Grizzly young sacristan who loves liturgy and liturgical tradition. I have a bachelor's degree in Catholic theology from the University of Dallas (a Catholic college with a solid theology department). I've worked as a Sacristan in four different parishes in the U.S. and at a shrine in Italy. I'm hoping to make this blog a resource for priests and laity who want to introduce Latin into their parishes, as well as being a resource for doing liturgy correctly, especially in the Mass according to the 2002 Roman Missal, as Pope Benedict XVI called for in his accompanying letter to bishops on "Summorum Pontificum."
The Life Magazine photo archive is online now and hosted by Google. There are some amazing high quality photos from the last century, even ones from Rome and papal ceremonies. For instance, do a search for "Vatican" and you'll see some amazing pictures. The picture above is just one example (and that's the "small" picture).
Note: Not all their photo descriptions are accurate. This picture is actually in Saint Paul's Outside the Walls, not Saint Peter's. And I've seen several that were at also labeled as being in Saint Peter's when they were actually in the Colosseum!
The Periodic Videos guys have an interesting Halloween video on candles which is actually very informative ... at least from a Sacristy geek's perspective. What altar boy hasn't been fascinated by candles at one point or another.
***(WARNING: Probable spoiler alerts)*** Just skip to the bottom if you really plan on seeing this movie.
The Matrix series has been an odd thing for me. When I went to see the first movie, "The Matrix" the theater was having technical problems and the sound channels were going out every so often. Needless to say, that made a highly confusing movie, even more incomprehensible. The effects were great, but it was just confusing (due to lack of sound).
After talking with friends, I gave it another chance and watched it when it came out on DVD. Once I figured out what was going this time, I began to enjoy it and found it pretty creative, and ended up buying the DVD and watching it many times. I still really enjoy "The Matrix."
So when the sequel, "The Matrix Reloaded," was announced, and I saw the trailer, I was stoked. A friend and I went to see it opening weekend. There were technical problems again (different theater). The center sound channel would fade out occasionally, but not as bad as when I saw the first film. Still, the second one had to be one of the most disappointing sequels I have ever seen.* It was like they took the Matrix, stripped it of any decent plot, and then made it sleazy. For instance, Zion is just a big, sweaty rave party full of rastafarians and geeky white folk. The first time I saw Zion I realized I would have actually wanted to stay in the Matrix if I had the choice. Guess you can kiss any of that Christian/gnostic symbolism of the first movie out the door. It was clear the Wachowski Brothers were just milking a sucessful first movie (especially because the second one ended with a cliffhanger).
I hated "The Matrix Reloaded" so much I have not even been curious to see the final movie of the trilogy, "The Matrix Revolutions." Well, I did have one reason I wanted to see it: I heard that Neo dies. Yes, I hated the second movie so much I wanted to see the protagonist get his just desserts for putting me through the sequel. However, that reason has still never really prompted me to want to watch the movie.
So why am I reviewing the third movie? Well, I finally came across a form that I figured I would watch. When cruising around the web last night, I came across a movie "review" that was more of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 viewing. It was the entire movie with two guys making humorous comments throughout the whole thing. You may think the "commentary" is annoying, but I have to say, it was the only thing that got me through the movie. And sadly, as loud as they were compared to the movie volume, I really didn't miss anything important.
Yes, "The Matrix Revolutions" was actually as bad as "The Matrix Reloaded. Really on it's own it was worse. Take "The Matrix Reloaded" which had already stripped the decent storyline out of the "The Matrix" and now strip away all the cool fight choreography and cinematography, and for the most part, the Matrix itself, and you have "The Matrix Revolutions." But there are two reasons it wasn't worse: 1) The ending of "The Matrix Revolutions" meant that the trilogy was over and 2) Neo did die (Yea! \o/ ) ... actually we're not totally sure about that by the end. Anyway ...
It was horrid though. Most of the movie didn't even take place in the Matrix, which is what made the first one great and the second one tolerable. Instead it took place in the boring, drab "real world." The other thing that annoyed me was that everyone was so darn serious. Everyone was so sober, tense, and stiff that I thought they all had been given an atomic wedgie before shooting the scenes. They could rarely even squeeze out more than one sentence at a time.
Enjoy you wedgie, Mr. Anderson?
Then you have three story lines going on at once that take forever to cycle through.
1) You have Neo and Trinity going off to save the world.
2) You have Morpheus on another ship, and he practically plays a bit part in this movie (actually the movie is so long and bounces around so much, you really don't feel like anyone really starred in the movie). As the commenters noted, Morpheus becomes the Chewbacca to the Han Solo-like female pilot and the male captain who has to say the "GD word" every other sentence.
