Alera Pulchra

I’ve just finished Jim Butcher’s First Lord’s Fury, the 6th book of his series Codex Alera. While First Lord’s Fury is not the best book in the series (my personal favorites are the 2nd and 3rd), the novel is an enjoyable read, and has inspired me to re-read all 12 books of Jim Butcher’s excellently written Dresden Files.

BTW, is it just me, or does Alera talking to Tavi sound a lot like Number Six talking to Gaius Baltar?

Music Monday: The later Callas

The experts say that her voice had precipitously declined in later years, in part due to a diet that drove down both her weight and her vocal power.  But, after hearing Maria Callas, one wonders just how high was her summit, that she could be so magnificent after the fall…

Google’s Pacman Super-Doodle

It’s a doodle moment of awesome.  ”The New Google Doodle Is a FREAKING GAME OF PAC-MAN“, says Gizmodo.

And it so is.  Actually playable, with 256 levels says the Gizmodo folks, though I’ve so far blundered through only 2 (because I am seriously out of practice, and using a Mouse to choose directions is a tad counter-intuitive).  Even Google Philippines, which is often a poor cousin of the main Google.com site (e.g., try choosing News in its search options), has the super-doodle.

And here I was, thinking that the Hans Christian Andersen doodles were the best I would ever see.  I happily sit (playing and getting gobbled up by ghosts) corrected.

It’s only up 0n the weekend to celebrate 30 years of Pacman, amici, so enjoy it now.

Deus vobiscum.

Why kill Nightcrawler?

Is Marvel Comics anti-Christian? Or is it just an accident that Christians (or thinkly disguised Christians) have been portrayed as villains since before Messiah War; or that California is lionized for its “tolerance”; or that the token Catholic was killed protecting the mutant messiah?

In any case, religion or ideology aside, Nightcrawler (along with Logan and Rogue) was always one of my favorite characters, just as Cyclops (a colorless piece of cardboard, no matter how bada_s they try to make him, even in the Age of Apocalypse) will always be was one of my peeves.  Nightcrawler always refused to be as flat as his teammates, in part because his demonic appearance contrasted so sharply with his character.

Which rather makes me wonder at the times that Marvel would magnify characters without substance or with poorly contrived back stories  while ignoring those with better narrative potential.  I mean, seriously, they gave Psylocke a shout-out pseudo-Kill Bill miniseries when Rogue or Gambit or Nightcrawler himself sure as inferno deserved a solo title better–especially now that there are so few mutants to go around, and they have a chance to shine.

DC, for its part, initially cast aside Barbara Gordon (without first seriously considering, for instance, how she adjusted growing older with her planned-to-be-outgrown hero role), but at least that felix culpa gave us Oracle.  What do we get from Nightcrawler dying–that is, aside from trading emotional space for time, after Marvel wrote itself into a trap with the persecution-myopic post-Decimation storylines?

Deus vobiscum.

A blessed new year…

And belated merry Christ-Mass to all!

We remember the Cristeros

Today, 1 January, we remember the formal beginning of the Cristero rebellion (or the Cristero war), through which the Mexican people attempted to wrest their nation back from their militantly atheist government.  The political and economic elites had attempted, through oppressive laws and an anticlerical Constitution, to suppress the Faith of the staunchly Christian nation.  Hence, the people, with few arms and little organization, were forced to take up arms against the well-armed army and paramilitary forces of the government.  And although they did not achieve their goals, with persecution continuing for another decade, we remember the valiant Catholics, heroes all, who defended their freedom to believe and worship as Christians of the one true Church.

¡Viva Cristo Rey! ¡Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe!

(See also our posts at Scriptorium, “The martyrs of Savenay” and “So tired of Anti-Catholicism“.)  

Typecast!

Have just watched the 1st part of the (rather anti-Christian) Children of Dune miniseries from the SciFi Channel.  Albeit one might quibble with collapsing 2 volumes in one miniseries, so far the miniseries seems excellent (by which this Talifan means faithful, within the limits of the medium) and worth every cent.

