If you were wondering where I, Atobe, have been these months past, You, sir, have are ignorant of must-know entertainment news. Yes: Shame on you for forgetting about The Prince of Tennis: Eikoku-shiki Teikyū-jō Kessen!, the brand new Prince of Tennis movie that hits theaters September 3! Quite naturally I, Atobe, neededto join Echizen, Tezuka, and the rest of Hyotei back in Japan to film the scenes that take place on the Main Island (the plot eventually takes us to Wimbledon, and I, Atobe, am truly excited for our sojourn in England on the Lesser Island of Britain). We also have to do a few scenes for The Prince of Tennis: Another Story II, the OVA to be released at the same time as the major motion picture. Notice my conspicuous place in the movie poster. View a thirty second sneak peek here!

As you can see, my fraternal nemesis Echizen looks less than bad in the OVA montage. My upbeat tone, you may imagine, is in part an effort to sound happier than I, Atobe, admittedly am, after the tsunami hit so close to home. The Abobe estates, well inland, are intact, and more importantly my friends are all safe as well, but Japan needs a lift or two or three after the disaster, given the loss of life. Otherthan the personal camaraderie with longtime friends, I, Atobe, took solace in Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's re-election, especially AFTER the right-wing giant declared the tsunami a divine punishment for greed and materialism. Now, I, Atobe, do not venture to say what's on God's mind, but as mourners in this effectively secular empire ask Why, this is a great occasion to remember that we, the West and the Westernized, are hardly innocent in the grand scheme of things, and ought to take this opportunity to reconnect with, or in our case discover for the first time, Jesus and His message. Apologies though there were, my countrymen evidently still recognize the offender as a better leader than the decidedly lukewarm PM Kan.

More important, though, was the True Finns victory in Finland. Now, Crusader was looking forward to blogging about the foregone win, but is presently too tired from staying up late to finish reading his obscure beloved novel The Lilac Sunbonnet. As the Eurocrats were readying a new round of bailouts, do understand, Catholic convert Timo Soini and his merry band of True Finns weighed in on the situation, and the scales tipped in their favor: quite literally, as you can see! The results of the Sunday vote are most heartening: the True Finns shot up from 4% to 19% of the total, more than fourfold their 2007 returns. Look: They came in third place, and all seven of the other top eight parties bled votes. If that's not something to get excited about, I, Atobe, don't know what is. If they had won just 1 1/2% more of the electorate, they would have taken first place. However, the fact remains that 76 3/5% of the voters still opted for the governing False Finns (if we group the Christian Democrats, who did worse, and the minor Freedom and Change 2011 parties, which did better, with the good guys). So close. Despite the protest vote, the bailout will undoubtedly go ahead.

Still, it is good for the Far Right, a term I, Atobe, wear as a complement, to do this well; the only country where they have a plurality is Switzerland. And they could never have grown so much without proportional representation; who would vote for a party likely to have no more than a Perot effect at best (yes, Leslie found me that example)? Hence we place great hope in the upcoming referendum on adopting the Alternative Vote system in UK parliamentary elections. Thought the British National Party opposes AV as insufficiently proportional, I, Atobe, think it's the only chance Britons have of getting a parliamentarian who speaks against persecutions like this in the near future. In this latest Western persecution of Christians the BNP bravely exposes,

an electrician now faces the sack for displaying a cross on the dashboard of his work van.

The electrician, who works for Wakefield and District Housing, was told that his cross risked offending those who did not follow the Christian faith. Despite asking Mr Atkinson to remove his cross from the van, one of his managers has a poster of Che Guevara on the wall in the main office!

That's how the world works, baby. [On the happier side though, my congratulations to the four Christian Frenchmen (Really! Christian Frenchmen!) that vandalized a blasphemous work of trash. Blasphemers of Christ have no freedom or rights in my book. Sadly, some worse-meaning intruders committed a sacrilege against Jesus Christ and Our Lady in Spain; this is getting as bad as Second Republic.] In retrospect, I, Atobe, wish we could renegotiate our shooting deals, and relocate to some country that doesn't persecute its Christian minority.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

As it happened, Miss Carlson did not win the SGA President race; despite her funny videos, she was in Chicago studying theater for the entirety of the campaign, and could not overcome the victor's enthusiasm at a distance. Nonetheless, I am confident the SGA will be left in good hands, at least at the top. Other than President-elect Wiley's on-record independent streak, which I mentioned in the last post, she is among the most personable friends I have made at Assumption. When she told me, of late, that she, like me, had given up soda for Lent, I was reassured of what we hold in common, and I'm not only talking beloved beverages with which we could afford to part.

