The E'er Good Pundit

2012-01-13T19:47:00.009-05:00

Where were we? Admittedly, besides the usual reading and writing, my free time has been taken up in trying to finish one spectacular and spectacularly long anime, Detective Conan. Seen here are Conan Edogawa, and his sometime rival Kaitou Kid in the background. As of yesterday, I passed episode 550, and have about 100 more to go before I can finally add this hefty notch to my anime belt. Measured and empirical, the series stands in contrast to the lighthearted moe series I usually prefer. To be sure, there is much adventure (whenever the villainous Black Organization shows up), and an uneventful love element between the protagonist Shinichi Kudo and Ran Mouri, the girl he was growing close to before the Black Organization turned him back into a child, and he adopts the Conan identity. Of course, the lover of hopeless causes that I am, my sympathies lie with Ayumi Yoshida, his admirer within the Detective Boys group his newfound elementary school comrades form around his high school detective talents.

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An old friend of mine said to me that these are Strange Days. The turn of the phrase is rather negative, but given candidate Ron Paul's astoundingly good performance in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, I feel obliged to justify him those still wary:

Ron Paul: A Strange Candidate for Strange Times

I suspect, after all, that relatively few of Dr. Paul's supporters would confess their second choice to be Rick Santorum, as I do (unless you count the marginal protectionist candidate Buddy Roemer). Generally speaking, I bear few sympathies with the libertarians, who consistently understate the consequences of immoral and antisocial behaviors on the common good, so to keep their individualistic philosophy afloat, the conscientious paleoconservative has no other choice in the Republican 2012 field. His pledge to eliminate multiple departments from the federal government, cut the budget by at least $1 trillion the first year, end the Federal Reserve and restore hard money, end our foreign wars, end birthright citizenship, offer a $5,000 per child tax credit for tutors, books, computers, and other educational needs for homeschoolers (sounds opulent, until you remember all the goodies public schools get for the sake of brainwashing us into politically correct heathens), and decimate (that is, reduce by 10%) the federal workforce set him apart. While Paul has largely avoided hard rhetoric on borer security, he states clearly that there will be no amnesty (which Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, supposedly "conservative" alternatives to Mitt Romney in their times, could not promise). And while he is too moderate on the marriage issue, and thinks it wise to legalize immoral drugs, he is arguably the most pro-life of all the contenders, and hence more than qualifies for my support.

By all indications, Paul is a deeply Christian man, but reticent to speak of it publicly (among other things, this would alienate the many nonbelievers within his libertarian base). He leaves the profession of his beliefs to a Statement of Faith on his website. As I alluded earlier, in these Strange Times, where Christians in the West find their most formidable foe to be their own governments (thankfully, though, I must admit that the late Supreme Court decision protecting the Church's freedom to control whom it hires and fires, may represent a reprieve from the same in these United States), the time for a libertarian in the Oval Office has come. As Paul says,

I’m running for President of the United States because I believe that our traditions and way of life are under attack from an out-of-control federal government and reckless politicians who show no regard for what our Founders entrusted to our protection.

His defense of liberty is in the service of our America's traditions. The Zionist hawkery of evangelical Protestants notwithstanding, faithful Catholics in our country are already drawn to Paul. For example, in 2008 Richmond, New Hampshire, a town bordering Massachusetts, and home to the Saint Benedict Center our Pundit occasionally visits, was the only town in the state to go for Ron Paul, giving him 34% of their vote to Mitt Romney's 20%, while Paul received just 7.8% statewide. This time around (hover over the middle of the three green communities bordering Massachusetts), Paul won 47.7% to 22.1% for Romney. The town is tiny--the total tally of votes in last week's primary was 243--and shows just how Catholic traditionalists would rock the vote, if only they were more numerous. This traditionalist, at any rate, takes pride in sporting the pin he bought at the Ron Paul Store on his lapel as he hits his favorite spots in liberal Northampton.

Paul came in second place, but at least he received three delegates for the convention. According to polls I've seen, he's up to 15% in South Carolina, and according to one source has reached 20% support. Given the problems our Nation faces (very fresh in my brain, as I read Patrick Buchanan's epic and enthralling Suicide of a Superpower after getting it for Christmas), I can only hope, and pray that our fellow Christians turn to him, before it is too late for America. To be sure, I am not the sort of historicist who believes it can literally be "too late", but there comes a time when little is left to preserve in a moribund country, other than architecture. Think the Czech Republic, France, Latvia, Estonia, and other hotbeds of secularism with dire birthrates and nothing to save but stone cathedrals. We aren't there yet, or not so badly as they, I think. But either way, the only candidate worthy of hope is the one who promises to outright Restore America Now.

2011-12-07T15:09:00.002-05:00

Quite often lately, I have thought on the future of beauty, mainly in illustration and fashion, but also in painting and music, though the last has hardly ever been my strength. Call it the influence of the European New Right. That anti-democratic school, its potent intellectual currents fed by the best insights of the post-Nietzschean Right, as well as of traditional Catholicism, tends to be very futuristic: that is, concerned with the way perennial ideals are embodied in new forms, artistic or not, rather than in revivifying older forms. While the distinction reflects an unfair dismissal of the contributions to culture made traditionalists (the vibrancy of communal life in Latin Mass churches being a perfect reproof of the bias against them), they do have a point. Newer forms and styles of art have, despite disadvantages, great potentials yet unrealized. While I, a child of the 90s, usually prefer bubblegum pop or its close cousins when I do listen to contemporary music, after reading this thought-provoking article at a New Right publisher's website, and listening to "Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still", a piano song by the neofolk group Current 93, at long last I am awed by the possibility for greatness music still holds. Though neofolk often glorifies European paganism, we can make common cause with David Tibet, the front man of Current 93, who identifies as Christian. I hope to become much better acquainted with the genre in the future, but even now, I can recommend, also, Current 93's "Tamlin", an eerie modern ballad wrought from the traditional, without fear of your boredom or disapproval, my cultured reader.

My favorite arts after the literary, however, are the visual, to most of my musings and all of my efforts are devoted. As a lover of anime for reasons beyond the standby "It's over 9000!" (if only it weren't for dubs), and even more so of Gothic manga like Rozen Maiden, Godchild, and Dantalian no Shoka, it was natural that I should eventually succumb to the charms of Imai Kira. A cutie in her own right, as you can see, she is known for her illustration artbooks, calendars, and most famously for the art she produces for Angelic Pretty, a lolita fashion clothier with, for all my Californian readers, a location in San Francisco. Just days ago, two stunning, beautiful prints featuring her trademark innocents arrived in the mail. I can't find large images of the prints on the image search, but you may see them here and here. The dealer, Lolita Desu, is run out of Denmark by a femme with the cutest Nordic name--Sasha Maria Wiinholt Foght! On her equally kawaii Facebook, she represents herself as a cuddly furry!

My favorite Imai Kira works were not available for purchase, but I post a few here for your delight. I just adore Jewelry Princess, which is the Birth of Venus on the vanity. Please click to enlarge.

There is something profound about "The World in the Black of the Left Eye", the title of which is cut off here. Observe the birds, silhouettes of birds, fallen birds, feathers, egg, and candled pastry.

Piano! Piano! Piano! An unmatched socked herald with Medievally plain mien.

I believe this one is called "Sleep Child".

My favorite, melding modesty with sprightly eroticism. The hair is gorgeous.

My, my, and that is but the famed artist herself. Her work has inspired many admiring illustrators. See for instance this LiveJournal, Pinkish-White (see also the lady's Tumblr). Whatever one's tastes, her pastel-colored works, whether finished by hand or by Photoshop, are on to something.

I cannot conclude the post without recognizing some of the adherents to lolita fashion. Often overdone or misunderstood, the fashion, done rightly, enwraps the woman in the feminine beauty of her own nature, with the returned intensity of a forgotten age. In a time of spike heels, blue jeans, and halter tops, these self-motivated damsels give me hope. Some bloggers with really exceptional, inspiring style include Alice-tan of Pink Milk Tea, at left, and some of her friends at right.

Those interested may watch this short documentary, LoliGirls: The Story Behind The Frills and Bows, which I heartily enjoyed and is well done for an amateur project.

Russell Kirk, it may surprise even my fellow paleoconservatives to know, profiled romanticism in his epochal The Conservative Mind. Writing on "the whole struggle between philosophical radicalism and romantic conservatism," he wrote,

What the Romantics dreaded in a world subjected to Utilitarian domination was an indiscriminate destruction of variety, loveliness, and ancient rights in the name of devouring individualism and a Philistine materialism.

How true still today. May the Lord God, as we enter the fair season of Advent, soften our hearts to the finest things by the experience of beauty, Amen+

2011-11-15T17:51:00.011-05:00

For the reader's information, this 2009 Charles Coulombe article at Taki's Magazine gives an incisive and resonant account of the divide between "conservative," older paleoconservatives and their often "reconstructionist" younger counterparts. Coulombe, a Catholic monarchist born in 1960, spans the divide, and is an apt man to address the amusing subject, which has been on my mind since receiving the November 2011 issue of Chronicles magazine, whose cover proclaims, "Democracy is Tyranny." Does "democracy," I wonder, mean simply government by plebiscite, or does it include, in fact, all republics whose authority originates in the consent of the governed?

Before I leave the political realm, didja hear the remarkable news? Ron Paul is polling at 19% in Iowa! A single point behind receding frontrunner Herman Cain!!

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Sip is a new (and hopefully not passing) loose tea and coffee stop in downtown Northampton. As much a lover of tea as crisp-yet-corporate Coca-Cola, I had to try it out, and stopped by on a walk this afternoon. I can only give it my highest review. To be sure, the only beverage I downed was an Earl Grey tea, its flavor very good but not revelational. Like many dining establishments, Sip's greatest strength is its delectable selection of sides. My oatmeal raisin cookie, pumpkin spice tea bread, and microscopic block of Belgian chocolate were scrumptious. I did not buy these Belgian waffles, but as per pictures from another website they look good. I find the interior, though very modern, surprisingly nice, and very bright next to shady Starbucks. My favorite bit of décor is a wall printed with a wood of bare birch trees; it manages to look cutting edge with a new spin on realist forest frescoes. Best of all (though this can hardly be credited to the good management), one of the employees is a fair lady friend from high school who, as I admitted, had slipped into name-in-the-yearbook status over college. Given the bit of friendly conversation, Sip gave me the perfect atmosphere to complete my new sonnet, which I then read to my friend. She thought it beautiful.

Sonnet CLV- Three Seasons Joined Their Heavy Hands

In late October, t'was Year of Our Lord
Two Thousand and Eleven, trees aghast
To strip in summer's clime stayed verdant past
The midmonth, shrubberies in full accord.
But silksome winter, eager to extend
Her swanly wings on branches billowing,
Crashed early, donning leaves a pillowing
Straw-soft, and shattered branches loathe to bend.
It made a royal mess, and on the night
Three seasons joined their heavy hands the fall,
But little colored, stood there, that was all,
As their reunion wrestling tripped the light.
Exhausted, they turned from themselves instead
To where the stars in changeless ringlets sped.

Since an earlier sonnet commemorated the Great Ice Storm of 2008, I decided to describe the forceful storm of last month in a new poem. Fortunately, being in Northampton, our power was only out for an unprecedented but relatively short 32 hours, and we lost no food. But let me tell you, we here in Paradise City had some good clean fun! The only restaurant open downtown was Pinocchio's Pizza, an excellent, established eatery (which Catholics will praise for rejecting usurious credit cards and accepting cash only). Waiting in line fifteen or twenty minutes in line in a place lit only by dimming window light for an orangegreasy, doughy slice of pizza may not be everyone's cup of tea (that's Sip), but made many good memories!

2011-11-12T18:46:00.007-05:00

I shall soon embark on an epic quest. On the Lord's Day after next, November 20, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword will hit stores across North America; to Atobe's chagrin, the game actually won't be released in Japan until November 23, three days later. But, given the predominantly Western settings for Link's recurring adventures, the earlier release here is fitting. Since my brother purchased a Wii + New Super Mario Bros. Wii a few days ago, my fiery passion for the mainstays of Nintendo, and especially the heroic Legend of Zelda (see here; I even thought of Zelda after my baptism). As it were, and as I mentioned over four years ago in the first linked post, gamers have a bad name among Traditional Catholics; in society at-large, gaming is nearly a synonym for apathy and narcissism. I have never understood how this came to be. Games like Zelda, where the player guides a sword-wielding hero as he rescues maidens and vanquishes the teeming minions of darkness, point to something greater than the mean lives most gamers seem to lead. Thinking of Link, I think of what Zarathustra said:

It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope. His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there. Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man -- and the string of his bow will have unlearned to launch!

The bow is yet supple and ready. The fighting spirit still can rise in man against intolerable evils. Yet, as Zelda enthralls me, I could was, again, put off by the results of this week's elections across the Nation. To be sure, here in Northampton, David Narcewicz, my candidate of choice, won by a landslide, but both he and his opponent, Michael Bardsley, whom I voted for the last time against the since-resigned incumbent Mary Clare Higgins, are Far Left Democrats who march in Paradise City's annual gay pride parade, but I definitely knew who the lesser of two evils was after the Rainbow Times endorsed Bardsley; and unlike his predecessor and Bardsley, Narkewicz is a heterosexual, married man with children, though I'm sure he would have a guilt trip if he knew I found that a political plus; if we hadn't elected him, it may have been decades before such a normal fellow occupied City Hall! And other than that, here, the two at-large city councillors I did not want elected won, and voters rejected a proposal to eliminate the Community Preservation Act, a tax used to fund affordable housing and other pet projects chosen by a committee.

The worst disappointment, though, as you can well imagine, was Mississippians' failure to approve Amendment 26. I had expected better from the Deep South state, but the voters certainly were subject to an endless, hateful campaign of deception, and made the vote much closer than it would have been in Massachusetts. As the sponsor of the question, Personhood USA, responds on its blog, "Personhood USA firmly believes that our campaign fell victim to the outright lies of our opposition, and because of their lies, children will continue to be murdered in Mississippi." However heavy the bombardment of liberal spin, it should remain common sense that Amendment 26 would not give personhood to a "fertilized egg", so to speak, because once an egg is fertilized, it is no longer an egg but an individual organism. This diction, present where most voters read about the question in papers or online, is wordplay intended to portray it as irrational. Admittedly, the language of "personhood" is a bit one-size-fits-all, but that is the fault of the legal system Personhood USA and pro-life legislators have to work with. As per the 14th Amendment, "...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," the subjects of the protection of the laws are persons. In Catholic thought, while we do not know with certainly when the soul is infused, life is assumed to begin at conception, during which, science has informed us, the conceptus begins acting as an organism, has human life in some sense and is certainly not an appendage of a bigger being. To speak in terms of human beings (with the emphasis on beings, as in organic wholes) seems much clearer than to use the artificial term persons, which is subject to limitless definiton and redefinition by Kantian and utilitarian ethicists. So, we are at a disadvantage, but we needn't be bitter (though we might be, since the genocide of abortion has been reconfirmed by voters, many of them wary of losing their precious contraceptives and in-vitro fertilization) or give in: myself, as a creative reaction to the defeat at the hands of liberal propagandists, I am adding Personhood USA and the American Life League to my GoodSearch causes. The fight isn't over yet. Closer to home, it may be high time I sent my compadres at MassResistance a check.

2011-10-16T21:29:00.017-04:00

Good news. A few days ago our Pundit wrote a letter to the editor critical of the Occupy Wall Street movement, or more specifically its Occupy Northampton franchise. It appeared in today's Sunday Republican, a centrist daily published out of Springfield. Read it here. As of right now, it even has "Featured Story" status!

Letter-writer: Northampton protesters' shameless "gimme money"-style demands are on the caliber of rap lyrics, the composition of which might be a better occupation of their time.

As Han Solo said, sometimes I amaze even myself. For those interested, Jim Goad and Ann Coulter have also given apt evaluations of the movement in question.

To my great surprise, it stirred up a great response online, and at last check had garnered 82 responses, many if not most positive! As I note on my comment on the site, the editor did make an important typo—a protester's sign read "Love>Greed", from which, as I note, it follows that "when Richie Rich makes a profit, it’s greed, and when the ragged proletarians want to 'redistribute' his wealth to themselves, it’s love!", was made to meaninglessly read "LoveGreed"—but his added title, "Some protesters doth protest too much", is just marvelous, and captures my irascibly old-fashioned, Medieval mind.

Some remarks are necessary. While, as my faithful readers know, I often criticize capitalism on this weblog, this letter, while actually silent on capitalism itself, freely chastises its OWS antagonists. This doesn't represent a change of opinion on my part. Truth be told, conservatives like me should boycott Bank of America too, since it goes out of its way to cater to illegal immigrants. I bank locally. I am constantly aggrieved by the banality of capitalistic pop culture (except anime), architecture, trade deficits, and collusion with government to gain unfair advantages over small business, among other things. In a small way, I am glad that, now, both the Right and the Left are being overtaken by populist movements that demand with one voice, "End the Fed!", hopefully in favor of sound money.

What I absolutely cannot stand, and will not humor with claims of common cause, is the Marxist language of "We are the 99%!" As my commenters point out, the arrogance of any movement claiming to represent 99% of Americans without asking them first is astounding. It also reflects the dialectical-materialist mindset, according to which men are gathered together or opposed not by ties blood or belief, but by now much money they have, and which no thinking man ought entertain. That mass movements today still perpetuate this simple speak, which left tens of millions dead in 20th Century communist regimes, is offensive in the extreme.

Another thing. Much as the protest Left's drumming has not improved in fifty years, today's anticapitalist youth are on an even lower level than the original hippies. I sometimes think that, whereas Muslims are sometimes unfairly called "ragheads" (logically, the ladies of traditional Catholicism would be "laceheads"), it would be just to call these activists marked by particularly poor hygiene "ragshirts". And I say to you, wealthy Tom Monaghan is much closer to us traditional Catholics like myself, and Protestant Americans, than the Occupy Wall Street ragshirts!

The feedback thread from my letter is a heartening read. Highlights here:

Dear Leslie, Thank you for expressing the sentiments that I think most american s feel. This is all about a failed presidency, a failed economic policy and the extreme left's way of trying to get this guy another 4 years.—Itcf

Patriotism does not mean following blindly [he replies to a leftist], not knowing who the OW leaders are nor their goals, while calling for the destruction of the American system as a whole. OW leaders have called for Americans to
1. default on their student loans
2. default on their mortgages
3. default on the credit card payments...
You think this is "patriotic?" You and all the OW others should study some history... As an American, it's your right to follow anyone - just know WHO you are following so you don't hurt America. That's being patriotic.—suncatcher1

What do you expect for Northampton... the moonbat capital of Mass. Most of these "protesters" just like dancing around beating drums because they keep blaming "the man" for their life. Went up Main St. last night and thought that the circus was in town!—T-Ball

OWS (et al) demonstrations is nothing but a temper tantrum staged by societies losers and other mental misfits and anti-Semites from the socialist, communist and anarchist camps.
...
Senator McCarthy [he notes before I did] may have been and out of control drunken jerk, but that doesn't mean he was mistaken about there being communists in both the government and film industry. Kremlin records revealed in the 90s just how correct he happened to be about that fact.

To dismiss as McCarthyism someone making an observation that Marxists are involved or supporting this or that is nothing but a lazy cop out. Don't expect anyone to take your seriously if that's all you have to offer.—buddystone

Most of these protesters have no idea what they are doing or what they are protesting for. They are being led into a tunnel of Government controlled everything. I wouldn't call them communist, I would call the people putting this together communist sympathizers, and the zombie like followers will follow them into the cesspool.—obamaisdone

I also love the arrogance that they feel they speak for 99% of all Americans. They hardly speak for me and I am definately not what you call rich. I simply work my two jobs, pay my bills and try to have some fun every now and then. These OWS people are idiots.—01020ishome

I'm so sick and tired of those protesters! They couldn't give a reason why they're protesting other than being jealous of those who have jobs and making money. They want everything NOW without working for it. When I was young like those protesters, I had no money - worked 2 jobs and going to school. School paid off big time and I now have a respectable job, a respectable income, 2 cars, 2 great kids, and traveling quite a bit (ski trips to Colorado and California). They need to put their noses to the grindstones and earn their way up!—george7

And my personal favorite— communists protest in Northampton=the real american dream.—sickofthegames

Whether taken seriously or in jest, the comment reflects the decline of American culture since the end of World War II. Young Americans dream of a home, a car, and a two-child family, and blame the wealthy for their failure to succeed.

2011-10-07T18:26:00.005-04:00

Since Atobe and I no longer go to school together, he has abandoned this blogspot and has left it to me, though he may contribute columns on a lark in the future. Therefore, is shall not any longer be A Blog from Atobe after the still much to be recommended film A Gift from Atobe. Not wanting to return to The Young and Once Good Pundit, the older, high school age relic of a name, yet unable to think of a good new one, I have decided, here and now, on The E'er Good Pundit. E'er, that poetic & arrogantly archaic contraction of ever, serves as a quirky expression of my character, as well as a guarantee of the weblog's consistent quality.

Happily, I have a nice new sonnet for you. Truly, my rate of production of these fourteen lined poems has dropped in recent years, down from almost fifty a year when I began college, though this is mainly because I have spent more time on an epic poem; under a burst of inspiration, I wrote no less than 250 lines last week. I ask you, then, to enjoy

Sonnet CLIV- The Bookshelf

The shelf stored titles by a TV host
To magnify and stud his own career,
A statesman's monographs retelling near
Salvations tabled and good fights to boast.
It held hyperboles by misanthropes
Accredited as nuanced novelists,
Hardboiled ethicists whose logic twists
As Smith and Jones enact unlikely tropes.
Although romancers stowed their heartful tales
With sage men's lives of sought enlightenment,
Their place of pride become a banishment
Did not contain the owner's choicest pearls.
His favorite books he kept not as most read,
But as a certainty beside his bed.

Those unfamiliar with the genre mentioned in lines 7-8 may consider themselves lucky. In one college philosophy course on biomedical ethics, we read several utilitarians and neo-Kantians. They tended to argue by means of ever more complex and harebrained thought experiments, especially on the subjects of abortion (the most famous being Judith Jarvis Thomson's violinist problem) and "killng and letting die." The experiments may have a point, but after reading a particularly breathless question about whether it was worse for Smith to shoot Jones than to not tell Jones he was standing next to a bomb, my low estimation of their literary ability was sealed. Assumption being a good school, we also read several worthy followers of natural law; I particularly recall studying Hadley Arkes, a recent convert to the Faith from Judaism.

The practice of keeping the best books by one's bed, most notably the Bible, is common enough, but in writing this I actually remember the example of a former SGA President at Assumption. Though a solid partyer initiated in the ways of FiveMen, he was something of a philosopher king, and always kept copies of the Bible and the Republic on his desk.

2011-09-18T21:43:00.012-04:00

Please support The Fifty Beads and Fifty Cents Campaign (ongoing).

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What has our Pundit been up to lately?

Petitioning Pakistan to free a Christian convert convicted of blasphemy?
Fighting for a more petite-friendly fashion industry?
Generically asking retailers to stock more modest clothes?
Telling the US Government anime is the best thing for teens?
Protesting Seven Seas' refusal to publish the controversial masterwork Kodomo no Jikan?
Requesting a third season of Vampire Knight, a good-looking anime he's never even seen? (Alt. site here)
And getting a shuttle program at a college?

Yes, all of that and much, much more. It's been petition fever at A Blog from Atobe. Something about these famously ineffective online petitions excites our author. As it is, I was shocked I didn't see more "Free the [place n.] [#]!" petitions, and almost the only ones I did find were from annoying liberals, and received no support from me. The one I was gladdest to sign may have been the demand for a more petite-friendly fashion industry, due to all the kind short girls I knew in high school and college, as well as for the sake of cute little chibis everywhere. Beauty has always been very important to me, and I have always thought the ideal of the tall woman unnatural, and probably grounded in a feministic impulse to undermine the feminine, delicate, relative shortness of the fair sex. By nature, there is no reason at all an outfit cannot look stunning on a lady less than five feet high.

