KT's Dixie Adventure, Day 1

It's after midnight here in Mobile, Alabama, but since it's not yet midnight in my home city of San Diego, I argue that this counts as a blog post for June 30. All in favor? AYE! All opposed? (silence)

The Ayes have it, this counts as the post for June 30.

I'm completely trashed, so all I'm going to share is a photo from northeastern Alabama, which I found to be beautiful in the extreme. Explanations tomorrow after I get some sleep. Enjoy.

Catching The Cthulhu Vibe

Something is really weird out there, but I can't quite grasp what it is.

Jordan Peterson turned me on to the perils of postmodernism and the book he recommended is convincing me of its dangers. Before we explore that in later posts, here are a few things gnawing at me.

Pride Week. Just what are we proud of here? Jim Gaffigan, Catholic comedian, tweeted his pride for his gay kids. I thought pride was linked to accomplishment. Do what you want in your bedrooms, it's all one to me, but I don't see an accomplishment there unless it leads to children. Children are the only real accomplishment associated with sex.

Don't judge. One of the podcasts I sample off and on tries to be comic, but they pepper their dialog with, "Don't judge!" and they mean it. It took me a while, but I finally realized that not judging was what made their comedy fall flat. Comedy needs an edge. Without judgment, it's all soft and rounded.

Illinois and Venezuela. Could it be more obvious? Socialism is a failure. Period. And yet we entertain that nincompoop Bernie Sanders like he's a serious person.

Obamacare and its replacement. Another obvious failure. It never delivered on any of its promises, rates are way up, deductibles are way up and insurers are fleeing. It should be a given that it must be replaced, but the debate is couched in terms of maintaining its key benefits. We can't afford them. It should be crystal clear by now. Health care is a scarce resource, not a right.

Baltimore. It's not racism and it's not politics and it's not funding that is crippling an entire generation and yet that's where we center our debate. We discuss leprechauns and unicorns while these children suffer.

Q: What do these things have in common?

A: The rejection of objective fact and logical reasoning.

Sounds like postmodernism to me. Wild, man. I guess the Enlightenment is over.

The really weird part is to live as if there was such a thing as objective Truth and use logical reasoning in a postmodern world where subjectivism is the norm. You'll always be out of sync with the dominant culture. It feels Lovecraftian in a non-Euclidean geometry way.

Maybe we should just cut to the chase and bring on Cthulhu now.

Sunset Cruise

Part of the mothballed fleet at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Larger Ships Always Have Right Of Way

... especially when they're driving down a narrow road.

The USS John F. Kennedy, looking like it's about to scrape the sides of some buildings as it drives down the street.

You Never Know How Kids Are Going To Grow Up

... in this case, intellectual concept kids.

Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason as a response to what he saw as the Enlightenment's threat to religion.

It is one of the foundational documents of Postmodernism.

Postmodernism is currently a gigantic threat to the faith and to civilization as well.

I think my man St. Thomas Aquinas inoculated the Church against any threats by pure reason quite nicely. Some Protestants, with their emphasis on Biblical literalism, were not so lucky.

So Much For Compassion In Illinois

Illinois is heading for insolvency and bankruptcy.

This being a math problem, you'd think that someone out there would be able to state it simply. "They borrowed and spent too much and now there's nothing they can do but cut the budget."

If they raise taxes, as Connecticut discovered, the people what pay the taxes will leave. If they borrow more money, they only postpone the inevitable and that for a very, very short time.

Instead, the media focuses on the "budget impasse" as if that mattered in the long run. Have a budget, don't have a budget, do what you want, Illinois. Funding is going to have to be cut and drastically. That's because borrowing is spending tomorrow's money. Well, tomorrow has just arrived for Illinois.

Way back when their credit rating was high, all of those wonderful spending increases paid for with debt were sold as compassionate. Only heartless people opposed them, greedy people, people who don't give a rat's rear end about the poor. Yep, that was people like me.

Now look. All those poor folks and students are getting whacked and good.

Too bad no one seems to be learning from it.

See also: Rico, Puerto.

Los Angeles - A Place To Avoid If At All Possible

Last night, we saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Arroyo Seco Festival in Pasadena. He was awesome, but the crowd was, well, the crowd was a bunch of Los Angeles hipsters and airheads. Here's a snippet of the concert.

