I could have written about this... but you know what? Life is too fucking short.
Yeah. It's also kind of a gimme to point out that there's already been a long history of right-wingers using bonfires to celebrate their ideology of "practices that are necessary to conserve conservative goods like community, authority, piety, solidarity, and manliness."
Jesus Christ.
I slammed a car door on my hand when I was four, had shin splints for three years running track and cross-country, ruptured an Achilles tendon playing basketball, dislocated a couple of fingers, separated a shoulder, had shingles at thirty-five and passed a kidney stone a couple years ago, and I've never experienced anything even remotely as painful as that.
From the meditation:
conservatives need conservative culture theory to better understand the social institutions and practices that are necessary to conserve conservative goods like conservatism, conserving, conserving, and fruit conserves. Ugh.
I also remind you that Aggies are widely mocked for being loud-mouthed, obnoxious, bullheaded, thoughtless right-wingers. By Texans.
I may be just a silly non-conservative, but what the hell was the little anecdote about the girl whose friend died when some drunken idiot felled a tree on her supposed to prove? "Hey, the bonfire may be killing people, but it makes me feel real damn proud to be a rightwing moron, so it's all good!" Also, what this has to do with anyone's wedding, and why weddings traditionally need a polka band, escapes me.
The combination of youth, lack of sleep, power saws, huge timbers, and far too much alcohol hurt many and some died.
Yeah, I hate when that happens.
So this is how blowhards are born.
Good God, that's Zombie Diana Trilling! The whole place is crawling with them!
Those who lost their lives had not seen ... this loss as the result of a silly prank... In a way, she understood what I was groping toward[Hurrrrrrgh!Mghghghgm!] - Protestant mid-westerners tend to be ill at ease with rituals [Hisssssss!]. Nonetheless, strangely and even irrationally [Ghooarrrrrgh! Mmmmmmmmh!], I was brought around [Shmell- Braaaains!] to the idea of a larger wedding; the turning point [Bump - Oops!] was that bonfire tragedy. No one understood (including me) ["Oh my God! They've taken over the Mall! Run!"] why it led me to embrace a ritual in which two people are subsumed in a marriage - a marriage designed to benefit both but primarily to provide a shelter in which their children can be born, mature, and become men and women. My daughter couldn’t follow my reasoning, but the truth was, neither could I [Glurrrrrk! Nyarrrrgh!]. Smith’s article helps me understand this apparently random response [Braaaaains!]; at moments like this we dimly understand [Mmmmmmohhhhhhooooh!] that what we feel is not necessarily irrational, just because the rational explanation is out of our reach [Braaaainsss! Mgaaaaaah! Burp!.
All this dim groping about, the dead people not thinking about the silly prank but apparently having some other feeling about it, the total loss of reasoning power -- does that not all seem suspicously zombie-like?
My friend, your getting lazy with a post like this. What's your point? Are you trying to say that a happy marriage is not the desirable end of romance? And this view is "conservative"? Do liberals not even pretend to care about ideals anymore? It's all shit, we're all messed up, and live and let live? Hey how about that!
I'm down with "a happy marriage is somehow the desired end of romance". As opposed to what: stay single, childless, remain perpetually immature, have single friends who seem to get younger and younger all around me as the years go by, go to bars and ponder why can't I find a good woman at 3 in the morning? I'll let others live those glory days. CG enjoys the lil' army o' kids greeting him at the door everyday. It's a beautiful thing in an otherwise mussed up world.
CG enjoys the lil' army o' kids greeting him at the door everyday.
But after years of exposure to double-plus ungood TV programming, they may become savage abortionite monsters with multiple piercings. That's why you must fight the power, CG, with TV reviews. Do whatever it takes, but for God's sake, let the others know which doctor shows respect marriage and which do not!
It's for the children. as we liberals are alleged to say.
Do liberals not even pretend to care about ideals anymore? It's all shit, we're all messed up, and live and let live?
Isn't that the biggest ideal of all?
I can always get a quick reaction out of you. 10 minutes. That's a new record.
I know you didn't really think about my comment (10 minutes!) but dude, it's easy to argue against stereotypes ain't it. You comin back to CG with "ungood", "abortonite monsters", or "multiple piercings", writing TV reviews, or invoking "for God's sake". Treatin me like I'm some rube dancin around the old Aggie bonfire. As if all anybody who says there a conservative does is rail against "the liberal media". Actually I don't mind it. It helps you misunderestimate me. CG is a broadly edumacated man! Some might even say a Baroque man.
It ain't that black and white as maybe you'd like it to be. But sure my kids do have their TV shows screened. Would I be a halfway decent parent if I didn't? I'm gonna guess that even some of your more mindless commenters here who have children do the same.