As I see it, this age is marked by the divide between cause people, who seek fulfillment through commitment to works of purported righteousness, and apathetic cynics. Whatever and how many bad things ought be said about ideological lemmings, they have the better of it. As Socrates argued in the Phaedo, misology and misanthropy are related, and misanthropy is fed by beginning with unreasonable expectations about human beings. Inflamed by the Rousseauian denial of original sin, and insistance on the "perfectibility" of man, people are more likely than ever to suffer a let-down when they realize utopian dreams are just that, and lose all hope in human goodness and potential. These are the people who spam good petitions, and create pointless, often vile petitions. With the latter example, the spammer's message, "HUMANITY IS GOD'S SIN", which he spent three-and-a-half days spamming several times a minute, eventually to reach a total above 60,000, is probably sadder than the demand itself, and demonstrates the nihilism petition saboteurs have imbibed. As a Catholic, I refuse to submit to that spirit. Not having too much to do, I take pleasure in signing good petitions; after all, I do not feel justified in complaining about something unless I do every little thing to address it first. Some online petitions might even be effective—I can easily see the pleas for the Pakistani Christian convert and a 3rd season of Vampire Knight being heard, since they each have tens of thousands of signatures, and I wouldn't be surprised if the shuttle program got enacted either. Few things a man can do online can be so sweet as lending someone your voice. Imagine, after a good petition gets spammed by careless heathens, the joy its creator receives when he sees one honest signature from a kind, concerned, unknown friend.

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I am now reading The Queen of the Damned, the third book in Anne Rice's Chronicles of the Vampire. Though an easy read, I am again astounded by her grasp of the essence of modernity. Her vampires are all individuals with varying perspectives, and sometimes utter (suspiciously facetious) praise of the 20th Century, but the oldest and wisest of them always end up realizing modernity's not all it's said to be. Here Armand, who lived in Renaissance Venice before he was made a vampire, speaks to the mortal Daniel, in his 30s. Boldface mine. The picture is from her Catholic period, if I may be so bold, and the saint pose—what could have been—is just too kawaii to pass up. For the life of me, I can't figure out why she's so liberal when she writes like this; just read how she describes birth control. From the way her vampire novels read it's hard to believe she was ever an atheist.

Yet at other moments, he spoke in rapid bursts of the things around him, of the eerie garish cleanness of this era, of the horrid acceleration of change.

"Behold, earthshaking inventions which are useless or obsolete within the same century—the steamboat, the railroads; yet do you know what these meant after six thousand years of galley slaves and men on horseback? And now the dance hall girl buys a chemical to kill the seed of her lovers, and lives to be seventy-five in a room full of gadgets which cool the air and veritably eat the dust. And yet for all the costume movies and paperback history thrown at you in every drugstore, the public has no accurate memory of anything; every social problem is observed in relation to 'norms' which in fact never existed, people fancy themselves 'deprived' of luxuries and peace and quiet which in fact were never common to any people anywhere at all."

"But the Venice of your time, tell me...."

"What? That it was dirty? That it was beautiful? That people went about in rags with rotting teeth and stinking breath and laughed at public executions? You want to know the key difference? There is a horrifying loneliness at work in this time. No, listen to me. We lived six and seven to a room in those days, when I was among the living. The city streets were seas of humanity; and now in these high buildings dim-witted souls hover in luxurious privacy, gazing through the television window at a faraway world of kissing and touching. It is bound to produce some great fund of common knowledge, some new level of human awareness, a curious skepticism, to be so alone."

To complain, surely, is easier than to diagnose, but Tocqueville hardly said it better.

Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with selfishness... Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself...

Selfishness blights the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another; individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same ratio as the equality of condition.

2011-09-04T19:10:00.010-04:00

Ever worry you are not prayerful enough, especially for the conversion of Russia that Our Lady has requested? Ever fret that you aren't active enough in supporting alternatives to Deweyan public schools and diocesan token Catholic schools? The country's large-familied, home-schooling Catholic moms and dads are probably covered, but for thousands of good-hearted believers these thoughts are a valid concern, and until recently I was in the same situation. But friends, dear readers, I found the solution! Channeling Glenn Beck's Forty Days and Forty Nights campaign of yesteryear, I proudly present and inaugurate

The Fifty Beads and Fifty Cents Campaign

Praying the rosary has never been particularly hard. Clocking in at fifteen minutes, five decades take up hardly 1/100th of a day. But for laymen, whose lot is the active life rather than the contemplative, saying a rosary a day and doing nothing else for the salvation of souls can seem pretty empty. Coupled with 50 of some other goodie, though, those 50 Hail Marys can be pretty sweet.

You can imagine my happiness when I remembered GoodSearch, a Yahoo service that gives about 1¢ from the ad proceeds of each search to a charity of your choice. And included in the registered charities, if largely forgotten until I showed up, is the Immaculate Heart of Mary school, a traditional Catholic school run by the sisters of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Richmond, New Hampshire. As a longtime friend and occasional visitor of the Saint Benedict Center in New Hampshire, I knew of the school and its good work, but had done little to help them out. But that all changed a few weeks ago. Right in time too. After tying up some legal loose ends, Saint Benedict Center will soon start building a permanent chapel for its religious and the local Catholic community, so money will obviously be tight. But thanks to GoodSearch, I pinched in a little bit without paying a cent, and so can you. All you have to do is:

1. Click here.
2. Sign up to support Immaculate Heart of Mary school, and register and login if you want.
3. Search until you drop, need an anime break or get banned!

That's all! Someone tell me if it doesn't work. If you just go the the GoodSearch site and don't have the link, all you have to do is type in Immaculate Heart of Mary school, and verify your choice as the Richmond, NH school. If, like me, you get enthusiastic and search for IHM again and again, your IP address may be blocked even if you obey the rules, so it's best to space searches out throughout the day. And if you get blocked anyway, remember that library and school computer labs have untainted IP addresses galore! Just make sure to earn 50¢ a day on average. While the total may bring unsavory reminders of a president whom religious Catholics would rather forget, The Fifty Beads and Fifty Cents Campaign, is your chance to sanctify the denomination!

Though the money may add up slowly, particularly if you're careful not to get banned, this program is Robin Hoodism at its legal best. Yes, this is the bet thing since using a postage-paid envelope to mail to mail a brick to usurers! Ads on the Internet, as with ads elsewhere, generally com from materialistic retailers who try to incite your acquisitiveness and make you buy things you do not need. Many of them advertise on search engines. Funneling their money to a small, wholesome, rural Catholic school run by religious sisters is about as close to "Taking from the rich to give to the poor" as it gets without getting handcuffed. These people think you're gonna buy their junk if you see it on their sidebar enough times. Prove them wrong! GoodSearch for IHM!

Catholics are famous for their guilt. Since BadSearches are such a source of sin in the Information Age, GoodSearch is a very fitting form of penance. Of course, good intentions do not a good search make, but if the first stage of this campaign didn't go so hot, piously saying the rosary is a ready form of penance, often recommended by confessors. Fortunately, the Society of Saint Pius X just happens to be waging a 12-Million Rosary Crusade. For that,

1. Click here and sign up as instructed.
2. Pray the holy rosary daily.

And done. Simply pray the regular five decades a day. Even if you have a demanding conscience, participating in The Fifty Beads and Fifty Cents Campaign is sure to make the sin of omission an endangered species in your life. Wait, is there something more you could want? Celebrity endorsements? Hollywood is evil, but I have been able to reel in a couple from the Main Island. Mariya Shido, of Maria†Holic fame, has enlisted the entire Dorm 2 at Ame no Kisaki girls' high to help (admittedly her rosary is a little unusual, as it doesn't come in decades and looks more like chaplet beads).

My co-blogger Keigo Atobe? At least he's offering token support.

2011-08-22T16:20:00.018-04:00

Glad to get back to you, my peeps. Even on the steamy main island, one can feel the summer wearing itself out as he sips a Shirley Temple by the poolside, or sashays about summer festivals in his stylish yukata for his purely cultural observance of Bon. There has been much good reading to do, so much so that I, Atobe, am compelled to prescribe some of it for you. As my dear fans know, despite the abundance of Catholic imagery in manga and anime, serious evangelization efforts on these sacred islands get little press. Thankfully, there was a break in that this summer. Your American district of the Society of St. Pius X posted an interesting three-part interview with Fr. Daniel Couture, head of the Society's Asia district, last month. All three parts are recommended, nay insisted upon reading, but especially Part II, which speaks about the Society's small presence in Japan, which has recently borne some fruits.

Part I
Part II
Part III

Please continue to pray for the conversion of Japan to the Catholic religion. Every soul brought to the Lord Christ helps. I, Atobe, will focus my efforts on converting the remaining pagan members of the old Hyotei Gakuen tennis club.

Given the stormy weather as I, Atobe, head out this morning, it does not look a good day for sunbathing, though. Happily, the days itinerary is looking up. My plan, see, is to take the train into Akibahara--I, Atobe, can brook public exposure every so often; no need to helicopter in; must be green you know--and visit Cure Maid Cafe, which is running a special menu based on the comedy anime YuruYuri. Looks tasty, doesn't it? Too bad, ye Anglos. America is sadly devoid of maid cafes, minus one on the Left Coast, which does not count because it is more a center of degeneracy than of things cute, as such dining institutions ought to be.

The benefits of the cult of cuteness in modern society cannot be underestimated. Other required reading is the fabulous Wikipedia article, Cuteness in Japanese Culture. Even our guardrails are cute. Are yours? Oftentimes, adorability counterbalances the excessive cult of Eros. Take this anime that started just weeks ago. While Leslie crazes over Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise, which fails to connect with me, I, Atobe, much prefer Dantalian no Shoka, or The Mystic Archives of Dantalian in English. Though it is almost purely a a copy off last season's Gosick, it has already distinguished itself as a wonderful and unparalleled anime six episodes in. Perhaps the clearest sign of how much it stands out is the clothing designer. Even though it's just animation, the production company Gainax went the whole nine yards of lace and had Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, a lolita fashion outfit, do the costumes, as you can see in the opening. Baby, which actually runs a respectable establishment in San Francisco, is selling a positively kawaii Bibliotheca Mystique de Dantalian line of clothes in conjunction. Yes! For but $150 (plus tax) you--or perhaps just I, Atobe--can acquire a stylish Hugh "Huey" Anthony Diswald bowler.

Why should traditionalist Catholics appreciate the fashion, and the anime that promotes it like none before? First, I must point you to the magnificent opening, "Cras numquam scire" (yes, we Japs now have a fuller appreciation of Latin than the West). It's fine listening, and look at the pretty imagery! And look at all the traditional imagery shown to such advantage. The best part, though, is within the anime itself. In episode 3, Huey and Dalian encounter the former's old friend Camilla in a bookstore. Though Dalian is bribed with scones and agrees to have tea with Camilla, she insults her "hysterical clothing." Though the flashy blue outfit is technically long by today's standards, it is obviously meant to reveal rather than conceal, and looks timelessly radical.

At the tea, Camilla gladly explains, "This outfit is the work of a French fashion designer. It's all the rage in New York." Unconvinced, Dalian rebuts, "Your hair is absurdly short. And you are wearing an obscenely short blouse with pointed sleeves. Have you no common sense?" After Camilla gives the usual "But these clothes are very comfortable to move around in. I'm sure that they'll catch on soon enough," Dalian laments, "If so, there is no hope left for this world."

If only someone had said all this before 2011! Had liberation from decency not prevailed in the 1920s (like Gosick, Dantalian no Shoka is set after the Great War, but this time in England rather than the fictional Saubere), perhaps such manifestations of decay as legalized abortion (which was "all the rage in New York" even before Roe v Wade) would not have come to pass in turn.

Truer words were never spoken by man. But unlike your Western period animes, which feature superior styles of the past for petty nostalgia, or even to show contempt for "stuffy" Victorian and other old European sensibilities, our shows, so far from holding the past in contempt, feature amply virtue'd, hem-carrying females as protagonists, and even devout Christian believers (Dalian does have hope for the next world; after a couple dies in episode 4, she says, "Eternal rest grant unto them o Lord. And may perpetual light shine upon them" over them) as protagonists. Note, too: it is not Camilla's fad fashion that is on sale. Baby, the Stars Shine Bright is offering Dalian's lovely outfit. If you have $1,388, plus tax.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

P.S. I, Atobe, am almost not awed by the sight of, etc etc. I just found an embarassing high school video were my Hyotei pals and I mimicked our favorite anime, Lucky Star!

2011-08-11T00:00:00.010-04:00

This past week has been tough for America, given the S & P debt rating downgrade, tumble in the stock market, and the deaths of thirty soldiers, mainly SEALS, with the loss of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan—The Long War if ever a long war there was—and the English fared perhaps worse still, as the rioting by hoodied, unemployed immigrants is only now calming down. Conservatism has never been a philosophy fitted to the ebullient and optimistic, and this is especially true in this later stage in the decline of the West—but still I do try and find some better news to help doff the weight of doom.

Usually I can do little better than vainly think, Maybe after this latest feat of multiculturalism in action they'll learn, and vote the British National Party into Parliament. Not gonna happen. But this time, from that other great British Isle across the sea, there is a piece of welcome, welcome news in which Christians may rejoice.

The Republic of Ireland has long seemed a lost cause to this armchair Pundit. Hibernia being the source of those migrants who have historically formed the backbone of American Catholicism, the cultural decline in the country which rules most of the island over the past few decades of prosperity has been especially sad. While all of Europe has suffered secularization, Ireland's case has been especially noteworthy, most recently because of the intensity of the clergy sexual abuse revelations there, and the decline in vocations sharper than that throughout the rest of ex-Christendom. Politically, the situation appears worse than anywhere else in Europe. Party politics in Ireland remain defined by the factions of the Irish Civil War; while the hard Left is respectably organized and wields considerable power, this has served as a disincentive for giving expression to politics of the Right. Ireland has no equivalent National Front, no Freedom Party of Austria, no BNP to speak of, and its Christian Solidarity Party is more often the subject of atheist jokes than dire warnings about Christian intolerance.

Until a few weeks ago, it seemed Ireland was set for a landmark of degeneration&mdashthe election of a "gay" President. Senator David Norris, an Independent, led in every poll by a huge margin. Even given the recent rise in anti-clericalism, which is cerrtainly a motive of the hapless secularists who support an open pervert who called John Paul II an "instrument of evil" and Benedict XVI a "Nazi", his popularity defied belief. A liberal Protestant? I knew the Irish were ready for that. But a supporter of joining the British Commonwealth? I did not think the famously proud Irish would stand for that!* To make things worse, he's a Joyce fanatic; I suffered through all of Ulysses, and cannot conceive of how a man can rave over that too long, generally uninteresting, and often sick epic.

We no longer have to worry about that. The media eventually reported that he once wrote a letter to Israeli authorities in favor of clemency for Ezra Nawi, a onetime "partner" of his accused of statutory rape of a 15-year-old boy. Yes, there is appears to still be a floor of decency which cannot be ignored without political suicide, and soon enough his supporters, so shocked that a practitioner of unnatural acts would condone the still inexcusable, largely left him and he dropped out of the race. Indeed! As I researched for this post, I found this revelatory article about the man who would be president. According to his campaign team (what a team to be on!), they left after unearthing a few “more controversial views on underage sex.” According the the minutes of a "Union for Sexual Freedom" meeting in 1975, “David said as a child it had been his greatest desire to be molested so he, more than most people, knows the rarity of the homosexual child molester.” Also noted is another, 1980s association with a pro-pedophile organization.

There we have it. Ireland has a second chance! Maybe her electorate of newly-chastened liberals will select someone better than an uncloseted gay-pedophile "ally" for their Head of State this October! American conservatives, surely justified in not having tuned into this race already, may take comfort in an Irish ignominy barely avoided.

Those requiring further encouragement are invited to listen to the skippy-happy ending song to the anime YuruYuri.

*Though I would, to throw Senator Norris a bone; while most Catholics automatically identify with Irish nationalism, I have long been an Anglophile, and regretfully unimpressed by the accomplishments of independent Ireland. Hence I support the determination of British-descended Ulsterites to remain joined to their mother country).

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

A note to readers: My blog name has, as of now, been changed from crusader88 to simply crusader. Way back in 2006, when I established The Young and Once Good Pundit, now A Blog from Atobe,* I was not well versed with the ways of the Internet. Imagining, from portrayals of IMing on TV, that people frequently went by odd names composed of indicative words and random numbers, like angel32196, I knew crusader88 would be a good fit, since it had a ring, and I was born in 1988. It was only later that I learned of the significance of the number 88 in National Socialist circles. Hence, I shall now go simply by crusader, which remains politically incorrect while not causing false impressions that I am party to said circles. Yes, even in the Information Age, the mien of a Christian knight is quite sufficient to strike fear into the liberal hordes!

*I was originally waiting for Atobe to post, but he is busy rearranging his securities in this volatile market. "At least I have peace of mind," he told me, "now that I know those darn Yankees are making their August payments of interest on the debt they owe me."

2011-07-26T15:10:00.019-04:00

After I finished Dombey and Son a few weeks ago I, though bogged down in the cunning, jealous quarrels of Strawberry Panic (see the post from the 30th of last month, below), I began Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Finding that "great and challenging novel based on a supreme belief in the rights of the individual" awkward and somewhat anti-inspiring, due to its fidelity to a confused and inorganic philosophy, I turned to an exposition of a more desirable and less facetious ideal. I began The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order: Defending Democracy Against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends by Daniel J. Mahoney, chair of Political Science at Assumption College, intellectual mentor, and good friend.

The Conservative Foundations is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a traditional conservative leaning academic publisher, and may be purchased directly from their website; lest lay readers fear that a conservative academic press publishes only a staid run of books, as this sign from the site shows, they too know how to have a good time. The book covers the thought of a slightly heterogeneous variety of thinkers who have best explained how our liberal democratic order presupposes a variety of non-democratic inheritances--the nation, religious piety, the integrity of the family, and the noble love of freedom--necessary to prevent the depoliticization of the West and a descent into nihilism, and to preserve respect for the human person. There are, in Professor Mahoney, many principles which lead him to his views, but in this work he generally argues from a conservative liberal perspective (the liberal order is best served by conservative means). A testy traditionalist such as our Pundit will find points of strong agreement and steadfast disagreement on almost every page.

Mahoney begins the work with a striking quote from philosopher Michael Polanyi. In part it reads,

Tom Paine could proclaim the right of each generation to determine its institutions anew, since the range of his demands was in fact very modest. He unquestionably accepted the continuity of culture and of the order of private property as the framework of self-determination. (vii)

Not to mention the obstacles to the "right of each generation to determine its institutons anew," if culture is seen as a social construct composed of unattached individuals, to whom all overbearing "institutions" are seen as illegitimate oppressors! This is the case with the anarchists Mahoney derides later. Even from this point, though, one wonders whether the likes of Paine and his radical polemic are worth preserving with such contrary means. Indeed, the fortuitous and unnecessary nature of the circumstances of the American founding is a major theme in The Conservative Foundations. Describing the thought of Orestes Brownson in his The American Republic, he observes,

the founders' practical achievement was in decisive respects better than their theory. On the theoretical plane, they endorsed social-contract theory, the conceit that the political community is an artificial construct of free and equal individuals who voluntarily depart what Locke called the 'inconveniences' of the 'state of nature.' However, they were not fully aware of all the metapolitical implications of this doctrine. As Tocqueville appreciated, it could be applied to every aspect of human life and even to the governance of the cosmos itself. But as wise and prudent statesmen the founders respected America's unwritten or 'providential' constitution, the habits and mores of the American people so eloquently described by John Jay in Federalist 2, as well as the 'territorial' character of American democracy. (5-6)

In other words, the Americans are a nation in the original sense, but in the tradition of their founders can recognize themselves as such only by conceit. From this, the astute reader will note that by saying that this theory, endorsed in the Declaration of Independence, can be applied "even to the governance of the cosmos itself," Mahoney acknowledges that classical liberalism is a precursor of the nihilizing deconstructionism he rightly ridicules when he discusses Raymond Aron and May 1968. He sees the founders' prudence as an example to be followed, and is hopeful that statesmen of moderation can continue to work in their tradition. Against this, I can only point to a quotation, in which Aron works toward an interpretation of Edmund Burke's writings on the Revolution in France:

They can be read as definitive condemnations of political rationalism--or of ideological fanaticism. (9)

I answer that political rationalism is ideological fanaticism. Political communities are essentially organic, not rational; reason can touch on the goods of the political order, but only imperfectly. Insistence on rational politics encourages fanaticism, or where zeal is lacking, deferential mediocrity, as in the spectacle of Christian politicians enacting secularism to save democracy from the influence of the influence of religion, sometimes in earnest. Therefore, it would seem that advocates of moderation should reject principles that are more likely to discourage prudence than be subject to it. Mahoney and I recognize the same facts and tendencies--Max Weber would be proud--but reach different conclusions as to what must be done. Yet we do agree when he criticizes efforts by the likes of Jacques Maritain and the last Roman Pontiff to "baptize" democracy for Christianity (46-47), preferring "a Christian religion faithful to its own wisdom" (49).

He praises Churchill and de Gaulle as the finest statesmen of the 20th Century; while I am not prepared to offer a definitive alternative duo, I do contest, for example, the greatness of any Prime Minister who "suggests 'we must take the loss with the gain. On the uplands there are no fine peaks," or in Mahoney's language "We must resign ourselves, then, for the most part to a kind of decent mediocrity" (61), and question whether de Gaulle "saved his beloved France... from disgrace" in 1958 (65). On the other hand, he follows the bothersome practice of begrudging violent fanatics these same virtues, especially courage, which they obviously exemplify, whether we like it or not. (Currently Anders Behring Breivik is subject to this same light dismissal.) His understanding of the totalitarian phenomenon is hardly to be surpassed; he emphasizes the similarities of communism and national socialism, and the similar conditions in which they arose, though I think it might have been of interest to discuss how the one was simply an intensification of certain liberal tendencies, while the other offered an illiberal alternative ideology.

Perhaps the best, and maybe the most relevant chapter, is on May 1968, and Raymond Aron's dissention from the foolishness of the '68. This passage caught my interest:

The partisans of 1968 were mesmerized by the vision of direct democracy in an industrial society and appealed to "participation" ("autogestion") as the only legitimate governing principle within every educational, social, economic, and political institution. Authority as such was identified with domination and repression. (97)

Cute how college students thought the ecomony et al could be run by plebiscite. Unfortunately this "antinomian" ideology, whose slogans included "Demand the impossible," "It is forbidden to forbid," and "Take your desires for realities," is the philosophy of the legion "immoderate friends" of the title. "[T]he thought of '68," he paraphrases Roger Scruton, "became the official philosophy of the humanities in universities throughout the world," (99). Given the earlier analysis of democracy's incongruity with Christian piety, the natural order, and political prudence, I would take this development as evidence that democratic zeal is unlikely to suffer moderation, and that informed conservatives ought to reject intellectual accomodation to the liberal order. To cite Alain Besançon by way of Mahoney, "If the American and French revolutions installed democracy in the political realm, ' '68 has extended the field of democracy to the whole of the social order," or alternatively, "the revolution is not finished," (101). No, it is not! I have a hunch that the tweeting mobs letting it all hang out in Syria and Egypt, the rebels in Libya united around nothing except anti-authoritarianism, and the hapless NEETs lately making a scene in Spain's M-15 protests, are the harbinger of an attempt to actually govern by Blackberry. Revolution: It's the only NEET thing to do! (In other news, NEETs aren't all that bad; a new anime, Kamisama no Memo-chou, features a colorful agency of NEET detectives). As I see it, Professor Mahoney does have a noble vision, and one likely to appeal to conservatives, if not unhardened liberals. However, what he desires amounts to, to negate the usual saying, A Revolution That Does Not Devour Its Own Children. No, I do not believe that is likely, or desirable, or, for those who appreciate the goods of the soul and have a sense of distance, or who simply want the peace and loveliness of Christian order,* intellectually coherent.

