Irresolute resolutions

• To post every -- er, more often
• To walk my post in a military manner -- wait, that's something else
• To vote for any party that promises to mandate that calls to Mental Health are returned
• To remember when I've written an article and when I've merely uploaded one written by someone else and adjust the author settings as needed
• To stop worrying that I'm turning Our Lord into my therapist
• To refrain from making a lame joke about Our Lord's ethnicity and His putative role as my therapist
• To revoke any of these resolutions that seem like a bad idea tomorrow

Haggard versus Chesterton . . . and the Boston bombers

Throughout an otherwise unusually restful weekend, I had an earworm: A Merle Haggard song called "Mama Tried". Catchy, but ominous. I'll get to it in a moment, but first here's Chesterton:

Many of the country songs describing crime and death have refrains of a startling joviality like cock crow, just as if the whole company were coming in with a shout of protest against so sombre a view of existence. 

"Mama Tried" is one country song that's the inverse of that. Here are the first words of the first verse:

The first thing I remember knowing,
Was a lonesome whistle blowing,
And a young un's dream of growing up to ride . . .

Cute, right? But here's the chorus, sung to music every bit as jaunty as the verses:

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No-one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading, I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cos Mama tried.

Ever since I first heard this song a few months ago, I've wondered on and off what appalling bloodbath took place to land someone so young in the lockup with the key thrown away, since the song never tells us. (And in my opinion it's somewhat cheap to leave that part out and skip straight from the moderately difficult little boy to the convicted arch-villain.)

Well, since the bombing, I have some idea what it could've been like.

Line of the Day

Man at church, speaking of my sons: "They're good boys. There's much worse trouble they could be getting into."

What I've been doing instead of posting

• Serving on the Benevolent Committee for the Giving Away of Other People's Hard-Earned Money
• Waiting for a government worker to return my call. Long ago, I read about a lady who, circa 1955, got a vague idea that as the widow of a veteran she was entitled to some kind of pension. She duly applied and they told her to "go home and wait". So she . . . quit her job. And waited several months till they told her she didn't qualify for enough to live on. After the last few days, I don't look down on that lady quite so much.
• Being careful the articles I edited which mentioned Boston were above suspicion of exploiting it

Breaking: Bombing suspect spotted in video (?)

Tried to embed the CNN video but seemed to get the wrong one -- anyway, here's the story.

Gotta keep going

Though what I have to keep at seems suddenly so trivial as to be insulting to the people who unknowingly ran into an explosion in a crowded square in a peaceful city.

Lord have mercy.

And may those who are left hear someone say the right thing, whatever it may be for them.

Chant

With all the posts flying around about Some Traditionalists, I'm reminded that I once had my own Bruising Online Encounter With A Trad. But I'm not getting into it here and now. I'm only going to react to the memory by parodying Jonathan Coulton's song "Shop Vac".

But that's all right
'Cause I'll be mostly 
At Novus Ordo
Call me neo and I prob'ly won't hear you
Because it's loud with the tambourines. 

Yesterday, early troubles seemed not far away

I had a long, emphatic post going about a "new" book now called How to Drink Like a Mad Man. Not a book of cocktail recipes from the 60's, but a reissue of something from the year I was born, The 24-Hour Drink Book: A Guide to Executive Survival, which tells you how to be a functioning alcoholic. As we said back then, more fun than a barrel of monkeys. 

My own insights were personal, bitter, and all around an occasion of sin, so I'm leaving them out. Mostly.

Line of the Day

"I argued aloud with the radio, television, and newspaper, but for some strange reason, nobody thought to call me and ask for my opinion." 

-- Monica Perry

Tweak

It's bad enough (in an entertaining way, but still) when readers who are probably nice, reasonable, intelligent people think a fake story is real.

But today I had to edit a review of a non-fiction book by a  nice, reasonable, intelligent person who thought it was a novel.

Striving to be a nice, reasonable person myself (I can't do anything about the intelligence), I decided I had no need to fire off an email saying, "Hey, that's a true story!!"

But the review needed some tweaking. Oh well, that's what I'm there for.

"On the front porch, all year long"

Was going to post on Easter vs. Christmas in the eyes of the world, having heard a good point about it at the Vigil, but I ended up just commenting on Charlotte's post about it. C'mon. I can't be expected to comment and post, can I?

But I'll add, on the subject of leaving Christmas lights up late -- somewhere I have a folder full of photos of Christmas decorations that's called "signs of spring".

Background check

Our Lord and an Angel

See those two tiny people in the background near Jesus's left elbow?

Adriano and Cariola de Armada

No?

Look:

This is Adriano de Armada and his wife Cariola, donors of the painting, and they were not very happy about being so obscurely included in it.

I just made that up. I don' t know who paid for this painting. I don't even know who painted it. April Fool. There, that's over with for another year.

Which is also how I feel about Holy Week and Easter at this point.