Now you must make the prayer of the poor: “Thank you.”—Black Orpheus, probably misremembered, so if you know the actual line please tell me Read more

Night-night,It’s time for blogwatch,It’s been a great day, thanks a heap! Krampus tweets! Via Sean Collins. This is a gift from me to you, because you have been bad. “The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009.“ You probably missed fewer of these if you read the foreign press, but if you don’t, Foreign Policy catches you up. “Seven Insane True Stories Behind the World’s Most WTF Houses.” Read more

“KEEPING THE KRAMPUS IN CHRISTMAS“: Longtime readers know that I am no fan of Santa-Claus treacle. But if we must have superstition in our Christmas, let’s at least have justice to go with our mercy! (Jesse Walker has more links: “A few years ago an Austrian psychiatrist reportedly called for banning Krampus, on the grounds that ;in a world that is anyway full of aggression, we shouldn’t add figures standing for violence…and hell.'” And some readers may appreciate a Christmas... Read more

Jacob Wilson, a student at Iowa State, described his experience at Love In Action. When he was 19, his pastor found out he was dating another boy from church, and threatened him that he would no longer be welcome in his church or his hometown unless he went to LIA. The program promised him freedom from the pain of his “deviant choice”, but later they told him that the best he could hope for was a life of celibacy and... Read more

GOING TAME: Jesse Walker vs. Sarah Palin (and in partial defense of her fanclub)… and John Reynolds here and here. “Ronald Reagan showed more substance in his delightful book written mostly about his time as an actor than Palin shows in her four hundred pages.” Read more

“UNSAFE AT ANY CREED”: My current AmCon column looks at Brookland/CUA. Subscribers can read it here (PDF). This issue isn’t as good as their stellar books issue–I think the cover article rests on a naive view of an American Golden Age when we had a “humble foreign policy” (TM GW Bush, summer 2000) and the press afflicted the comfortable–but AmCon consistently finds interesting and entertaining writers, and then gets out of their way. Read more

I WONDER IF HE’LL ROT UNDERWATER?: I bought a 2010 calendar with a horror-movie poster for every month; and, in a burst of cheapjack awesome, the calendar comes with four dvds so you can see all twelve movies! I think April’s selection is Dementia 13, which also happens to be the directorial debut of one Francis Coppola. People, this is the good trash. The plot is a Frankenstein skeleton, the writing is obvious, and the acting is workaday, but you... Read more

ALL INSTITUTIONS ARE “STRUCTURES OF SIN”; BUT WITHOUT THESE INSTITUTIONS THERE IS NO VIRTUE. Read more

“I LOVE THE ’30S”: This is amazing. So far the Monopoly episode is my favorite, but the Hindenberg one is also epic, and really, all of them have been hilarious. (If you just let this link run it will play all the videos. They’re all about three minutes long.) Read more

SO MANY STEPS TO DEATH: As he does every November, Daniel Mitsui is posting Catholic and Orthodox artwork/liturgical whatnot relating to the Last Things. Yes, there are a lot of Dances of Death; you also get Alaskan spirit houses, Requiem chasubles, ossuaries, death’s-head rosaries (!), and the Museum of the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Read more