There are also excellent sections presenting what I thought the most balanced and fair treatment of neoconservative foreign policy I have seen, as well as a great chapter on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, on whom Mahoney is an expert. The only thing I take issue with is one passage he takes right from Solzhenitsyn, so I must disagree with the pair of them.

Let us go back to the 1920s and 1930s. The best minds of Europe were full of admiration for communist totalitarianism. (133-134)

Sorry to be picayune, but this is, as they say, throwing a bone to the Left. Despite their prestige, it is doubtful whether it is possible for any Marxist to qualify as a "best mind," especially when actual great minds--I name Charles Maurras, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, G. K. Chesterton, Anthony Ludovici, and my personal favorite Julius Evola were as far as far can be from the ideology of the USSR, when they were not active in the other totalitarianism.

Buy the book. In the folkways of my native Northampton's street artists, I appeal, "Help starving conservative professors at occasionally hostile Catholic colleges!" For the self-interested and the money watchers, conservatives will appreciate Mahoney's great expression of the ideals of mainstream but genuine conservatism, liberals will bow in shame before his exposition of the vacuity of their lofty but actually quite base ideals, and traditionalists will learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the conservative liberalism from which they partially dissent.

*Mahoney, whom everyone agrees bears a remarkable resemblance to Patrick Cox of Tax Masters, is a Catholic gentleman, who may be seen to cross himself in class once or so a semester, and who is wont to lambaste unnamed, residual communist professors in certain departments at the College, for their anti-Christ obsessions and many other errors.

2011-07-05T15:15:00.027-04:00

Oh, the proper uses of an iPad! I shall explain why below.

I recognize quality. For that reason, the wholly serious, political paragraphs of this post needn't be too long. While I would have to answer the misleading question asked of Republicans on television, "Are you satisfied with the Republican field of presidential candidates?", with a yes, that is because Ron Paul, gray about the brow but fresh as ever, is running again. Should Paul outrage me further (as when he voted to eliminate Don't Ask Don't Tell), Rick Santorum, hardly less an intellect with that thoughtful, ISI-published volume It Takes a Family in his resume, and his political foresight, is a ready neoconservative alternate (though his hawkish attitude toward Libya turns me off). The problem, of course, is the man leading the field: Mitt Romney. While he may have the best chance of defeating President Obama, his refusal to sign a pro-life pledge from the Susan B. Anthony list (Paul and Santorum signed), his lousy record on natural marriage and other social issues (see especially here), and, of course, Romney Care, my expectations for a President Romney are rather unspectacular.

Indeed! The G.O.P., other than being united against Obama, have little more under their banner this year than being, as one liberal whom I cannot recall put it, an anti-tax Taliban--hence, unless there should be a Ron Paul miracle, I find that the unofficial 2012 Republican theme song is--what else?--Ray Stevens's If 10% Is Good Enough For Jesus, a tune which did so much for the advertising aesthetic of Glenn Beck's much-missed-by-me program. Dr. No, on the other hand, earns the hip HOME MADE Kazoku's FREEDOM (full version), the 17th ending theme of Naruto Shippuden, featuring such lyrics as "Tell Me Tell Me Who's The Ruler", "Stand Up!! Wake Up!! Reach Out For Liberty," "Oh Yes We Are The Dreamer," and "Fight For Your FREEDOM!!" well befitting the libertarian die-hard. Last time around, Obama's unofficial theme song was this; now that Beck so helpfully informed us about all his commie friends, associates, and diverse "czars"--for a change, how about this?

With the way I always end up snidely sidewinding those ideas and people anointed with the Will of the People, one might get the impression that I do what I do simply for the sake of contrarianism and, like many politicians, follow the polls, but so that I might enjoy opposing the vox populi rather than flow with it. Nay, I suspect the same myself some times! Except, every once in a while, something like this happens.

I spoke of quality. Since anime series are seasonal, my senses have been keened for quality as I've inspected the crop of summer 2011 animes. For the first few days, there were some fun new series I shall watch to the end--the chatty, silly high school girls' anime YuruYuri, the pastel-haired
little girls' basketball team of Ro-Kyu-Bu!, the serious-themed God-in-their-names animes Kamisama Dolls and Kamisama no Memo-chu (meaning "God('s) Dolls" and "God's Note Pad"), and even the adorable Ikoku Meiro no Croisee, featuring a young Japanese hirl who lives as a servant to an iron signmaker in late 19th Century France--but nothing that said eureka. Then, yesterday, I found it:

Kaitō Tenshi Twin Angel - Kyun Kyun Tokimeki Paradise!!

In English, the series is entered as Twin Angel: Twinkle Paradise, an accurate rendering of the cotton candy warm feeling of this anime. Just check out the opening! Or the ending, endearingly named Shining☆Star (featuring chibis)! What can I say?! I'll leave that up to Anime44, where you can watch the first episode, and all the rest when they come out!

Haruka Minazuki and Aoi Kannazuki are freshman high school students and best friends. During the day they help with school activities but at night they thwart enemies like Black Auction and other villains as Red Angel and Blue Angel, the Twin Angel team.

Best friends is an understatement. Unlike the heroines of every other girls' school or moe anime I have ever seen, Haruka and Aoi are not poured into antagonistic molds, simply for the sake of playing jokes off each other. Rather, the writers permit their pure, wholesome friendship to blossom into a paragon of sisterly affection, without amusing but distracting yuri jokes. To but watch them smile and hold hands! The villains are good too, targeting seven treasures that are part of the "Holy Grail", and which, if they are stolen, will cause unhappiness. That is essentially what the sub I saw said. Not the usual world hanging in the balance, but why else, in real life, is it ever bad if a treasure is stolen, other than that it will cause unhappiness? And oh, I just loved Misty Knight, Twin Angel's shameless and undisguised copy of Sailor Moon's Tuxedo Mask! He even throws white roses! For parents and others concerned about appropriateness, there is the usual tearing of clothes in the henshins (transformation sequences, a staple of magical girl animes), and Aoi's chest is sometimes shown to bounce, but for anime standards the show is rather tame and lacks sexual jokes.

The moe era of anime having reached its acme, I wondered how Twin Angel came to be. Unlike most animes, so I found, Twin Angel, which was preceded by an OVA of the same name, was not based on a manga, or a light novel. Nor is it an original anime: it is based on a pachinko machine! Must have been one good arcade game! See more pictures, a video, and some of the following merchandise here. Perfectly kawaii, and lacking any bewildering plot line, this Japanese gambling device inspired an anime true to moe in every way, and free of the cynical emphasis on genre satire found in so many entertaining but lesser programs.

I thought critics would jump on Twin Angel's magnificence like I had, but it was not to be. ALL of the cretin reviewers on staff at the Anime News Network panned Twin Angel, the best giving it a 2/5, the worst of the bunch giving it a zero. The dilettantes complained of its unoriginality, whenever they weren't merely whining that it wasn't to their tastes. But as I read the infamous 0/5, the critic gave, as from God, the reason for its moe excellence into my hands; I'll also lift her review image for looks.

You know that show that non-anime fans vaguely imagine anime as being? The one always parodied by fictional anime-within-anime...? High-pitched, overly colorful, and usually mind-numbingly stupid? This is that show.

Well, of course not mind-numbingly stupid, but you know those pretenders to an intelligensia of the animated arts, who never let themselves have any fun? You get my drift. Every art form, every genre needs an archetype, and this is where the anime under discussion comes in. Looking forward to eleven more episodes (unless the naysayers succeed in cutting it short), I am proud to add Twin Angel Twinkle Paradise to my interests as listed on this blog!

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

Correction: Despite the wording used by all the commentators I'd seen so far, Twin Angel is a slot machine, as in the image; perhaps it is often found in pachinko parlors. But just read this too-cute passage on the origin of the Twin Angels, from the English version of the anime's website!

In 2006 the Twin Angel girls Haruka and Aoi were created as slot machine characters - back then cute slot machine characters were not all that popular, but in no time the girls became popular with both slot machine fans and anime fans alike, redefining the genre of 'moe slot machines'.

Moe slot machines? Who knew?

Also: See my spirited praise for the show on this Crunchyroll thread (apparently, my enthusiasm makes me a troll).

2011-06-30T20:57:00.010-04:00

Just last weekend I returned from a three week's vacation in the South, a rare thing for me, and so, much cherished. The pinnacle of the leave was finally being able to go to the Mass of the Ages at the SSPX's little chapel in Mount Holly, North Carolina (we also went, once, to a weekday Traditional Mass at St. Ann's church in Charlotte, a building of recent construction, yet stunning and beautiful; the Novus Ordo parish is very, very conservative, and communion is even at an altar rail, praise be to God). Expectedly, however, I spent much of my time reading, completing--how's this for an odd pair?--Yockey's Imperium and Kennedy's Profiles in Courage (to be sure, their esteem of the democratic press is uniformly low). Given the fine country then beneath my feet, a discussion of Naipaul's A Turn in the South, or Chronicles magazine's Chronicles of the South, would be appropriate. But I have read neither of these volumes, and am left with only a very untimely novel, or rather a trio of novels, to highlight for the inquiring reader.

But I can afford to keep you in suspense for one paragraph, that my geographico-literary wanderings may continue. I might have even added geologico: the day after I returned to Northampton, I proceeded to clean out my room, in order to make more room. While it took almost eight hours, and I practically caught I cold from the dust, I uncovered a near-forgotten childhood treasure: Junie B. Jones and her Big Fat Mouth. Unjustly squashed between toddler books in a box in the closet, Miss Jones now sees the light of day. Yes! While I discovered the series at school, I loved it so much that I think itthe books from that series were the first I ever requested my parents to buy for my personal enjoyment. I have yet to reread the paperback, but remember Junie as a likable, and certainly adorable, heroine. Looking at the cover, which sports one of her prettiest appearances, I immediately realized, with due surprise and plumb wonder, "Haruhi Suzumiya is a transfer student from America!" They look exactly alike! She now prefers to knot her ribbon twice, her fair skin shows off better in a sailor uniform, but she shows relatively little change for the years. Her popularity has also grown: my Google Image search gave 6 times the results for Suzumiya-san as herjuvenile, American alter ego. Unfortunately, given how much else there is to read, I will probably never be able to catch up with the once-loved children's series by Mrs. Park, as she has pumped out installments like tankōbon.

Back to the untimely trio of novels. It shall go down as some feat of irony that, as I heard the expected, yet vile news that gay "marriage" won out in New York--may the hand of the apostate who signed it into law rot, along with those of the liberal die-hards and frank opportunists who voted for it, as well as those who, without real convicton, voted against it--I was reading, nay holding in my hands, Strawberry Panic: The Complete Novel Collection. The veritable Russian light novel of yuri, the perfect bound omnibus contains volumes I, II, and III of the self-explanatory Strawberry Panic! Girls' School in Fullbloom. What can I say? After seeing the luscious anime (merely see the opening), and reading the manga, how could I not venture through the original novels as well? In moral defense of Miss Sakurako Kimino's novels, I attest that the protagonist, Nagisa Aoi is a model of traditional femininity, and possibly her precious friend Chiyo Tsukidate as well. When I was reading the supplementary materials to an edition of Northanger Abbey some months ago, I found a very cute example of the 18th Century feminine ideal of kindness toward small creatures, as seen in Helen Maria Williams's contemporary novel Julia:

"[Julia had] frequently been engaged in the very same business of rescuing flies from destruction; and, when she saw a worm lying in her path, had often conveyed it to a place of safety among the untrodden grass, to prevent its being crushed by some foot less careful than her own."

Aww! Now see this vignette from pp. 69-71 of Strawberry Panic, italics in original:

"A small white butterfly had fallen right in the middle of the the hallway. For a moment, Chiyo had thought, Oh, there's a beautiful white butterfly, but then she realized the butterfly wasn't moving at all and froze. Her legs stiffened and she couldn't move.

"But I have to go to the faculty room, so I need to pass it no matter what...

"But Chiyo loved flowers, so she was part of the gardening club, and one of her strong points was her knowledge of insects. She could touch beautiful butterflies and adorable tent caterpillars.

"But even Chiyo was too scared to get close to a dead bug. Just a few moments ago, it had been happily fluttering around in the sky, but now it was dead and nothing but a cast-off skin. When Chiyo thought about that, she got really depressed, and felt like she was being dragged down by something scary--it was frightening.

" 'Poor thing. And what a place for it to happen.'

"The voice belonged to someone Chiyo had never seen at the school before. When the girl saw the butterfly, she walked up to it, gently picked it up, and placed it in her palm. She did it so lovingly, with the smile of a gentle goddess.

"The girl gently blew a breath across her palm, and the butterfly's wings trembled along with the breath. To Chiyo, it looked like she gave the butterfly its last rites--one last moment of warmth.

"She's saying goodbye to it. How kind.

"This girl gave love to something Chiyo was too afraid of to even get close to. The girl released the butterfly out the hallway window, saying, 'Be a good girl--go on home, now!' Even though it was already dead. Though Chiyo thought the upperclassman seemed to be under the impression the butterfly was still alive.

"But it might be better for it to return to the ground, instead of staying in the cold hallway, she thought as she watched the older girl.

"And then...

"There was a miracle.

"Chiyo had thought the dead butterfly would naturally fall to the ground. But just as it was going to hit the ground, it stopped in mid-air. The next moment, it started moving again, flapping its wings.

"It's magic, Chiyo thought. Chiyo's goddess, who was kind even to an insect that was almost dead, said her name was Aoi Nagisa."

Enchanting! If but lesbians were contented by such worthy literature, they would not need to mime marriage! On top of that, Strawberry Panic is another franchise set at a prestigious all-girls Catholic high school, so you just know it's good.

2011-06-21T21:30:00.008-04:00

Although I, Atobe, am not generally given to enlivening a crowd with an unsolicited joke, in these times of war for Europeans and you Americans, is an exception. True, my heedful audience, there is nothing funny about war--except in the redundancy of the lies and exaggerations appropriated in its justification. As I, Atobe, have learned through the helpful English-language site Antiwar.com, citing the UK Independent, the latest charges of Col. Gaddafi's misconduct in the Libyan Civil War, as Leslie has harped on in the past, are trumped up. Yes! In the Age of Democracy, the enemy in war must be a manifestation of pure evil (or at least a madman, an unsubstantiated charge which began buzzing about the blubbering lips of news anchors as soon as the "no-fly zone" became a possibility), at least to the plebs who elect their ideologist politicians! War can never be, simply, in the Nation's interests, but must be a moral affair.

Of course, the real moral authority in the region, Bishop Giovanni Martinelli of Tripoli, has been a consistent critic of this so-called "humanitarian intervention", to the point that Western media have accused him of sheltering Gaddafi in his offices! While not a Gaddafi enthusiast, the good churchman has no doubt become the target of international slander for the fairness with which he has treated the Colonel--as when, for instance, he confirmed the death of Gaddafi's son by an allied bomb, after the media vilely accused Gaddafi of lying about the death of his own son for propaganda purposes. Well, we saw who was lying as propaganda there! While the following point would not come in handy here, as I write from heathen Japan (which has thankfully ignored this foreign matter), these words from Bishop Martinelli should be heeded by any European or American Christians who actually support this foolhardy war from the last story above:

The Libyan strongman had up until now protected the Christians and Catholics of Libya, he added. 'He is a great friend and we must help him find a form of dialogue' with the international community, said the bishop.

Do you Americans think the terrorist-filled mob trying to overthrow its legitimate ruler will be as kind to us followers of Christ? And from the first article in that same paragraph:

“I remember,” he told Fides last week, “that an important Western politician, a month ago, said that Gaddafi's fall is a matter of hours. I do not know how long those hours are.”

On the other hand, just today I, Atobe, intercepted some rare good news. Rifts are forming in the NATO coalition. According to the article, Italy proposes a ceasefire; according to the fine print, non-interventionists of all leanings should note, Foreign Minister "Frattini's comments come three days after Premier Silvio Berlusconi's key political ally, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, called for an end to Italy's participation in the Libyan war." In other words, the driving pressure to end this war originates in the Far Right, which need be heeded thanks to parliamentary coalition politics. The cost of the war has also told on the weak powers of Europe, so I, Atobe, am hopeful that a phalanx of factors might bring an end to your Western intervention, allowing the Colonel to crush the unruly Islamist mob uprising. My, my, that would possibly make for the first time the good guys win the war since General Franco bloodied the Spanish Reds!

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

In personal news, the level of international charity that yours truly has given out have exceeded new bounds. A few weeks ago I, Atobe, sent my pal Leslie two fine artbooks of his favorite mangas, DearS and Rozen Maiden, featuring color illustrations by the creators Peach-Pit. As they were only published on these sacred islands, they should be a special treat in the profane West. Feast your eyes on some select pictures I, Atobe, took of the preciouses before mailing them away.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2011-06-02T13:46:00.008-04:00

Ah, yes, my readers. Yesterday, after much delay, and managing to avoid a system of deadly tornadoes, I finally took the GRE. Scoring well in the Verbal part, not half as well in the Quantitative part, and expecting a high score for my two essays, I am satisfied even if I did not do phenomenally. The GRE is a funny test. Its software has very large, blocky font like one would expect from an 80s computer, and for this inveterate multiple choice lover deprived by years of actually thinking during college, it would actually be fun, if it didn't cost $160. Given the secure, cheat-proof test environment, the cost is partially justifiable, but how I wish it were more like an old time arcade from the same era as its technology. If you failed, you could just plop in a quarter again and again, until you etched your three initials into the high score board! LHH! Even without said fine fantasy, I can now truly say as I have said before—GREs: They're not good, they're GREat!

Aside from this personal task done, I promised a few more fun clippings from Hilary Flanery's Campin' in Chicago to encourage you to buy the small edition book, or delight you a bit if you can't afford to. Do I hear Trad Catholic Status Symbol? A rare Electric eBook Publishing 1st edition of Flanery's Campin' in Chicago? Verily, I contacted the author/old Internet friend of mine some days ago, and she said the novel needeth revision (though I contend it readeth well already)—though she admitted her work's potential as a screen play. To this time, the family vacation genre has largely been straight comedy with nothing more than a superficial message. With Campin' in Chicago: Now a Major Motion Picture, that will change! Comedy though it is, in the archaic way, the characters truly reach a better place by the end of the book. To be sure, the book has few metaphysics and rarely moralizes, seriously. The work was inspired, like many many good things I am sure, by a dare between traditional Catholic moms, and true to its origins, a movie based on this epic battle of fecundity and barrenness, or even just a second (possibly revised) edition would surely benefit the Holy Remnant, SSPX on down.

In her most Socratic mode Mrs. Flanery, via Mrs. Flanigan in the novel, describes their three neighbors at the camp ground, and tritely dismisses them. The passages are gems, so I reproduce them to substantiate my good review.

As we strolled to the road I eyed the couple to the right of us and their two children, a boy and a girl. They were people of means in their LL Beans, sitting inside their tent of screens, eating cups of yogurt, granola bars, nuts, dried fruits, and lot's of fiber. I'd be callin' them the Fiber Family. That epitomized what G. K. O'Chesterton said, "There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle."

In other words, don't smoke, eat right, die anyway.

Then there was the older man, retiree-type, across the road from our campsite waxing his honkin' Winnebago. I'd be callin' him Mad Wax. He had been waxing it when we came in, and he was still waxing it and probably would be waxing it when we came back from the beach.

So little time, so little to do.

Turning left, from our campsite and onto the road, we passed Daryl and Meryl Sterile, as I dubed them.

Daryl was sitting on one of the two matching wood framed leather sling back chairs with his lap-top, drinking espresso coffee out of a tiny cobalt blue espresso camping mug. They had an electric site and their espresso machine was whooshing away, out here in the wild. I saw the wife, Meryl, go inside their little two person dome tent, carrying a portable dust-buster vacuum cleaner machine of some kind. The children thought it was hilarious as the tent was wiggling and shaking like a plate full of jello while she vacuumed.

"Why is that lady vacuuming her tent?" Jack asked in all seriousness.

"What a freak of nature," exclaimed Bridget.

"She probably has what they call an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short," I explained. (Or maybe Bridget was onto something, FOND, Freak Of Nature Disorder. I think I'm rather fond of that.)

"What's excessive impulsive?" asked Nora.

"Nuts," I said. "Daddy helps a lot of people like that. They have issues."

""Tissues?" Nora asked. I've got to get that girl's hearing checked.

"Issues, Nora, problems. They are people who can't relax, even when on vacation. She probably cleans all the time. Everything just has to be perfect, in its place and a place for everything. Very sterile." Like her, I'm thinkin'.

2011-05-29T16:53:00.009-04:00

As a Catholic, it takes a lot to keep me in good cheer after the bad news from Malta. Indeed, as one wise Maltese minister said, Our Lady is sorrowful too. We all (that is, we all who follow foreign politics) knew this was coming. The campaign, though, served to remind those of us who wanted to think of Malta as Europe's Catholic bastion that Malta is not that different from the rest of the world. While, as an English-speaking reader, I was (and have long been) impressed with the writing characteristic of the Times of Malta, the Malta Independent and Malta Today are in tone no superior to most of the papers of Europe, America, and everywhere else in the world. If Malta was actually 97% Catholic, as the common figure has it, such a media would never have survived.

I spare you the univocal blather from the liberals, whose medley of bishop-bashing, scare references to better ages in the past, insistences that discussion of the impact of divorce on the family and children is mean-spirited, that the families are already broken and need divorce, that families are strong and need not fear divorce, that Malta needs to join Europe in its failed policies and be compassionate to vow-breakers, that Catholics can vote for the referendum, that nuns and church ladies voting No are so-called Catholics, and that Jesus and the Holy Spirit want the separation of Church and State are no news to loyal sons and daughters of the Church. Alright, I will observe with amusement that the Yes campaigners frequently claimed 30% of Maltese marriages fail; in a country where that figure is 50%, it is a wonder who is emulating who. Previous complements maintained, the only really good Maltese article I saw for the No side was a post-vote reflection by one Roamer, which heartbroken readers can explore here.

Yes, this side of Heaven, the conservative instinct is the hardest sentence God can give a man. To see natural goods like marriage contemptuously squandered by liberal Twitterers: that is high tragedy. At times, the Yes camp begs the Christian compassion bone, but in their more instinctual moments the ridicule the old Malta as mired in the Dark Ages. This, of course, is just their sly way of saying the institution of marriage is mired in the Dark Ages. You can argue against liberals with every observable warning of American or European-style social decay, but to them it is all equally Medieval, because we would insist that a spouse's vows, made before witnesses no less, ought to have force, and the irrevocable force befitting a man's (or woman's) word. The Yessers might have just advocated government-endorsed, shifting partnerships of free love, but that would be demanding honesty from those who desire to sanctify lying. Aye, and when we reprimand them for choosing the side of evil in this clean-and-easy question (to complain of "undue spiritual pressure" hampering your vote admits as much), they snidely say, in post-pubescent defiance, they are waiting for the earthquake. Such were the commbox remarks from many of the Yes atheists. Translation: I don't mind being evil unless I'm punished for it. Thomas Hobbes may have applauded this petit audacity, but I see it as the ultimate failure of government. This attitude naturally goes with liberal democracy and the rights regime (both I which I so hate), and serves to affirm human degeneracy and vice over kindness, humility, flourishing, and virtue. For those liberals who cannot conjure, upon reading v-i-c-e, anything less archaic than a tipsy Irishman being berated by a 19th Century prohibitionist (you know who you are), look at how these liberal human beings decayed into a pack of thoughtless animals in their Facebook campaign groups, and salivated over the latest slogan reformulations and lauds for democracy on Twitter (those with resolute minds and a tolerance for painful stupidity see here). Criticism of the M-15 morons must wait for another day.