Poor Alec Newman, though.  Everytime I see him–i.e., in Angel, though he was wearing a hood there, so I can’t be blamed–I can hear “Muad-dib! Muad-dib!” being chanted at the back of my mind.

Which reminds me of Ken Watanabe:  In Letters from Iwo Jima, I could almost hear the Japanese soldiers shouting “typecast!” instead of “banzai!”

Just meandering.  Now off to Sexta…

A complete New Year’s Eve

This New Year’s Eve, we–

• Participated in the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite) and in the chanting of the Te Deum(!);
• Read F. Manuel’s chapter comparing the metahistorical thought of St. Augustine and of Joachim (which counts as a pretty good continuation of Norman Cohn’s Pursuit of the Millennium, one of my favorite works);
• Watched the last sunset of 2009;
• Started Terry Pratchett’s Guards! Guards!;
• Watched Indiana Jones I and III (which are the movies of the franchise that count);
• Ate pasta, biko and brownies, and drank chocolate e! with my family; and
• Prayed the last Compline of the year.

Which counts as a complete New Year’s Eve…

And though, to our deep regret, we will be unable to join the New Year vigil and the midnight Mass, the first Matins of 2010 will still make it worthwhile.

Belated merry Christ-Mass, everyone, and have a blessed 2010!

Interdisciplinary Christmas reading List

1. Isaac Husik, History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy–to be finished, as I’m already past Maimonides, though, oh! if only he wrote like Copleston–;

   

   

   
   

2. Edwin Black, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race;
3. Frank Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History–because I like anything that pits St. Augustine and Joachim of Fiore against each other;
   
4. Sylvia Maxfield et al., eds., Business and the State in Developing Countries–in part because of work, though the subject is fascinating–; and if I still have time,
5. Brian Herbert,  Hunters of Dune–because I need closure,

Albeit with due respect, I cannot but feel that continuing the Dune series was in itself somehow inappropriate; for the animus of a great author qua author is intransmissible, and his greatness is a personal charisma (in Weber’s usage) that is handed on not by lineage but “by the laying on of hands of the presbyterate” (1 Tim. 4:14, following Jewish usage), or by anointing, or by taking on his cloak as he ‘s raised by the merkabah.  A disciple can follow the master, perhaps (as Aquinas followed Albert, and as Lenin followed Marx), but never a son the father, and never on the same road.  At least Christopher Tolkien only edits.

I’ll resume Husik by tomorrow, as soon as I finish Newman…

A “Valkyrie” Christmas

Later on, we’ll conspire

To bomb Berlin and kill the Fuhrer;

And then he’ll find out

And wipe us all out–

Walking in the Third Reich’s Deutscheland…

The faux lyrics were thought up by a family member who abhors the Nazis but admires the General Staff; and we dedicate them here to the Catholic hero Von Stauffenberg, who showed that Hitler’s evil was not Germany’s.  Being Catholic he surely had a sense of humor, and we hope he chortles a bit when he reads it…

By the way, did you know that the anti-Hitler conspirators were in communication with Pope Pius XII, and that they repeatedly contacted the West with his help?  Only, their mission failed, because the West refused to consider any terms of peace other than unconditional surrender… See John Toland’s Adolf Hitler, vol. 2.

When will Gibo give up?

I estimate about 8 weeks before the administration completely jettisons Teodoro and puts its machinery behind Villar.  Gibo has performed dismally in every survey–another one digit showing in the last one, as GMA 7 just reported–; and if his time-to-shine moments amid natural disasters and horrific massacres raised his profile without substantially raising his numbers, then nothing will help him.  It’s not his time, any more than it was the more charismatic Escudero’s.

Which leaves the administration one choice: Villar.  Moneyed, ideologically vague Manny Villar, who’s already lined up Manny Pacquiao and Michael V in his campaign arsenal.  It’s only logical.  Unlike in the US with its (predominantly) 2-party system, where beat-up Republicans had little choice between Palin-McCain (I mean, I like McCain, but it’s pretty clear who held the base) and going Obamacon, in the Philippines the administration has 2 strong non-Noynoys and a gaggle of lesser lights to choose from .

