Greetings, readers. I am--if perchance we have never had the pleasure--Keigo Atobe, the new Guy with the Tie in the neighborhood. As I was surfing the 'net a few days past, I came across a fine blog, named The Young and Once Good Pundit, but pity thing! no sooner had I lain eyes upon it than it disappeared. After a lengthy inquiry, I discovered that the prior owner was set on abandoning it. Not that it was a bad blog, as he said in my confidence, but he was concerned over the fundamental goodness of blogging. Is there still, he asked, a net benefit to a good and moral blog even if its audience, that is the good, receive an incentive to quit their walks and book reading for the Internet, a notorious portal to iniquity and a magnificent waster of time? He is a firm believer--as am I--in the goodness of God's Creation, and of the virtue of the way of being-at-work lived by man until his own artifices began to fundamentally shift the way we must live in order to eke out a decent existence. I have, however, not come to the Crusader's ludditical conclusions; suffice it that I perceive more clearly the goods which come from maintaining a Catholic, conservative weblog such as this one. After some wrangling, and a concession on my part that the Crusader retain the right to publish, I have been handed this weathered little outpost, and have re-christened it, after my delightful movie (more on this must-see to come), A Blog from Atobe.

Reader, you are right to have questions. First off, you may wonder who-in-the-heck I am. Maybe you do indeed know me as the Atobe from the fabulous manga/anime The Prince of Tennis--if so join my fan club here--but you never imagined I was a living, breathing person, but just a cartoon character. Anyone who thought that is wrong. My good friend Takeshi Konomi was actually just writing about the exceptional season the Seishun Gakuen (Seigaku) tennis club had in 1999. The anime was, albeit, more dramatization than documentary, but that was largely necessary since most of the action went unfilmed, and we were all called back to reenact that year of triumphs and--for my beloved Hyotei Gakuen, among others--our regrettable failures. If you were perplexed by the appearance of all the kids who were still supposedly 12, 13, and 14, now you know why they looked and acted just shy of their majority. (What a trial it was on the makeup artists to keep our appearances consistent for the four years of anime!) Moreover, unlike Crusader but like everyone else these days I, Atobe, have a Facebook here, though as you can see I tired of it as of July. So if either of us is a phony, it's him.

I still must explain just what led to the present business. Why am I, Atobe, whom you will remember as the immensely popular (and immensely rich) captain of the tennis club at my Jr. High alma mater, Hyotei, one of the best tennis players in all Japan, already playing at a pro level at 14, dawdle hours and hours on the blog of a decidedly plebeian rightist with a Western religion? Remember that I was but 14 years of age in 1999, when the manga and anime were set; I am now 24, and a lot has happened in my life since the events there portrayed. Most importantly, just a few months after the manga ended I, Atobe, became a catechumen and entered the Roman Catholic Church the following Easter. I know, I know, it certainly seems out of character. I've always got the spotlight, and I know it--this fan was right to set me to a pretentious Britney tune. But right as the Nationals were wrapping up, two of the club members, Ryo Shishido and Chotaro Ohtori, began to be drawn to a Catholic church by Providence, even though neither had had much contact with Christianity. Since it made a nice aesthetic shot, they even included one such visit in the anime, though from before they came to believe (to see it, skip to 12:52 on ova episode 8). Well, it made quite the hubbub when they word of their conversion hit the world of Jr. High tennis, but you should've seen the gawkers when, after many leisured discussions with the pair I, Atobe, announced my intention to convert with them! The rest, as the Americans say, is history. The three of us were inclined toward traditionalism when we ran across Fr. Thomas Onoda from the SSPX mission in Tokyo. The SSPX in Japan could fit into a Mariott room, needs more priests, and could use an improved website; maybe I should pitch in a few yen one of these days and soak them with some much needed assistance.

Another reason for having A Blog from Atobe is that I share Crusader88's far Right politics. Always have. They didn't want to bring it in to the manga, but the Atobe family is renowned for using its dough (and me my tennis fame) to boost nationalist and patriotic causes. Just before the manga got going, my whole family was energetically campaigning for now-Governor Ishihara. At times coach Sakaki gave me a real talking-to for causing too much of a hubbub with the local Uyoku dantai. Though Japanese nationalists often have an anti-American attitude because of the management of military affairs by the United States, Crusader is an isolationist paleoconservative, so when I went to the USA for an Assumption education (I was so busy with the The Prince of Tennis anime that I couldn't enter college until Fall 2008, so even though I'm Crusader's senpai in years, he's one class above me!), and discovered the fate of this blog, I couldn't but feel an opportunity in taking the wheel.