For those who care about the truth, justice, and the good, the worst part (admit it) is that the Yessers get away with impunity. On the anime front, my dismay calls to mind the ferocious, fire-spewing monsters from Miyazaki's 1984 film Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind, appropriately called "god-warriors" (see one in action about a minute in here!) One of those things could've whipped the immoral electorate into shape had it visited Malta (with the exception of still-Christian Gozo) yesterday. Sadly, even in the anime movie, the god-warrior disintegrates before it can clean up the bestial encroachers upon civilization.

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

[The younger Paul Dombey and his dear sister Florence. The news has me feeling little better than unfortunate little Dombey.]
I mentioned that it takes a lot to keep me in good cheer these days. Some of this duty is taken up by Dombey and Son, my fourth Dickens novel, but this is less so since the sad happening before the first third of the volume is through. Quicker, if quirkier, to the task was Campin' in Chicago by Catholic mother of ten Hilary McRee Flanery, who blogs poems here, and whose volume of poetry, written under the pseudonym Long-Skirts, I reviewed here. Actually, Campin' in Chicago is the earlier book, published in 2004 and a Breath of Home in 2008, but since it was out-of-print already, I took my time in acquiring it; eventually I resigned myself to buying an exorbitantly expensive copy on Amazon (it was, however, a nice, autographed copy; I think someone named "Fran" will have some 'splaining to do about why she hawked her personalized copy). In the first few pages, I was turned off by Mrs. Flanery's "mom humor", but after twenty and thirty pages, I became impressed by how well she long she holds together a single, ten kids hectic narrative! And that's only Chapter One! While her poems could be dainty, her novel is rowdy, even dirty (for an traditional Catholic mother). My my, for someone whose standards for humor include Ann Coulter and John Kennedy Toole (Yes?/No? Circle one), this is hilarious. To use the book's own language, Campin' in Chicago is the macomic bomb. This post has gone on rather awhile, so I'll save some fun quotes for a few days from now, but all I can say is, I really hope someone decides to print a second edition! Or for that matter, a movie! A live-action, zany Catholic vacation film, based on this ultimate duel between fertile and sterile, would put big, faithful families on the map, and make them seem ordinary and, all else being equal, normal.

2011-05-16T21:58:00.023-04:00

If you were wondering why I haven't written for this blog in over a month, as these pictures indicate, I was beset by the worries of a final finals season, through which I just barely managed to complete my three majors, and still graduate summa cum laude, as indicated by the yellow cord, and the certificate for completing the overblown Honors Program. Not as cute, perhaps, as the identical twin girls with matching blue magna cords (forgive me; my brother, who kindly took these pictures, was elsewhere when I saw that sight to see after the reception), but satisfying nonetheless. Graduation was Saturday morning; I had hoped to post right after, but was intent on finishing a book instead. Nor would Atobe write. Though he is a year below me, and hence shall return in the Fall, he could not be bothered. By the time I called to see if he would attend commencement, he was already back in the Kanto! Anyway, some of the pictures are quite dazzling, so do enjoy.

Hey, isn't that that hobo from Elm Park? Here I stand by my advisor and favorite professor, the University of Chicago-educated, somewhat Straussian [much to my joy, the valedictorian quoted the great mind in her address], quirkily Rousseauist Dr. Sorenson. Sadly, he is retiring this year. A Protestant heretic, hints of disparagement toward each other's religion were not unknown.

Rival Thnkers. Lauren Trapasso, former president of Phi Sigma Tau and the Philosophy Club. As you can guess, Philosophy Club was very often me vs. everybody else.

If you ever wondered if the Campus Ministry girls I hyped so much were really all that, repent and believe in the Gospel! This little cherub is Kelley McNutt, or as I have entitled her, Chibi Kelley. For a comparative anime chibi, see here.

Me (perhaps in my best light) and another Campus Ministry girl, Rachel Dalo, whom I have aptly called Curls Rachel. However, only half the charm is in the looks; she has a lovely voice, which I will not hear again until our 5-year reunion, when I shall be 27.

Jill Foley and I, going through our second graduation together. Throughout all four years she was the only other graduate of Northampton High School to choose Assumption. We have never had much in common--she excels at swimming--but have always been dear friends, and whenever the SGA tackled sports affairs, she was on it. Pictures from that other graduation can be seen here; even given the better picture quality, I thankfully find I look rather better now, don't I?

I even bothered getting pics with a few guys. This is Mike Swanson, former VP for Financial Affairs. Given his overall air of cluelessness, I often call him Gilligan. He's a great gentleman, and a regular entertainer, the type that can send an entire room into laughter just by walking on stage.

The Les and the Pres. Former SGA President Carleigh Baldwin. Briefly "rivals" during a fun and friendly campaign (see here, here and here), she and I, New Yorker and Bay Stater, often had fun hanging around the SGA office over lunch or Dunkin' Donuts. A woman of impeccable music taste and a broad smile (though, aye, another heretic), she is much missed. As you can tell here, she was already quite teary.

Blogger and blogger. I stand with the precious, Hannah Katy, Class of 2010 grad and author of the popular Girl Power blog As Simple As That. She even mentioned me once a few weeks ago, after a visit to Assumption, so I return the favor here, though she hardly needs my assistance to expand her readership. Known for her run-on titles I, who as she notes adore her freckulous forearms, suggested she name a post "Friends are like freckles. They aren't always there, but they always come back for the summer," with a tanned photo of a cousin pencilling freckles on her smiling face when they were little.

Me beside the freshly-ordained Fr. Dinh. An immigrant from Vietnam, he recommended that this Poltical Science major do something to alleviate his homeland of communism. A good idea, but first I have to get around to graduate school, and before that the GRE.

Just before we drove off campus for good, I had my brother take this shot of me atop Adrian's Wall. A stone barrier between the world and the Catholic college, I have so named it for Hadrian's Wall, meant to keep barbarians from crossing the frontiers of the Empire. My, I hope it holds in my absence! Even if Pres Ces, an inactive Matt Brennan and a stardom-distracted Atobe remain, I have a feeling things will get worse without John Guinan or I. When I left NHS, the Republican Club dissolved in mere weeks, though I heard I was replaced by another who took up the mantle of Christian Kid...

Like the high school graduation post, this would feel incomplete without a brief reflection on some contemporary songs, though no poems this time. In the time of the SGA President before Miss Baldwin, the decadent Jay-Z cover of the excellent "Forever Young" (technically, "Young Forever") came out, and the then Pres, who could be a real Christian gentleman, was wholly infatuated with the tune, booming it back-to-back from his office cubicle. I too grew to like it. As much as I don't approve of "smoke some weed," and I never even "drink some wine," the rapper, intentionally or not, seriously considered the Eternal in his anthem to the Now.

Let’s dance in style,
Let’s dance for a while,
Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst...

As he disclaims before his lyrics about good times in the 'hood, all good things come to an end, and for that matter the Future looks pretty bad! He doesn't discount Heaven, but merely asks it to wait on a few worthy temporal revelries.

Reminisce talk some ... forever young is in your mind
Leave a mark that can’t erase neither space nor time
So when the director yells cut,
I’ll be fine,
I’m forever young...

While not leaving out the urban ladies, Jay-Z does not ignore the joy of remembering. And he evidently has at least a foggy sense of responsibility for what he does when he's "forever young." Though this is how I found the lyrics, I'm pretty sure it should be spelled Director. Four Last Things, baby. Though Z apparently has much to figure out about the One God. Indeed, however playerly the song is, its thesis-chorus, courtesy of Alphaville, asks:

Forever young I wanna be
Forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, forever

After affirming the goodness of endless, pleasurable life on earth, he calls the goodness of that same life into question, inviting the listener to think on whether this life, and its allures, are really everything. Call my speculations idle, but that is undeniable.

May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows

This is perhaps the best blessing I have ever heard (did he steal it?) In any case, I will the same for all my fellow alumni, and hope the next time they hear "Forever Young," they think on it.

But that's not all. I leave it to another rapper to say my current sentiments as I relax, back in my native (albeit, unlike Harlem, suburban) Northampton for good and all, until, God willing, I ascend still higher in the realm of liberal studies.

I'm coming home... I'm back where I belong, I never felt so strong.

2011-04-18T19:21:00.008-04:00

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!

2011-04-13T21:32:00.010-04:00

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!

2011-04-02T20:00:00.003-04:00

**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!

2011-04-02T18:17:00.006-04:00

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.

2011-03-18T22:34:00.007-04:00

War again?! In retrospect, from both the perspective of my youthful, generally neoconservative self and the paleoconservative years that have ensued, it has taken far longer for the United States to reach the brink of embroilment in a third Middle Eastern war after our last one began on March 20 of 2003, almost exactly eight years ago. Though the War in Afghanistan remains hot, the Iraq conflict has been fought through, and the government's claim that all our troops will come home by December 31, 2011 is believable. But oh! Despite President Obama's claim that

The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya, and we are not going to use force to go beyond a well-defined goal, specifically the protection of civilians in Libya.

I rather doubt we can, with any degree of publicly verifiable responsibility, simply leave it at a no-fly zone. Read this foresightful Pat Buchanan cautionary article my well-informed mother was kind enough to show me over break [mama's boy by nature, politico by vocation one might say]. Now, though a bit dated. who can really argue with this?:

What would be the purpose of establishing a no-fly zone over Libya? According to advocates, to keep Moammar Gadhafi from using his air force to attack civilians.

But if Gadhafi uses tanks to crush the rebellion, as Nikita Khrushchev did in Hungary and the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square, would that be OK?

What is the moral distinction between using planes to kill rebels and running over them with tanks? Do we Americans just want to see a fair fight?

As it happens, "individual states" are considering air strikes, so it's not like they're planning to surprise anyone. My hope, see, was that NATO and friends would continue their hand-wringing until the war was over. Even now, it is so close! Bad Guy Col. Moammar Gaddafi insists he is just days away from crushing the revolt, insisting that he will "show them no mercy" (as Obama has repeated when making his case for intervention), though he does claim "those who surrender and throw down their arms will be saved." Of course, there's no reason to believe anything the dictator says given his recent run of comically obvious lies, such as that al Qaeda is the mastermind of the uprising. As it is, thanks to another lie--that there is a ceasefire, even as fighting continues--who knows, maybe he will win if the West is not sufficiently aggressive.

Though hardly to the same degree, the West, despite our obsession with liberal democracy, has certainly been disingenuous this affair. In all of this, perhaps the wisest and most telling comments on the foreign attitudes toward the Libyan civil war come from Col. Gaddafi's son, Saif al-Islam. Along with his brother Khamis, he's become something of an Aeneas struggling to save his city in flames. And my, he has wit! In a Time interview he quipped:

"One month ago [Western countries] were sooo nice, so nice like pussycats," Saif says in a contemptuous sing-song tone. "Now they want to be really aggressive like tigers. [But] soon they will come back, and cut oil deals, contracts. We know this game."

Totally not fooled. I adore his realpolitik. As much as Westerners inhale, exhale, and sweat democratic ideology, our patience with presidents and prime ministers who presume to pronounce that any peevish, down-on-their-luck old dictator "has no legitimacy" astounds me. Throughout this entire affair, when have we read of Gaddafi committing Saddam Hussein-style massacres of his own people? The media acts like this were his chosen mode of operations. Less-than-precision air strikes against rebels? Yes. Artillery shelling out invested civilian neighborhoods? Yes. Violence against protesters? Yes--they seek to overthrow the government by force, after all. After a town is retaken, we hear that the people are frightened, and remaining in their homes; we do not hear of them being murdered in their homes. But we never hear of Gaddafi's henchmen wantonly committing genocide, even though everyone is reacting as if they were. Unless I am missing something (say so), the supposed madman is simply attempting to suppress a rebellion, without great concern to either commit side atrocities or offer mercy to enemy combatants. To heed the Western powers and refrain from all actions that might upset rights watchdogs, would be tantamount to giving up his power. It is, I maintain, absurd and wholly outside the scope of a leader's proper authority to demand another leader step down simply because we don't like him. If you want the strongman out that badly, do it yourself: do it we will, though almost no national interests are on the line, and Gaddafi and son pose no threat to the United States or Europe.

What do we expect will come of all our trouble and interference? The popular pipe dream is that nation-building will lead, in the long term, to stable, electoral democracy. Translation: North Africa shall be the new Europe. One man, one vote, high standards of living, and rights, rights, rights. No protests get shot up, and people are content with their lives. I can see it now. Optimally prosperous, Africa's Arabs slide into softer, majority-driven mores, cool in their Muslim faith, and live long and commodiously as their souls shrivel unto death. The proud Arab, too, sinks into existentialism and relativism. Incipit the last man.

The praise of truth and beauty may not be high on Gaddafi's agenda (see above lies), though interestingly he attempted to be quite pious in his earlier years (those, like me, too young to remember his earlier years may want to read Wikipedia's treatment of Islam in Revolutionary Libya; critics of Sharian chauvinism will be surprised to read that the on-the-books punishment for fornication is, or was, 80 lashes for both men and women, so we're hardly talking Iran or Saudi Arabia). However, as political scientists well know, life in dictatorships tends to stagnate, and the murky currents of Western fads ideological and retail do not have the effect on the everyman that they do in Europe. (On a side note, the Bahraini monarchy's crackdown on protests led to the destruction of an execrable public modern sculpture).

This war, or indeed this intervention should Obama somehow deliver and it goes no further, I oppose from the start. We certainly have no business in Libya; we are probably even taking the wrong side. Ah, at least I am young; I will probably live to see the consequences of this pivot in history, when the peace is entire and this war is but a paragraph on the Libya Wiki page, when I may sigh at my young fears, or cry my correct pessimism.

St. George, narrated in legend to have slain the dragon in Silene in Libya, pray for Libya.

St. Francis, evangelizer of Libya who daringly made the case for the Faith before the Sultan of Egypt, pray for Libya.

Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, pray for us+

2011-03-13T14:26:00.004-04:00

Rather quickly, spring break has ended. To note my sadness about the earthquake before I depart, is all I can do. As an anime/manga fan, this catastrophe to Japan touches me very much. Thankfully, the fan sites and writers have stepped up to help and offer up their prayers for the victims. The Anime News Network is providing links to donate to relief efforts, and Noizi Ito, illustrator of the Haruhi Suzumiya light novels, drew this Haruhi praying for Japan. Do remember them in your nighttime prayers, as I managed to do.

Despite all the turmoil, I couldn't help but also be sad that so many animes are delayed. To be sure, over there the stations that run anime are all the same big networks whereon breaking news had to take precedence, but I think their children are deprived of a solace I received after our Nation's tragedy. 9/11 was on a Tuesday, and at 12 years of age, I cannot tell you what a (petty creature) comfort it was, after an afternoon of depressing news, to still be able to watch BattleBots (the only decent show) on Comedy Central. But the children of Japan are deprived of Gosick. Oh well, at least the new Fractale aired before the quake.

2011-03-09T21:38:00.005-05:00

Where were we? In the last month, I have contemplated reporting the state of affairs at Assumption College, and a few goodies from one's anime and personal lives, but was honestly too busy. But now, on Ash Wednesday night (the ashes are still on my forehead; in my opinion they resenble a black dragonfly as much as a cross), during Spring Break, there is time to relate the manifold late fortuitous happenings.

Among my confidantes and I, the Brennan Censure and its aftermath (see last post) have occupied our thoughts. Happily, a witty professor has written a fine sarcastic defense of Brennan which does not spare the Basic Old Bureaucrats (BOBs) responsible for the leadership regime he stood up to. But my my, believe it or not, this is not the main event! Cassandra Delp, a sophomore in psychology, has written a daring exposé of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. The excellent Miss Delp, attesting her "experiences as a white student on campus"--I know!!--adeptly describes the groupthink prevalent in ALANA and other minority-oriented groups on campus, and the (hypocritical) attitude that white students who doesn't actively join "the minorities' side" are just "privileged," cultureless "yuppies." So do read this must read. *Bonus* There's a sidebar poll about one's favorite Girl Scout cookie (for Crusader88, samoas; gotta have the coconut). I promptly sent Miss Delp, previously wholly unknown to me, a congratulatory email and invited her to run for SGA, but sadly she was too busy.

Comment--Yes, it's time for something ridiculously controversial; I'm not sure which of these dudes I am though--As much as I agree with the article, the glory of which will surely be challenged in the next Le Provocateur (likely to be followed in turn by my op-ed parting shot; ah, this is the Golden Age of the student newspaper), the authoress didn't draw out all the conclusions. As a man disillusioned with multicultural harmony, when I read (for the convenience of those too lazy to follow the link)

I had thought that by meeting new people I would become more of a well-rounded person, but in reality, I started to view people based upon their color. I would dread the times when a group of minority students would come into my room and completely ignore me, or the times when all of my roommates go to a group called WINGS... that only colored women are invited to, or the times where I would hear "white isn't right" from some of my own friends. Being from a predominantly white high school and not having much diversity, I thought that this was normal and apparently I had just had the wrong impression that everyone was equal. However, when I attended my first ALANA meeting with my friends and roommates, I found that the reason that this segregation existed on campus was because the group that was promoting "togetherness"-as Geyer put it, "completely isolating one another."

I find an important lesson (perhaps yet) to be learned: it is human nature to think in groups, and the races are natural groups. The only reason "minorities" (as an insightful blogger notes in the name of his little publication, whites may be a majority in the United States, but globally are but 14% of the global population) seem inclusive is because white people no longer care if they are insulted, or die out altogether (a future for which Tim Wise, and some other whites, loudly moan). So when I read that, We then did an exercise where we picked questions out of a hat and had to answer them out loud. I randomly chose "What is your culture?" and as I read my question aloud, most of the minority students snickered at me and apologized that I had gotten this question, as in to say that I do not have a culture, I think, sad but largely true. White people have no self-respect, or sense of their beauty or heritage, so consequently when multicultis brag about whites becoming a minority in 2042 (since they already moved the date up from 2050, my guess is more like 2035), I wonder: We already live in a Nation where whites are made to feel guilty about their supposed privilege (of course, since minorities benefit from affirmative action, and are allowed to use groupthink, they are the only ones with any "privilege"), and where, with this current article, one of my (other) friends opined that Miss Delp sounded like a "quasi-racist" for writing from a white perspective, how should she expect to be treated when she's in the "minority"?

Until whites simply ignore the multiculturalists' stock insults and reprovals, they will remain incapable of interacting with "minorities" on equal ground, and the "conversation" apparently desired by Multicultural Affairs et al will never progress beyond guilt instillation.

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

Well. Other than that, I have finally begun a really cute romance I ordered months ago. The Lilac Sunbonnet is a wholly forgotten 1894 novel by Scottish author S. R. Crockett. Or, I should say almost forgotten, as old S. R. has managed http://www.facebook.com/pages/S-R-Crockett/107775852590470">to join Facebook (friend him). As you know, I love old books, but how did I find this find? As I was scrolling through the stock of an antique books dealer, I found, The Lilac Sunbonnet, and thought of a petite lady friend of mine who would look adorable in a lilac sunbonnet, so I had to buy it, read it, and show her! Fortunately, Crockett is a charming writer, and as a Theology major I am intrigued by the plight of his protagonist, a divinity student who accidently forgets his Hebrew Bible and lexicon and Latin Luther commentary--I can't read either of the languages in question--and discovers they were picked up by a 20-somethng damsel who embodies all the virtues of Proverbs 31 (on which he was writing an exegesis she discovered), and sports a lilac sunbonnet! Too good to be true, which is why it's fiction. I managed to locate an original 1894 copy, but there are a few copies floating around Amazon. Also: There was apparently a 1922 British film of The Lilac Sunbonnet, directed by Sidney Morgan, but sadly I can't find it anywhere.

Bonnets are certainly commendable attire. Lately, though, I have spent more time admiring lolita fashion, and particularly the lolita fashion illustrations by Kira Imai, a sometime hireling of Angelic Pretty. His drawings--see some of them here--are unbelievably dear and elegant. Witness especially the Mary Stuart dresses drawing (named for a lousy Protestant, I know, but still). To connect this with my last work, this is the best Western fashion I've seen in a long time, and it's Japanese!

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

Lastly, I tell you about a fine new anime I'm into, named Fractale. For math lovers: yes, there are fractals in the opening. But more importantly, for politicos who enjoyed the utopian/dystopian novels Brave New World and 1984, you will love Fractale. The projected future is even truer to fallen, pathetic human nature than the classics by Huxley and Orwell. I'm not kidding! So far there are just 7 episodes, so anyone who wants to embark on this high adventure following the foes of the oppressive/decadent Fractale System can catch up quickly. Oh, and of course, the characters are really cute and loveable.

2011-02-06T19:26:00.006-05:00

With sadness do I inform you that Atobe's fears from the post of Wednesday before last came to pass. In the words of that Sunday's Gospel reading, our friend was in fact "persecuted for the sake of righteousness," or as an observer of the situation put it, censured because he conscientiously absented himself from a few hours of winter leadership training, and was too meek but to accept that his actions had consequences, unjust though they were (I on the other hand gave a starchy, stuttering speech on his behalf, which was duly ignored). Fortunately, his censure did not include removal from the Student Government Association, so unlike Socrates he shall return to fight another day.

But for today those foul proceedings are irrelevant. As usual, the SGA took the day off to watch the Super Bowl. And more intolerably the Mass--where I would be as I type this were all things equal--was also rescheduled, a typical move that has causes angst in more Catholics than this one. To be sure, I can wait until 10:00, and I am sure the rest of this college's remnant is in the same state, but there is something unseemly about the Church genuflecting before the big game. The chicken wings or, more properly, sacrifice to the football gods by Taylor Dining Hall were delicious, but I continue to worry, for man cannot serve two masters or, more properly, two quarterbacks. Though to be fair, everyone watches this game. Except me, though thanks to a nifty song I even know both of the teams playing, though I am of the opinion that the color scheme in question was best expressed in another song. "Why doncha put it on ya blog?" I did.

These recent weeks have also been filled with Winter Bliss for everyone, except drivers. We have gotten so much snow that of these last three weeks of school, each one had a snow day following a huge blizzard. Were it not for the last two days--today was nearly t-shirt weather--the snow would still be layered almost Verdun trench high. To celebrate the season, which feels like a Second Advent, I had planned to return to my "I sure wish young ladies wore Victorian doll dresses" roots and include a fine gothic lolita wallpaper, filled with winter joy, that I found yesterday, but it was not to be rediscovered. Fortunately, I found this irresistibly kawaii image from, where else, Deviant Art, to foster your hearthbound happiness! (You see, liberals, my reactionary attire aspirations are undeniably prettier than the sweatshirts-or-polos textile world you have created). In addition, I simply could not forego this charming scene (last below) from the brand new anime Gosick, a romantic detective series based on light novels of the same name. Even without the Victorian-inspired fashion (the anime's producers are even collaborating with the lolita dress company Innocent World), conservatives should love Gosick. Read the Anime News Network's summary:

GOSICK takes place in 1924 in a small, made-up European country of Sauville. The story centers on Kazuya Kujo, the third son of a Japanese Imperial soldier, who is a transfer student to St. Marguerite Academy, where urban legends and horror stories are all the rage. There he meets Victorique, a mysterious yet beautiful and brilliant girl who never comes to class and spends her days reading the entire content of the library or solving mysteries that even detectives can't solve.

As my mother remarked Gosick, starring an emerald-eyed blonde and inevitably set at a Catholic boarding school with statues and all, the Japanese once again embrace everything good about the West that the West has rejected (while bravely continuing to celebrate their maligned martial tradition). Oh, and did I mention the opening? Art Nouveau out the yazoo and feat. Our Lady.

