7 Quick Takes

ONE *+* Back home!  What a trip…much fun, much happiness.  Like I mentioned last week, we most certainly did meet up with the Accepting Abundance gang.  Check out the pictures she posted!  :)  Coming from the deep South, it’s nice to see Catholics wherever one finds them, especially really cool blogger Catholics that one feels like one already “knows.”  Now, if we could just find a good reason to drive to Arizona…

TWO *+* Taking a 20-month-old to see a movie is not a reliably good idea.

THREE *+* The nice theater guy who watched me walk up and down the hall during 65 of the 93 minutes of movie ensured some return business by giving me a refund.  Chivalry is not dead.

FOUR *+* I registered for “The Civil War: Seminal Event in American History” this morning.  The reading list is short, which makes me nervous.  That means lots of online articles and snippets to page through in AdobeBookview.  Yucky.  On the plus side, there are billions of ebooks on the Civil War, for freeeeeee, and I can read those on my phone.  Which is good, because it feels like playing with a toy instead of reading a book.

FIVE *+* Forest fire!

SIX *+* Angry Birds continues to be the death of me.

SEVEN *+* I’ve decided that society’s insistence that kids simply won’t control themselves in regard to sex, thus we must just prepare them as best as possible to battle disease, is both a crock and an insult to young people.  “Here, you’re never going to be responsible, so here’s some protection.”  That’s like saying to the dog, “Here’s some grass, because you’re never going to learn to pee in the toilet.”  Two problems with that.  First, I’m sure the animal people are going to jump all over me and say that dogs can be trained to flush.  But that’s not the important problem, that’s the idiotic problem that arose when I tried to come up with an analogy for an idiotic train of thought.

The real problem is that people aren’t animals, they’re people, with rationality and free will and the ability to make choices for themselves.  Who gives their kids $500,000, and says, “Here, you’re never going to go to class (or study) or go to bed at a decent hour, so here’s some cash to make sure you can afford quality beer, because I don’t want any kid of mind drinking that cheap American stuff.”  Nope.  Doesn’t happen.  We expect our kids to success, to rise above, to beat peer pressure, etc etc etc.  When they fail, we love them, we shake our heads at the culture that makes success for them so heartbreakingly difficult, and we withhold whatever kind of ammunition they want that would allow them to further fall into the pit.  Right?  Bah.  Liberalism is bull.