Now that we have been properly introduced, I have some business to attend to. You see, Crusader88 had a sonnet due for one Agnes Regina, a good Catholic traditionalist blogger girl he met online. She blogs here with a few friends. The man was out of ideas, and gave up on writing a worthy sonnet to fulfill her request. Hence I, Atobe was called upon to pen one for him.

俺様の美技に酔いな! Or to use the English, Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

Sonnet CXXXV

Our Agnes, Queen, is Argentinian

By birth, but the United States have since

Become her home. A special Providence,

Now, brings her to New England. Second in

A healthy clan's eleven children, she

Distinguishes herself as pianist,

For nowhere in the wide world does exist

A maiden more attuned to melody.

That genius carries over into poems--

A little formulaic, pieties

That put the reader on their praying knees.

Atop her Vespa Tesla, Agnes brings

This grace to bear on every place she goes,

A grace that, like her hair, just grows and grows.

Though the request was for a sonnet, I stereotypically thought up a haiku for the fair lady. Now, like Crusader, I'm actually much more familiar with sonnets given my education heavy in Western culture, but on a cue the inspiration hit me:

My Agnes' name falls

like orange-red yarn from fingers

into toddler's hands.

For now I, Atobe, am back in Japan, enjoying Christmas in my chateau with my as-yet nonreligious family (prayers). Though Crusader may not have better to do, I do, so for now, this has been Atobe, the King of Tennis--

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

At long last, I am back home, curled up in a rocking chair with a candle at the side table... get caught with a candle at AC, and you might lose your housing. Nope, not here. Finals and term papers are, at long last, despatched, and rather well if I may say so. As I told my friends, whenever I despaired or simply felt lazy, I motivated myself by thinking of anime. When the going gets tough, the tough take a break to watch anime. If I ever had a daunting paper to write for a reputedly hard grader, I'd don my Prince of Tennis thinking cap and say to myself, "~, just hit a boomerang snake and show them how it's done!" (Watch the video; its only 1 min. long). Grades, by the way, come out on December 23, my 21st birthday, so I hope they'll make a nice present.

The tree is already up, so I am free to do some leisure reading (pursuant to my Dante class, I just began the late Fr. Ernest Fortin's Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and His Precursors), watch Glenn Beck and Red Eye, and sort through the month's political mailings. As usual, I have no cash on hand to help out the noble beggars come to my mailbox, but I am rather heartened by what I read. A belated letter from the National Organization for Marriage on the Maine victory, a few appeal from theologically orthodox convents and seminaries, a few petitions to send away. Perhaps best of all was the letter from House Minority Leader John Boehner on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee. The rhetoric of the Republican establishment has been increasingly populistic for a while now, but I was especially pleased by this paragraph:

Obama and Pelosi are beholden to the liberal special interests that bankroll their campaigns with hundreds of millions of dollars. Your opinions and concerns do not matter. To them, you are part of an "angry mob" or just a "mindless zombie" tricked into opposing them by talk-radio or a cable-news network.

Truly, how America would get along without Fox News I can't imagine. For the first time in years, the G.O.P. is more popular than the Democratic Party. {Certainly a good thing versus the alternative, though not so much thanks to the Republican example than as to President Barack H. Obama. Remarkable how he squandered his outstanding popularity in less than a year.} But there has been some Republican initiative I've been keeping up with. Besides Rand Paul, whom I've mentioned as running for Senate in Kentucky, I was excited to learn about one candidate from the lovely state of Iowa. Bob Vander Plaats, website here, promises to issue an executive order to stay the gay "marriages" forced on the state by its supreme court until it's put to a vote (why didn't Mitt Romney do that for us?). This guy is great. As a conservative Christian (and, it seems, Dutch) he's received support from a blogger/employee on Mike Huckabee's HuckPac and, for the liberals in the audience, he's been- I was flabbergasted to learn this- endorsed by the local NAACP President! The guy's a Baptist minister, so he understands the importance of the family, among other things. Good luck to Vander Plaats.

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I've been ranting for a while, but one more thing. Massachusetts voters should check out Scott Brown's campaign site. Running against Martha Coakley, the guy's a long, long shot, but I'm gonna try and get the word out anyway, since he's outstanding by Massachusetts standards. As you can see here, he's against amnesty, giving illegal immigrants in-state tuition and driver's licenses (Governor Deval Patrick ran promising to provide those; only in Massachusetts), wants to leave the definition of marriage to the states, and while he's not pro-life, he at least supports a few restrictions.