2011-01-26T11:36:00.003-05:00

Guess who's back. Leslie? Please. I, Atobe, return from the more temperate environs of Tokyo quite refreshed, but I was rather surprised; Crusader had told me there'd been almost no snow, but I, Atobe, suppose since that communiqué the clouds have opened. I would resent the man for his silence on the meteorological--but he has, however, a reasonable excuse. At last, he has finished Soft Despotism and The Last Man: Tocqueville and Nietzsche on the threats before man under the equality of conditions, the seventy-five page capstone he elected to write to close off his experience in the AC Honors Program. As his proofreader I, Atobe, vouch for its quality, but he told me about the thing so darn long ago, t'was nearly forgotten by moi.

Whilst I, Atobe, am not involved in student government, and need practice my tennis along with the rest of the gang during most of my free time, happily my associate and his friends are keeping up the struggle against leadership training--although, sadly, one of his noblest friends is really feeling the short, or perhaps, the sharp end of the stick for his valiant efforts. Alas, the usual treatment of those bold men who stand in conscience against liberal bureaucracy! On the brighter side, Leslie has designed a colorful poster for the anime club, soon to adorn hallways near and far on 500 Salisbury Street. Even I, Atobe, haven't the top secret template, but perhaps Leslie will be charitable enough to post it for you all soon.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-12-23T22:25:00.003-05:00

So ends my 22nd birthday. This is a fine age to be, I think. As the number suggests, I feel I have been back for seconds a lot lately. Lately Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, the second book in her Vampire Chronicles, arrived in the mail, and after the first 50 pages I am glad I finished Whitman's interminable Leaves of Grass earlier that day to make room for something less shallow. The impious reputation these books have acquired is really undeserved. Lestat, necessarily, is quite the sinner, but like the first book's Louis his very existence as a vampire leads him to a disdain of mortals' lack of curiosity about the grand scheme of things and the reason for being he despairs of discovering. And, as if to throw a bone to counter-cultural traditionalists who cannot but mention "rock n' roll" without mentioning that in some paleolithic era the term itself was lewd, Lestat confirms their suspicions: Rock music is satanic. I believe it, even if I can stand a Doors song once in a while. The second second, in case you were wondering, was Sara Bareilles' Kaleidoscope Heart, which my kind brother purchased for my big day.

More significant than my good fortune is the approach of Christmas. Sigh; the way this advent has proceeded, the War on Christmas certainly seems lost. And it is rather hard to get into the Christmas spirit when the unusually potent lame duck Congress passed, among other abominations, the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, with the assistance of a flip-flopping Senator Scott Brown no less. There can be no greater sign of sickness in a nation than acceptance of open sodomites and other criminals against nature, in armed forces which should foster genuine manliness and shun effeminacy no less! See my favorite commentary on this disaster here. Nonetheless, Christians always have reason for hope, and in this season most of all. Christ is our refuge, even if He is excluded from every place on the earth but our own hearts. Please enjoy this year's Christmas sonnet, which just happens to be the big 150.

Sonnet CL- The Father's Christmas Gift

The sky peered sweetly over Bethlehem,
Lit bright from deep to earth, hardly a night.
For God had placed a star, marvelous bright,
For men of good will in Jerusalem
And in the country near to follow, find
Their captive Israel's Messiah come.
These guests brought presents also; soon with them
The Infant's shelt'ring stablery was filled.
Eggs, poultry, linens, songs, fine gold and myrrh
Accumulated round the trough and kine.
The finest gift, though, roof could not confine:
For in the midnight blue and royal were
An endless many angels fair as stars
To glorify the throne our Savior chose.

Thinking of the little drummer boy, naturally Jesus accepts all the gifts he surely received that night, but when I think of them piling up like children's toys and men's gadgets underneath the Christmas tree, I expect that whether they were really all that good themselves was a different story. Moral to the Story: The presents God gives are a lot better than the ones we give.

Even though it's my birthday, your goodies do not end there! I also have a recommendation to make, after the fashion of those bloggers who select any old obscure book and label it a "conservative obligation", I assert the same about Shangri-La, the anime Al Gore doesn't want you to see. When I read that the plot involves a corporate elite that enrich themselves by manipulating the carbon market, which arose when the nations of the world joined together to fight global warming with tax on CO₂ emissions, that got my attention. This little darling, Karin Ishida of Ishida Finance, makes obscene sums of money by manipulating the carbon market with a computer program named MEDUSA. Note the teddy bear; she's also fond of lolly pops. And of course, no anime would be complete without a pale heterochromatic girl afflicted with an XP-like disease, coddled like an absolute monarch, and with power of life and death over her army of underlings, here manifested in Mikuni, called the Moon. I caution, to be sure, that global warming is real in the world of Shangri-La and causes sea levels to fluctuate, but most of the good guys are members of Metal-Age, a resistance group that protests government carbon policy, which is so strict that street merchants have to bribe the police to ignore the emissions from their grills, and is clearly a remedy much worse than the original problem. Lure eco-crazies in with the promise of an anime all about the environment and climate legislation; they'll be be glad you provided the assist. Maybe they'll even be ready to realign themselves with Metal-Age.

This is Kuniko with her trademark boomerang. See the opening here, and the ending here. The entirety of the series is available legally and free at the Crunchyroll website.

2010-12-14T02:01:00.013-05:00

It has been too long, but then again I, crusader88, could say finals have been too long. And before that one of my classes was much taken with reading David Hume the British empiricist, not to be confused with the livelier Brit Hume. What it took to get through only 75 minutes! Hume was one of a half dozen modern thinkers we'd read who thought they'd come up with a system that was genuinely new, and whose clarity would at least bring quiet to the disputes of philosophers. It never worked, and inspired by a funny anecdote the professor told in class I came up with this ditty, entertaining friends and faculty:

As I was reading David Hume
I counted thinkers who presume
They were the ones to start anew
But stopped when I reached sixty-two.

In real life, some long-ago gal undergrad stopped short at just that number in her efforts to enumerate boys wearing khakis and backwards baseball caps in a large lecture hall. Monkey see, monkey do.

But at long last I completed the work I set out for tonight, so there are a few minutes to blog. I wish Atobe had kept the dust off for me, and the good Lord knows he had the good time. The diligent aristocrat, no procrastinator, up and left the moment classes left last Wednesday, leaving just a note saying that he'd finished his (all written) exams and had by the time I read it returned to Japan, and including to be sure the URLs of a few seasonable gift ideas, in fulfillment of a promise:

--His Charm Point wa Naki Bokoro album (hear the hit single here. Though perhaps best suited for the J-pop enthusiast, with that hat, he's basically Rat Pack.

--Too many keys? Or is that college lanyard just too de mode for the rebellious spirit? Well, these Prince of Tennis keychains are for you. Since the Ryoma and Karupin one's nice too, your purchase is a true choice between these eternal rivals, including a cat.

--Isn't this Atobe pin accessory adorable? Features the young Atobe's yearbook photo, and the Hyotei crest in metal.

--This may be too chilly for New England this time of year, but what respectable undergrad could pass up the Keigo Atobe line of togas? Possibly the one reason to wish Assumption College would go Greek.

--Ever just wanted to pet that blueberry Slurpee-colored hair with your very own hands? Well, Atobe's very sensitive about his color... but in the spirit of Christmas he's included this huggable plush toy for the young and young at heart.

At the end of the note, Atobe relays to all his fans around the world, A MERRY CHRISTMAS, AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Atobe also asks for your prayers. Though you can expect him to show at Christmas Mass in his level best, along with his fellow Hyotei converts Ryo and Chotaro, he requests your prayers for the conversion of the other 99% of Japan. And especially his longtime on-court foe Tezuka, who's been spotted outside Nagasaki's famed Oura Catholic Church recently.

Yes, as you can tell, the War on Christmas drags on still another year, surpassing even the War in Iraq. Though it was the atheists that got off to a good start this year with their billboards, their spirit and sport, detestable as are the objects pursued thereby, enlivened my soul. Despite the ingenuity which should follow from their purported REASON, the design hardly betrays Nietzschean creativity. Same old, but of course, the worry is that Christians haven't found an adequate anti-soundbyte. As it happens, I had the good fortune to read Chesterton's Orthodoxy a month or two ago (Lord and Chesterton forgive me for not having read more sooner), and was impressed to say the least by G.K.'s take on reason, and of the fools he made of the atheist goons of his day! So if any Roman Catholics more enterprising than this one want to undertake a billboard, my suggestion is something like this:

[sample]

WHAT IS REASON?

AskWhatReasonIs.Org

Try to ignore THAT on the freeway! Large and in-charge! The site would, of course, present the inquirer with some of G.K.'s timeless barbs and teach the atheists a thing or two--literally.

I myself have little contributed to the War. While, of course, avoiding the heartless "Happy Holidays," and giving everyone a buoyant sending-off at the last SGA meeting, usually my spirits have been barely enough to annunciate "...yeah, you have a nice Christmas too." Don't worry, my life is certainly not bad, and further my days have not been without new cheers. Just a few days ago I began the wonderfullest anime, Kemono no Souja, meaning The Beast Player, and called simply Erin on the CrunchyRoll website where it can be seen for free. Based on a light novel series by Nahoko Uehashi, a university professor of ethnology no less, Erin follows the life of Erin, a young girl living in a village that raises tohdas, an important beast of war; Erin is illustrated with a baby tohda at right! One of the first things I noticed about the masterpiece show (it's not just me saying it) is that the characters and landscapes look as if they were taken right out of The Legend of Zelda and specifically The Wind Waker. I got to thinking, Maybe Erin is a fitting consort for Link. After all, she basically raises dodongos! As I searched for images, I made a sad discovery. Not being a Zelda fan of the caliber to have played the original, I had been wholly ignorant that Link USED TO BE A CHRISTIAN KNIGHT! I know! Maybe he lost the Faith when he found the tritheist Triforce.

2010-11-21T13:22:00.002-05:00

Western poets wither my very soul. Whilst my own people boast a fine tradition of aristocratic verse--a tradition to which I, Atobe, ably contribute, as you soon will see--my travels in America have been dreary indeed whenever I, Atobe, encounter those celebrated for their literary prowess. So many Western poets of potential, afflicted by victim veneration, socialism, and the anti-social impulse, are reduced to malevolent irrelevance.

Just this Friday I, Atobe, attended a poetry event with Crusader88, and was sorely disappointed. The guests were fine writers, but their ideological perversions reduced it all to waste. These practitioners of the art simply must be heard to be believed. Find any handful of people, anywhere, any time, who've been excluded from society for the supposed good or health and community, and you have yourself victims to be memorialized in a poetry chapbook. One guest was selling a book about the poor lepers sent to Penikese Island, off the coast of this Commonwealth, at the turn of the 20th Century. Now, yes, the disease isn't as contagious as scientists then believed, and there were a few cases of bureaucratic ineptitude, but face it: these patients lived well. The poet included this very shot in her slide show. Now, these cabins might not be my Okinawa bungalow, but they aren't exactly 8'-by-10' cells. They had electricity, were well-fed, and had their laundry done by Chinese immigrants. And the location was even up to Atobe clan standards. Penikese, as you can see from this enlargeable map, is located among the Elizabeth Islands, halfway between the seacoast and Martha's Vineyard; Penikese is the little one just to the just above and in-between the bottom two. Yep, the colony was on real estate nicer than the late Ted Kennedy's pad; heck, he probably yachted by the spot time and again. And they were ably cared for; our Lord Jesus healed lepers and showed them care and compassion, but liberals aren't satisfied until they live among us like they didn't even have a contagious disease. The book would've been nice if the poems read were any indication, but the pity lust really irked me a bit too much, and so I, Atobe, kept my wallet closed at selling time, but riffraff interested may purchase the volume here.

Also disappointing were poems read by the same author on Suzanne Valadon, a promiscuous fool who did Impressionism, and a guitarist who somehow connected a melody to the future trial of your last President George W. Bush for war crimes. As per the American idiom, Are you serious? These people are under the impression that Bush is motivated by something besides the progressive liberal dream that, one way or another, the entire world will enter succumb to the easy consumerism and unjust perpetual peace that is Western liberalism. To make myself clear to less educated ears: Americans often giggle, and with good cause, when people die in a human stampede in Muslim countries. Trust me, in fifty years, they'll still be stampeding, but not because disorder broke out during a procession or some such. Oh no, they'll be stampeding, just like us, in an effort to snag the best Black Friday deals at Wal-Mart Baghdad (trust me, they'll be celebrating corporate Christmas sooner or later, just my own pagans back in Japan). Such will be the triumph of democracy.

But I, Atobe, return to my point. These cultural (and political) Marxists deserved a due reproach, and they received one. Since anything this veteran rightist says himself would be seen by these leftistas as mere boilerplate, I, Atobe, penned a mischievous poem to be read by a mutual friend of Leslie and myself. A ginger given to pulling at her curls, we put her up to reading this brusque masterpiece.

Curling up to Marx

A girl with curls [thread fingers through hair] thought this to herself:
"Why is it not straight?"
She asked her friend the same question:
"Why is it not straight?"
"I think it's naturally curly."
"Oh, nonsense!" she said, and stormed off,
fingering her curls straight, just like so, anticipating their compliance.
This girl, as it happened, later curled up to Karl Marx.

Immortal, is it not? But it actually won laughter and cheer from the attending ex-hippies; either they have a sense of humor, or they were too burned out to notice the poetic prank. Give that to your utopian why don't you? Poor people and their delusions...

Next week I, Atobe, shall condescend to be kinder to mt brother Christians of lesser means. Yes, folks, expect an Atobe-centric Christmas giving guide next Friday, just in time to miss the potentially deadly Black Friday crowd!

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-11-15T01:18:00.004-05:00

Last week was quite wonderful, and I expect no less from this one. My meditations have frequently wandered to the loss of A Certain Hope, however. So please enjoy, before I read it at Friday's poetry event, an allegorical poem specially written for this time of the New England year,

Sonnet CXLVIII Asking for the Snow

The autumn night suggests more than herself.
When black, or merely gray below the rain,
I hope and hope the promise of a swain
Rests on Ouranos' bosom: Winter's sheaf,
Crisp silks for clothing mucklands, marvelous,
Hauled live by sky, a man's back's Christmas tree.
I pray to God, expect my ask to see
This bedlayn ossuary may just pass.

The oily night's skin slips on over blue.
Her darkness drapes the lonesome, pupile moon.
Trees bristle, for the night shall not end soon.
Eyelashes flutter, darkness in them too.
The bent horizon might, with less surprise,
Be nothing but the closing of my eyes.

2010-11-06T00:17:00.007-04:00

When they campaigned against your victorious candidate with this, you know you're in for a good four years...

...and when they called Senator-elect Pat Toomey one of these, you know you'd have to be nuts not to like him.

You find me still in an enviable abyss... or should I say a Neo Angelique Abyss? That recommendable shojo anime I have lately begun encapsulates, at any rate, my thankfulness in its aptly-named opening theme, "Joy to the World". While the cute Angelique, seen here with ribbons, derives pleasure from the company of the anime's plenitude of handsome males, I express my gratitude for Tuesday's nationwide Republican victories. However little I (and I think most other conservatives) have come to expect from the Grand Old Party, this electoral rebuke of President Obama and his agenda is certainly more welcome than a further endorsement. And what a rebuke it was! As I write this, it seems the total Republican gains in the House of Representatives shall number 64, making this the biggest Republican year since the 1930s. The strident naysayers, of course, attribute the mood of the electorate to pocketbook issues. Even if this is partially true, I am not such a snide pessimist. Midterm reversals are common, and I doubt this Democratic defeat would have been such a rout were it not for the innumerable indignant citizens who only now long-facedly realize the consequences of their ballot but two years back. And the economy? Many voters finally realized that our economic woes are as much the fault of big government Republicans as the Democratic socialists, as they demonstrated in the several primary upsets that booted incumbent candidates of both parties.

Conclusion? Be vigilant, o ye Christian Americans; if we hold John Boehner and his merry men to their promises, and especially their pledge not to fund Obamacare, maybe things won't get any worse for a few more congresses. And whatever the limitations of the two-party system, promising, genuine conservatives--I'm thinking especially of Senator-elect Rand Paul--have made it to Washington: this is an opportunity to supplant the Manhattanite neoconservatives that nearly ruined the Republican party not too long ago. For one good sign, Ron and Rand are planning to introduce legislation to end the Federal Reserve on the latter's first day in office! A symbolic move, but certainly better than the successful stunts perpetrated by some of those who've been booted--at least the second half, for instance, of McCain-Feingold is now out for good.

Moreover, while Atobe called a few races wrong, and Sharron Angle, Dino Rossi, Bill Brady, and apparently Joe Miller were rejected in favor of crooked incumbents (I would bet Campus Cash that an Illinois recount EXCLUDING those no longer among the living, and inner city votes surreptitiously purchased by ACORN, would place Brady above Governor Quinn), the wins can count are no small joy. I was afraid I'd have to swallow our optimism about Maine's Paul LePage, but in Right-wing equivalent of the Chilean presidential election of 1970, the good man won with 38% to the leftist Independent's 36% and the Democrat's 20%. He's got a lot on his plate, but expect LePage to keep hounding the President for his hellishly bad policies. And Pat Toomey? I was starting to think long-standing dreams never come true, but heck, he won too. On the congressional side, which Atobe didn't have time to discuss, we are certainly joyed to see Lou Barletta, the infamous anti-illegal immigration activist from Hazleton, Pennsylvania, is finally in the House on his third try. Frank Guinta, the Tea Party-backed Assumption grad, also won his race in New Hampshire.

Lastly, while Massachusetts did not elect a single statewide official or congressman from the Republican party, the Mass G.O.P. scored an important win no one's talking about. And I'm not talking Question 1 (repeal the surtax on liquor), though it shall certainly make the average student's weekend life much cheaper. As MassResistance reports, Republicans doubled their representation in the General Court's House of Representatives, and 12-14 of the new Republicans are rock-solid social conservatives. Still, the expected in-excess of 30 members are a minor stumbling block for the Democratic supermajority in the 160-member body, so even becoming an effective opposition block remains something of a pipe dream...

Oh, and since she's so darn cute in her Gothic lolita dress, here's another shot of Neo Angelique Abyss's Angelique.

2010-11-01T22:30:00.006-04:00

Election Pre-Gaming: Part II

Feeling like the king that is Atobe. When fair Aurora's fingers next grace the Eastern seaboard, Americans will be voting, and not a moment too soon. Or too early: games of tennis not only, but of racquetball too have kept Yours Truly from the completion of his evaluations. I, Atobe, am in high spirits, and not the least because I expect tomorrow's vote will balance off the bad news from Brazil. A cosmopolitan (whereas my friend Leslie is wary of the word), I, Atobe, am much affected by the victory of former leftist guerrilla Dilma Rousseuf in that country's presidential election. Those poor Brazilians! Theirs is the largest Catholic nation on earth, and yet the faithful must suffer under an ideological successor to da Silva (and things would have been still worse, saith the Wall Street Journal, were it not for the growing influence of evangelical Protestants). Three bishops critical of Rousseuf even received death threats. The Brazilian Left apparently has its act together. Tomorrow, however, you Americans have the opportunity to stall, even turn back if G.O.P. rhetoric is to be believed, the encroachment of socialism and atheism. As promised I, Atobe, have furnished some brief remarks about candidates who give me hope.

This fresh Senate class may be something extraordinary. 2004 was a pick-up year for the Right; that we have the prospect of winning still more seats is a happy sign of the times. And moreover, most of the Republican nominees are not, as one might expect, liberals vying for the votes of the bad, but pro-family conservatives wholly at odds with the ObamaNation. Take Pat Toomey, that good Catholic of Pennsylvania, here shown beside a trigger happy Sarah Palin. "My idea of gun control," the source has her saying, "is good aim." He's basically been the Candidate-In-Waiting since he lost a primary against Arlen Specter six years before. He's in a tight race against Democrat Joe Sestak (whose win over the traitorous Specter did make me happy in its time), but I have hopes that he shall be the Keystone State's next Rick Santorum. (By the way, my Americanos, learnèd though I, Atobe, am, the knowledge of what this "keystone" image is has escaped me. When I, Atobe, asked Crusader88, he said, "Well, I always just called it the Pennsylvania Shape"). Not all the fine candidates, though, were hanging on the rack waiting for use. For the best of the contenders, we surely have the Tea Party to thank. But lest we forget, we have ONE PERSON to whom we owe more thanks than anyone, even any organization, for this fine crop: again, Sarah Palin. This Christian woman, bête noire extraordinaire of the Left, and feminist though she is, whom neither Leslie nor I, Atobe, would choose as President, has found a great niche endorsing anti-establishment conservatives. As you may read on this helpful map by the Washington Post, Christine O'Donnell, Joe Miller, and Sharron Angle all enjoyed her support in the run-up to their close primaries (she also aided Carly Fiorina, whom I, Atobe, am not enthused about, but California could certainly have done worse). Yes, her penchant for giving Republican women a boost seems to have had salutary results. As Leslie said, O'Donnell is so great that, even if she loses (as looks likely, though she isn't as far behind as she was a few days ago), the G.O.P. did a noble feat in opting for her over Mike Castle. (A hint to latter-day witch hunters: If rather than hounding the misspeaking Catholic O'Donnell, you scoured my co-blogger's hometown, you would fine many who are guilty as charged). Joe Miller, a wonderful Christian pro-lifer, is in a race that's wholly up for grabs after the Alaska mayhem, so I, Atobe, wish him luck in replacing pro-choice moderate Republican Lisa Murkowski. The Alaska race was really the test of Palin's mettle: she'd spoken condescendingly of the Murkowski family's entrenched influence in Going Rogue, but to actually endorse Lisa's little-known foe in a primary was something!

And Sharron Angle! That woman had better win. The lovable fanatic--you need fanatics like her in your Senate--has already spent nearly $19,000,000 on her drive to unseat the Majority Leader Reid, most of it mine. Investments aside, Angle advocates eliminating the Department of Education and IRS, doubts man-made global warming, endorses militias, doesn't believe your First Amendment separates Church and State, and is a model against which even I, Atobe, must be weighed! Gasp! If she wins, and it looks like she just might, the entire election cycle will have been worth it. Bravo, Mrs. Angle.

Rand Paul, lastly, has his race good as won, so it's been hard to keep up the excitement due to the son of Ron Paul about to become a senator in Washington. Meanwhile, exemplary conservative Ken Buck has also got his Senate race against Colorado's Democrat Bennet to just a tiny lead without Palin's assistance, though the kindly woman has endorsed the aforementioned Tom Tancredo at the last second. And need I, Atobe, tell you anything about Dino Rossi? The poor man! He lost his last two statewide races in Washington; should he loose a third time, commend him for his strength if he doesn't leave this life Horace Greeley style! And against such an unworthy Catholic in name only! Good Kami-sama! Atobe hopes that YOU, America, will indeed vote your way out of your Obama's mess. To any remaining electoral indifferentists who don't think your vote matters, remember: you'll be voting for years after you die, so you might as well get involved in the democratic process pre mortem. (Post mortem voting is rather less common in Japan, which is odd since the voters are often interred much closer to the polls).

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-10-29T02:08:00.005-04:00

Election Pre-Gaming: Part I

Elections, my good Americans, are fast approaching, and as AC's resident athletic prodigy I, Atobe, have seen is meet to write a pre-game report so YOU can know what to expect on November 2.

The weather has been good--observe my seasonable and stylish denim jacket--and the forebodings for next Tuesday have been no less auspicious. While, as a fellow political animal reminded me, we cannot count our chads before they catch--that would be political pre-gaming--as a friend of the President Obama once said, "You don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind's blowing"--especially when it's filled with cherry blossom petals. As I, Atobe, see it, the question is not whether we shall celebrate, but until what hour in the morning the party shall last. The time has come, after years of losses thanks to unpopular neoconservative wars and immoral, ineffective Keynesian economics, for a resurgence by a hopefully reinvigorated Republican party. The time has come, to put it otherwise, for a Republican party!

