What kind of woman are you?

In my ongoing considerations of the meaning of sexuality, call it Hilary's Gender Theory, I am often minded to wonder what kind of woman I am.

When I see something like this

and think, "I'd like to try that..."

...when I find that I despise the kind of simpering, murderous manipulativeness that has become the hallmark of modern femininity,

I wonder what is wrong with me.

I used to wonder, with much pain, in school why I never fit in. In the early to late 1970s, I thought it was because my parents were divorced, which at that time was still unusual.

It was years, decades really, before I started understanding the difference between me and the other kids. I simply never lived in the same world they did. I lived in a world that had been abolished by the time I was in school. And they lived in a new world defined, principally, by a totally new paradigm of being male and female, and which I had unconsciously rejected by the time I was ten.

I remember having a discussion about feminism with a woman I lived with when I was fifteen, telling her that she was wrong about feminism, that it was destructive and was warping her and her two young daughters and the whole world. I didn't have a vocabulary to describe what I knew, but I knew that her liberal/feminist interpretation of the universe was not just wrong, but evil.

Feminism remains the most vile and insidious creed, the most evil ideology I've ever examined. And it rules the world. The whole world. It creates monsters out of men and women, people who would rather eat their own children than give up their petty, passing pleasures.

Why don't men hunt? Why don't they farm? Why don't they marry and have children and teach their children to hunt and farm and fish? Why aren't they the heads of their homes? Why won't they stand up and teach their women to be women? Why won't they reassert the natural order of things for everyone's benefit?

I've spent my whole life feeling lost in this new world. At 23 I started roaming around the world trying to find a corner of it that was not corrupted by this thing that I had learned to hate and fear. But it is everywhere in the western world. Every place that Christianity created, it now rules.

I haven't been to Malta yet.



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Broccoli

The other day I was overjoyed to see that the wonderful Fibonacci broccoli is back in the shops.

Italy's food production is determinedly cyclical. In the wrong season, you cannot, for love or money, get anything that isn't coming out of the ground or off the tree right now. It makes grocery shopping a little more fun. You have to learn what things are available when and what things to look forward to, and when to stop buying something because, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Italians are usually right. Food that is getting to the end of its season is really not as nice. And every time you get used to something (I've been eating the huge yellow peaches at a rate of about a pound a day) you have to learn to let it go when it's at its end. But it's OK, because it just means that the next nice thing is coming along.

The Fibonacci broccoli, properly called Romanesco, is much, much nicer than the "regular" kind we're used to in Britain and N. America. Apart from its delightful shape, and interesting mathematical/cosmological implications, it's taste is much milder and somewhat sweeter. It comes in heads like a cauliflower, only smaller, and you can cook and eat every bit, stems and leaves too, which are also very good. I usually steam it lightly, drizzle in a little olive oil or fresh butter and grate some peccorino over it.

But when I was very small, I was not such a broccoli enthusiast.

I don't know whether this memory is one of those real ones, or one of the kind your brain makes up later and convinces you is real, but one way or another I do remember it.

My dad used to take me for weekends when I was small, and on one of these occasions, I recall that we were to have dinner at his house and then go to the park to play on the slides and swings, at that time, my all-time favourite thing to do.

I asked him what was for dinner and he said, something, something... "and broccoli".

I said that I didn't like broccoli.

My father, being a guy and therefore having a rather more practical turn of mind than a woman would have, promptly responded, "OK, will you eat it if I give you five dollars?"

I agreed to this sensible transaction, believing that I was definitely coming out the winner. ("Five bucks!! Woot!"... I'm five, remember).

Well, it turned out that broccoli was actually wonderful, and I've had a lifelong love of the stuff ever since. But Fibonacci broccoli is an entirely different matter, a stage of evolution better. If you see it in some N. American yuppie specialty food store, get some immediately. You won't be sorry.



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Mystical Poetry prize

Who knew there was such a thing? And it's worth some pretty big money too! €7000 Euros is nothing to sneeze at.

XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry Fernando Rielo in Rome

The proclamation of the XXXII Fernando Rielo World Prize for Mystical Poetry, which includes €7000, publication of the work and commemorative medal, will take place in Rome, on December 13th, at the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See. The event will be presided over by the Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. In addition, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, will be present in a message that will be read by his representative, Monsignor José Manuel Del Río Carrasco.

I'll be going to see the Hobbit, but anyone else who's around, I'm sure there'll be really great snacks.



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You can't kill people to solve your problems

because it makes you go insane.

"...Webster traipsing around the complex in a devil costume

...horse dung Webster spread along his property line to deter pro-lifers, and ... this one of Webster’s friend verbally assaulting a black pro-lifer and yelling out at a mom entering the mill to abort, 'You’re doing the right thing, and God will honor you! I believe in you, Mom'."

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Brits freak out

I have scant memories of the lower middle class life I lived with my family in Manchester c. 1972, but I do recall that it wasn't pretty. It really, really didn't look anything like Downton Abbey. One of the things I appreciate about YouTube is its ability to show us television from other periods.

This

kind of shows what life was like then in a middle class suburb of an English conurbation in the 70s/80s. And how they really felt about it.

Is it any wonder that the English are kind of freaking out right now? The only thing holding them together at all since the Anglican takeover and the forcible suppression of The Real, has been the social rules.

Well, we got rid of those, didn't we?



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A fitting tribute

...and I agree, it's a pity we don't make music this big any more for TV.

The theme music is unmistakable: Four mysterious, tentative notes descend in pings, building to a fanfare that heralds the slowly approaching vessel. As the brasses gather excitement, the giant ship gathers speed, cruising past the starry backdrop, an exhortation to venture on to strange new worlds. And then the voice-over: "Space, the final frontier…"

It is, of course, the opening of the original "Star Trek," the most famously cultish TV series of all time. When it debuted in 1966, it was unlike anything previously seen on the small screen, and the music was no exception. In fact, on a show that had an average per-episode budget of less than $200,000, music was often essential to evoking the necessary sense of wonder.