Hey isn't the Mets season starting soon? Yeah that'll be great. Who do you have for the Final Four? That'll keep you busy. Wait do you all like sports? With all that competition and hurt feelings, lower self esteem,etc. for the losers. Maybe they shouldn't play after all. Or maybe they can all win.
Well, I'm off to read Sam Harris. I like simple answers to hard questions in under 200 pages. Stuff CG doesn't have to think too hard about.
All the Best.
I'm down with "a happy marriage is somehow the desired end of romance".
And it is - for some people (including me, which is a good thing since I've been married for 12 years). But I know plenty of people who don't want anything to do with marriage, and who do not even remotely resemble your little caricature.
You want the army of kids? Fine, good for you - I'm glad you've found happiness. But that kind of life just doesn't do it for everyone; why should they be expected to pursue something they don't want?
Do liberals not even pretend to care about ideals anymore?
Sure we do. One of them is that we each get to choose how to live our own lives . . . including whether we want to get married at all.
Incidentally, I saw that Bonfire article in my latest copy of the AAAG, and shook my head thinking about the rejection letters I've received from that journal over the last couple of years.
I haven't read it yet, so I'm not sure how, exactly, it's connected to geography. But I suppose I'll break down and read it soon enough. Maybe after the hockey playoffs . . .
As if all anybody who says there a conservative does is rail against "the liberal media".
Well, that's pretty much what all the conservatives at NR do, as evidenced by the lengthy, schoolmarmish review of Grey's Anatomy. In fact, that's what NR is dedicated to.
Oh, dear Lord, it really is a professional journal?
"...a gaggle of hot young surgical interns...
"...her (formerly hot surgeon) mother...
"...the hot redhead neonatal surgeon...
"Here’s an idea, Lords of TV: How about just one, rippin’ hot hospital chaplain who offers the patients hope? This character, call him McGodly, could be sexy, moody, and conflicted.... But he could offer...more than science. That would be well-rounded drama!"
Holy hot McGodly, woman. Scratch that itch!
Bonfire of the Inanities.
Some might even say a Baroque man.
No argument there
3. Extravagant, complex, or bizarre, especially in ornamentation
We're more Renaissance people here, with a twist of lime.
A friend's mother wrote that chicagoboyz piece so I could clear up a few things here... but I won't. Except that polka bands at Czech weddings in that part of Texas (Snook, Burleson County) are a heap o'fun and certainly more life-affirming than anything involving drunken frat boys and logs.
Try another way of looking at it CG: Why does your faith, per the National Review require script approval?
I've never experienced anything even remotely as painful as that.
Read the Jonathan Smith pdf article. It's like root canal sans anesthesia. With my dominatrix off working the Catskills this week I need some professional degradation bad so I just read the whole thing. It's like a paradigm of everything wrong with the refraction of social science through the lens of political theory that conservatives mistake for academic enlightenment. It's not as abstruse as a turgid Jeffrey Goldstein jargasm, but it has plenty of biazarre arguments and heavily footnoted but egregiously wrong-headed window dressing on just about everything. As near as I can tell, it claims that the "conservative goods" of community, authority, piety, solidarity, and manliness allegedly embodied by Bonfire were weakened by... well I'm not too sure from this exegesis what did them in except perhaps that a strong Southern tradition was undermined by an excessive zeal for a strong Southern tradition. One could read this and substitute "cross-burning" and "Klan" (or "pogrom" and "SS" for that matter) for "bonfire" and "Corps" and it would only require different footnotes.
Reading this tripe makes me glad that I served my sentence in academia pre-Bloom and Horowitz, but I should have stopped at "Life is too fucking short."
From the link: *Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit.
That's nice. Really, it's good to have a place to kick back and just be yourself, you know.
The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago boys including those pictured above (we claim no affiliation), and others who helped to liberalize Latin American economies.
Hmmm. You might have to workshop that good-humored gesture. Work through the kinks. I mean, it might not be so fucking histerical for the thousands of victims of Pinochet, or the millions of destitute Latin Americans who got the fuck end of the Boyz' (and Reagan, natch) desire to help the oligarchs and their cast iron fitting for fists.
Why no Chaplain? Well maybe the writers know if they actually tried to deal with religion in realistic way - like what happens where there isn't a miracle and the innocent person dies they would be, as sure as the sun rises in the east, howls from jebus gonna make it all better crowd all over the net works and cries for a boycott.
While exploring how a religious person deals with that might make good drama and TV, considering the grief they would get from the bible thumpers, it's not worth their time.
I am totally going to pitch a show called "Rippin' Hot Chaplain" to ABC.