No: I, Atobe, shall not deign to predict whether America's party of the Right can regain control of the House of Representatives or Senate. Political websites already do a fine job forecasting such generalities. While certainly important, especially given the influence of committee chairs, there are usually enough principled mavericks, pandering moderates, and plumb sell outs to make complicate important votes beyond the numerical advantage of one caucus or the other. Rather, I shall briefly note a few fave hopefuls of interest to good traditional Catholics like me and hopefully you, great candidates with a chance to win it all, a few popular, but most under-reported. For months now, Atobe has kept an eye on:

1. Paul LePage. Remember when Maine was supposed to vote for gay "marriage" in 2008? This year, it looks like Maine might also muster the gusto to defy the social liberals in the gubernatorial race. When I first read about LePage, a Catholic, I thought, "How did this guy slip under the liberal outrage radar?" A Tea Party-backed candidate, LePage won the primary as a social conservative, and hasn't backed down. When I, Atobe, read his "Traditional Values" page, which begins, "As the eldest son of eighteen children, and a parent of five children, Paul knows how important it is to protect the traditional Maine values that have created strong communities and strong families across the state," I thought, WHOA, 18 CHILDREN! As a Jap, trust me, that sounds even cooler to me. Sadly, LePage's family growing up was "dysfunctional", but unlike some he hasn't let a sour childhood turn him into a psychopath, and is rearing a brood of his own. Both pro-life and pro-marriage (if in wishy-washy terms, but give him a break--he could be the next Chris Christie), LePage would be a better executive than a New England state deserves.

By the Grace of God, LePage has a strong lead. According to a recent poll, LePage is at 40%. Doesn't sound promising, but the Left is evenly split--a clean 26% each--between Democrat Libby Mitchell and liberal Independent Eliot Cutler. Both of the prospective losers are for "marriage equality" which, according to St. Paul, is a contradiction in terms.

2. Bill Brady. Though a production of the bad guys, this one was too good to pass up. Illinois is definitely NOT one of the great states in this union. As politicos will recall from February, the horrendous liberal Mark Kirk won the Republican Senate primary with little opposition. However, Providence saw fit for them to have a gubernatorial candidate even better than Paul LePage. Yes, Chicago liberals have met their match. If you liked LePage, you'll love Brady; if you didn't, no help will be availing. See, that same February day, a slew of indistinguishable Chicago city boys appeared were vying neck-and-neck for the nomination, but out of nowhere Brady won. A backwoods boy, the severe fragmentation of the field allowed him to win with just 20% of the vote; and he beat the next contender by 155,527 to 155, 334, a difference of just 193 votes!

Brady, another Roman Catholic, is a too-good-to-be-true candidate. Not only is he against abortion without the usual exceptions, but he, a state senator, introduced a bill to prohibit gay "marriage" and civil unions after he won the primary, so you know he's for real. Besides supporting gun rights as above, he also wants to get the death penalty alive and kicking again. Though Brady usually does better in the polls that the ignominious candidate Kirk, one of the latest polls has him leading Democrat Pat Quinn by but 5%, so keep him in your prayers, and remind all the Bulls fans in your life just what's at stake here.

3.Tom Tancredo. Perhaps there will be a Constitution party also. The former-Republican congressman and presidential candidate, who needs no introduction, is within striking distance of getting elected Governor of Colorado over the Democrat and a Republican he's totally overtaken in the polls. Besides the usual pro-family goodies I, Atobe, expect of candidates, he's so strong on immigration that even I, Atobe, in these United States on a mere student visa, cower in fear at Tancredo--but of course, he is merely imitating us Japanese in all his salutary policies. If he wins, there shall be no more illegals in Colorado: a clampdown will surely round up those fool enough not to flee. On the downside, Tancredo lost the faith of his youth and is now a Protestant heretic, so pray for his conversion unto the one fold of the one true Church.

Part II coming soon! Until then

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-10-22T20:25:00.002-04:00

Life must have been boring these last two weeks without my beautiful writings to reflect on. Verily, life without the Beautiful is mere drudgery, as a video series I simply must insist you watch reminded me yesterday. Now, I hate the way embedded videos look on a weblog, but these are for more than kicks. Courtesy of Kevin Alfred Strom, whose art gallery I recommended some time ago, the Aesthetic Underground presents The Banishment of Beauty, a four part series by painter Scott Burdick in which he considers and soundly refutes those modern artists who reject beauty as the end to their art, and faults the critical/curatorial establishment that has brainwashed the public into believing the works they promote worthwhile. Yes, I speak frequently these days about brainwashing, perhaps too frequently for some tastes (and indeed my own patience). But I ask: When will it end? For you, now. After a well-placed investment of time (better brew the tea or coffee now), not only will your appreciation of improve (art majors will want to watch too, since Burdick critiques a standard modern art text I've seen students toting around campus), but you'll regain the innate candor to dismiss cons as adulated as Picasso with a laugh of pity. His Weeping Woman (which will not be shown here for ugliness) gets several cameos, perhaps to illustrate the apprehension of such "artists" at being exposed as frauds. Enjoy!

[And I note that, looking back on the political situation when I first mentioned Strom's art gallery last year, the improvement in the Right's political fortunes since then, which even a cursory glance at the polls will confirm, fills me with joy.]

[Approximately one hour later, dear reader,] to be fair, even this novice knows Picasso could've done something more with his God-given talent, as we can see from his Communion which he produced at but fifteen years of age. But no such luck. The commie squandered his talent, and, we hope in Christ, is headed for the garage sale of history. Indeed, perhaps the best part of the series is a thought question posed at the very beginning of video 2 (in case you didn't follow the instructions and watch it yourself):

Imagine walking through a junkyard and finding some work without its frame, signature, or any explanation. The average person would instinctively rescue the Michelangelo, Schmid, Edgar Payne, Lyon, etc. from the scrapheap. Its innate value would be obvious without anyone to tell them it didn't belong alongside garbage, while even the trained art critic would have no way of identifying the modern artwork from junk. Beauty is rare. It forces us to stop and take notice, to preserve it when stumbled upon. Who, after all, would be able to tell that this Jackson Pollock was a work of art worth tens of millions of dollars, rather than just a simple drop cloth?

Ain't it the truth! Methinks this directory rant may, if there are any influential art snobs reading, be the ticket to realizing my life-long dream of getting added to the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. (Now that Atobe's on board too, even though much of his net worth resides in similar pricey refuse, A Blog from Atobe does indeed qualify as a group). If they can't pin this traditional Catholic for actually hating anybody, they can at least accuse him of hating bad art.

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

To move swiftly from Occident to Orient, [we have surely reached the "kicks" I mentioned above] I must pay early praise to a wonderful new anime I've been following from the first episode, conspicuously named The World God Only Knows. Christian ears may perk at the title, but as one familiar with anime, I was not much surprised to learn that the only "god" in question is just the pictured protagonist. Read up:

Katsuragi Keima is known on the net as the god of getting the virtual girls, thanks to his popular gal game website 'Fallen God', while in real life he's known as 'Otamegane' and hates all '3D' girls, believing them inferior to girls of the game world. He is approached by Elsea, a devil from Hell who has heard of his legendary girl-capturing skills, to help her in catching runaway spirits that hide in girls. These spirits only hide in the crevices in women's hearts, and the only way to get them out is to make the host fall in love so that the gap in the heart will be filled. And if Keima fails to do so . . . he will lose his head.

Cute, eh? One glimpse of Elsea and I was hooked. The opening theme, aptly titled "God Only Knows", is graphically pleasing, and as I listen to it a few times through, mysteriously soothing. Well, in a world of uncertainty, our refrain, too, shall be naught but "God only knows"...

2010-10-08T21:12:00.013-04:00

Thanks to Christopher Columbus, whose statue before Worcester's Union Station is here shown, a long weekend is now begun. Howe'er nice it would be to be home already, I cannot return until late tomorrow, so Atobe (it would be less than practical to fly to Tokyo and back over a holiday weekend) and I plan to take advantage of the afternoon to watch an Assumption home football game. Our team's been playing well this year. Go Hounds!

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

A fortnight ago, after awing a roomful of officers and their adjutant lessers with a poetic selection, I received a commission for a sonnet about Assumption's Campus Activities Board. Hardly the usual request, I was initially unsure what to write about. Almost every college, after all, has a CAB; what makes ours special? Pondering this upon a visit to the CAB office I saw, within that newly furnished and colorfully upholstered environ, a notice that a certain many-pillowed couch was designated, in Washingtonian fashion, "Jordan's Couch."

Sonnet CXLVI- the CAB Luxuriant, the CAB Jordanian

Assumption, as a college, has a CAB.
Its office, freshyears immemorial,
With autographs of artists magical
And musical was hung. But colors drab
Consigned aesthetics ancient to their fate—
For while you almost would expect, in CAB,
A football signed by Donovan McNabb,
Aged scribbles, they know, make no office great.
A cushion fringe and satin mania,
Burlesque oasis for the college day,
Now greets the student-guest on his foray.
Within this apricot Arabia,
A lounger, day relaxer, beckons him
A friend, unmoved from couch Jordanian.

As I wrote in the epigram, all CAB needs now is a hookah. Despite the intended subject and recipient, the poem is perhaps more truly a tribute to the estimable Jordan Dembishack, member of both CAB and its supposed rival SGA. As I discovered upon inquiry, the man recently took a nap there, which event was memorialized in a fashion worthy of our first President. The event confirmed that the room's fresh trappings were indeed the baggage of the Near East.

I should like to see the "CAB" at Holy Cross match that.

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

[Black Pond at Camp Woodstock]

It sure didn't look like this when we were there. In case distant readers wonder what became of the aforementioned Letter to Le Provocateur, the eruption of controversy which succeeded it was better than I could have hoped for, and fits perfectly into my plan. While there have been the expected criticisms, the acclaim and agreement given me by thankful readers has been overwhelming. Let all know: the sole purpose of the Article is to end student leadership camp once and for all. Given the scale of the operation, the number of participants, and the wide commitment by administrators to continuing camp, the most effective and sensible way to achieve this end was to provide a critique which not merely undermined the rationale of camp, but emboldened my fellow student leaders and all concerned greyhounds to turn their intermittent grumblings into a tempered revolt, and I think I have succeeded as well as I could have on that. For a progress report, our SGA's VP for Academic Affairs plans to assemble an ad hoc committee to investigate the relevant concerns, and I shall before long meet with a higher-up to discuss the matter. Courage, Christian soldiers! With a mustard seed of faith, we may yet move mountains!

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

In other news--to say evokes my happiness!--Assumption is finally getting a club for anime and manga lovers! First meeting on October 21, I think. Under my influence, the organization will surely render fine service to our Catholic college as well as enrich our student life. As I was watching another fine episode of Cardcaptor Sakura some hours ago, I was delighted when the sweet protagonist Sakura Kinomoto, asked by her father (a professor of archaeology) what were her wishes for New Year's, gave an example worthy of emulation by dutiful Christian children. Said she:

Well, that you don't get hurt during a dig, Dad...

And that my math score gets a little better...

And also, that I can learn to sew well...

That I become better at twirling the baton...

How many virtuous wishes she would have expressed if her brother had not interrupted! Finer cares of affection for one's father, purer determinations to improve feminine virtues, have hardly been uttered. Ah, the world does not understand, and even seasoned otakus too often forget that while the characters and kimonos are pretty, their souls are often no less admirable.

Until Christ be formed in you... by anime!!

2010-09-29T23:12:00.003-04:00

Well! Check out this delectable opinion piece which took me completely by surprise. My American partner-in-blogging crime, Leslie, has typed an exquisite and catholic critique of the student leadership training camp. "Camp No More!" quoth he. Scarily eloquent, the op-ed was published in its entirety in today's Le Provocateur, the student newspaper. With this exception: as Leslie tells me, after "they have two choices with regard to deviant behavior by students," it should note "(many of whom, not insignificantly, identify as Irish)." Nope, the Gaels, don't get off either. The censors would have been right were offense meant, but astute readers will find the remark relevant to the argument presented. So for just this once--and this once shan't endure, for my birthday's coming up on October 4, whence the glory shall return to its rightful repositor--

Be awed at the sight of his prowess!

2010-09-19T18:15:00.004-04:00

I have written a sonnet, which was received to some acclaim at the d'Alzon Library's inaugural poetry reading on Friday. Cunina, Vallonia, Collatina, Mellonia, and Fructesa are all minor Roman goddesses St. Augustine mentions in Book IV of The City of God. The accompanying painting is Piero di Cosimo's The Discovery of Honey; though perhaps given to a different mood, it is an admirable Renaissance piece which, since it is on display in the Worcester Art Museum, I have had the immaculate pleasure of spending a few minutes contemplating in solitude.

Sonnet CXLV

Cunina, soft, safe valley; I was born,
She held me, care devout, immutable.
Vallonia, I walked her ways that morn,
Lived, satisfied by rivers wide and full.
That afternoon, with Collatina, I
Found paths into the hills, saw as from far.
Only Mellonia lives there, and by
Late day, I gorged thick sustenance from her.
Raw honey, yellow pale, down wrists and squeezed,
Made troubling nourishment without a cup.
Mellonia was good for talk, but teased,
Amused her honey was such messy sup.
Last light I left; Fructesa found me, seized
Me off to orchards, fruits I could pick up.

2010-09-14T23:51:00.013-04:00

What a glorious primary night! This is getting to sound like a Same Old Story, but Christine O'Donnell is different. I have had my eye on the fine woman for some time, and in more ways than one. Forget Sarah Palin: Miss O'Donnell, 41 and still available, is quite the looker. Anyway, unlike some of the other candidates who've coasted to victory with the support of the Tea Party, Miss O'Donnell, unlike her heterodox brother in faith Michael Castle, has long been a model socially conservative Catholic politician. Unsuccessful, yes, but I shall always have a place in my heart for perennial candidates. A rare triumphs, and a triumph over a liberal Republican who's been a fixture in Delaware politics for decades, sends a sweet rush of vital blood through my arteries. Can Miss O'Donnell actually win the general election? The odds are against her, but in 2010, this singular year, she's got a fighting chance against the little-known Democrat, Chris Coons. And even if win she cannot, last evening's victory is the latest sign that Americans have firmly resolved, with the assistance of their lackluster President to be sure, to have at least one good political party. (Chris Young, the Democratic long shot I was rooting for for mayor of the beautiful metropolis of Providence, Rhode Island, easily lost, but for candidates as good as Mr. Young I expected nothing more from our country's social liberal party).

There is even good news from my own heathen-choked congressional district. Tom Wesley, a veteran whom MassResistance and this amusingly unprofessional-looking conservative voter's resource assure us is pro-life and pro-family, has one over the more lukewarm Jay Fleitman (who still deserves some credit; he's a Northamptoner. My fair city has a paucity of men with even a degree of common sense, so I would prefer not to send this one away). Scott Brown won district 2, and I have good hopes that Mr. Wesley can do the same.

In general, my studies divert my attention from practical politics, and lead me vainly cursing our liberal democratic order in the presence of my close friends. But it was in fact one of my latest philosophical readings that drove me to check up on this election cycle's socially conservative candidates once more. Tradition-minded conservative philosophers primarily rememberJean-Jacques Rousseau (it's getting cold, so I'd better give him warm attire) for his staunch belief that men are naturally equal (though not in the same way Hobbes, Locke, and their ilk aver), his advocacy of direct democracy, and his disbelief in human nature that foreshadowed Marxism. Under the tutelage of Assumption's atypical department of Political Science, however, this Citizen of Northampton has increasingly come to appreciate that Citizen of Geneva's heavily unpopular rejection of the Enlightenment as harmful morals and conducive to every sort of pride and pettiness. Few are the philosophers who praise virtue and provincial simplicity with like elegance; we Christians certainly have much to learn from his wise writings, and may delight in his unparalleled candor.

When I read Rousseau's Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, an obscure reading we didn't have time for in a course I took on the philosopher, a stunning passage on the necessity of heroism in politics reminded me of the usual, nagging objection modern heathens and their collaborators (acting as much from spiritual sloth as liberal conviction) advance against encouragement of moral behavior and discouragement of the opposite by a regime: They just want to tell other people what to do/think. This one sentence rejoinder serves to delegitimate the only reasonable goal any government can pursue- general happiness in accordance with virtue. (To the immediate objections of government's role in establishing law and order, pursuing even that goal only makes sense as a condition for allowing virtue to flourish securely; a human being who has effaced his dignity with vice and debauchery suffers, I dare say, no real loss if he is deprived of his misused goods, or even his life). After saying the wise man's primary concern is "the care of his own felicity" (I myself have higher hopes for the philosopher than Rousseau and his forbearer Socrates), he attests:

The views of the true Hero extend further. The happiness of men is his object, and it is to this sublime labor that he devotes the great soul he received from Heaven... The Philosopher can give the Universe some salutary instructions, but his lessons will never correct either the Great who scorn them or the Populace which does not hear them at all. Men are not governed in that way by abstract views; one makes them happy only by constraining them to be so, and one must make them experience happiness in order to make them love it. Those are the occupations and talents of the Hero. It is often with a strong hand that he puts himself in a position to receive the Benedictions of men, whom he first constrains to bear the yoke of laws in order to subject them to the authority of reason in the end.

Never have I heard such lusciously illiberal sentiments in words so beautiful, words so eternal. Aye, but for this sad Republic, mired in deplorable relativism, too inert to oppose evil, infatuated with lugubrious, monotonous progress, and to this day convinced of the righteousness of the founding ideals which have inspired our moral perdition, there are no Heroes, and we oughtn't hope for any. Honestly! Lately I've been reading through St. Augustine's The City of God, on which I have a class (and it is, at last, turning me into an Augustinian; I just couldn't appreciate the teenage whininess of his Confessions). I've only read to book 4 of 22, and he already devoted so many pages to demonstrating that Rome's decline and the depravity that caused it not only was not the fault of the Christians, but began long before the birth of Christ. Were I a Muslim today, penning a contemporary argument on Augustine's model, and perhaps entitled The Umma of God would not be difficult. Though, to be sure, I believe Islamic moral teachings far less just than those our Catholic doctrines, the principal conservative loudmouths of our day inconceivably treat Islamic extremism, even when nonviolent, as a graver moral threat to America than the lax Christians and (numerically smaller contingent of) nonbelievers who either pollute our society with filth and immoral behavior or, in the name of freedom, reason, and tolerance, refuse to act against those who do. Indeed: as much as I disapprove of the Muslim understanding of modesty, predestination, the relationship between religion and reason, etcetera, it is hard to believe America would be less virtuous as a theocratic Islamic state than under the present set of Christian liberals and their various friends.

(In this condemnatory context, so to divert some due amount of the blame from generic foes-in-argument to myself, I note that over the weekend I at last purchased and thoroughly enjoyed the first volume of Ei Itou's Tetragrammaton Labyrinth, a fine manga exemplifying both the yuri genre and nuns with gun subgenre of the girls with guns genre; while I appreciate the series for its artfulness, touching relationships, and quasi-Catholic eye candy, there are some who would insist my fanship a peccadillo. In any case, the theology isn't very accurate... see lovely illustrations of such here and here).

While Catholics not infected by Enlightenment liberalism must continue to speak boldly against our diversity of errors and evils granted immunity, we must also recognize our country has always had a broadly Christian populace, and a self-governing one at that, and, as of now, we blew it. To return to Rousseau, I would indeed go so far as to say, to render our state of affairs into the children's program duality, far from electing a Hero, but two short years ago we Americans elected over ourselves no less than a Villain: a villain much more terrifying, I nostalgically add, than Hanna-Barbera's The Hooded Claw!

2010-09-07T16:45:00.004-04:00

Ah! The warmth of summer is fleeting! Summer vacation being caput, it is time for some of us to resume our academic pursuits. Whilst I, Atobe, am as much taken with athletics as that noble labor, and often find myself within the plight of occupational two-timing, our brawnless Crusader assures me that my plight is not his own. For once more leisured than his aristocratic peer, so engrossed was he within his studies, required or otherwise, that I, Atobe, am again to type a post on his behalf.

Assumption is one of those rare college where a student of philosophy and theology begins his semester with Robert Nisbet and St. Augustine, Pierre Manent and Virgil. However, my familiarity with this set is tantamount to boredom, so instead I shall delve in to Leslie's leisure reading.

First, we're going back. Way back. Over the Labor Day weekend, my compatriot devoured his first ever light novel, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. The light and fluffy text, reading like a Japanese variation on your American Goosebumps, is the first of Nagaru Tanigawa's ten-volume saga on the irrepressible heroine. Bored, quixotic, and "Jenius with a J" as Leslie puts it, here is how Suzumiya-san introduces herself on the first day of high school:

I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders, or espers here, come join me. That is all.

(Found that pic, incidentally, when I was searching under Goosebumps. Yeah, she's that pretty.) I, Atobe, know my otaku compadre already discussed the corresponding anime, but brilliance of this intensity merits a sustained propaganda. After a few irritable weeks of trying out dull, "normal" clubs, Suzumiya's classmate Kyon suggests she start her own club. And so begins the SOS Brigade, or Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade. Forced to explain what the club's about, she says, To find aliens, time travelers, and espers and to have fun with them! Unbeknownst to Suzumiya-san, the three members she ropes in after Kyon are... an alien, a time traveler, and an esper, with whom she has altogether too much fun. In the manner of Cervantes's Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha and Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly, Haruhi inadvertently brings about the impossible by virtue of her very eccentricity. As the members reveal to Kyon they (and possibly the entire world with them) were created three years ago by a subconscious act of Haruhi's consciousness. As the Koizumi the esper explains, Why do you think espers such as ourselves and characters such as Mikuru Asahina [time traveler] and Yuki Nagato [alien] exist in this world? Because Suzumiya wished for it. Given her ability, Haruhi's underlings carefully conceal their powers from her, lest she comes to believe aliens, time travelers, and espers are common and the world is overrun by them, while still keeping her from giving up on the ordinary world and creating a new one in its place.

Me? Ugh! I, Atobe, have had quite enough of this Melancholy. In Japan, see, the series has sold 4.5 million copies, so it's little better than Harry Potter or Twilight amongst our teenyboppers. Still one of my intellectual caliber cannot deny the light novel's subtle Genius (with a G). When I see the American paperback cover, I cannot but paraphrase Zarathustra:

Behold, Tanigawa-san is a herald of the lightning and a heavy drop from the cloud; but this lightning is called Haruhi.

Over(wo)man or not, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a wonderful read for the philosophically-minded or the despiser of big words. Pick up a copy at your local comic shop today!

It seems I, Atobe, am almost out of time. Certainly an injustice to Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Rousseau's Discourse on Heroic Virtue, but I shall leave those for Leslie to write on once he is finished reliving his teenage years. So, too, shall I leave to him Yotsuba&! 1, should he then insist on reliving his childhood as well.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-08-28T17:34:00.002-04:00

This octave of neglect now ends. This being Saturday evening, I gladly await the start of classes on Monday the 30th. Whereas peers of mine frequently wonder at the speed with which our lives have progressed, for me God has moved time at just the right pace. Glories there are to a senior year. As Atobe pointed out when he returned today, I shall be an upperclassmen, or senpai, in the Japanese, in the truest sense of the term, receiving the admiration we once gave our illustrious forebears, and living the power and authority I merit as a four year member of the Student Senate. As in the corresponding senior year of high school, I am ready for these blessings, which have arrived neither a moment too soon nor too late. In the spirit of "One More Time", a fine and relatively innocent dance tune by some Daft Punk, the beat of life, this

Music's got me feeling so free
We're gonna celebrate
One more time

Yes, even we Naulties and non-substancers.