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Oh, I'm getting bad, one last, last thing I JUST found. This is funny!

My Dante's Comedy class was canceled this morning, as there was a good fall of snow which subsequently turned to rain. It was, however, our last class, so we'll never get to discuss Dante's encounter with the Trinity. It seems as if, having glimpsed God, his last guide St. Bernard of Clairvaux turned him away and said, "All right, you have seen everything there is to see- let's go back now!" How unsatisfying it would be if there were but 99 cantos rather than 100!

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Gather 'round the hearth, and be all the family refreshed by a round of tea, coffee, and hot chocolate! It's that time of year again! Fortunately, there was little agonizing over this year's Christmas sonnet, which I wrote after a 3:20 AM walk in a snowy field. I give you, though not perfect,

Sonnet CXXXIV The Christ Child

He pines for cherishing in crossed, warm arms
That clasp Him to their bosoms, as to suns.
The dawn itself is still so new that men's
Awakenings are still to come, in turns.
The red sun's light, Norwegian, far-off, cold,
Can't touch His face till its communional.
Still we, like smaller, nearer stars, may all
Enwrap Him till its route is halfway sailed.

So young. His body still feels moist, from birth.
That body may look fixed, but isn't yet.
In our own chest, the cartilage will set
And cozily remember, when the earth
Lies desolate again, we helped His need
When He, when He required care and ward.

May this Christmas be a delight to all, and an occasion of closeness to the Son of God. Though it is only sixteen days away, given finals and term papers, I feel like ancient Israel counting off the centuries until their Messiah should arrive. Its at times like this, especially for those with real jobs I imagine, that you could almost pray like this


































In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The decade, regrettably, is winding down, but the best idea of the 00s has only come to my attention in this December of 2009. After checking in on the victory in New York, I came across a site devoted to one of my favorite things: a serious joke. Californian John Marcotte is attempting a political stunt to lampoom the logic of supporters of natural marriage in the Golden State. As he describes the effort on the About page,

RescueMarriage.org is the brain-child of concerned Christian and political activist John Marcotte, who felt strongly that Prop 8 did not go far enough in protecting traditional marriage. With the help of attorneys and friends, Marcotte is attempting to ban divorce in the State of California.

Now, the guy is clearly a sarcastic liberal (I can't remember where, but one of the articles on Marcotte's efforts said he'd opposed Prop. 8), and the website graphics are not very respectful of marriage, but his logic is right on. And he really seems to be collecting signatures; if he got the measure, to be dubbed the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act, on the ballot, I perceive four advantages:

-Christians would be able to vote their conscience and witness Christ's teaching on the indissolubility of marriage.

-Even satire can help to reopen the discussion on this social ill, which has long been accepted as if it were natural.

-The Catholic bishops, Protestant and Mormon churches, and pro-family orgs would all have to take public stands on the issue. While liberals often point out that St. Paul, and not Jesus, spoke against homosexuality in Romans I (as if God had never made use of preachers to spread His message for Him in the past- and the while forgetting what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah), there is no getting around the Christian teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. The Sermon on the Mount... that's as Christian as it gets. Either the clergy and spokesmen would get behind the initiative, or they would make fools of themselves for opposing the teachings from Christ's own mouth.

-If enough college morons, Hollywood liberals, and nonbelieving homosexuals jokingly voted with the minority of believing Christians and Oscar Wildes in California, could it actually pass?...

If I had a Facebook, I'd immediately join their already over 22,000 members here, so I recommend that course of action for you, my audience. A token donation would be in order, too, minus that I wouldn't trust this guy with a red cent.

Bad news. During a "study break", I was perusing The Technodrome, a website devoted to that classic cartoon series of the 80s and 90s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The site's not the bad part; I'm glad to see a site devoted to an old favorite show going strong after 10 years, so it's headed for the sidebar. But there was some old news I'd missed posted there- Nickelodeon has acquired the rights to TMNT and is planning a new series and movie. That wouldn't be bad either, except that, like everything these days, they'll be in CGI, one of the numerous, though onerous, banes of my existence. Why adulterate the fine series, which lives so happily in the memories of all us Babies of the 80s?

Why, for that matter, was I thinking about the series at the library, you might ask? As my mind wandered whilst writing a paper (which I later finished), I was giggling about one of the sillier associations I've subconsciously made in my mind. For some reason, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona (left) reminds me of Bebop (right) from TMNT. Hmm. What do the two gentlemen have in common? Kyl is certainly the more genteel of the pair. Well, Kyl and Bebop are both steadfastly against gun control!