It really does amuse me when conservative Catholics complain about the Pope. I get how the conservative Evangelicals twist Christianity around to suit their political purpose, basically turning it into fascism with pot luck suppers. They just interpret the Bible as it suits them in the moment, and every pastor has some latitude to be a loose cannon.
But Catholics have a Magisterium and a hierarchy, and the contortions the conservatives have to go through to claim the Pope isn't a true Catholic are hilarious.
Precisely when you have a large body of opinions on which to draw, you can find the ones you want…and everybody in an hierarchy can look for agreement and for protection from their immediate superior, and the Pope is so far away….
Coincidentally (the internet works in ways mysterioso) this morning my New Yorker feed sent me Adam Gopnik's 2012 review of “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation” (Viking), by Elaine Pagels. Mosta yinz know my rat's patoot stays securely empocketed regarding all things religion, but I read the thing for the grins. And it doesn't just touch on today's discussion, it smacks right down on it. Kind of a hoot, really.
The weirder contortions are, in mine opinion, found among those who disagree strongly with the Pope, hold the Pope infallible (after Vatican I), but do agree that the Pope is the Pope. The sedevacantists don't have to contort their minds at all.
"KAVANAUGH: I sympathize with Bill. The girls came home from school the other day and asked me about Kavanaugh Stops."
Bet you that before whoever coined the phrase, Mrs Blackout Brett did.
Almost as funny as the Strict Scrutiny women dissing Blackout Brett. Or Roberts. Or Thomas. Or especially Sam Alito. Contrary to how that looks, it's a compliment; they're the platinum standard for dissing the Roberts junta.
As for Bennett, is he still alive? Really? With most of his marbles and stuff? Normally, I'd look for myself but not worth the effort given the lack of the requisite F.
"VANCE: Oh, OK. You’re not from the fake news, are you?"
Well, put like that, I wouldn't bet that Vance (not his real name) knows who Bennett is what with being converted to right wing extremist through Thiel, RWNJ media and/or history not so much.
Anyway, lovely piece with which to start the week.
I think I know his looks because I've had a long hate for him since the 1980s. And he did all those "Book of Virtues" things which, GOP telling us what virtue is, they only know them to violate them (much like underage girls)
Link cited goes to another paywall, but the thread is well worth reading. Claire Willett's take is on the politics of undercutting the tradfash cult ("in this case I don't think he's Leo from Chicago as much as he is Leo from Peru").
It's easy. You prop up a box with a stick, tie a string around the stick, put a wad of cash in it with bait, and pretty soon Opus Dei comes sniffing about...
"VANCE: Whatever. No one listens to Popes anyway. I mean let’s be honest, guys, isn’t this Catholic thing really just a secret society like — like the Masons? [Steam comes out of BENNETT’s ears.]"
This cradle catholic LOL. They never really told us _why_ the Masons were evil, we just knew they were in league with the devil.
What never fails to kill me about the Masons is that their official symbol prominently features the letter G--which I take it stands for "God." The idea that God has a monogram is hilarious. Or maybe it really is what God has custom-embroidered on his fancy French cuff shirts.
If you were a good Lutheran you'd know that God (or at least his Son) has several monograms. They're called Chrismons, and pious ladies make them and decorate their church's Christmas trees with them.
Hey, that almost had a happy ending! Love to see JD manhandled and ejected. Everybody else though - they need manhandled too. They all suck , but I really hate Bill Bennett, sanctimonious piece of shit degenerate gambler.
that lullaby in the NYfT (maybe yesterday?) about an old, lost-but-glamorous? new york, and people were throwing up about and so i skipped it. Roy's is better, I'm sure, mor ehearty.
i had a taste of some of that, but the 'lite' flavor of the old (Irish) Democratic machine, you know, the "Breezy Point" upper crust.
The headline's weird but that Times story is pretty good. Excerpt:
Mr. Epstein wrote to one confidant: "so many guys caught in the me too reaching out to me asking when does the madness stop." To another, he wrote: "brett ratner now. Oy."
Mr. Epstein was referring to the film director and producer, who had stepped away from a $450 million deal with Warner Bros. after The Los Angeles Times reported on allegations made against him by six women.
Mr. Ratner has since resurfaced as the director of "Melania," a soon-to-be-released Amazon Prime documentary about Melania Trump, which the first lady is producing.
that was beautiful. and i could smell vance from the git-go! i had my last thread to the cloth fade into memory just this week, so this was a little nostalgic.
i've pained my way through Heather and Margaret today. "Made me feel like the buck and a quarter i paid 'em to see," no, i mean made me think that moral rearmament has "more than just 'legitimacy', old lad." i dunno what to do with that but stand on it. maybe that's all it's fer.