And if they’re desperate enough to pick Edu Manzano as VP, then they’ll be ready to make deals withVillar and abandon S.S. Gibo. After all, democracy’s just political capitalism: the only question is where the supply-demand curves (which has at least probabilistic value in statu concupiscentiae) will leave the price, and when the deal will be struck.

Okay, so why the somewhat arbitrary 8-week  timetable, which places us at about late February?  Because the signs of the times are ever clearer, Exhibit “A” being the sudden cessation of attacks on Villar by his fellow Senators; because that’s long enough bleeding of money and people for KAMPI to squirm; because that’s long enough for Estrada to prove the point that he’s still a force to reckon with and also to accept that he’s not as popular as he used to be (assuming he’s  seriously running to begin with), leaving a field of two where only one will even smile at the President.

And then we count the days till Gibo says goodbye.  By then he’ll have guaranteed himself a Senate seat in 2013 (assuming there’d still be a Senate) and solidified his new nickname, so it’s not a total loss.

So, Dear Reader, who’s your bet?

528,000 miles: A reaction to “Avatar”

You can see the ending of James Cameron’s Avatar from miles away.  I calculated with my foolproof method and determined from what exact distance you can see the ending.  Thus:

[Spoiler warning]

Let d=the diameter of the embolism you get when you realize that the theme reproduces that of Abyss (oh, wonderful, wonderful movie) down to the big bad militarists and the scientists willing to die for inter-species understanding;

Let f=the frequency of the shout you want to make when you see Ellen Ripley in a movie with aliens in it;

Let t=number of seconds into the film when you realize that it will reproduce the archetypes of the washed-out soldier, the traitor to the cause, the disgusted turning-away of the woman loved, and the expiatory rescue (Umberto Eco’s essay on Casablanca explains the mechanics);

Let G=Gaea; and

Let c=speed of light in a vacuum,  at least 800 parsecs from the nearest mass (because absolutely nothing will linger 15 minutes after finishing the movie),

And we derive the formula thus:

(1)

(2)                                                              !

(3)                                                                                       !

Which upon substitution yields the result: d=848,991,560 m or 8.49 x 10⁵ km.  Therefore you can see the ending of Avatar from about 8.49 x 10⁵ km (5.28 x 10⁵ miles) away, corrected for blue-shift (because the ending hurls itself at your face).

But don’t worry, the graphics are pretty enough that you’d stick with the movie to the end.  So enjoy it if you’ll watch it, and down with capitalism!

P.S., In keeping with the ever-emerging novus ordo saeclorum we shall call the formula novum modum imperatoris.  Unfortunately, only a monk named Jorge of Burgos can see it.

Protected: Anamnesis: another poem

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Gehenna, a poem of despair

I am not a poet, whatever my delusions to the contrary, albeit I often comfort myself with the thought that I at least “have the heart of a poet, if not the voice” (Dickinson, I think, issuing what we in the Philippines call consuelo de bobo, ‘idiot’s comfort’).  However, like ‘most everyone else I’ve written verses on everything from romantic love to despondency (though no one else, I think, has written a dirge, as I have, on a bout of, to be very indirect, “uncomfortably unschedulable enterological functions”–I can almost hear you saying ugh!).

Heavens, I do talk; but, anyway, I’m posting in this pseudo-lit blog (as I previously wrote here) another poem I wrote during one of my oh-so-routine fits of devastating depression.  I called it, very grandly, gehenna:

                    the stars are dark on crimson sky

                     the moon is black the sun is red

                     the valleys wilt the rivers dry

                     my body walks my soul is dead

         

                     my soul is dead i cannot feel

                     the dewy touch of early spring

                     not midday heat nor falling snow

                     nor autumn cold i cannot sing

          

                     of loss or joy or share a smile

                     all love or hate is gone from me

                     i call the void i dwell in i

                     for what have i forsaken thee