This was near the end of the concert, so it being LA, there was a steady stream of people leaving the place as he's playing so they can beat the traffic. It was festival seating, meaning we were all standing around. A quartet of LA airheads were gossiping loudly through the whole show. You can kind of hear them at the start of that video. During one song, the people in front of us decided to leave, so while Tom Petty is playing, they stand up and fight with their beach chairs for a few minutes, trying to get them to close to carry away. Then some friends run into them, also trying to leave and the group starts holding a loud conversation at the end of which they exchanged business cards.

I'm not kidding. They exchanged business cards. Unreal.

On the plus side, by the time the concert was 3/4 finished, enough of the crowd had left that we could move to a better spot. The airheads never left so their prattle polluted the whole show. What a pack of dingbats.

The biggest problem with LA is that it's the SoCal destination for so many great acts. Here in San Diego, we're cut off from many wonderful bands such Tom Petty and U2. They stop in LA and expect their San Diego fans to go up and mingle with a self-important dingledorks of Los Angeles in order to catch a show.

Sigh. At least Tom Petty was worth it. He's over 65 and put on a great performance. He must have played for nearly 2 hours.

Cat Photography

We're teaching the remarriage class for the Diocese today, so I don't have time for a normal and boring post. Instead, here's our Maximum Leader, doing what Maximum Leaders do: whatever they want.

We try to keep a sheet on her couch because she's a prodigious shedder.

Alcohol And Caffeine

Are they signs that you don't like yourself?

Alcohol and caffeine artificially change your mood. Isn't your mood an expression of self in the moment? I love them both and I love the way they make me feel for the first 30-60 minutes after consuming them. After that, all bets are off, but that hour of euphoria is terrific.

While drinking my morning cup of French press Columbian after having had a few pops the night before, it occurred to me that what I was doing was changing who I was. Subtly, but still, they change me. That's their whole point.

Wasn't I OK before them?

A growler and glass of Legacy Brewing's Hellfire IPA. It's excellent. Well, until you've had too many and then it's not so excellent.

How Good Is Your Acting?

Like Micky, you're probably no Laurence Olivier yourself.

Dig these two tweets following the recent Georgia congressional election which was funded like a Super Bowl game. The first is from a progressive activist with 64,000 followers. The second was part of an excellent tweet series from a guy who lives in Georgia district 6.

At some point we have to be willing to say that yes, lots of conservative voters are hateful and willing to embrace bigots.

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) June 21, 2017

Self-awareness not being a notable Leftie trait at the best of times, today the Left coast is declaring GA06 a mass Klan meeting. 9/40

— Will Collier (@willcollier) June 21, 2017

If you hate people, it's a pretty good bet they know it. What do you think the atmosphere will be like for the progressive candidates in and around Georgia in the future?

Rocking Matthew

Yesterday, I started listening to the New Testament, beginning with Matthew. Before I did, I decided to start with an anthem. This one, as a matter of fact.

It was a little act of cheery self-indulgence before starting the audiobook and then it hit me. It wasn't just a bit of fun, it was the perfect lead-in. That video is what it's all about.

This is what it is
This is who I am
This is where I finally take my stand
I didn't want to fall
But I don't have to crawl
I met the One with two scarred hands
Giving Him the best of everything that's left of
The life inside this man
I've been born again

What a wonderful thing this is! It feels so good to be a part of it, particularly when I actually practice my faith like when I work at Catholic Charities downtown. I love it.

As for Matthew, he's a gas. Very terse and declarative.

God and money. YOU CAN'T SERVE BOTH! DON'T EVEN TRY IT! Now on to the next topic.

I have to smile as I listen, it's just so great. Parts sound like someone reading bullet points from PowerPoint slides.

That's enough for today. I need to get to work. Take care!

Odds And Ends - Religion, Politics And Photography

I couldn't take it any more so I changed my habit.

I got my coffee, gave the dogs their treats, fed our Maximum Leader and sat down with my laptop. I opened the Wall Street Journal. Screaming. I opened Instapundit. Screaming. I opened Twitter. Screaming. Enough!

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I opened Lynda and started a course on photography. No screaming. Ahhhh. I've promised myself for years to learn photography, but I never have. I don't know the first thing, not even the terminology. I just drag my cameras around and blast away at stuff, getting a ton of shots from which I can find decent ones to post here. A four-year-old in a sandbox is more technically proficient that I am. Time to change that. Soon, I hope to be able to challenge middle-school kids with my mad skillz.

When I feel like returning to the screamfest that is our content-free politics, it will still be there.

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I've been listening to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It's good and all that, but having marinated in Catholic theology for years now, it's nothing new. I think I'm going to skip that and go to the source. I've never read the New Testament straight through and I've got it on Audible. A while back, I listened to the Acts of the Apostles in its entirety and I was amazed how it changed my world view. The complete story is so much more sophisticated than the snippets you might get at Mass.

