KITCHEN ADVENTURES: BURGER TIME! I pretty much never cook meat, but this week the fever came upon me. I used ground beef, jalapenos, salt, freshly-ground pepper, a couple different kinds of rolls (mealhada, and then today something where I don’t know its name), butter, cinnamon, cayenne, cumin, ground ginger, dried thyme, and Port Salut cheese. What I did: I’d never actually made my own patties before. First I sliced the rolls in half lengthwise and put them cut-side-down in the... Read more

“I have never felt like this before,” Louis pressed on. “Passion has happened to me before; I’m a man, after all. But generally I preferred to ignore it, to get on with my work.” This was true enough; it had always seemed to Louis that a fundamental desire to take postal courses was being sublimated by other people into sexual activity; that he was at the root of things.–Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People Is Wrong Read more

SHE NEEDS YOU/MORE THAN SHE LOVES YOU: An email in response to my post about tradition and iconicity: First, you suggest that tradition’s primary purpose is to create a persona out of an impersonal thing (like a place or an institution) so that individual human beings might truly love it. But it seems to me that this position reduces love to an exclusively inter-personal phenomenon. I will accept that love cannot exist apart from the relationship between persons, but consider... Read more

You don’t have to be blogwatching, but it helps… Holy Whapping provides awesome Philip Neri/celebrity-cardboard-cutout action! Via Sparrow Fallen. In other weird saint news, yesterday was the feast of Saints Processus and Martinian, patrons of wardens, jailers, and prison police. (That’s because St. Paul converted them when he was imprisoned, and they suffered martyrdom proclaiming the Gospel their prisoner taught them.) Today is the feast of St. Thomas, but I think you can find the Caravaggio painting by yourself. Overlawyered... Read more

I WAS WRONG. “Gypsy Presents: ‘Waiting for Gorgo'” is my favorite MST3K riff. So far. Read more

The dead woman whom I adore keeps her distance. … Where is the cocoon of noise and need?I am an uneaten meal, a full glass.–Anna Harrison, “Need,” in the current Commonweal. You really, really should read the whole poem. Read more

As other lifestyles become more acceptable, you must choose whether to get married and whether to have children. You develop your own sense of self by continually examining your situation, reflecting on it, and deciding whether to alter your behavior as a result. People pay attention to their experiences and make changes in their lives if they are not satisfied. They want to continue to grow and change throughout adulthood.–Andrew Cherlin, Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in... Read more

“ROMOEROTICISM”: My take on the collision of Corpus Christi and Gay Pride, at Inside Catholic…. Read more

LOYALTY BINDS ME: Some notes on Alan Bray, The Friend. The first thing to say is that I love this book. It’s a study of the culture, rituals, ethics, and tensions of same-sex friendship in England, from 1000 AD through, essentially, the death of John Cardinal Newman. I could not love this book more if it were made out of chocolate and shaped like Sophia Loren, with a cameo by Iron Man. But now that I’ve got that out of... Read more

SHE LOOKS LIKE AN ANGEL… BUT I GOT WISE/SHE’S THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE!: Some exceptionally scattered thoughts on tradition and conservatism. These are propositions for discussion, not settled beliefs of mine. [I’ll add links to older posts later, and remove this parenthesis.] 1. There’s a difference in kind between a stereotype and a role. Actually, this one I’m fairly sure of; I’m just not sure how to cash out what that difference in kind really looks like. I’ve been using... Read more