Morpheus in "The Matrix Revolutions"
3) Then you finally have Zion about to get attacked by the machines (as you find out at the end of the second movie). By the time the machines get to Zion, you are cheering for them to just kill everyone and get the movie over with.
The Morpheus storyline has them trying to get back to Zion to save it, and when they actually do make it and save the day, you realize you still have another FORTY FIVE FREAKIN' MINUTES LEFT IN THE MOVIE!!! Of course you still have the Neo storyline, but you also find out that after that excruciating battle for Zion that that was just the FIRST WAVE of machines!
I'm not even going to go into the acid trip that was the Neo and Trinity storyline. All I can say is that at one point, when they went above the clouds and saw the sun, it reminded me of the only worse movie (and sequel) I have ever seen: *"Highlander 2: The Director's Cut." That is not a good thing, and just re-enforces how bad this movie was. In fact, the whole trilogy is much like the first three Highlander movies. Just watch the first movie of the series and pretend the other two don't exist.
And then I really am not sure what happened at the end. I'm not sure Neo really totally saved the day. I almost saw a crack in the door of the plot that would allow more movies to be made if someone were actually evil and twisted enough to try and do that. (I can see it now "The Matrix Regurgitated.")
Oh, wow, there actually is something like that.
***(END OF SPOILERS)***
So for those of you who skipped down to this part ... you might as well just read my review with spoilers, the movie just stinks. "The Matrix Revolutions" is an appropriate name because it is just revolting. The only reason to see it is to see how bad it is. If you really insist on seeing it, probably the best way is to watch the video I saw. The commentary is rated R, but then, so is the movie, so don't think the commentary makes it any more appropriate for children. It's in 7 parts, and here's a link to the first part (you can see the other parts from this one):
"Avid reader" Ronny sent me some grizzly news, well, not grizzly as in gruesome, but grizzly as in my mascot ... perfect for some Monday levity.
I personally hate it when people set up barbed wire to get my hair. In one sense I feel it is rather ironic. In this age of "animal rights," who does the US Geological Survey think they are to violate our grizzly privacy with their CCTV's!?!?! Are US national parks turning into London's 1984 becoming real with today's CCTV proliferation?
You humans need to quit assuming we want rights. We just wish you'd leave us alone and quit using us animals for your political agendas. PETA, LEAVE ME ALONE! The Onion has a point (LOL):
Of course the minute I saw the MSNBC video, I had to search youtube because I knew that somebody would do something like this:
Which eventually reminded me of the dancing bear in this video. I love the way these guys flip the usual "thug" image of rap and make it more "fuzzy."
I know I've felt it. In my own realization, it seems like I have been less proficient at retaining the information itself, and more focused on just knowing how to get to the information I need. Instead of remembering all the data around "fact A," I usually end up just knowing that all the information on "fact A" is over at website "fact A.com."
It opens up the question about the internet and how we use it. Because it is such a new thing, I think many (not only myself) are having to learn a certain discipline in using this new tool. The internet is certainly a great and powerful tool for information and ideas, but it is a two edged sword. For all the information and ideas it has, it also has a lot of misinformation and bad ideas. It's easy to get distracted while researching something to watch a quick video clip, read a quick sports result, or just start surfing on some unrelated tangent.
It's interesting that I found this article after making my post yesterday about buying some good old fashioned books. So, part of the veracity of an article I just found will be if you can even get through the article or not. However, it is a good article to give some thought about the internet and it's effect on our thought processes as we move deeper into the digital age.
Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)
[snip]
I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a] voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer: “What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
[snip]
Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004 interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”
Like I said, it's certainly worth reading the whole article. It touches on several things I have personally experienced.
I know that even though I do feel I read much, much more now (mostly on the web though), it's often more trivial things, or just blurbs rather than focusing on the whole of the article. And I also will gravitate towards things that are more entertaining than necessarily intellectual. It sort of worried me that I recognized just about every internet celebrity in the latest Weezer video for "Pork and Beans" (yes, those are the real internet personae in the video).
See, I had to slip in that little bit o' entertainment, either to keep your (or more likely my own) attention.
I love hiking mountains (which is frustrating living in Texas). But I really enjoyed this when I saw it last week.