H/T to our longtime bloggie friend Six-Bells John




BTW: regular readers may find it shocking, shocking! that I own only Season 1 of TOS...(Jingle bells...jingle bells...)





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Weird, removed from reality and spooky; indeed, slightly creepy

I've figured it out: Venice is Miss Havisham.

Indeed, if there ever were a place hiding a mad old woman living in a crumbling palace, dressed in motheaten finery, waiting in bitterness for her long lost grandeur to return,

you'd find her in Venice.

I'm home. Somewhat the worse for wear. I spent 12 hours stomping around the weird old place in my big tall black winter boots in the freezing cold on Saturday. My legs, not used to that much punishment (all stone streets, up the bridge stairs, down the bridge stairs, stomp, stomp stomp...) have entirely seized up. Am applying the ancient Grandma solution of a hot-water bottle under the knees.

I can see why people get obsessed with that creepy old place, and can't stop themselves from going back again and again. It's out of my system for now, but I suspect I'll be seized with the urge again at some point. But I can't tell you how good that strangely sterile and crumbling old city makes Rome and Santa Marinella look.

Rome is vibrantly alive. Venice is a ghost.

More later. I'm tired.



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Happy Punching-Heretics Day!

St. Nicholas of Myra,
pugilist and patron of the fighty,

ora pro nobis.

During the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea (AD 325) there was a big argument over the divinity of Christ. Arius — a heretic — was of the idea that Christ was not divine, but rather a mere creature. The Council gave him leave to speak, to defend his claims, and he did, yammering on — I have no doubt — in a relentless flood of sophistry.

Jolly Old St. Nicholas — oh yes, he was a bishop — wasn’t having any of it. He tried to listen patiently, he really did, but Arius’ speech was just so wrong, that he was compelled to get up in the midst of it and, yep, punch him in the face.

BOOM! YOU JUST GOT KRIS KRINGLED SON!

I hold that this is the image of Santa Claus we need to reclaim. Because when you think about it, this was the original campaign to Put the Christ Back in Christmas. Arius would have made the nativity a non-event (woop-de-freakin-doo everyone, God made something else). He, majestically prefiguring the various sects of Happy-Holiday-ers, Winter Solstice-ers, and it’s-actually-a-pagan-holiday-ers (that’s the point, you muppets!) denied that Christmas need be a celebration of substance at all. So when the modern world promotes the consumerist image of Santa Claus over the image of Christ, it is not so much the wrath of Christ they should fear as it is the wrath of Santa Claus. He may very well climb down the chimney and wup yo ass.

Christmas is about this singular, terrible reality: That the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. In the spirit of St. Nick; accept no substitute.

All of which leads me to the belief that our Christmas carols need to be rewritten in light of the Grand Punch of St. Nicholas. It wouldn’t be too hard, we could sing: “Jolly Old St. Nicholas/Lend your fist this way,” ”I saw Dawkins rocked by Santa Claus/flying from the podium last niiighht,” and of course, ”He sees when you’re dissenting/he knows when you’ve blasphemed/he knows your schismatic doctrines/and so he’s gonna punch your face/Oh, you better not doubt/You better not divide/You better not bring scandal to the Holy Roman Catholic Church/I’m telling you why/Saaaanta Claus is smacking you down,” etc. etc.

So thank you St. Nicholas, for your inspired punch. Oh I almost forgot the end of the story. I’ll let Taylor Marshall, who writes over at Cantebury Tales tell it:

Now if that were the end of the story, we probably wouldn’t know about Saint Nicholas, and our children wouldn’t be asking him for presents. However, after Nicholas was deposed, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary visited Nicholas who was being held in a prison cell for his fist-fight with the heretic.

Our Lord Jesus Christ asked Saint Nicholas, “Why are you here?” Nicholas responded, “Because I love you, my Lord and my God.”

Christ then presented Nicholas with his copy of the Gospels. Next, the Blessed Virgin vested Nicholas with his episcopal pallium, thus restoring him to his rank as a bishop.

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Unrequited Love

It's a sad thing, but sometimes no matter how much you admire someone from afar, they're just gonna hate-cha. It's not fair, and it's not nice, but there you are. That's life on planet earth. Sigh. It's tough being a mean, nasty hater.

These two, Kate Stone and David Gluck, are doing some of the best Classical Realist painting of anyone I've found so far on the net.

They've got a show at the M Gallery of Fine Art in Charleston SC., though they live in lovely old Duncan, BC. the same town as my Dad, in fact.

Oh well.

(I wonder if I'll get another nasty note from the irony-challenged guardians of tolerance and diversity.)

Check it out.



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Venice!!!

I'm having a "Yay, I didn't die of cancer!" celebratory holiday in Venice.

When I was too sick to move off the sofa without help, I vowed I would go to Venice the first moment I was strong enough. This week, I've managed to get my medication down to a quarter of what I was on at the start, and I can consistently do two articles a day and ride my bike all over Rome and go to class after work, so the time has come.

There's an el-cheapo train ticket for the slow train from Termini up the Adriatic side of the Boot. Six hours from Rome and lots of sights.

Going up for Immaculate Conception at the FSSP parish there and will spend Friday and Saturday nights camped out at a convent and walk all over the weirdest city in the world.

Got my Blue Guide (thanks Greg!) and a map, and my sketchbook and my rubber walkin' boots and I'm all excited!

Maybe even get an Acqua Alta!

Wouldn't that be cool!

Last trip in July 2010






More more more!

And here's a video for you from a band I was crazy about when I was 27




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