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I bought this yesterday. It's a dashboard / windshield mount for my GoPro Hero3.

I hope to make some interesting driving videos to share with you soon.

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That's it for this episode of Odds and Ends. I hope you have a great, screaming-free day.

What Is The Meaning Of Life?

... is the question that manifests the very first part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.

I tried listening to the Catechism about a year ago and couldn't muddle my way through it. For whatever reason, I'm able to consume it more readily now. In any case, this one jumped out at me right from the start.

The Catican Guards don't wonder about the meaning of life. At least I don't think they do. Instead, in the morning, they wonder if Poppy is going to get up right now, go downstairs and give them treats while he makes his coffee. At night, they wonder if Mommy will finally turn off whatever she's binge-watching and go to bed so they can cuddle with her. In the afternoon, they wonder if this is the day the mailman will attempt to gas them so he can come inside and kidnap and torture us.

They do not wonder about abstract things like meaning, but we do. There may or may not be a God. We may all be random chemicals gathered together to form "humans" who watch LSU football games for no real reason at all. Still, we wonder why we're here. To me, that seems like the desire for God the Catechism mentions in the first section. After all, if He exists as the Church says, then He is unquestionably the meaning of life and He satisfies that very human hunger.

Here, the Guards aren't wondering about the meaning of life, they're wondering if they can go back upstairs and sleep with Mommy a little more.

The Catholic Church And Postmodernism

Epiphany Alert: I recently watched the Jordan Peterson lecture below and it radically changed how I see things.

At his suggestion, I went to Amazon and bought Explaining Postmodernism and it's as awesome as he says.

It's Father's Day, upon which I wish a happy day to all fathers out there, but it also means I get to cook whatever I want for dinner. I've got a whole chicken to cut up and marinade for Jerk Chicken tonight and after that I want to test out my MGB headlight wiring harness, so this will be quick.

The Central Problem for Catholicism in 2017

Postmodernism says there are no such things as Truth, objectivity or even logic. The Church says there are. Without an agreement that there is such a thing as Truth, there's practically no point to the Church. If everything is relative and everyone has their own reality, then the Catechism is just a bunch of dudes in robes trying to tell people how to live their lives.

Evangelism, then, is not about "how do you know this is what we should do?" but "how do you know there is something we should do?" I would argue that once you convince someone that objectivity and Truth exist, the Church has a huge advantage. As long as each person's reality is self-defined, you're pretty much hosed.

Going back to the Benedict Option posts, the strategy the sagacious and kind-hearted Rod Dreher is suggesting is that we crawl into bunkers and wait for Postmodernism to self-destruct. That could get very, very ugly. Without logic and objectivity, you get a society of screaming, violent mobs.

Sort of like what they've got at Evergreen State University.

A Prayer To The Holy Spirit

Let us pray.

Oh Holy Spirit, Guider and Giver of Wisdom, I pray that today you bring me the fortitude and judgment that I so desperately lack and aid me in my efforts to stop singing and humming Beautiful Dreamer for it is tempting me to the sin of Wrath. It is like unto a worm in my ear and won't come out for all that I may do. I know that with Your divine help, I will be able to overcome this horrible malady.

Amen.

Coachella 1943

Last night, we watched Stormy Weather (1943). It was my first foray into negro cinema and I loved it. I've recently started listening to a Fats Waller Pandora station which is likewise fantastic. Fats died of pneumonia on a train coming back from Hollywood after the triumphant opening of Stormy Weather in which he has a role.

Everyone in the movie is black. As far as I know, almost everyone who worked on it was black. It was made for black audiences. As an aside, the illegitimacy rate for blacks at the time was about 15%. It's a wildly different world and if you watch it, you need to get out of a 2017 mindset and try to immerse yourself in the culture of the past. The movie could never be made today for a variety of reasons, all cultural.

The movie is really a series of performances by about 8 of the biggest colored musical, dance and comedy acts of the era, tied together with a very thin story line. I enjoyed what little acting the cast got to do. The whole thing was delightful.

As I watched it, I tried to put my finger on just what it was. I finally figured out an analogy. These days, one can go to a music festival and see a bunch of bands in succession. Stormy Weather is a celluloid version of a music festival. It's Coachella in 1943. Lena Horne is the headliner with Fats and Cab Calloway providing a couple of numbers as well. Other acts get one performance each and all save the Cake Dance are terrific. The Cake Dance was simply alien, part of a bygone era that I couldn't comprehend.

