Just to scare the snot out of you

What I'm going as for Halloween:

 

Image courtesy of Althouse, who picked it up from a link at National Review. Her husband Meade's comment is pretty funny, I think.

Other than that, be afraid, be very afraid. These are the Left's latter day Children of the Corn.

Totally unrelated: WTF is "Hadroop"? Logging in en route to post this, Google Adservices informs me I can learn it in 15 days. I sure hope it doesn't involve "genderbread".

Dave Davies: In You I Believe

I remember buying this from a "bargain bin" circa 1981. Dave Davies's solo stuff always reminded me of Triumph with his high voice and prominent lead guitar. The lick from this tune has always stayed with me. It kicks up to my virtual turn-table as I walk down Lorain Ave on Friday in my blue jeans.



It's a walking song.

The Dante Trail trail: E Beeros, Christos

Eh...I might have fudged the Latin a bit. Whatever.

This post wraps up Rod's Italian vacation and our studious following of it as well. A quick synopsis:

Rod likes the Benedictine monastery in Norcia, a lot, for a whole host of reasons, but beer seems to be the one shoving itself into the camera frame. Three of the five pics in his last overseas post were either of or about the beer they brew, and his general takeaway was that the beer helped them bring people to the Church, hence the subtitle of our post.

This could also be a revealing element of Rod's teologia dei suini which we've been unpacking here, namely that, for some souls like Rod, everything that goes in their goozlepipe comes to be regarded as a divine sacrament.

Rod would also like us to know, PAULI, PIK, and DIANE

I told the monks a bit of my story, about how I became Orthodox. There was no sense of judgment or hardness toward me for having left the Catholic Church.

So there.

I graded the beer pics as food pics, bringing our final tote to:

Total pics: 43 - 100%

Selfies: 7 - 16% of total

Things Rod Ate: 12 - 24% of total

Hope someone out there had the winning square. I didn't. I had bet on more selfies, but food took the lead in the final straightaway

Our final Dante Trail trail takeaway: given the preview we've seen on the Dante Trail trail, boy, howdy, will Rod be batting out of his league trying to fuse a figure like Dante into his personal spiritual maelstrom.

There's been no hint so far that his engagement with Dante in Italy has been anything beyond travel guide name- and place-dropping, while the overwhelming focus of the content has been Rod's comestible-obsessed feeling tour of the small part of Italy he could afford to visit.

An honest book about Rod for those for whom he's their spiritual guru? That would sell, to those people. A serious, scholastically researched book about Dante? Well, maybe there's still room for another one, even by an amateur.

But a book where Rod in effect only rubs Dante's head for luck while leading us on a pseudo-Dantean journey through his own personal Hell? This is bait for the publishing Erinyes, fer sure. May they be merciful and not take his eyes.

And with this I'll hand it over to our readers. What sort of Dante-based book about saving Rod's life would you or anyone you know be likely to buy?

Oohhh! Oohhh! Mr. Kotter!

Yeah, Pikkumatti got me in the mood for mashups. How about this one? I think the name that formed in my mind while watching this was Vinnie Barbarino.

. . . oh bother . . . . oh bother . . . .

Apocalypse Pooh (warning for salty language):

Best mashup ever, IMO.

H/T Guns.com.

Hold Pro-Abortion Politicians Accountable

Here's an email I got yesterday from the National Pro-Life Alliance. If you can throw some funds their way, please do.

Pauli --

"Many hands make light work . . ."

. . . That's pretty much the whole idea behind grassroots mobilization.

NPLA doesn't have the powerful interests spending hundreds of millions. (And we don't need them.)

We have supporters like you, and at big fundraising deadlines, we're absolutely relying on you to come through and make a donation.

Can we count on you, Pauli?

According to our records associated with this exact email address, here's what we have marked down for you:

-- 2014 Election Mobilization Program: Not yet
-- Suggested Action: Donate $5 or more today.

Every day when I come to work, I see why grassroots organizing matters. It's about building relationships, and empowering everyday Americans to stand up and be heard.

It's truly inspiring.

But when we're facing a huge budget deadline like Thursday's, it's also incredibly nerve-wracking.

Our grassroots programs depend on support from folks like you -- anyone who is ready to take action across the country.

We set a goal of reaching $43,000 before Thursday at midnight (24 hours). That breaks down to about 16 donations from . We can do that, right?

Every donation here goes a long way. (And it's my job to make sure of that!)

Before our critical fundraising deadline on Thursday night, please chip in $5 or more:

http://www.nationalprolifealliance.com/accountable-2014.aspx

Thanks,

-- Jenni

 

Chirpmunk

Man, take a vow of silence, won't ya?

On the Dante Trail trail: Behold, America: A Ham Tree!

Now we're talking. Our third Station of the Belly: charcuterie, the sacrament of the teologia dei suini and its apostle.

To leaven lurking little voices like this

The primi piatti was spaghetti with mushrooms and black truffles, and the secondi was a mixed grill that included, yes, wild boar. I wish I had a boar piglet sleeping at the foot of my bed tonight. And I wish Nonna would come by and bring me warm milk and tell me a bedtime story.

with at least some alibi of spirituality we also get this sworn testimony

I spent an hour today praying my prayer rule in front of the altar of the crypt church, underneath the church you see above.

Why an hour rather than 50 minutes or an hour ten isn't specified, and as usual how anyone but Rod would really know isn't either, but I think the message comes through loud and clear: Rod is a prayer athlete, no doubt also explaining his inexhaustible need for fuel, particularly black truffles which contain the vital amino acid precarosine.

Those of us who maybe pray for five minutes or so at bedtime for our family and friends would clearly be out of our league in this sort competitive exhibition.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but an hour of prayer taken from the day is an hour that wasn't spent learning much about Dante, which tends to reinforce my suspicion that the Dante book will be more about Rod's interior life than about Dante and his work. You, potential Dante book reader, will in turn be vicariously saved, not so much by Dante, but by absorbing these various sensibilities of the athletic apostle we're following here as if they were a spiritual vapor rub.

The ham tree and its associated signs from this SOTB shift our tote board once again:

Total pics: 38 - 100%

Selfies: 7 - 18% of total

Things Rod Ate: 9 - 24% of total

Our Dante Trail trail takeaway this evening: by your works you shall be known. Although our following leads with this piety, salted with the language of the donkey-born traveler of yore

Casella and I find ourselves lodging here tonight. We came to make a pilgrimage to the church and monastery built over the birthplace of the saint and his twin sister, St. Scholastica. A happy, happy benefit of coming here is that Norcia (Nursia, to Americans) is known for cured meats, wild boar, and truffles.

the picture sequence reveals a completely opposite set of priorities. As Rod himself says, there's a lesson here for us Christians in these times.