7QT: Life as a Walking Knock-knock Joke

7QT: Life as a Walking Knock-knock Joke July 23, 2021

Since it’s that time of week, seven things to make you glad you don’t live inside my head all the time:

#1 I will almost certainly watch a little bit of Olympics this year, but honestly I’ve lost my taste for them.  Reasons:

  • The regional chokeholds on broadcast coverage.  I can’t watch the sports I want to watch, nor the commentary (or silence) I want to watch, because heaven forbid the television monopolies discover that half a dozen geeks worldwide prefer some other country’s telecast to their own.  Geez. Might see what I can get this year using a VPN, though?
  • Men competing in women’s sports?  No thanks.  Deeply unimpressed by any further claims from the IOC that this is sporting “competition.”
  • Profoundly ticked off by this nasty nasty bit of ableism.
  • IOC gets guilty-by-association for Bikinigate.  I’ve been irritated by the mandatory bikini-wearing since I first saw beach volleyball in the Olympics years ago. Dear women athletes: It’s all about voyeurism, your job is to be the eye-candy.  Don’t wreck our ratings by dressing like the men do. 

Guess the Olympics are turning me into a raging TERF.

#2 Just finished reading Trans by Helen Joyce.  Hope a review will follow soon.  I’ve quit predicting anything at all about my life, so who knows.

Two-sentence version: Highly recommended for most readers, excellent book overall, valuable contribution to the discourse, valuable for personal edification.  Recommended only with caution for readers who are either coming in completely cold to the topic (little or no previous knowledge of the discourse), or those who would find reading an argument from a purely secular, atheist, and pro-abortion POV too unsettling to be of value.

#3  I have a shortlist of people (a few dozen or so) whose opinions I value so highly that if I should disagree with them, or they with me, I give immediate, serious thought to whether I have gravely erred.

Timothy Scott Reeves is one of them; Christopher Tollefsen is another.

Which would be (yet another) reason I tend to take a very conservative view of how public  health policies should be implemented.  Religious exemptions for vaccine mandates must be protected.  Must.  Must must must.

#4 And yet, because science, I think the US is being too cavalier in how we respond to the surge in Delta-variant cases.

Weird effect of being a walking knock-knock joke, “What do you get when you cross old-school liberalism with old-school conservatism?” –> You get someone who recommends (based on changing conditions on the ground and improved knowledge of the present surge, this was not my stance a month ago) aggressive use of vaccination, ventilation, distancing, face coverings, and heck just work on your garden this summer . . . without thinking that a whole-hearted embrace of that advice is in any way a call for limiting the freedoms protected by the US Bill of Rights, strictest possible reading.

#5 Insane fact about the Catholic faith: Even poor people should be able to raise children.

If you knew of, say, a high-profile politician who was both touting his or her Catholic faith and insisting we need to make abortion more available because-poor-women . . . they haven’t read their Leo XIII.

The answer to poverty and crisis pregnancies is not, “Poor people shouldn’t breed.”  Tell me about what you’re doing to ensure even people who will never rise past the rank of Walmart stock clerk are able to raise their families in decent living conditions.

That’s the Catholic.

Doesn’t fit either party’s narrative, but there it is.

#6  Brandon @ Siris has written a fantastic discussion of what detraction is and isn’t.

#7 Reiterating for those who are bound to wonder: Don’t mistake my sudden presence online this week as a sign my life is sorting itself out.  Quite the opposite. Nothing ominous in my saying that, just clarifying in case you were tempted to think maybe I was rejoining the ranks of the high-functioning.  Nope.  Not there.  Still working on it.

Meanwhile, something fun:

Me with certificate: Honorable Mention, Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith, 2021 CMA Book Awards

Not just the world’s slowest paint job in the background, but also an Honorable Mention from the Catholic Media Association’s 2021 Book Awards.  Huge thanks to OSV for submitting the beast for consideration.

Reminder for those who are, like me, still puzzling over how I of all people could have written such nice book?  There were editors involved.  Good ones. I promise it’s safe for the general public, Our Sunday Visitor is reliable that way.


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