Now i realize that "there's them that thinks they have that, too" on the other side. Never heard Bennett speak so eloquently. i only remember burps and snarls and such. i wonder if he still gambles? and Barr? what does he do all day these days? and the old monsters got nothing on the new.
Hilarious as usual. But ohmigod, the mere mention of the Baltimore catechism and I'm back in second grade standing against the wall along with my side of the class like so many prisoners about to be executed by firing squad. This was Sister Mary Sadisma's way of having us "compete" by answering catechism questions she delivered shotgun gun style, and you'd better know the answer because it will hurt a lot more than merely going back to your desk if you get it wrong, ya little bastids.
That's some Pope, what with the US bishops' statement and Opus Dei "in a box." He even sounds pretty good as a film fan.
Who knew even the Cradle Catholics Club (Girls, Keep Out!) could provide visions of a better world. Where "Mr. Sulzberger says I can only do three Pope columns a year," and, "The girls came home from school the other day and asked me about Kavanaugh Stops." VANCE: "No one listens to Popes anyway. I mean let’s be honest, guys, isn’t this Catholic thing really just a secret society like — like the Masons?" Roy's channeling of fake hillbilly is so precise.
But however does the door get opened? Since last time we saw her, I don't think Miz Noonan has stopped hoisting her Three-Handed Martinis of God.
Dough Hat isn't a cradle catholic?! (And me, I'd never heard the phrase before but it must be a thing.) Great way to start out the week, this--grim but hilarious. When a conservative man really embraces the Scarlet Lady--like Waugh or Graham Greene for example--it can be rather nightmarish. You know how Greene, in The Heart of the Matter, imagines that trying to leave a broken marriage is the equivalent of punching Jesus in the face...but we cradle-catholics know it's Jesus's one job to forgive us when we color outside of the lines, as it were. (This is why Scorsese once described his parents as peasants, because they didn't share his religious agony. They knew the old ways--you sit through Church on Sunday, and your sins are forgiven, and rinse and repeat.) Orwell said something to the extent that back in the day when people really believed in hell, they didn't stand on the precipice, wrist on forehead, talking about how they were damned already.
On a related note, Todd Snider died under mysterious circumstances, though it's unlikely J,D, Vance was involved. I'm guessing this crowd doesn't include a lot of Todd Snider fans, or even people who knew who he was, but as it's kind of on topic with today's production, I'll tell you a little about him. A eulogy, so to speak.
Snider was an East Nashville legend. East Nashville is the cool part of town where there are a lot of small clubs and all the alternative music people live, play, drink themselves blind, and take a lot of drugs. Much like Johnny Thunders he was known more for being a druggy than for his music. He had a couple semi-popular songs that border on novelty like "Conservative, Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight White American Males" and "Beer Run," and a funny song about the Seattle grunge scene, none of which I needed to listen to more than once. So I wasn't a fan until a few weeks before he died. I knew and liked him for his film (available on YouTube), the classic "East Nashville Tonight," which is perhaps the best ever made in its genre, albeit the only one over made in its genre.
A couple weeks back I heard a song off his new album "High, Lonesome, and Then Some" on Apple's new music playlist and without knowing who it was thought it was terrible. But I saw it was Snider so listened to the album and marveled that he was able to get away with making a record so sloppy, unprofessional, and unappealing. But the chorus of "Older Women" stuck in my head. I listened to it again and thought, it's different, but maybe not so bad. I listened a few more times and literally had the thought "this is a fucking masterpiece." I'm not sure I ever had that thought about a record before, and it lingered even after the drugs wore off. Practically every song contains a piece of ear candy that can get stuck in your head. I had to quit listening to it because it was difficult to function with those lyrics playing round and round in my brain all day. It just wouldn't let up. Then I saw that he died.
After Johnny Thunders, his is perhaps the least surprising musician death, at least among relative contemporary artists. It would be sad in any case, but worse I think because it seems he had ascended to a new level as a recording artist.
It is to be noted that the Sun-Times is a nonprofit so yes, I can see this. (The Trib was always suburban Republican anyway.)
I'm also imagining Mike Royko's alter ego Slats Grobnik having Fun With Chicago Pope. Or Roger Ebert reviewing Pope Leo's favorite movies. What could have been. . .
