Lenten sacrifice I'm such a schlub. I had been thinking about Lent, how in past times penance and sacrifice were genuinely practiced, but how in our day, we've all gotten so adverse to the slightest discomfort that all that is required of American Catholics is to not eat meat on Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of Lent, and Good Friday, and--how cruel--to not snack between meals on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Is this really going to produce any spiritual benefits? I doubt it. So, I'm going on about that, when I start thinking about what to give up for Lent. Having finally settled on something, I immediately started thinking of ways I could modify it so it wouldn't be so bad! And believe me, it's probably not even enough to begin with! Could I get any more soft-bellied?

Labels: lent, sacrifice

♠ ~ 8:51 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Hymenoplasty Here we have a story from UK'sThe Times on the procedure known as hymenoplasty, or having one's hymen restitched up so that women can experience the joy of losing their virginity again. The article contains the most hilarious quote ever:

“What an awesome gift to give the man in my life who deserves everything. [My virginity] was the most amazing thing I could give him as a woman,” [Yarbrough] says.

Imagine this concept! Giving one's husband one's virginity! As a special gift! We should have thought of that YEARS ago!

There are other things in this article that bug me--the concept of restructuring one's bits in order to look sexier. I'm one to talk about not liking that area and modifying it, but the procedures the article talks about are specifically designed to make The Area into an area that has never experienced childbirth or age. That's the salient point: it's not that somebody might want to restructure stuff--I'm all for that--it's that women think they need to have a snatch like a sixteen-year-old's, because the media tells them they do. Even the idea of restitching the long-gone hymen (except in cases of rape and childhood sexual abuse--where it would be well worth the cost) is offensive, because these women, in giving it up in poorly-thought-out First Times, learned a valuable lesson about intimacy and sex. You can't undo it, and you shouldn't.

But, somehow I think all these women pretending to be virgins know full well that a merely superficial operation can't do a thing to give them their first time again--not in the ways that actually count.

Labels: news of the weird

♠ ~ 8:55 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Last night's Battlestar Galactica I'm divided on last night's Battlestar Galactica, in which one of the few remaining fleeing humans seeks to have an abortion. On the whole they handled it more fairly than I think I've ever seen a television show handle the issue: The girl is from the more religious population, whose representative, Sara(h) tells President Roslin that abortion is obscene and is prohibited by the gods, and that it cannot be allowed. Well, Sara(h) is depicted as possessing more than a bit of the stereotypical righteous zealousness that the media thinks we pro-lifers burn with; I would have been happier had they allowed her to express a wider range of sentiment, such as "How can human life be valued so lightly at a time like this?" or some other dimension of charity. (However, Admiral Adama, who is not revealed to feel one way or another about the issue, does voice such sentiments, so I'll give them that.)

On the other hand, after telling the pro-choice Roslin that if the population continues at its current growth they will face extinction within eighteen years, Vice-President Gaius "Weasel" Baltar then grabs the issue and demagogues it for his own gain, proclaiming himself a candidate who will never curtail abortion. So, while they may have been one-dimensional with the pro-life character, they evened things up by actually portraying another character using the pro-abortion position opportunistically--something I'd never have expected to see on a television program.

So, not quite what I'd want, but then, well-handled on the whole. Battlestar remains one of, if not the, most intelligent show(s) on television.

A surprisingly fairhanded summary of the episode is here.

EDIT: Jonah Goldberg's take is here. His is not so favorable; I'm somewhat surprised Goldberg didn't see all the angles inherent in the presentation. Goldberg makes the rather incongruous suggestion that "in a society scientifically so much more advanced, it seems to me that the issue would no longer be controversial one way or the other. Either contraceptive technology would have "solved" the problem. Or moral dogma about abortion's acceptable parameters would have been long established." Incongruous, because it hasn't happened in our society, and history is quite clear that the more "advanced" a society becomes, the less it values life, which of course contributes to its ultimate demise (but that's another topic). Anyway, issues having to do with morality never get "settled," because human proclivities never get "settled."

Labels: battlestar galactica, pro-life

♠ ~ 9:00 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Our daily bread In a number of ways this has been one of the more upsetting weeks of my adult life, and in an attempt yesterday to get a grip I retreated to the backyard with my rosary. This part of the Our Father struck me:

Give us this day our daily bread

The world is and almost always has been out of order. It will never operate in any other way. God does not promise that it will, and when I come crying to Him that things are a mess and I can't handle it I'm doing so in the face of a promise He made: to give us our daily bread. In other words, that while things are and always will be precipitous, He still nourishes us.

In a way, my continued agitation in response to the cruelties and beastliness of the world is almost like not believing Him on that.

Labels: disorder

♠ ~ 2:21 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Update on The Creep Father Giuseppe Moscati refutes the erroneous claim of The Scotsman (UK newspaper) that Michael Jackson would be setting the late Pope's prayers to music. We gratefully thank the saints who intervened.

Labels: portents of doom

♠ ~ 2:27 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~

Worst.Idea.Ever. The Scotsman (UK Newspaper) reports that Michael Jackson is apparently going to be hired to set Pope John Paul II's prayers to music. Jackson's reputation and creepiness aside, how is a pop star qualified to handle sacred music?

Labels: portents of doom

♠ ~ 2:32 PM ~ 0 ♥ ~