plenty of Music Day" or, better, St Cecilia's, the patron saint of music. I, of course, failed, since I watched an intensely musical movie. The main characters are followed around by unexplained Gypsy horn players as they party with an urgency and earnestness sadly lacking 'round the typical college keg. But I digress: many of the comments on the "No Music Day" site reinforced the point made by the nuns. They said, essentially, "This is a stupid idea, music is beautiful and I can't imagine living a day without it and not going insane." It's an argument I've heard made by many in person, as well. Make no mistake, I listen to a fair amount of music and don't impugn them for doing so, but there's something pathological about being unable to unplug for even a single day when for so much of human history we didn't even have a thing to unplug. We moderns are unable to engage in even the most basic of fasts. We can't bear to be left to confront ourselves for a day and I'm no exception.