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There’s a certain sadness one gets when coming to the end of a good book. One wants the story to go on, to know that the characters continue to live and that the world they inhabit does not cease to exist. That’s how I felt coming to the end of, for instance, The Lord of the Rings, or Brideshead Revisited, or any number of good books.

And this is why I’ve grown to love the big, thick books with tiny print–because I know I needn’t put the work down permanently after three days because I’ve finished it, but that I can savor the story for weeks. I’ve just begun Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter, a work in three volumes. It’s nice and thick, and will take me a while to get through

“There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman into beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things–their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be conceived that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded, and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women.

A good online friend without a blog needed a rant.

No one gets fired in Hollywood. I don’t know if you have noticed that. People part company because of “creative differences.” Executives tend to move to another branch of the studio, even if the branch has to be invented. Contract negotiations fall apart. But think about it, when have you ever read the “F” word in the trades, or heard it on Entertainment Tonight?

Mark Butterworth has some interesting comments on “success”:

“Michael Medved read extracts from portions of his new book, Right Turns, which didn’t make the cut and were edited out. One section had to do with his success as a teenager at selling encyclopedias. He ended the chapter with a brief homily on the key to any success in America was the ability to sell or promote your ideas, your product, your gifts and to close the sale. The most important aspect after all.

He mentioned that people who were too shy or reluctant to sell end up in a pool of self-pity …”

Similar sentiment is reproduced on the VDARE site (not recommended):

Yesterday I put up an entry suggesting that the tsunami and divine chastisement may not be completely unrelated. It was really the continuation of a discussion on Amy Welborn’s blog, and that context was important. The connection between earthly calamities and the divine will is certainly worth discussing, but after reading one more account of the disaster yesterday — something about beaches full of children being swept out to sea — it occurred to me that I’m not really up to the task.

My post might have been interpreted as rejoicing that a notorious haven
for sex tourism and child prostitution was devastated by the tsunami, no matter the “collateral damage”. Truth be told, there was something like that going on. But there is such a thing as looking too hard for the silver lining. Were some of those children mine, I would probably like to strangle armchair theologians pontificating on their weblogs about the meaning of it all just now.

For those of you who haven’t heard, Charles de Nunzio has entered the company of traditionalist bloggers with his provocative Annals of the 9th Crusade. He is a serious and careful writer to whom the frivolity of blogging must not come easy. Neverthless, you won’t want to miss his early entries. See especially his comments on the cultural import of The Passion of the Christ.

Michael Brendan Dougherty, another talented writer and friend, has launched a new online magazine called The New Fugitive (now defunct!). His essay “How I Became a Paleo-Conservative” should be required reading for every American male under thirty.

I received one more phone call this morning from a polite lady who also wanted to “confirm” the story, saying “Maybe you don’t realize how big this is and how many people are talking about it.” At one point she asked what I would do if I found out one of my children was homosexual. “Would you throw him out?”, she asked.

A fellow who says he owns a “4 million dollar business” left a message wanting to talk about “last week’s incident”.

Someone sent an e-mail from the franchise website saying I must be “gay” because “homophobes are closet gays”.

Yesterday, my wife discovered that the back of my car had been vandalized with a key, but we don’t know when this happened.

I’ll bet that most of you think an increasing Gross National Product is a good thing for the country. Or maybe you don’t, and you’ve come to realize that GNP stands for Going Nowhere Prettyfast. Anyway, considering how GNP figures are calculated, it is clear that GNP may well be inversely proportional to national quality of life from a Catholic perspective:

here’s one of Peggy Noonan’s finest articles from last November:

“A short word on smokers. They are people who?ve made a deal. They are old-fashioned, and it?s an old-fashioned deal. Their sense of life is essentially conservative: They know it is short, they know part of how you say thank you for it is to really feel it and enjoy it, and they know this life isn?t the most transcendent and important one you?ll be living. Smokers are disproportionately Catholic, did you know that? They know that eventually something will kill them. They accept death and illness as part of the equation. They love smoking so much, it so enhances their enjoyment of each day, that they?ll gamble. Some of them, they know, will die in a car accident next year, so it won?t matter if they smoked; some will die of old age at 97; some will get emphysema or lung cancer at 50 and pay the price. Fine. You buys your smokes and takes your chances.”

“I keep hoping that this feeling will pass, the constant gnawing that ebbs only for an hour or so after dinner. Other than that brief respite, I feel it constantly — upon rising, after breakfast, mid-morning, after lunch, throughout the afternoon, into the evening, and upon settling down to sleep. I find myself awaking in the early morning hours, ostensibly to visit the restroom, but really because my body and subconscious mind have partnered to save me from myself. To prevent me from starving…”

A very good friend of mine has decided that he wants to lose weight the old fashioned way: he’s starving himself. The Starvation Journal is Brendan’s idea of radical accountability, as well as providing some relief for his urge to write. So read his journal, scold him severely when he falls, and consider yourself to have done a good deed.