I cannot deny my worry that, with the departure of our cometic Class of 2011, the student government will want a bit of enthusiasm. On election speeches night, many if not most candidates, facing little competition, did not even bother slouching to the podium to say "Ay".

[Who could beat that ticket?? Though I hear there's been some progress in getting new tunes for the Taylor juke box, I'll bet an SGA President Fonz would've fixed it up years ago!]

What kind of representation is that? The students may (due to collective apathy) have only one choice, but I still think they deserve to be told where their student leaders plan on leading them. To be fair though, I do have confidence in the ability and devotion of everyone who got elected. But there was one major disappointment: the notorious Senator Brennan, tired of the ire of Student Affairs and company, quit the race for VP of Academic Affairs even though he was a surefire win. The (unopposed) victor will probably do a great job, but no one can equal Brennan's prowess at navigating scholastic conundrums and enunciating how we ought to do it. On the positive side, we are departing with a last hurrah: a witty and wise article by outgoing VP for Academic Affairs John Guinan, on pretty much the same thing I wrote about, but updated for the new semester. In summary, the mild-mannered and, as I said in my recent sonnet, usually cautious and prudent Mr. Guinan has had it with the way things are run around here, and has typed a worthy complement to my original controversial article. To my credit, he consulted me a few times and accepted a few revisions by me before publication, adding, perhaps most of all, to the piece's humor. If you were wondering when the line "--the winter training from which Senator Brennan played the noblest hooky--" popped into my colleague's brain, now you know. Oh and, the book John mentions in the article is Fr. Barry Bercier, A.A.'s The Skies of Babylon, a fine and true evaluation of the American university under the dispensation of 60s liberalism and professionalism. It's a fine book: you may buy it here.

There will be fury, whether of the open or the covert variety, from the usual foes and differently-minded friends, but this should not be anything new to them, so they can probably endure it without a hissy fit. To the ease of their mind, the author and his ally will soon be but SGA emeriti. Even were they in the mood for a censure, there aren't even enough meetings left to dole out The Brennan Treatment.

At the same time, the scattered devotees of Catholic liberal education have given us positive feedback. Among John's fans, I was emphatically happy to count Bernadette Smith the Ginger, and Lady Margaret (soon-to-be) Jones (she is betrothed to a sturdy, handsome, and worthy Marine, whom she shall marry when he returns to his native soil). Bernadette, longtime readers may recall, was the subject of my 2007 sonnet, "The Faerie Ginger". We had a convivial and happy conversation in Charlie's.

In the spirit of Machiavellian generosity, I inquired into their feelings toward pretzels and, finding them favorable, returned to the CAB office from which I had emerged to, with a degree of permission, pilfer them two snack bags for their immediate consumption.

Margaret (she likes Maggie, but Margaret just sounds swell with Jones doesn't it?) is wearing the Fight Club shirt, as you can guess from her non-ginger hair. Earlier I had commented on the shirt's cleverness; it was part of a campaign to promote hygiene and prevent the spread of flu, very apt given the movie's soap motif. However, as I stressed, I hate Fight Club for its unintellectual nihilism and overall grossness: as my profile reveals, In Cold Blood is more to my taste as far as dark and gruesome motion pictures go. Something in that movie is just just. Other that the beautiful imagery [the other film seems to be of that school that rejects beauty] and subtle touches of theology, it is the best artistic arguments for the rightness of the death penalty I have ever seen. I have ventured beyond our conversation, but no matter! If the conversation then contained more in the way at mildly indignant words toward the Leviathan that is Student Affairs, to communicate with you on the over-appreciation of one film and the wrongheaded overshadowing of the other is no less fine a thing.

*************

On a lighter note, I happily link to a Provoc article covering the ordination of Fr. Vo Tran Gia Dinh, A.A. (yes, he's Vietnamese). Formerly Br. Dinh, he is a jovial pal and the adviser to the Assumption Advocates for Life. Personally, I credit him with knowing the whereabouts of some delectable Vietnamese cuisine, and can "fault" him with nothing more severe than his anomalous axiom, "Time does not exist" (which he did not even pick up from the famed Prof. Bauer). Say a prayer that he may serve the Lord for many years as a holy priest.

For my part, I admit I have been absent from the AA4L of late, given the meeting time of that more pressing engagement, the anime club. Happily, though, piety and program are not always at odds.