I thought off that, but since the rest was hard stuff (B&B gets a marginal pass there) I expected it to to be liquor, but your guess is as good as mine. (You could get a deep porter that is truly black, while Guiness is more brownish. I'd go for the porter myself)
I had a cassette of that and the only cassette player I had at the time was in my '92 Geo Prizm. I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Madison and Urbana, IL, a five-hour drive, and that Johnny Cash tape was in the rotation just so I could sing along, " Oh I'm stuck in Geo Prizm, and time keeps draaaagin' onnnn..."
Tee hee. When I get stuck in a traffic CCR comes to mind "Oh Lord, stuck in low gear again"
You reminded me of a cassette I listened to back when I had to commute to Pine Bluff, 35 minutes away. It started with "Shock The Monkey" and now I can't hear that without waiting for "Gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John, he claims to have the miseries but has a lot of fun.." to fire up.
Speaking of fire, I lost that great mix table when my S-10 decided to immolate itself in the drive way. "Judy In Disguise With Glasses", :"Double Shot Of My Baby's Love". Man I miss that tape.
With Bennett all Oirished up calling David French a Proddy, and Barr thinking he’s gotten the IRA (that’s what was meant by “‘RA”, innit?) I have to think Billy Ben is a Provo, not an Official.
Reminds me of the story my friend told the other day.
He's been part of an Irish studies group/social club for decades (his specialty as a professor was Yeats). At his 90th birthday dinner the other night, he confessed to the group that he is not Irish but Czech. He just really likes Ireland.
The bunch did not throw him out, so there's that...
Dear God up in Heaven, the Baltimore Catechism! Man that stirs some cold ashes of memory. I was raised in the Italian version of the Faith long ago in Detroit. Irish or Italian, we all share the same respect and fear of nuns, universally addressed as "S'ster". I remember the answer to the 1st question as "to serve God in this world, and know and love him in the next", but time and memory, you know. I would fail my confirmation test if I took it again. As a transactional human to his bones I'd expect Vance to put an effort into sucking up to his only power base besides the techbros, but he is ambitious but none too bright.
It really does amuse me when conservative Catholics complain about the Pope. I get how the conservative Evangelicals twist Christianity around to suit their political purpose, basically turning it into fascism with pot luck suppers. They just interpret the Bible as it suits them in the moment, and every pastor has some latitude to be a loose cannon.
But Catholics have a Magisterium and a hierarchy, and the contortions the conservatives have to go through to claim the Pope isn't a true Catholic are hilarious.
Next they'll be claiming bears don't shit in the woods.
Quod erat demonstrandum, baby. /ThomasDolby
Damn! You blinded me WITH SCIENCE!
Precisely when you have a large body of opinions on which to draw, you can find the ones you want…and everybody in an hierarchy can look for agreement and for protection from their immediate superior, and the Pope is so far away….
Coincidentally (the internet works in ways mysterioso) this morning my New Yorker feed sent me Adam Gopnik's 2012 review of “Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation” (Viking), by Elaine Pagels. Mosta yinz know my rat's patoot stays securely empocketed regarding all things religion, but I read the thing for the grins. And it doesn't just touch on today's discussion, it smacks right down on it. Kind of a hoot, really.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/05/big-reveal
The weirder contortions are, in mine opinion, found among those who disagree strongly with the Pope, hold the Pope infallible (after Vatican I), but do agree that the Pope is the Pope. The sedevacantists don't have to contort their minds at all.
"KAVANAUGH: I sympathize with Bill. The girls came home from school the other day and asked me about Kavanaugh Stops."
Bet you that before whoever coined the phrase, Mrs Blackout Brett did.
Almost as funny as the Strict Scrutiny women dissing Blackout Brett. Or Roberts. Or Thomas. Or especially Sam Alito. Contrary to how that looks, it's a compliment; they're the platinum standard for dissing the Roberts junta.
As for Bennett, is he still alive? Really? With most of his marbles and stuff? Normally, I'd look for myself but not worth the effort given the lack of the requisite F.
"VANCE: Oh, OK. You’re not from the fake news, are you?"
Well, put like that, I wouldn't bet that Vance (not his real name) knows who Bennett is what with being converted to right wing extremist through Thiel, RWNJ media and/or history not so much.
Anyway, lovely piece with which to start the week.
Come on, anybody who's partied with Boof knows Kavanaugh NEVER stops.
Even when the girl cries "No! STOP!"
He only hears that as "Don't! Stop!"