El Caminito del Rey (English:The King's pathway) is a walkway or via ferrata, now fallen into disrepair, pinned along the steep walls of a narrow gorge in El Chorro, near Álora in Málaga, Spain. The name is often shortened to El Camino del Rey. The walkway has now gone many years without maintenance, and is in a highly deteriorated and dangerous state. It is one meter (3 ft) in width, and is over 700 feet (200 m) above the river. Nearly all of the path has no handrail. Some parts of the walkway have completely collapsed and have been replaced by a beam and a metallic wire on the wall. Many people have lost their lives on the walkway in recent years. After four people died in two accidents in 1999 and 2000, the local government closed the entrances. However, adventurous tourists still find their way into the walkway.
Here's a video of part of the path. I sent this to a friend of mine and he said "I was white-knuckling my couch as I sat here."
When I missed the 2nd question, I was actually nervous I would end up looking like this:
Whew! Thankfully, this grizzly can still remember his cub science class. I can still pass 8th grade science. 25 out of 26 (I missed a geology question).
"'immaculate conception' Why isn't it abrogated if it falls on a MOnday or Saturday?" This is only if you live in the U.S. This Solemnity is not abrogated because the U.S. is under Mary's patronage under that title.
"roman wild animals" Wild? I am a rather civilized grizzly, just not that well organized!
"ancient roman ox-powered boat" Believe it or not, there is a wikipedia entry related to that: De Rebus Bellicis
"Byzantine Carthusian" I'm not aware of anyone in the East embracing the Carthusian rule.
"what is the caloric count in communion host" If you are that concerned about calorie counting you might want to see a doctor. Here's the best I could do. (You'll have to visit Ironic Catholic for the high res pic)
"if holy day falls on saturday, is it obligated?" I am getting so many hits for things like this. Answer: usually "no", however, in the United States, for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, "yes" you are obligated to go. See my post: Oh no! You'll have to go to Mass 2 days in a row!
"what are the computer issues" In my case, just old hardware. I'd say I got my money's worth out of this computer being just over 7 years old now.
Time for another round of how people got to my site:
"theology of mt. everest" Never had Mt. Everest in the list of Catholic holy mountains. Mount Sinai, Mount Tabor, Mount Zion, and the hill of Golgotha are the top contenders there.
"pope marini" Woah. If that is P. Marini, that would scare the crap out of me. Thankfully, there were no results for that specific combination, just those words appearing seperately.
"leaving Catholic church" If you're considering it ... DON'T DO IT!
"byzantine benedictine oblate" Most Byzantine monks will follow the Rule of Saint Basil. However, I am aware of one Eastern rite monastery which follows the Rule of Saint Benedict: Holy Transfiguration Skete: Society of Saint John You might contact them and ask them if they have oblates.
"goofy song lyrics lets goof around" Sorry, no life-teen stuff here.
I found out about it because someone made it into a short film, which also won an award. I like the setting into which they put the story. The whole visualization is good. I just wish they hadn't cut out some of the lines from the story though. Still it is surreal-y funny:
(WARNING - one quick cuss word (an f-bomb) in film)
(I don't know why, but the only thing I would have added was a monkey for the guy in red. He just looks like he should have one.)
-"purple vestments november" Yes, remember, the color for Advent is violet (purple). Although in Advent you can use the bluer hues of violet, it still must be violet. Blue is not a liturgical color in the Roman Rite. Marian feasts are white. You may have some blue on a Marian vestment, but it should be obvious that the vestment is a white vestment. I mean, choosing blue vestments (and other hideous vestments) for the pope might be why Archbishop P. Marini got canned from being the Papal M.C. It might not be the reason, but it is interesting that right after P. Marini chose some hideous blue and yellow vestments for the pope, soon afterwards he was replaced by Msgr. G. Marini as Papal M.C.
-"ronald mc donald kill" Not sure what this person was looking for. LOL.
-"Gloria in Excelsis Deo en power point" One of the more interesting searches for prayers I've seen. Made me wonder, what happens when Windows meets Mass? Then I though, "it's obvious, that's how we get the blue vestments in Advent." It's the equivalent of a "blue screen of death" in windows: it's something that shouldn't happen and ruins whatever is currently going on.
-"breaking open the word for 32 sunday of ordinary time 2007" Must be looking for something specific, since I've never really heard interpreting scripture being referred to as "breaking open the word."
-"the end of the world" I can be negative sometimes, but I don't think I'm necessarily apocalyptic. (Actually my site popped up because of a story I had on the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland)
-"autobiography of Saint Benedict" There's not an autobiography of Saint Benedict of Nursia. The closest thing would be his Rule for Monks (aka the Rule of Saint Benedict). The best information we have about his life is from Saint Gregory the Great in the Second Book of the Dialogues.
I'm not trying to make fun of what people search for, I am just entrigued not only at what terms people use in a search, but also by how search engines will end up listing my blog for something completely unrelated to my "theme." I also would like to try and answer or comment on some questions that might need to be addressed, eg that "purple vestments" question.