Below is one of the performances that blew me away. I'm sure it blew away the white musicians of the time as well. I could see Louis Prima and Harry James being deeply influenced by the artistry of the performers. I can't tell if I prefer Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly over the dancers in the movie. I think Astaire and Kelly give better routines, but is that because they had more money for more takes? Who knows. In any case, enjoy. And take some time to watch it if you get a chance. It's available on Amazon video.

Honolua Bay

This is my absolute favorite from the photos we took on Maui last week. I left it really large, so if you click and see the full-scale version, you ought to be able to make our details on the deck of the sailboat. Enjoy!

Don't Feed The Animals, Alexandria Edition

A quick addition to yesterday's post on feeding those political obsessives who are prone to violence is today's news that a Bernie Bro shot at a group of Republican congressmen playing baseball, wounding one and a couple of cops to boot. The guy's Facebook feed was full of sweet, delicious, political hate. I haven't looked into the sites he's reported to have followed, but I have no doubt they're jammed with accusations of racism, homophobia and Islamophobia on the part of those horrible conservatives.

Well.

The thing we really need to be worried about is a possible backlash, you know.

What jumped out at me is the utter nothingness of the moment. We have full employment, a rising stock market, no new wars, no environmental crises, no natural disasters and the Russia-Trump collusion thing turned out to be a soap bubble that just popped. We're all struggling with ... what? I'd bet you could turn off the news and pundits for a month* and nothing would have happened that affected your life when you turned them on again.

That's enough to make anyone start shooting. Resist! Or maybe not.

Seriously, this is about the depths of our national crisis.

* - Well, not me. You need to visit The Scratching Post daily, no matter what. Turn everyone else off, though.

Update: Someone else did the research on one of the shooter's groups, "Terminate the Republican Party." Here you go.

The shooter's fellow members of "Terminate The Republican Party" on FB are pretty sure the shooting was "karma." https://t.co/OZNAp3NkXK pic.twitter.com/zd2RkuxP7t

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 14, 2017

Don't Feed The Animals

Yesterday, during my lunchtime constitutional, I listened to this episode of the Glenn Show. It was my first introduction to the podcast and I'm going to give it a try from now on. It was two black academics, one from Brown and one from Cornell discussing race and current affairs. They're very impressive thinkers.

Sigh. They seem like such nice boys. I wonder what they might teach us if they could get past the color of their skins. Oh well.

In any case, they both registered surprise and fear at the violence from the campus lefties. They'd experienced the hate on their Twitter feeds as well, almost all from the left. This did not prevent them from saying that what they really feared was a reaction from the right, but that's par for the course.

They were a funny, in a humorous way, mix of far-sighted wisdom and hopelessly ignorant myopia. I had to laugh a couple of times at their innocent revelations of the way living in a progressive bubble had warped their thinking. It wasn't that they didn't accept others' points of view, it's that in many cases they didn't fundamentally understand them or had a grade-school comprehension of them. The podcast desperately needed Jonah Goldberg or Charles Murray.

These are minor criticisms, however. If you've got a half hour, I highly recommend it. Glenn Loury and John McWhorter were excellent.

Getting to the point: What they missed in the leftist violence section of their discussion was that they had been feeding the animals for a long time. If I live around Julian here in the mountains of eastern San Diego and I put out big bowls of cat food for the local ferals, I know enough to expect mountain lions to eventually show up. That's what these two have done with their endless focus on race. Put enough of that out there and eventually it will feed people who have a natural bent towards violence. You're just giving them an excuse to release their natural rage and take it out on the "oppressors."

I mentioned the real risk we take when we feed our audience the raw meat of injustice on a daily basis in this post.

If everyone is agitated about everything, if some percentage of "everyone" tends to fits of rage, then aren't we just asking for physical altercations, a la the ANTIFA riots?

ANTIFA and the Evergreen State tantrum-throwers are the mountain lions in my analogy. The residents of Julian are sufficiently experienced to know the mountain lions are out there and attracting them is a very, very bad idea. I guess we've not yet learned that lesson in our politics or use of social media*.

Here, we see one of the leaders of the Evergreen State protests.

* - That includes me. As a natural polemicist, My raw meat distribution probably means I need to register for a wholesaler license.

Stairs

I tried some experiments in Adobe Premiere this morning with running water video I shot on Maui, but the results were disappointing. Instead, there's this. A set of stairs that look like they could have been in cold Ireland, but instead were in the warm Hawaiian Islands. I like the perspective, looking up, as if you're wondering what's at the top. Enjoy!