Well, we all know how much he hates Temporary Restraining Orders.
Oof, oof...
He ruled she didn't have standing, given that she was horizontal at the time.
You spelled 'Especially' incorrectly.
Of COURSE he's still alive. I'm sure the Reich is planning on bringing him back for a cameo appearance in "Porn Is Treason, 2025 Edition".;
He's been outside my attention for so long I'm actually having hard time forming a mental picture of the guy, which suits me fine.
Doughy, jowly white guy.
I think I know his looks because I've had a long hate for him since the 1980s. And he did all those "Book of Virtues" things which, GOP telling us what virtue is, they only know them to violate them (much like underage girls)
Ah, that explains it. He's the Standard Model. When they made him, they re-used the mold.
"Doughy, jowly white guy" doesn't exactly narrow it down in this crowd...
Is that my fault?
Certainly not! Just an observation.
Great, thanks.
😬😳🤢
Damn, I was really curious to know how Pope Bob got Opus Dei in a box.
There was a link!
There was a paywall!
"Put a hole in a box..."
Link cited goes to another paywall, but the thread is well worth reading. Claire Willett's take is on the politics of undercutting the tradfash cult ("in this case I don't think he's Leo from Chicago as much as he is Leo from Peru").
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7qiuhllywd7skoiqadlya3ry/post/3m3ebfkzkzs2w
It's easy. You prop up a box with a stick, tie a string around the stick, put a wad of cash in it with bait, and pretty soon Opus Dei comes sniffing about...
BENNETT: "Come on, auld son, pretend he’s a lady with a briefcase an’ a short skirt and lay into ‘im!"
Fookin' brilliant!
DOUTHAT: "Sorry, Bill, Mr. Sulzberger says I can only do three Pope columns a year."
Had this crew a chef on standby, they'da heard a great big MWAH! right then and there.
2 bling-encrusted marks.
Yes, our host Mr Edroso deserves to encrust his writing room with Temu-bought gold ornaments!
America: The Encrustening
I think they're beige when they arrive, but I've got an old can of spray paint in the basement I could send him.
Is that where Bern gets his marks to hand out?
Marks, marked down.
The WhiTemu House
"VANCE: Whatever. No one listens to Popes anyway. I mean let’s be honest, guys, isn’t this Catholic thing really just a secret society like — like the Masons? [Steam comes out of BENNETT’s ears.]"
This cradle catholic LOL. They never really told us _why_ the Masons were evil, we just knew they were in league with the devil.
Same here. Decades later I worked with someone who was an Orthodox minister, and that dude could get *really* wound up about Masons.
What never fails to kill me about the Masons is that their official symbol prominently features the letter G--which I take it stands for "God." The idea that God has a monogram is hilarious. Or maybe it really is what God has custom-embroidered on his fancy French cuff shirts.
Masonic-symbol cuff links
If you were a good Lutheran you'd know that God (or at least his Son) has several monograms. They're called Chrismons, and pious ladies make them and decorate their church's Christmas trees with them.
Huh.
"World's Greatest God"?
Thou shalt have no godš before! (maybe after, like a glass of cognac after dinner)
Which makes His followers G-men?
Here's the lowdown on Masonic symbols. They seem like a pretty swell, upstanding bunch to me.
https://masonicfind.com/masonic-symbols
I thought the G was for Grange. Shows how well versed I am on secret societies.
And the symbols can't be all bad if they inspired the Magic Flute.
Absolutely!
And Man Who Would Be King!
Would Be... Oh, fictional, and nicely 19th century (not a current would-be).
Hey, that almost had a happy ending! Love to see JD manhandled and ejected. Everybody else though - they need manhandled too. They all suck , but I really hate Bill Bennett, sanctimonious piece of shit degenerate gambler.
that lullaby in the NYfT (maybe yesterday?) about an old, lost-but-glamorous? new york, and people were throwing up about and so i skipped it. Roy's is better, I'm sure, mor ehearty.
i had a taste of some of that, but the 'lite' flavor of the old (Irish) Democratic machine, you know, the "Breezy Point" upper crust.
The headline's weird but that Times story is pretty good. Excerpt:
Mr. Epstein wrote to one confidant: "so many guys caught in the me too reaching out to me asking when does the madness stop." To another, he wrote: "brett ratner now. Oy."
Mr. Epstein was referring to the film director and producer, who had stepped away from a $450 million deal with Warner Bros. after The Los Angeles Times reported on allegations made against him by six women.