Granted, our seniority has not availed universally. Despite a streak of drizzly and unfathomably chilly days, my eminent SGA colleagues and I (our core of pro-Catholic mission senators has been jokingly termed the SGA Brain Trust by a friend) were unable to prevent our participation in the universally-detested and indoctrination-rife Student Leadership Camp. Included this year were multicultural awareness activities reminiscent of my elementary school brainwashing. By their structure the activities assumed, a priori, that all common notions about different races, believers of different religions (ex. Muslims, Jews, and Catholics), and even such groups as teenagers and the elderly are "stereotypes": that is, not grounded in reality. I don't know about you, but it'll be a long day when I believe teens are not, in fact, bad drivers. Besides the relativism inherent in multiculturalism, this ideological cancer prevents the "critical thinking" educators are supposedly so eager to encourage. To make things worse, the rain ensured that even the traditional delights of midnight pranking were off.

At least there is good news: the Brain Trust has a potential new prospect, in a gentleman who goes by J. Paul. As I told him, had I that moniker, I would always be adopting the persona of the late Supreme Pontiff of the same name in my varied discourses. Speaking of whom, I just finished his Memory and Identity, his conversational look, a few years into the third Christian millennium, at global politics, the future of nation and state, and the evil ideologies of the last century. Given the liberal reputation traditionalists rightly give Pope John Paul II for his treatment of the Archbishop Lefebvre and the SSPX, it was surprisingly good. While John Paul praises the Enlightenment belief in the rights of man and "liberty, equality, and fraternity" (the last of which is quite popular at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute across town, now that I think of it), an overly positive view of Vatican II, and claims the post-Reformation wars of religion were not in the spirit of the Gospels (I, of course, would have been the first to serve under the Iron Duke on his heretic-crushing campaign; and it were better for the tolerati, that millstone were hanged about their necks, and they cast into the sea, than that they should let the schismatics scandalize one of these faithful), he defends the nation (as distinct from the State) as natural and irreplaceable, forever setting aside the claims of post-nationalist Catholic liberals. Besides the few defects I mentioned just now, Memory and Identity would make a wonderful companion book to the Catholic political thinker Pierre Manent's A World Beyond Politics? A Defense of the Nation-State, which also discusses the essentiality of the nation in the context of the horrors of nazism and communism, and of the drawbacks of modern liberalism--of course, for someone as widely read as me, everything seems like a good companion book to any work written on such great and general themes! Additionally, John Paul uses the example of his native Poland in explaining the nation to his readers, and I for one was intrigued by his accounts of that Catholic nation about which I know so very little. Overall, a very profitable read, which may be read in two or three determined days if you are reading on a schedule.

Now, for my first anime break in eight long days!

2010-08-20T13:28:00.002-04:00

In mere minutes your Crusader shall depart for his senior year at Assumption, early for student government training. A week and more without anime is a sad prospect, especially since I Cardcaptor Sakura was just getting good. The anime, which I selected as a counterbalance to the manlier Cowboy Bebop, is lethally cute. Just take a look at Sakura Kinomoto with her plush companion Cerberus! Bright-eyed Sakura-chan is shown in her grade school uniform below. Like her, I am quite happy. It will be nice to see all my friends, and return to a place where the Catholic faith is treated with greater respect than in Northampton. Also, no more TV to annoy me.

(The superficiality of the Ground Zero mosque debate was genuinely getting on my nerves. The Left defended the dubious project from a newfound commitment to religious freedom, and the Right pretended that one can rationally oppose the mosque without opposing the spread of Islam. Besides the usual wimpery, they pretended to merely act in the interests of the more sensitive 9/11 families; no one, of course, ever noted that these victims were either being irrational and therefore had no worthwhile input, OR that opposition to Islam was their motive, and therefor the motive of those speaking on their behalf. Me, I oppose the mosque, though I acknowledge that the presence of devout believers of any faith may be a boon to that godless city.)

Yes, enough of that! Before I go, here's "Catch You Catch Me", the opening theme to Cardcaptor Sakura. Watch it, it's good!

2010-08-14T16:20:00.003-04:00

Good news from our friends at the deliciously notorious MassResistance. Pro-life, pro-family Massachusetts Republicans finally have candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor.

When I read here that Scott Lively, write-in candidate for Governor, is "founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, the Pro-Family Law Center, DefendTheFamily.com, and most recently the Redemption Gate Ministry Society in Springfield, Mass.," that "[o]ver the past 20 years he has also lectured and consulted on pro-family strategies in more than 30 countries," and that he "is everything that Charlie Baker is not. He is principled, pro-family, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-2nd-amendment, pro-religion, pro-parents' rights, and utterly fearless," I knew MassResistance had struck gold. Or to put it another way: "Like Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, the Tea Party Movement, MassResistance, and many more, Scott Lively has been demonized by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a 'hate group' ": what else do you need to know? Write in Scott Lively as Republican nominee for Governor on September 14. MassResistance says they'll have more information coming in the future.

MassResistance also had a few good things to say about Keith Davis, write-in candidate for Lieutenant Governor, right; this image, of January 2008 vintage, is really neat, since he and Rep. George Peterson flank the still-unknown Scott Brown, perhaps foreshadowing a bright future for Mr. Davis. He "lives in Holyoke and is a long-time pro-family leader and organizer in Western Massachusetts. He is head of the FIAT (Faith in Action Team) of Pioneer Valley, and is also an active Tea Party / 912 Group member," and "is everything that Tisei is not. He pro-family, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-2nd-amendment, pro-religion, pro-parents' rights, and anti-activist judges." He has his own corner of the Internet here. So likewise, write in Keith Davis as Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor on September 14.

For readers unaware of the horrendous records and unconscionable platforms of the Republican establishment's clown Charlie Baker and his homosexual activist sidekick Richard Tisei, read up here. Lest we should have to settle with independent candidate Tim Cahill, the best of the big three, in November, let's change the game on the heathen Party establishment and nominate two stalwarts for the big race!

2010-08-10T17:50:00.009-04:00

These final days of summer, so bittersweet. Not three weeks remain before I, Atobe, need return to America to begin my third year at Assumption College in Worcester, in the state of Massachusetts. Though I anticipate those frigid regions will do little good to my temperate physiology, my veritable American cousin Crusader reports the New England summer to have been humid almost unexceptionally and sweltering as often as not. For me this would be optimal tennis weather—wears down an opponent faster—the hot air has merely incentivized his typical reading and anime watching passtimes. While he reported little on the literary front, he did report one surprising accomplishment: finishing all 200 episodes of Sailor Moon, plus three movies and several specials.

That brings back memories! For I, Atobe, was but a middling chibi when that fine series swept the airwaves and, mostly for my female peers, redefined the magical girl genre of anime. Truth be told I, Atobe, watched much of the series myself but when it got into the fifth season no, that was enough. And yet, my American kōhai very greatly adored that ignominious season. Partly for a certain character I will note later, but more importantly for the sake of a featured band. Three of the sailor soldiers introduced in the new series live their ordinary lives as the members of a boy band called Three Lights. I, Atobe, may thankfully say I have never been into boys bands, but upon Leslie's insistence I admit their hit single, "Search For Your Love", was pretty good. Alright, make that addicting. In the series, all the main sailor soldiers are Beatles in love with the Three Lights, even studious and usually tempered Ami Mizuno, Leslie's favorite and mine as well. This, even though the boys, when they transform into sailor soldiers, become female—a very Northamptonish transformation, as I reminded my friend.

Otherwise, the fifth witnessed the completion of the long series's colorful cast. Aside from the aforementioned aqua pedant, here shown to advantage against a marblized backdrop, there are also the—sniffle!—utterly adorable Chibiusa, right, and Chibi Chibi, left, here illustrated beside Usagi, the protagonist (as I, Atobe, hope you all remember from your happy childhoods) and Chibiusa's future mother. Manga. As an art, it certainly has moments where it ascends to the heights of Heaven.

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

America, reports Crusader88, is being set aright. At the close of last night's program, Glenn Beck promised he would devote this upcoming Founders Friday to President Calvin Coolidge, the onetime Northampton mayor—it was a better time—whom Leslie adores. Be sure to watch, either at 5PM or, if you're like him, at 2AM—and that includes all the progressivist cretins who expend their time denouncing the good American Mr. Beck. Even I, Atobe, am not eminently familiar with this reportedly Silent Cal, so I will tune in as well. Leslie would have blogged this himself, but he is busy with an over-the-summer paper, and could not be bothered.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-08-02T21:03:00.002-04:00

The Mill River runs through Northampton, but in many places is well removed from the parallel streets, and accessible only after a brief trek through a mostly pathless wood. A few days ago, as I walked through a residential street, I noticed a convenient path thence behind a former auto dealership, and voilà.

Reflections along the Mill River

The visage of the creek, the shimmer of
Her woodringed surface in the shadebound wind,
Precipitate with legs of bugs who mind
Their own above young crayfish whose remove

In rockends seldom meets the sun. A tune
The crickets interlude between the nights
Succumbs to patter currents as the banks,
Stones blanched by countless summers passing on

Behemoths cut with human industry,
Enclose a swifter creek, her narrowed bed
A fluid cipher in the watershed.
The steep embankments, vacant but for me,

A restful couple aiming to enjoy
The glades in solitude, to whom I wave
In passing, and a cat, one slow to move,
Black, orphan, leisured as he makes his way

Long water's edge, rise to a lot outside
Aquadro's warehouse. Reams of planks and frames,
Square, arsenaline racks of iron wares,
These architectural colosses hid

Noachian anchors, tied with smelted cords
Runged in a gumdrop ton of concrete shank.
A titan built abandoned where he sank.
A man then feels right anchored where he stands.

2010-07-25T12:17:00.005-04:00

I wrote the entirety of this devotional sonnet last night, in a local parking garage that has become a favorite meditative spot. The steaminess of the even was thought, by most, excessive.

Sonnet CXLIV

Moist nights, they are not visible, but do
Give solace to my lonely, plumpened lips.
Though clouds above obscure, the skies accrue
Effulgent graces, and when cover slips
Away, I see them, stones in watery
Muck trenches. For the Lord does not allow
The fundamental goods that break us free
To shelter with too great persistence. Now,
The midnight's allegory in my mind,
A rosary of knighthood in my hand,
I sit upon a wall and pray in kind,
And near believe cement will understand
And echo my devotion like a spouse,
In praise of Him Who made us both by choice.

The mysteries, or course, were the Glorious.

2010-07-16T00:59:00.016-04:00

This handsome snapshot came fresh from my cell phone; it came out well considering the sun was in the background.

Well, as my own Crusader88 mentioned last Saturday, the elections in the Land of the Rising Sun are complete, with modestly satisfying results, as you may see here. The ever-reliable Liberal Democratic Party and its ally, the Buddhist New Komeito Party performed much better than the center-left Democratic Party of Japan and its block. Though these developments (which I, Atobe, assure you are more accident than fate--just a month before the new DPJ Prime Minister was wonderfully popular, but he sank fast) are surely happy, alas, the genuine conservative patriots in the Sunrise Party of Japan won but a single seat, but lost another. For some perspective, they mustered a fifth of the votes given the communists, but themselves received a similar advantage over the political wing of the Happy Science cult. Such is the fate of the Right.

I, Atobe, confess a better mood than electoral circumstances would permit, however. Leslie, see, frequently recommends weblogs and websites he presumes are worthy of my inspection. The recommendations, to my dismay, are just as frequently silly. After trying out .Christian Lolita., a LiveJournal page where Christian practitioners of the Japanese fashion he wishes the fair sex would wear find electronic fellowship (at right is a classic lolita, and below her a gothic lolita--in Holy Nihon we see them more often, and they're sort of like prettier punks, so it's not a big deal), and then Good Bye, Bad Bishops!, a goofy site which posts the retirement dates of supposedly bad bishops with a squeaky old Lawrence Welk tune playing in the background (we Japanese haven't enough bishops for a comparable site, and we don't have to worry about bad clerics as bad ecclesiastical architecture—imagine if St. Patrick's Cathedral looked like St. Mary's here in Tokyo!), I was ready to stop trying.
But this is different. He sent me to a magnificent Catholic-run anime blog named NeoShinka.

To use one of those foreign-language phrases my colleague so loathes, NeoShinka is a tour de force. Founded September 12, 2007, NeoShinka is dedicated to the Holy Name of Mary, the feast for which is also September 12. The author, Charz by pseudonym, has a distinctive style of posting anime images and reproducing paragraphs from Wikipedia or a similar reference as commentary. In this classic post, he takes a few images from the exuberantly executed, albeit slightly perverted anime Maria†Holic, and quotes the free encyclopedia to note the influence of Japanese woodcuts on Art Nouveau. Another plus: NeoShinka clearly leans right. See Charz attribute an offensive anti-anime joke to an Obama-loving New Hampshire Democratic state representative here, and see the commbox here on why manga is overtaking propaganda-smothered Western graphic novels. And an off-topic pic of Obama as the Dear Leader here. Most impressive, however, are select icons from the sidebar. Since NeoShinka is hardly neoconservative (thanks be to God), I am not sure what this image, featuring the Bleach's violent Zaraki Kenpachi, says about America's "DIPLOMACY", but I like it. Better yet, get a load of this:

Look familiar?

Yessir, that there is the yoke and arrows, the symbol of the Falange, the Catholic Integralist party under which Generalassimo Franco beat back the Reds in Spain and maintained one of Europe's last Catholic states until his death in 1975. But why, you ask, is "MOE MOE KYUN" superimposed, and why hearts rather than arrowheads? Crusader didn't know until I told him its a reference to one of the greatest moments in all of anime. In the popular K-On! series, the characters are wondering what their band should do for the school festival, and one character proposes a maid cafe; when you Americans realize their splendor, they will colonize you like the tasteless McDonald's has colonized us. And no, "MOE MOE KYUN" doesn't mean much of anything. But at last, the Falange of that Christian Caudillo and the cuteness of affectionate maids (though more Crusader's cup of tea; I've been around maids all my life) are shown to belong to an Integral whole.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-07-10T18:25:00.006-04:00

I have made some slight progress in Fitzgerald's translation of Virgil's Aeneid, and have quickly come to admire the story's hero, Aeneas, shown below recounting the fall of Troy to Queen Dido. He is, I believe, a man for our times, so I shall bring forth his virtues here.

Shortly before I began the Aeneid, I had a telling exchange with a friend on the importance of fate within a discussion of the anime Revolutionary Girl Utena, which I found to be just another exposition of modern man's revulsion of destiny, inane obsession with choosing one's own future, and concomitant belief that all choices are equal, with no one more worthy or evil than any other. My friend reminded me that this conflict isn't exactly new in the human experience, and has always been a major theme in literature. True, but the state of the great debate has hardly remained constant. Whereas the active acceptance of a pre-determined fate is the very glue of traditional societies, both popular and elite opinion in the contemporary West find fate an oppressive concept, and believe all of its reflections in civil society are backward and even barbaric. I only need cite the example of arranged marriages. Formerly as common a practice in the West as it remains in some less developed corners of the globe (the picture is from a Bangladeshi arranged marriage), the practice is completely defunct and alien in our anti-society. While, of course, consent to the familial decision was always necessary for a valid marriage in Catholic Europe, the prevalence of arranged marriages reflected the understanding that a healthy society is made up of healthy families, and recognized that everyone, not just the spouses in question, have a stake in the viability and success of each and every marriage. When arranged marriages fell out of favor and only the romantic interests of the individuals were recognized as important in marriages, some of the seeds of the contemporary destruction of the family were sown.

Anyway, in light of this catastrophic shift, it makes perfect sense that Queen Dido, Aeneas's sometime lover, is better known theseadays than Aeneas himself. I at least had heard much more about the Carthaginian queen than the survivor of Troy before I picked up Virgil's epic. And Dido, typically, was always treated with unmixed sympathy. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Dido's Wikipedia article is quite a bit heftier than Aeneas's. Yet, in my reading, I find Aeneas not only a more admirable figure, a man of rare selflessness, but also much more interesting.

Aeneas has a destiny willed by the Jupiter and Venus: to refound the greatness of Troy in the plains of Latium. After a storm willed by Juno, he lands in Carthage and gets sidetracked and falls for Queen Dido. He even contemplates settling in Africa permanently and ruling Carthage jointly. After this state of things persists for a year, Jupiter sends Mercury to tell him he'd been

Oblivious of your own world, your own kingdom!

Lest his divinely ordained fate fails to move him, Mercury reminds Aeneas that his son's inheritance is also at stake:

... If future history's glories
Do not affect you, if you will not strive
For your own honor, think of Ascanius,
Think of the expectations of your heir,
Iulus, to whom the Italian realm, the land
Of Rome, are due.

Aeneas's decision to pursue his destiny or not has eternal consequences, which move him despite his powerful love. Given the epithet "duty-bound", he struggles to overcome his personal desires so that he might what must be done. Aeneas,

... though he sighed his heart out, shaken still
With love of her, yet took the course heaven gave him
And went back to the fleet.

He is not faultless. Rather than informing Dido of his decision to leave, he attempts to depart in secret, and when interrogated by her mendaciously tells her,

...Do not think
I meant to be deceitful and slip away.

which were his plans exactly. But, as there was no getting around it, he explained with strident beauty:

But now it is the rich Italian land
Apollo tells me I must make for: Italy,
Named by his oracles. There is my love,
There is my country.
...
...So please, no more
Of these appeals that set us both afire.
I sail for Italy not of my own free will.

What unheard-of resolution! This, my friends, is the definition of heroism. In the courses of our lives there are some things we must do, with no regard to personal consequences. Aeneas, like Abram, is called by God to establish a new nation. A calling of this sort transcends even the realm of right and wrong; to repeat a belief of the vampire Louis from Interview with the Vampire, all moral decisions are really aesthetic decisions. Whatever Aeneas might have felt was in his best interests, he understands that the gods, in their greater wisdom, desire a better future than he can possibly envision by himself, and so is undaunted by the continued pangs of his heart.

Dido is a much simpler character. Even though she does not doubt Mercury's message, she still tries to thwart the gods' plans. Her attitude is summed up in this passage:

Oh, I am swept away burning by furies!
Now the prophet Apollo, now his oracles,
Now the gods' interpreter, if you please,
Sent down by Jove himself, brings through the air
His formidable commands! What fit employment
For heaven's highest powers! What anxieties
To plague serene immortals!

The gods, she opines, are wasting their time, are concerned with a private affair of mortals which is none of their business. They are a bother. Ah, how modern. Completely bereft of self-control, Dido throws fit after fit trying to stop Aeneas, and commits suicide on his departure. Not upon impulse, but through an elaborate plan. Such was her disregard for the goods that remained to her (and her duties as Queen of Carthage) that she threw her life away after full consideration. Like many moderns, Dido displays resolution only in overreacting to not getting her way. It makes me, indeed, feel bad for the pop musician Dido Armstrong whom I like so much; Dido is her given name, not a stage name.

Let our virtue, rather, be that of Aeneas, who,

Buffeted by a gale of pleas
This way and that way, dinned all the day long,
Felt their moving power in his great heart,
And yet his will stood fast; tears fell in vain.

And may we pray with him:

Holy one, whatever god you are,
We go with you, we act on your command
Most happily! Be near, graciously help us,
Make the stars in heaven propitious ones!

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

Atobe is far too busy to post now, because the Japanese House of Councillors (Upper House) election is tomorrow. Though my friend has frequently expressed his preference for the American practice of having Election Day on Tuesdays to holding profane votes on Sundays, he's devoting all his energies to campaigning for the Sunrise Party of Japan, his rightist party of choice. Given late-breaking polling, he assures me the prospects for the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and its allies are happy rather than sad. One can only hope.

2010-07-04T02:52:00.000-04:00

A Happy Independence Day, to our cherished readers. Though this picture was neat, but yeah, like I'd ever cook anything!

After the visit of a dear friend at the beginning of the week, my ever-sparse schedule was free to devote to a new round of summer reading. Since the hefty Infinite Jest had long demanded my complete attention, I chose to begin three books at once. A complementary and fine mix they turned out to be.

First up had to be Virgil's Aeneid as translated by Robert Fitzgerald, a summer reading for my upcoming course on St. Augustine's City of God. Fitzgerald's version of the 2,000-year-old epic is shockingly clear and readable, retaining the power attributed to the original; it will probably merit addition to my list of favorite books when I'm through.

Second, at long last, I took out the second volume of George Sansom's A History of Japan; it's been almost a full year since I finished the first part, but I was eager to get back into the action. Haven't gotten too far yet; presently Sansom is relating, with his characteristic mild color, the well-intentioned but utterly failed reforms of the Emperor Go-Daigo in 1333. After generations of subservience to the Shoguns, you see, he returned from an imposed exile and reestablished personal rule with the aid of the disgruntled warrior nobility and the Buddhist monasteries. No sooner were the Shoguns overthrown than the warriors came in droves to petition the Emperor for a share in the spoils. While the confiscated estates were aplenty, it was impossible to satisfy everyone in the best of circumstances. And the bureaucracy was inexperienced and inefficient to boot, so many loyal warriors went unrewarded for their services, while many tracts went to petty officials and "dancing girls" from the court. It was a real mess. The namesake proprietor of this blog tells me the Atobe clan filed a claim for their heroic exploits at the time, and has yet to receive a response.

For the keystone to this trifecta, I knew it just had to be... Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. My eye'd been on the works of Mrs. Rice since I heard Br. Andre Marie of Saint Benedict Center mention her when discussing a Chronicles magazine article disparaging her vampire literature. Brother proceeded to note her earnest conversion, while cautioning that her take on Catholicism struck him as "gnostic", though he hadn't actually been able to read her fiction. While Brother, the prior of a religious order, naturally didn't have time to spare for her fare, I couldn't but want to read her stuff myself to see who was right. At the same time, Mrs. Rice's Christian-themed novels came only after decades of vampire fiction and whatnot, which she has hardly denounced: and I for one have never been such a devotional reader that I'd skip what made her famous. I am, rather, a stickler for reading things in order (the first time I read the Bible I did it front to back--ignoring all the warnings not to--and liked it). Finally, while as a guy I have been spared from the Twilight series, as an anime fan I have come to enjoy vampire fiction--though the vampires in Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase and Rosario + Vampire are so much cuter than their Anne Rice equivalents!--so the latter's first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was a natural choice. I am still just starting, but I can already understand what Mrs. Rice meant when she reflected, I wrote many novels that without my being aware of it reflected my quest for meaning in a world without God. The seeds of her return to the Faith are evident from the first pages of Interview, though insofar as accepting all the teaching's of Christ's Church she still has some more converting to do.

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

Speaking of Saint Benedict Center. That traditional Catholic apostolate, carrying on the staunch defense of the dogma No Salvation Outside the Church begun by Father Feeney (seen preaching to Bostonians, as was his wont), recently won a great victory in its crusade to convert America to the Roman Catholic religion. Godless municipal officials in their Richmond, New Hampshire locale, some of whom "expressed their view that the Church’s moral positions on matters such as abortion and homosexual behavior are 'abhorrent' ", tried to saddle them with zoning restrictions to hamper construction of a new chapel and school. Thanks to the Alliance Defense Fund, the Center won a $1.15 million settlement from the crooks, and got the restrictions removed! As a very occasional visitor who's entranced by the authentic Catholicism at Saint Benedict Center every time I visit, I can vouch that the benefit for all the additional students they'll eventually take shall be incalculable. While our Nation remains bogged down in two bloody, ideologically-driven wars to spread liberal democracy, is stuck with a host of socialistic government programs for which we cannot possibly pay, and educates most of its children in Deweyan relativism factories, a lasting triumph such as this is worthy of celebration.

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

On that note, I must leave off, and shall enjoy fireworks in the PM with my family. As a patriotic sidenote, which will perhaps be no news to astute readers, section breaks in A Blog from Atobe are always 13 stars, in tribute to the 13 stars on our Nation's first starred flag.