There seems to be a growing trend of posting what people are searching for when they find your site. So, I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon. This can be done rather easily with the "ego inflator" sitemeter info.
So let's see ...
- To the person searching by asking "Can one go to the Sunday Vigil and fulfill the obligation for the Immaculate Conception" the answer is "No". You cannot fulfill the obligations for two different days with one Mass, even if it does seem like a grey area. If you have two holy days of obligation in a row (eg if the Immaculate Conception fell on a Monday), you would have to attend a Mass for that Sunday, then you would also have to attend another Mass being celebrated for the Immaculate Conception.
-"blood of saint liquify during his feast": this is odd. Not because they are looking for information about Saint Januarius of Naples, but because I am not sure why my site came up in the search, since I have never mentioned him before on this blog. I believe that during the last feast day, his blood did liquify (apparently if his blood does not liquify on his feast, it is a sign bad things are going to happen. This happened with WWI and WWII and eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius, if I remember correctly).
-"University of Dallas Summorum Pontificum" although I've never blogged about these two topics together, I can say that from what I've been seeing about Stubenville's Summorum Pontificum controversy, UD's liturgies are usually much more "normal" (than some video clips I saw of Stubenville), and rumor is that there may be a TLM offered regularly at UD in the near future. If only UD could get a chaplain who doesn't change and "politically correct" the words of the Mass. Thankfully, there are many other good priests who help out there, and there are other easily accessable Masses within walking distance of the campus chapel.
-also, if you visit a "bad" site, before you come here, I can see that too. So please practice custody of the eyes and don't visit those places. I don't see the actual site, but I do see the url, and some of those url's are pretty obvious. And I also know which country you are in.
otherwise, not much interesting to note this round.
Last 100 visitors were from: U.S. and Canada, England, Eastern Europe, South Asia, South America, Panama, South Africa, and New Zealand.
And the "ego inflator" says we just passed 24,000 hits! (I only get an average of about 95 hits a day, which is pretty small time in the blog world, but still a little more than the majority of blogs out there.)
Carolina Cannonball over at The Crescat... posted a great clip from the Miss Teen USA pageant. Wow, did Miss Teen South Carolina actually say anything?
She reminded me of something Senator Ted Stevens had said a while back when talking about the internet. Now I was IT for a few years, and so we had to know about how network communications and the internet worked. I guess things have changed since I was in IT because what Senator Stevens says at the end of the clip is vastly different from what I learned (remember he is head of the senate commerce committee):
So of course, if you can't talk about the internet properly, it will get its revenge on you. :P
This week has been pretty busy, so I needed some Thursday levity.
EDIT - If nothing else, you have to watch the last video in the post.
Jean-Yves Blondeau is a French designer who came up with a sort of rollerblade suit. I had heard of this a while ago, but thought it was just some type of art project or something. (Don't see this being approved by any parental toy safet groups any time soon). Sorry you'll just have to deal with the French narrative.
The suit might look a bit goofy, but it looks like it would be fun.
However, he has refined the suit and can do some pretty cool downhill things in it. I think it has 31 wheels total.
Can't embed this one, but you can see it at youtube. The Swiss Pass is amazingly steep and winding, and he does it in normal traffic. (Kids, don't try this at home ... or at the Swiss Pass!)
Not sure what is scarier, going downhill at this speed on winding roads, or having a car filming you right behind you at that speed. You can hear the car's tires squealing they are going so fast around some of those sharp turns!
Here's a frustrating little game: Can you name the 192 countries in the United Nations. The difficulty is that sometimes you'll think of coutries, but they are not in the UN. You have 10 minutes (spelling counts).
If you need help you might find some hints from Wakko Warner in this amazing song:
Think that is impressive, the guy who does Wakko's voice, Rob Paulsen (who also did Pinky in Pinky and the Brain, and Raphael on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, can still do the song in one take. Hmmm, this would be a great homeschooler project [hint, hint].
As a side note, Father Gary Coulter has a page that has a summary of Father Reginald Foster, OCD's programs on Vatican Radio about the Latin Language called "The Latin Lover" (Better to give you the link than to have you google the name of the show. LOL.)
Now, some of the things Father Reginal Foster says you have to take with a grain of salt. He is a stereotypical genius. He can speak Latin, but he has some quirks, one of which is to say things to shock people. He is a good man, and he is very dedicated to the preservation of Latin, but he'll rarely hold back an opinion.
Anyway, the radio shows are very interesting, if not for the Latin anecdotes, then for a bit of insight into Vatican politics and workings.