Mr. Ratner has since resurfaced as the director of "Melania," a soon-to-be-released Amazon Prime documentary about Melania Trump, which the first lady is producing.
perfect. "Ratner" is almost proof of the existence of god.
You sure you don't have Gilda in mind?
"nevermind"
(i sure do miss her)
LOL
Ah, the "me too", blew in from a low-pressure zone off Jamaica, I was just caught up in it, honest!
I kinda prefer Ratner's version of Red Dragon, but I'm not one of those guys who lights votive candles to Michael Mann.
Ah, the gambling, it's a MANLY vice. Like the raping.
Morality Buffalo, or whatever the name of that prattling herbivore was, needed to get his friends together for an intervention.
"Plato the Buffalo". As if.
that was beautiful. and i could smell vance from the git-go! i had my last thread to the cloth fade into memory just this week, so this was a little nostalgic.
i've pained my way through Heather and Margaret today. "Made me feel like the buck and a quarter i paid 'em to see," no, i mean made me think that moral rearmament has "more than just 'legitimacy', old lad." i dunno what to do with that but stand on it. maybe that's all it's fer.
Now i realize that "there's them that thinks they have that, too" on the other side. Never heard Bennett speak so eloquently. i only remember burps and snarls and such. i wonder if he still gambles? and Barr? what does he do all day these days? and the old monsters got nothing on the new.
Hilarious as usual. But ohmigod, the mere mention of the Baltimore catechism and I'm back in second grade standing against the wall along with my side of the class like so many prisoners about to be executed by firing squad. This was Sister Mary Sadisma's way of having us "compete" by answering catechism questions she delivered shotgun gun style, and you'd better know the answer because it will hurt a lot more than merely going back to your desk if you get it wrong, ya little bastids.
I think I'm very glad I was brought up by Protestants.
I was lucky, my nuns were mostly the post-Vatican II types, guitar-playing peaceniks.
That's some Pope, what with the US bishops' statement and Opus Dei "in a box." He even sounds pretty good as a film fan.
Who knew even the Cradle Catholics Club (Girls, Keep Out!) could provide visions of a better world. Where "Mr. Sulzberger says I can only do three Pope columns a year," and, "The girls came home from school the other day and asked me about Kavanaugh Stops." VANCE: "No one listens to Popes anyway. I mean let’s be honest, guys, isn’t this Catholic thing really just a secret society like — like the Masons?" Roy's channeling of fake hillbilly is so precise.
But however does the door get opened? Since last time we saw her, I don't think Miz Noonan has stopped hoisting her Three-Handed Martinis of God.
Keep on like that and someday I’ll bequeath you my sack of marks.
At least he didn't say "like the Illuminati".
"however does the door get opened?"
It's a MIRACLE! The first documented for Our Lady of the Dolphins.
Dough Hat isn't a cradle catholic?! (And me, I'd never heard the phrase before but it must be a thing.) Great way to start out the week, this--grim but hilarious. When a conservative man really embraces the Scarlet Lady--like Waugh or Graham Greene for example--it can be rather nightmarish. You know how Greene, in The Heart of the Matter, imagines that trying to leave a broken marriage is the equivalent of punching Jesus in the face...but we cradle-catholics know it's Jesus's one job to forgive us when we color outside of the lines, as it were. (This is why Scorsese once described his parents as peasants, because they didn't share his religious agony. They knew the old ways--you sit through Church on Sunday, and your sins are forgiven, and rinse and repeat.) Orwell said something to the extent that back in the day when people really believed in hell, they didn't stand on the precipice, wrist on forehead, talking about how they were damned already.
On a related note, Todd Snider died under mysterious circumstances, though it's unlikely J,D, Vance was involved. I'm guessing this crowd doesn't include a lot of Todd Snider fans, or even people who knew who he was, but as it's kind of on topic with today's production, I'll tell you a little about him. A eulogy, so to speak.
Snider was an East Nashville legend. East Nashville is the cool part of town where there are a lot of small clubs and all the alternative music people live, play, drink themselves blind, and take a lot of drugs. Much like Johnny Thunders he was known more for being a druggy than for his music. He had a couple semi-popular songs that border on novelty like "Conservative, Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight White American Males" and "Beer Run," and a funny song about the Seattle grunge scene, none of which I needed to listen to more than once. So I wasn't a fan until a few weeks before he died. I knew and liked him for his film (available on YouTube), the classic "East Nashville Tonight," which is perhaps the best ever made in its genre, albeit the only one over made in its genre.
