Liberty and Death

Hat tip to Ryan Sayre Patrico over at First Things. This article by O'Rourke in the LA Times is a good one.

Wordplay

This weekend I enjoyed watching Wordplay. It's a documentary about crossword puzzles, the people who construct them and the people who solve them - specifically following an annual tournament where puzzlers meet and compete. These people they showed solving crossword puzzles competitively have high-capacity brains. Strange machines. The documentary showed one man finish a NYTimes crossword in 2:02! That's two minutes and two seconds. I can't even read all the clues in that amount of time.

Anyway, it spurred me to print out my own sample crosswords from the NYTimes and try my hand at them. And while I won't be puzzling competitively anytime soon (read, never), I did find myself having a great deal of fun. I've never done many crosswords in the past (I don't know why, being a word nerd) and so it was new ground for me.

The crosswords in the Times apparently are easiest on Monday and gradually become more difficult throughout the week, becoming extremely difficult by Friday and Saturday. My first go was at a Tuesday puzzle and my second, yesterday, I tried solving a classic Thursday puzzle. I was not able to finish either puzzle without the help of a dictionary and even then I had a few blanks. The Thursday puzzle I finished in 1:45 - that's one hour and forty-five minutes. I imagine the more you solve the easier they become. And I'll try to move away from cheating with a dictionary. Really. Or at least treat it like war - first exhausting all other options.

First Debate

Yawn.

Nothing new last night. Nothing earth-shaking or jaw-dropping. Wouldn't it be great if we just let the two candidates debate with one another - you know, argue? Civilly, of course. Let them sit down and hash it out, drinking whisky, smoke hanging in the air above them and half-filled ashtrays before them, as they discuss rogue nations and nuclear proliferation. Something more dramatic, more film noir. That would be a debate worth watching.

Maybe the veeps will take it there.

If they don't, perhaps I will.

McCain Suspends Campaign ...

WTF?

The BBQ Song: A Musical Primer for All Y'all

HT: Benedict Seraphim

Pillow Talk, the Last Days and the Obamanation of Desolation

I don't know whether you've heard, but Obama is the Antichrist. No, no. It's true. I read it online. I've even gotten some e-mails that verify what I've read online. (And, did you hear? he's black.)

Now some are not so brazen. Some would never talk about Obama being the Antichrist, but perhaps might make a passing comment on the eschatological possibilities to his wife as stories of the crumbling of one financial institution after another crowd radio waves and jam up satellite beams. Endless conversations about our economic situation being the worst since the Depression. Fundamentalist Islam and Jihad. Russia. China. North Korea and Iran. "Maybe these are the Last Days ... , " he says, as he surfs between Fox News and 24.

Let me clear the waters a bit: If Obama is the Antichrist, then there is nothing you can do to stop his meteoric rise to power and worldwide domination. Not even Palin can stop that. It is pre-ordained. So stop sending the e-mails already. If we rapture, we rapture. Restrain your delight long enough to get your What-to-Do-if-You-Find-You've-Been-Left-Behind videos (your We-Told-You-So videos) ready. Wipe off the dust. Maybe set up a display table in the foyer.

Newborn

Sensuous, birth is full of contrasts and archetypes, meaning. It is the intercourse of heaven and earth. It is God encountering woman in her pain and joy, sweat, blood, expectancy. A kiss. A rendezvous. A revelation. We are enamored. God's breath, awake, unveiled; the Divinity reaching into clay and pulling a person from it. Two. Three.

Surprised at surprise. Caught unprepared again, thirty-eight years in, I stir to.

Life is too great, too glorious. There is suffering. There is pain. But there is, also, limitless joy that leans out from little things, like an upturned, red-capped mushroom, a defeated umbrella pooling rainwater. Like morning glory bedding on a rusted sign. Like a newborn covered in blood and vernix, trembling. Joy entwines itself in the pain, curls about it, over it, and purples. Glory subsumes all suffering, at a glance.

Drums Ready, Please

I was playing Monopoly Junior with my son Will the other day and trying to teach him how to roll the die. He would vigorously shake his hand with the die clutched in it and then place the die on the game board. Usually on the number of his choice, as it happens.

"Will," I said, the fifth time in, "That's not how you roll."

"That's how I roll," he said.

*rimshot*

The Constitution, the Whole Constitution and Nothing but the Constitution

I thought this interview a fascinating conversation on The Diane Rhem Show, mostly because of the parallel I see with the Reformational concept of sola Scriptura. I'm not saying there's a one-to-one correlation here, only that as I listened to Tribe talk about the "invisible Constitution," the similarities were striking. (Tribe is no conservative, by the way. There's quite a bit of empty rhetoric here on abortion.)

We are not, as Christians, people of the book, however, but people of the Word of God, the Word made flesh. Though certainly Christ is made present to us in the hearing of the Scriptures. Please, don't understand my beliefs about the Scriptures as an attempt to belittle them. As a Catholic, I venerate the Scriptures. (Catechism, sections 101ff.).

For Dan

HT: Happy Catholic (But could be happier if she were a Mac)