Seven Quick Takes: In Which I Spend Eleven Minutes Writing, and Forty Minutes Trying to Wrestle WordPress into Posting the Seven Quick Takes Logo

–1–

I try not to have enemies.  (This is sometimes difficult when people are determined to be my enemy out of the blue, when I never heard of them, don’t know or care who they are, and have no idea why they’re so mad at me.  I’m like, “Wow, have you ever listened to music?  It’s nice!” and they’re like, “Yeah, I bet you think it is, you lopsided, warmongering, stinky-breathed Zionist!”)  But, like most bloggers, I do have foils — people whose point of view does such a good job of putting my own point of view in high relief.  It’s especially helpful if you have to come up with strong opinions on schedule! You don’t want to be constantly wringing your hands over how wrongy wrong wrong everybody is; but it’s perfectly legitimate to say, “So and so says X, and that helps me to clarify why I think Y, instead.”

But you can, of course, fall into some bad habits this way.  One of mine has been to casually dismiss protestants as a whole.  This habit probably formed partly because my parents used to be protestants, and so I’m used to thinking of Protestantism as the thing my parents were wise enough to abandon when they joined the Church.  But that’s lazy and unfair.  They would not have become Catholics at all, maybe, if they hadn’t first been baptized at the Community Bible Chapel.  And I know so many holy and generous people who are protestants, I’m kind of disgusted with myself when I think about the careless things I’ve said.

This all gelled for me when I read this takedown of — heh heh — one of Michael Voris’ by the thorough and grounded Dave Armstrong who used to be a protestant himself.  (The reason I said “heh heh” is because I have no problem using Michael Voris as a foil.  No problem at all.)

–2–

It doesn’t matter how you feel about contraception — this is funny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmnt31UgGT4
The only things that really matter to me as a woman, indeed.

–3–

Okay, I know almost nothing about Dartmouth College, but this tickled me:  apparently they hired an Anglican bishop to be some kind of dean or spokesman or what have you.  To the astonishment and revulsion of some, it seems that this fellow either is or was an actual Anglican.  Quelle horreur!   (Also, this is college level writing?  At Dartmouth?  Ugh.)

–4–

Can I just say this?  Putting a beach ball on the altar at Maria Maggiore is tacky.  It just is. You can put flowers on the altar, but beyond that, that is a sacred place, and it makes sense to reserve it for very carefully proscribed gestures, words, and blessed vessels.   I don’t think it rises to blasphemy or something, but I wasn’t crazy about it.  I get that it was a spontaneous gesture, and he was probably dedicating the young participants of World Youth Day to the care of Our Lady, but it’s still a damn beach ball.

But too bad!  He’s the Pope!  He gets to do tacky stuff if he wants to!  Good heavens, can you imagine if we had gotten an African pope?  Then we’d see some heads exploding.

–5–

Slice of life from our house.  Sophia (7) and Irene (4) are in the bath. Sophia wants to change spots.

Sophia:  “How about we do the old switcheroo?”
Irene:  “How about we do the old get-outta-my-way?”

–6–

Then there’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKooxzCnMXM

–7–

There’s still a little bit of summer left, right?  Still time to enjoy a drink we just discovered:  a Stormy Weather.

• 10 oz. Ginger Beer
• 2 oz. Rum, dark
• 1 dash Lime Juice

Yum.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and don’t forget to check out the other quick takes at Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog.  We’re going to see my husband’s sister and her husband, hooray!  It’s been a long time.  Hey, Rosie and Scott, I will try very hard to get rid of the old tadpole water before you get here.