A couple weeks back I heard a song off his new album "High, Lonesome, and Then Some" on Apple's new music playlist and without knowing who it was thought it was terrible. But I saw it was Snider so listened to the album and marveled that he was able to get away with making a record so sloppy, unprofessional, and unappealing. But the chorus of "Older Women" stuck in my head. I listened to it again and thought, it's different, but maybe not so bad. I listened a few more times and literally had the thought "this is a fucking masterpiece." I'm not sure I ever had that thought about a record before, and it lingered even after the drugs wore off. Practically every song contains a piece of ear candy that can get stuck in your head. I had to quit listening to it because it was difficult to function with those lyrics playing round and round in my brain all day. It just wouldn't let up. Then I saw that he died.
After Johnny Thunders, his is perhaps the least surprising musician death, at least among relative contemporary artists. It would be sad in any case, but worse I think because it seems he had ascended to a new level as a recording artist.
https://media1.tenor.com/m/u6KtR_7SAZgAAAAC/cross-christian.gif
An aside, but. . .
"KAVANAUGH: The Sun-Times, that’s what he reads."
It is to be noted that the Sun-Times is a nonprofit so yes, I can see this. (The Trib was always suburban Republican anyway.)
I'm also imagining Mike Royko's alter ego Slats Grobnik having Fun With Chicago Pope. Or Roger Ebert reviewing Pope Leo's favorite movies. What could have been. . .
I always thought Ebert vs. Siskel was Sun Times vs. Trib in physical form. Like how Ebert was short and squat, like a tabloid.
Boy howdy, Boss, you've digging through the papers indeed! Wow.
Silly boys, to get an audience with the Pope you have to bring a Chicago Dog. Just wave it under his nose, then speak your wish.
Point of clarification: "the black stuff"? Johnny Walker Black (seems unlikely)?
Guinness?
I thought off that, but since the rest was hard stuff (B&B gets a marginal pass there) I expected it to to be liquor, but your guess is as good as mine. (You could get a deep porter that is truly black, while Guiness is more brownish. I'd go for the porter myself)
Hey Porter, Hey Porter...
How much longer will it be 'til we cross that Mason-Dixon Line?
J.C. and the Tennessee Two represent!
I was thinking more along the lines of Rogers & Astaire, in the station, with the trunk...
As they say in Hollywood, "Meet cute"
Hmmm. No bells, but my R & G is quite limited.
But I regularly listen to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOVcg_MW7OA Love that song.
I had a cassette of that and the only cassette player I had at the time was in my '92 Geo Prizm. I was doing a lot of driving back and forth between Madison and Urbana, IL, a five-hour drive, and that Johnny Cash tape was in the rotation just so I could sing along, " Oh I'm stuck in Geo Prizm, and time keeps draaaagin' onnnn..."
Tee hee. When I get stuck in a traffic CCR comes to mind "Oh Lord, stuck in low gear again"
You reminded me of a cassette I listened to back when I had to commute to Pine Bluff, 35 minutes away. It started with "Shock The Monkey" and now I can't hear that without waiting for "Gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John, he claims to have the miseries but has a lot of fun.." to fire up.
Speaking of fire, I lost that great mix table when my S-10 decided to immolate itself in the drive way. "Judy In Disguise With Glasses", :"Double Shot Of My Baby's Love". Man I miss that tape.
With Bennett all Oirished up calling David French a Proddy, and Barr thinking he’s gotten the IRA (that’s what was meant by “‘RA”, innit?) I have to think Billy Ben is a Provo, not an Official.
Reminds me of the story my friend told the other day.
He's been part of an Irish studies group/social club for decades (his specialty as a professor was Yeats). At his 90th birthday dinner the other night, he confessed to the group that he is not Irish but Czech. He just really likes Ireland.
The bunch did not throw him out, so there's that...
My understanding is that all you have to do to be Irish is to really like Ireland. If only one could get citizenship that way . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Journal
Dear God up in Heaven, the Baltimore Catechism! Man that stirs some cold ashes of memory. I was raised in the Italian version of the Faith long ago in Detroit. Irish or Italian, we all share the same respect and fear of nuns, universally addressed as "S'ster". I remember the answer to the 1st question as "to serve God in this world, and know and love him in the next", but time and memory, you know. I would fail my confirmation test if I took it again. As a transactional human to his bones I'd expect Vance to put an effort into sucking up to his only power base besides the techbros, but he is ambitious but none too bright.