This week on a Very Special "Rippin' Hot Chaplain," Rip and the boys challenge Sister Mary Hotness and the Convent to enter the Hot Beach Volleyball Tournament...not realizing Sister Mary Hotness has a dark secret...
Hey isn't the Mets season starting soon? Yeah that'll be great. Who do you have for the Final Four? That'll keep you busy. Wait do you all like sports? With all that competition and hurt feelings, lower self esteem,etc. for the losers. Maybe they shouldn't play after all. Or maybe they can all win.
Do you even read this blog? Some of us consider Roy's finest moment to be his NLCS drunkblogging.
The thing I don't get about Grey's Anatomy is how the dweeby insecure intern gets all the hot lady docs: Meredith, Callie, and now Izzie? Seriously?
Maybe Spencer's right. Tolerance itself is an ideal rather than just a social value for getting along. If I prefer it its good. Pretty simple logic. What's to argue with there?
What do those damn poets and romantics over the millenia know anyhow? Who wants to be loved and known in a purposeful, intimate relationship. Freddie Mercury with his "Somebody to love" crap - my ass! Maybe I should have opted for the joys of enjoying a cold brew in a flat either alone or with my endless rotation of roommates while watching the ballgames. Love as a universal value that's elevated humanity? Those damn romantics with their more wordy and antiquated versions of what's elevating to human beings. It ain't any better than a hallmark card or a Shania Twain melody!
Are you trying to say that a happy marriage is not the desirable end of romance?
Why does romance require an 'end'? Is it not enough to simply love, exist, and be?
Wait a minute, CG; are you holding up Freddie Murcury as an epitome of traditional, romantic love?
If only all conservatives were that inclusive!
If CG is going to be citing dead poets as having amazing insight into what is the ideal life for each and every person on the planet, I will have to cite:
What might be right for you,
Might not be right for some,
It takes Different Strokes,
Different Strokes to move the world.
Maybe I should have opted for the joys of enjoying a cold brew in a flat either alone or with my endless rotation of roommates while watching the ballgames. ..
Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever makes you happy. Not for me to say.
Doubtless you think that's moral relativism, as your comments indicate that you believe moral standards are exactly the same thing as lifestyle choices. I think it's just common sense.
You know, it occurs to me that there was a show on a few years ago where Aidan Quinn, whom I consider pretty rippin' hot, played a chaplain, and the NR crowd whined their heads off until it got cancelled. So, you know, maybe the Grey's Anatomy people are not interested in pissing off everybody who gets hot under the collar when every little aspect of their personal faith isn't the one affirmed by the TV.
You'd think these people would be thrilled that they've kept that pile of dreck Seventh Heaven on the air for at least 10.5 more years than it deserved. Guess poor Stephen Collins isn't ripped enough for them.
I also remind you that Aggies are widely mocked for being loud-mouthed, obnoxious, bullheaded, thoughtless right-wingers.
Hey! Not all of us are right-wingers!
Sean '86
The thing I don't get about Grey's Anatomy is how the dweeby insecure intern gets all the hot lady docs: Meredith, Callie, and now Izzie? Seriously?
Don't forget the actual actor is gay in real life, just proving the Hollywood Jew writers are laughing at us while they sleep on their piles of money.
As opposed to what: stay single, childless, remain perpetually immature, have single friends who seem to get younger and younger all around me as the years go by, go to bars and ponder why can't I find a good woman at 3 in the morning?
Or how about: stay single, childless, laugh at your married friends as they have increasing less time for themselves, be able to do whatever you want without explaining yourself to anyone, read books, go to sporting events, attend concerts, not come home to find someone blew $3,000 on shoes, not changing diapers filled with human shit, etc. I mean, we can make up any kind of scenario we want.
How about: stay single, childless, wish my married friends good luck with that and hope it works out for 'em, avoid any requests to babysit, avoid the whole bar scene since I quit drinking, go see the occasional rock show, do a lot of reading, watch a lot of movies, keep all my friends (single or married, any age) as close as is comfortable to all, smoke a little of the good smoke now and then, and otherwise have a damn good time.
And if you can't find a good woman, CG, maybe you should work on your delivery. Might try actually listening to someone else instead of grafting your opinion of what they should think on any damn topic, no matter how tangently related. Or quit looking for 'em at 3 a.m., as most folks have gone to bed by them.
Grey's Anatomy. (n) General Hospital with higher production values.
Except that polka bands at Czech weddings in that part of Texas (Snook, Burleson County) are a heap o'fun...
Ahh, Snook. City of lights, city of magic.
Sneer if you wish, non-central-Texans, but you haven't lived until you've experienced the ChiliFest in Snook...
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