Much to my surprise, I recently learned that Maria†Holic, the 2009 Catholic girl's high school comedy with a touch of overt-yet-torturously-thwarted lesbianism (trust me on this one; in the first season there was even a scene where the characters discussed rosaries, and I have pictorial evidence), is having a second season: Maria†Holic: Alive! Saw the first episode just yesterday, and it was fantastic!

Beginners will appreciate that the first episode's opening serves as an informative and hilarious introduction to the whole series. See for yourself!

**SPECIAL BULLETIN** for Assumption College non-seniors and their friends: Leslie Higgins officially endorses JACKI CARLSON, his wonderful Class of 2012 colleague, for SGA President.

Leslie will not stick around for her tenure, but, in the spirit of giving AC the gift that keeps on giving, in this race between two good and independent-minded candidates, both of whom voted to save trays at Taylor Dining Hall in 2009 (see beside vanished image), he endorses Miss Carlson as the one who would, in his judgment, serve the school the best. Watch her campaign commercial and her interview with Tobin Hasse on You Tube!

Jacki Carlson

for SGA President and Senator!

She is JUST LIKE YOU!

A mere fifteen days, and already I can type a virtual retrospect on the Libyan Civil War of 2011! As the Guardian reports, and I worried (while I did not quite predict a quagmire in my last post, I did bemoan our decision to intervene when Col. Gaddafi was "so close!" to bustin' up those rebels; see ¶7), the war is officially "descending into stalemate":

Whatever the outcome, what seems most unlikely is that the rebels' newly visible generals will be leading their troops into Tripoli any time in the near future.

NATO hacks generally and President Obama in particular are surprisingly frank about their decision to slow down the bombing campaign, and the latter has indeed stuck to his vow not to send in ground troops. But, of course, that is because my alternative prediction (that we would draw down irresponsibly) has come to pass. Does NATO really think their sorties will save lives at the end of the day? The fight mayn't be as intense, but everything looks set for a prolonged and still bloodier conflict.

I will be brief, but some emendations are due. Firstly, an apology--to Bad Guy Gaddafi!! To my unqualified amazement, one of the "comically obvious lies" for which I criticized him two weeks ago had a kernel of truth: some of the Libyan rebels are Islamist veterans of the Iraq War! The rebel officer who spoke with the Telegraph even fought against the coalition in Afghanistan before being captured in 2002 and, typically, being released by the US to Libya in 2008! And see this story about additional mujahedeen "rebels" here. Dictator's intuition, I guess. On the other hand, shame on Secretary of State Clinton! She admits she doesn't even understand who these rebels are--we're still "getting to know" them. How comforting.

As a Catholic, I am glad that Bishop Martinelli, the apostolic vicar of Tripoli, is also critical of military intervention. Understandably, he sounds rather overwhelmed, but evidently thinks our bombing campaign isn't speeding the peace. As a rightist, I am happy that, on the first day of the allied attack, the British National Party's Nick Griffin MEP declared the campaign "madness, utter madness." Expressing the official BNP position, he lambastes PM Cameron's hawkish opportunism. Griffin, like Saif al-Islam whom I quoted earlier, says

The stench of hypocrisy is stomach-churning. Western politicians, including Blair and the EU’s Herman Van Rompuy, were pictured literally hugging Gaddafi not so long ago. Now they plan to put him on trial and execute him like Saddam Hussein.

and straightforwardly positions the BNP as the UK's "Peace Party". Lucky Britain; we don't have one of those.

*************

The SGA shall soon hold elections for the execs and senate to succeed yours truly and his classmen. Hence, the time is ripe for a tribute/roast to one of my closest friends, VP for Academic Affairs and Buckleyite partner-in-crime John Guinan (a better politician than those ridiculed above!) He had long requested a sonnet from me, so a few weeks ago I wrote him

Sonnet CLI- John Guinan

It was a tie black night when you met John,
His collar open for the fastening.
A friend of his, I said your opening.
"Ah! Have you read Emmanuel d'Alzon?"
He questioned, eyes cast over you. "So good.
Of all the Catholic Intellectual
Tradition, he's the best--a frank, noble
Intolerance is good, he says. Who would
Be bold enough to say these things today?"
I answered. He said, "Just be tactful too.
Do you subscribe to National Review?
The mag is not so blunt, and that's okay.
See Leslie's smart, but can sound crazy too.
You're not ridiculous like him, are you?

Even if it is as much about me as him, he loved it, as did the audience at the last d'Alzon poetry event.