2010-06-27T20:56:00.016-04:00

Hello again, everyone's favorite real life anime tennis star has returned. That you summer may be as splendid as the one I, Atobe, am enjoying here in Kanto, is my sincerest wish. Other than helicopter rides through the countryside, and scenic hiking through the mountainous interior, there isn't much reason to leave the Atobe estate now that I've been eliminated at Wimbledon, so I pass the hours reading and playing a few sets against acquaintances new and old. Not a bad way to live. My American friend tells me he's been rather inactive this summer, and I, Atobe, have been somewhat of a bum as well. Oh, minus this deluxe Atobe longboards business I've opened in absentia on the American West Coast. While yours truly is not a great enthusiast for extreme sports, longboards wear my name well, which uniform nomenclature has ensured brisk business, I assure you. I, Atobe, was inspired by Friar Gabriel, the Franciscan legend who uses his skating skills to spread devotion to Our Lady, though I opted to do business in longboards given their superior elegance. Thanks to my armchair entrepreneurship, traditional Catholics now have a foothold in the extreme sports market.

I, Atobe, frequently consider the proper role of Catholics in popular culture. Which brings me to a most intriguing email my American associate sent my way regarding the distinctive character of those otakus who also happen to be traditional Catholics. Rather after the style of Mr. David Letterman's Top Ten--though he could only think up five--they serve as a trite culturo-theological checklist. To quote Crusader:

You are a Traditional Catholic Otaku if:

5. You believe in the Book of Genesis,

and watch Neon Genesis Evangelion:

4. You believe the West should be proud of the Crusades,

and the East should be proud of Chrono Crusade:

3. You may think soldiery is not a woman's business,

but have no objections to Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon [yep, that's its full name]:

2. You pray the Holy Rosary,

and watch Rosario + Vampire:

and at #1...

1. You both watch, and believe, that The Virgin Mary Watches Over Us:

Now, that last one was pretty good. Maria-sama ga Miteru does indeed mean the Virgin Mary watches over us, and likewise it required just one picture. Yes, that's one anime whose holiness I can vouch for. I, Atobe, am not confident in the overall veracity of these supposedly Top Five. First off, where is The Prince of Tennis? Certainly Leslie could've squeezed my show in somewhere. While I am not really a fan of anything in which I do not star, and hence do not fulfill these specifications, my cursory knowledge tends to contravene his selections. Neon Genesis Evangelion heads the list of animes banned in the Christian Anime Alliance, Rosario+Vampire is a harem anime, and from the picture I found the Chrono Crusade nuns habits are hardly traditional. Sailor Moon, which Crusader is rediscovering from his childhood, would appeal to me more if it weren't so sissy. But perhaps I, Atobe, am overly sensitive. During my Google Image Search--Leslie provided the list, but the pics are de moi--I found this sweet image of Rosario+Vampire's Akashiya Moka betrothed to Black Butler Sebastian. If Rosario+Vampire can inspire such a wholesome Gothic matrimony, it cannot be so bad.

Be awed at the sight of my prowess!

2010-06-20T20:19:00.006-04:00

This anime was recommended to me by an Assumption professor of philosophy. Well, sort of. When in the course of a conversation it came up that I was one of the college's resident anime lovers, he immediately blurted out that a younger relative of his was really into Gunslinger Girl. What can I say? The wisdom runs in the blood.

Given the abundance of series to choose from, and a multiplicity even of recommended animes, I put Gunslinger Girl on the to-watch list for some time. Finally, a few days ago, when I couldn't decide whether to select a cute schoolgirl anime, or an action-packed series targeting the shonen demographic, I tried it out, and I attest to you, as soon as I saw the opening, I knew it'd be what we in the industry call a Masterpiece.

So, why are these adolescent Italian girl antagonists gunslinging girls? The Italian government rescued them from their assortment of sad and depressing pasts, and placed them under the tutelage of the Social Welfare Agency it established for just such unfortunates. Which then proceeds to transform them into cyborgs with superhuman strength and agility, and trains them to covertly combat terrorists and the mafia! For a sneak peak of Henrietta, the main girl, and her firepower, see here.

Despite their line of work, they remain cute and innocent at heart. Witness Henrietta, left, beside her violin (she's quite proficient), and Triela, right, embracing a teddy bear gift, at their afternoon tea in their dormitory. Even though they're the best special operations unit the Italian government can manufacture, they can sing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" by heart (for all the Baby Boomers out there, they also sing "Scarborough Fair") , enjoy their nation's operas, and develop deep bonds with their handlers, the adults who train them and accompany them on missions.

Political aficionados will find Gunslinger Girl relevant and engaging. Versus my bête noire, 24, which I mentioned in the last post, Gunslinger Girl identifies the political players with unmistakable clarity. Though the current prime minister who established the Social Welfare Agency isn't mentioned by name, a later episode clearly identifies him as none other than my beloved Silvio Berlusconi (his media control makes keeping the Agency under wraps much easier). A good thing too: of all the heads of state the world over, the only man with whom I would trust a covert unit of little girl cyborg assassins is Mr. Berlusconi. The Agency focuses its anti-terrorism efforts against the Five Republics Faction, a fictional right-wing Padanian (Northern Italian) nationalist group. Apparently the anime's intriguing depiction of the struggle for independence, for which cause an attractive image featuring a Christian knight is at left, has not gone unnoticed. The entire text of the "In Popular Culture" subsection of the "Padanian nationalism" Wikipedia article (which I swear I didn't write) reads:

The Japanese manga and anime series Gunslinger Girl is set in modern Italy. Creator Yu Aida describes the struggle for northern independence as an ongoing terrorist campaign similar to that of Northern Ireland during the Troubles or Spain's Basque separatist issue. The terrorists involved are referred to as Padania or Republicans (like Ulster's extreme Irish nationalists, such as Sinn Fein-IRA).

While I would prefer the secessionists as the good guys (the anime often portrays their motives solely in economic terms; the North is much wealthier than the South and is sick of sending its tax euros thence), the key villains are very personable and demand just as much sympathy as the adorable cyborg girls. Proud Italian Catholics all, Padanian operatives may be seen at prayer, and a Padania Republic Faction leader specifically instructs his operatives to avoid shooting near churches and museums. The only flaw is: if Silvio Berlusconi is prime minister, why would he go to such lengths to combat the Padanian extremists? They share the ends of the Lega Nord, the right-wing Padanian nationalist party forming an integral part of Berlusconi's coalition, and which he cannot afford to upset.

Whether as a cute alternative to a happily discontinued American television program or a girls-with-guns commentary on Italian regionalism, Gunslinger Girl is not an anime to pass up. The best time to start following Henrietta and Triela's anti-terror campaign is now! And if you're reluctant, then you can join my personal favorite, the bookish Claes, who has to stay at home and read except in one operation where she's the decoy.

2010-06-16T00:56:00.004-04:00

Had I a companion at the locale I am about to describe, I would have made the scenery my Wordless Book for the day, to relate a lesson about strength and weakness, vitality and age. A tree is never as healthy as in its days as a green seedling, for the development and growth of the trunk, out from which its leaves may reach over the canopy and best collect sunlight, decays from within as the tree becomes old, engendering a weakness often the cause of the organism's death. The same truth holds for human beings and their political communities.

Sonnet CXLII The Wine Tree

A hilltop hospital espies below
A forest inbetween a road and town.
The trees are verde, the hunglimbs sand-root brown.
They join in stems, share nutrients, and grow.
The leaves are life, the browns decay and age.
With age grows reverence and memory,
But sapwood dries to heartwood in the tree,
Enfeebling corpora that are grown sage.

The viney cwms that buttress mountainsides
Are sawdust bare from here, and sink into
The dipping dale, athirst for summer dew.
The wine tree, best of trees, rests there in shades,
Whose leaves and bark are wine dark, mingling
The wise and vibrant in a single thing.

What tree is the wine tree? No connoisseur in these things, only later did I learn that the tree is a Japanese maple, sadly ironic, for the tree's land of origin have taken exactly the opposite course, and not just in such appearances as the metaphor uses. Although, as I have attempted to document (to the point of your nausea), my beloved anime and manga are really more conservative and less nihilistic than the close-equivalent American television programs (with which I became thoroughly re-disgusted after watching one horrendous episode of 24, a program which somehow counts many conservative fans) and "graphic novels" (socialism illustrated), the Japanese obsession with youth is undeniable. Despite said obsession, Japan is, as Catholics know, demographically moribund. Beneficial influence of and aesthetic affection for it's traditions or not, Japan is probably the modern society whose decay is furthest advanced. Unless the Japanese are converted, they will not renounce the Culture of Death, and will expire in the mantle of a false youth.

2010-06-10T19:19:00.006-04:00

For a politico of my caliber, today, tomorrow, and the next day resemble the commercial breaks in the anime Kuroshitsuji, or Black Butler. In keeping with its Victorian setting, Kuroshitsuji frames its midway ads as an Intermission. And truly, these three days are sandwiched by two game-changing elections, which by their nature should but in fact rarely are, held back-to-back. The upper two Low Countries, see, have general elections, yesterday in the Netherlands, and on the Lord's Day in Belgium. Thusfar, I feel rather ambivalent regarding the results. Though Geert Wilders' notorious anti-Islam, immigration restrictionist Party for Freedom grew from 9 to 24 seats, that atheist's party doesn't stand for the sort of moral order which could reinvigorate decadent Dutch society, and Wilders frequently distances himself from more vigorous Right-wing parties like the French National Front and Austrian Freedom Party. In the bigger picture, the Christian democratic parties lost ground to market liberals. Certainly bad news. At least the traditional Protestant-confessional Reformed Political Party, while neither growing nor shrinking its representation, garnered 1.7 rather than 1.6% of the vote as in 2006. (In one's researches, they were rather cheered to discover there's a Dutch Bible Belt!) The outlook for the Belgians is also mixed. While the biggest Flemish language party come Sunday will likely be the New Flemish Alliance, a conservative party of those longing for separation from the welfare-sucking Walloons, it is siphoning off many votes which would otherwise have gone to the further Right, nationalist Flemish Interest.

Verily, this Pundit yearns for the stability of monarchy. where the ascension of one ruler might well set the political tone for decades, and where the heckling of the opposition would perhaps be more limited! The cruel joke, of course, is that the Netherlands and Belgium are monarchies, and Belgium a Catholic monarchy; the monarchs are simply figureheads. Even Iran is enviably free of this dreadful cycle of uncertainty; through the overarching authority of the mullahs, and the regime's almost shameless corruption, the electoral triumph of true sons of the conservative-revolutionary Islamic Republic over the "reformist" liberals celebrated by the West is ensured.

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

Now that I'm done lamenting the Christian democrats and envying the Iranians, it's time for a long-overdue summer film recommendation! And I do hearken back to the good old days of film--we're going way back! Bill Clinton was president, but hadn't yet committed those regrettable actions which inspire a seemingly endless variety of Ann Counter jokes regarding a stained dress, and Newt Gingrich was House Majority Leader. It was 1996, the year of welfare reform. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had just completed its final season, and the career of star Will Smith was on the rise. While the brief-but-timeless My Brother and Me had run its course the previous year, Salute Your Shorts reruns still filled the air, Clarissa continued to explain it all, and The Adventures of Pete and Pete continued to rule the Nickelodeon waves. Space Jam, featuring Michael Jordan, hit theaters in November and did not fail to impress. Just months earlier, however, an even greater film, starring another basketball giant, and released just months earlier, has been poorly received by crass critics ever since, worngly earning a spot on Wikipedia's List of Films Considered the Worst.

The feature whose praises I sing is Kazaam. I was seven. Kazaam is the first film I remember seeing in theaters. Sure, if you press me I may remember some elements of theater films I saw when I was younger, but Kazaam... that's the first time I remember the big screen, the joy of seeing a motion picture on the big screen. Mom hated it, I remember, and it was one of the few times in my life we didn't wait to sit through the credits. I loved it. Always have. At the time we got Kazaam toys at Taco Bell.

Why, you ask, do I find Kazaam so terrible-ly good? Do I consider Shaquille O'Neal is a good actor? I've never been one to care too much about the actor behind the character; I could care less that Shaq is Kazaam, so the whole "bad crossover" criticism has never been comprehensible to me. But on the other hand, who better than that tall, tough Muslim to play an old-style Arabian genie who takes refuge in a boom box when his lamp's out of commission? Whatever the viewer's opinion of Kazaam's rapping--I find it not-over-the-top, which I like: there are so many movies I cannot enjoy because the writers just tried too hard to make the script clever--what better spin on traditional, poetic tales of magic lamps could there be? Kazaam becomes a nightclub sensation simply by telling his 5,000 year story as hip-hop lyrics, and consequently becomes somewhat sidetracked from his wish-granting duties by his fame! Some critics even take issue with the appearance of the average kid-protagonist's appearance and relatable white boy in the 'hood story! No taste, get lives people.

Kazaam, I should note, came to be on a fourth the budget poured into the aforementioned Space Jam, and, after seeing it for my third time last night, in this Pundit's unimpeachable opinion is a far superior film, set to entertain kids and adults alike for decades. A true treasure of the 90s. If you missed out on the 1996 release, you can catch Kazaam in 11 parts on You Tube, starting here. And for those in need of further convincing, here's the fun scene where Max Connor accidently summons Kazaam from the boom box, and here's Kazaam's rap about how he came to be a genie!

Befriend Kazaam on Facebook and boost its ratings on IMDB (I gave it a 9/10)!

2010-06-06T01:00:00.001-04:00

Gov. Christie to Teacher's Unions: "YOU PUNCH ME, I PUNCH YOU"

Among all of Chris Christie's recent feats of oratory, this is my favorite. As he says, most teachers are good teachers, but all too often politicians are too cowardly to criticize the unions, let alone those educators who hypocritically claim to work out of love, but demand a raise on an $86,000 salary, with benefits, during a recession; he despatched their ilk here. The union's have already spent millions attacking him, and he didn't even attack public school teachers as a group; for that, read Ann Counter regularly.

Reminds me of my public school days. Every three years, punctually, Northampton's well-paid teachers, rather than re-negotiating their contracts peaceably as common sense might dictate, they would pull out the picket signs and protest that they were "Teachers Working Without A Contract", and implore the mostly ambivalent populace to heckle their public employers to pay them more. Though Northampton's public schools are known for their academic prowess, abundance of AP courses, and the sizable chapter of the National Honor Society, they also know for their liberal pedagogy. The usual stuff, only more intense. Promoting homosexuality as normal from elementary school on, frequent displays of gay pride, disproportionate amounts of feminist history, and an overrepresentation of Black and Latino literature (from the worst representatives of these respective races, usually meritless shows of ressentiment from Jimmy Santiago Baca, Ralph Ellison, etc.; the best I could hope for was Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits), a good medley of anti-Catholic texts (ex. WIlliam Manchester's A World Lit Only By Fire), teaching the virtues of "safe sex", the usual, irritating anti-smoking propaganda, and numerous unabashed socialists and left-wing activists among the faculty, who were even worse, using their positions to promote their progressivist ideologies on their captive audience. I sometimes thought it'd be better if the city let the picketers talk to the hand, as they say, and went about finding more grateful educators who kept their opinions to themselves.

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In Northampton, as you can guess, we also got our share of goddesses. The pagans in Northampton are a-plenty, and their novels were not unrepresented at Northampton High (while I don't quite remember any works wholly devoted to female deities, I did have to suffer through Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony over two consecutive summers). Thanks to anime, however, I have finally found some goddesses I like. And they're mini-goddesses at that! In just a few days I plowed through all 48 7-minute episodes of The Adventures of Mini-Goddess, an anime of 1998-1999 vintage based on a manga parody of the original Oh My Goddess! manga. In these exquisite shorts we rejoin Belldandy (jumping), Urd (reclining), Skuld (blinking), who use their powers to make themselves small, and befriend Gan-chan (falling) and his rat friends. Oh My Goddess! is a great series, a fine example of the average-guy-gets-gorgeous-girl (left) genre, and pleasantly unusual in that the protagonist is a college student rather than a high schooler. A cute romance, Oh My Goddess! was recommended to me by a fellow member of the Christian Anime Alliance, so you know it's good (it's so good it makes me want to say oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh oh, oh oh, oh oh my god-dess (alright, no one's made an actual Oh My Goddess! amv to the great Usher song, but you know it's only a matter of time). In Adventures of Mini-Goddess, however, Belldandy and friends put the affairs of love on the back burner, and engage in diverse antics. Believe it or not, it's quite addicting! And while I think the first Oh My Goddess! series, the 1993-1994 OVA, had the best theme music, the Mini-Goddess ending is super-adorable. In my favorite episodes, to give you a glimpse of the series' exceptional antics, Gan-chan the rat eats something moldy, and after a slew of (painful) attempted remedies they think he's finally well--but suddenly, their pal Gan-chan morphs into Gabira: The Giant Monster! Resembling Godzilla, he trashes much of the temple in which they live, and turns anything his breath touches all moldy. How do the mini-goddesses restore their friend to health? Find out in eps. 7 and 8 of The Adventures of Mini-Goddess!

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Finally, there's a tidbit of news from Atobe. Though he's mostly been awfully busy besting old rivals, he, Echizen, and Tezuka have reportedly formed a little rock band. Since my efforts to form an SGA boy band haven't gone as well (yet! you'll see!), forgive me for a tad bit of jealously. With regard to the resignation of Japan's Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, Atobe gracefully comments,

Hatoyama became less popular every day he was in office. Like the estimable Syuusuke Fuji's Higuma Otoshi, which drops the ball you've just smashed to the other side of the court behind you before you know what's coming, Mr. Hatoyama received a smashing mandate after the LDP fell from power, but through his lack of will--the only good thing I, Atobe, can say about him is that he honestly acknowledged he'd broken his promises--he sank like, well, a Higuma Otoshi. As you can't read here,

His party's approval plummeted with a swiftness to which you Americans are alien. Sadly, it's back up now that he's gone, which is too bad for the Right. At least the new guy, Naoto Kan (to be appointed Tuesday), seems patriotic and stronger-willed. And though not a Catholic like Taro Aso, he's a pious Buddhist. As you can read here:

"In 1998, he admitted that he failed to make payments into the state pension scheme for ten months. Although the amounts were relatively small, he left to avoid hurting the party. Additionally, his image had been hurt by the revelation of an affair with a television newscaster.

"As atonement for disgracing himself and his party, Kan shaved his head, donned traditional Buddhist garb, and went on a pilgrimage to 88 rural temples around Japan."

Methinks your American President, Obama, should emulate our new leader for transforming your wonderful land into a European socialist dump. Oh, and Be awed at the--

2010-06-02T01:21:00.000-04:00

Tonight I write of two sights for sore eyes. In these dreary times when one need only watch Glenn Beck on a given weekday to confirm their suspicions that President Obama has overloaded his administration with communists with a penchant for world government--Where's Joe McCarthy when we need him?--parodies on our sadly probable future, and genuine expressions of love for this country from improbable sources come much appreciated.

1.~As Atobe mentioned on the 7th of last month, our Crusader is presently slogging through Infinite Jest, the mangitudinous novel left us by the late David Foster Wallace, and has reached about page 530 (slight spoilers later in this paragraph). Though the longtime Massachusetts resident's intended audience was never in doubt, his political humor is just as enjoyable for this rightist as for the left-literati (though given the epic's often heavy tone, it could've used something a little more BLAST: War Number for the cover). Even today, those of us fighting to prevent an EU-style North American Union are frequently written off as kooks despite the preponderance of globalists and one-worlders in Washington (again watch Glenn Beck) and the parallels to Europe's postwar economic integration. Wallace, writing in the early 90s, already saw what was coming and rendered a parody of it. In Wallace's future (set about now actually), Quebecois separatists and Albertan far rightists unite in pathetic terrorist campaigns not against the NAU, but against ONAN, the Organization of North American Nations (giggle). The saga begins with the upset election of John Gentle, the hygiene-conscious leader of the Clean US Party, to the presidency. His party, abbreviated C.U.S.P., is indeed quite fringe, the

strange-seeming but politically prescient annular agnation of ultra-right jingoist hunt-deer-with-automatic-weapons types and far-left macrobiotic Save-the-Ozone, -Rain-Forests, -Whales, -Spotted-Owl-and-High-pH-Waterways ponytailed granola-crunchers, a surreal union of both Rush L.- and Hillary R. C.-disillusioned fringes that drew mainstream-media guffaws at their first Convention (held in sterile venue), the seemingly LaRoucheishly marginal party whose first platform's plank had been Let's Shoot Our Wastes Into Space, C.U.S.P. a kind of post-Perot national joke for three years, until

they swept the presidency "in an angry reactionary voter-spasm." Through a series of rashly-made promises and solutions worse than the original problem, President Gentle wrangles Canada and Mexico into ONAN. Never a popular pact, especially in Canada, Gentle used NAFTA as leverage to force it down our neighbors' throats, by the way. The ONAN crest is just too funny:

a snarling full-front eagle with a broom and a can of disinfectant in one claw and a Maple Leaf in the other and wearing a sombrero and appearing to have about half-eaten a piece of star-studded cloth

So much for Old Glory. On the brighter side, the emblem is silk-screened onto the door of a truck, whilst the opposite door bears the odd Latin motto TE OCCIDERE POSSUNT SED TE EDERE NON POSSUNT NEFAS EST, for which Wallace provides the translation "They Can Kill You, But the Legalities of Eating You Are Quite a Bit Dicier." Any Latinists around to provide a more literal translation? Truly, those internationalists should know that we have not yet begun to fight! Though as a numismatist I must confess that the purported patterns for the amero currency are stunning. To be sure, Wallace still has over 400 pages to ruin his master work (as Kurt Vonnegut demonstrates in Cat's Cradle, a promising book hardly needs that many more pages to fall to pieces), but as yet my friend's recommendation has more than paid off, and energized this reader in the fight against the NAU/ONAN. Which brings me to

2.~Doesn't anybody love America any more? Given the post-nationalism plaguing our political and economic discourse, attempts to answer the rhetorical question are often depressing. But then I recall that there's an entire nation of people that demonstrates, again and again, their steadfast love for America: the Japanese. Through thick and thin, their infatuation with all things western, and especially all things American (though not self-denigrating in the manner of our preference for the multicultural), has never wavered. The latest periodic reminder came as i was watching Bleach a few weeks ago, and was pleased to find a new ending (the 23rd!!), wherein all the characters hit the streets of New York. Dining at 5th Avenue and authentic Italian restaurants, hanging around as mafiosos, shooting pool, editing the day's paper as Superman (presumably Don Kanonji) flies by, playing poker, singing as divas, walking down allies in high school football jackets, and of course skateboarding past the Empire State Building. In their eyes, the Big Apple is definitely bright, happy and colorful. You can really feel the love, or should I say the HEART HEART.

2010-05-26T18:16:00.006-04:00

First honors tonight go to our senator, Scott Brown, shown here in his National Guard attire. As if to answer my fear he would forever close ranks with his shameless politicker-colleagues up in Maine, he today declared his opposition to repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This is, needless to say, a courageous stand here in Massachusetts. Who would have though a year ago that the only man to talk sense on this politically dangerous issue would be a Bay Stater?

The hype spread by the tolerance-mongers regarding Don't Ask, Don't Tell lately has been quite unbearable; even Fox News has left it largely unchecked. In my audacious opinion, Don't Ask, Don't Tell does not even go far enough. President Clinton promulgated the 1993 directive in response to a stronger, absolute ban on homosexuals in the military President Reagan has issued in 1982; as far as conservatives go, I'm usually not much of a Reagan-venerator--on this subject he opposed the Briggs Initiative, which I mention below--but in this case he's dead right. As a Northamptoner and a graduate of Northampton High, I know from experience that wherever homosexuals are in positions of power, the legitimization of their unnatural lifestyle enters the agenda. This is understandable; they believe their "sexual orientation" is a fundamental part of their being rather than a perversion thereof (in the case of educators, it's quite easy for them to, even inadvertently, shape students' opinions by creating sympathy for their situations--and this is why I eternally rue the day the Briggs Initiative, which forbade not just homosexuals but any teacher "advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting" homosexual activity, failed in California in 1978). Back at NHS, I recall, we even had to listen to a military gay whine about her removal under Don't Ask, Don't Tell during a Pride Week assembly. If the military scraps the policy, I expect the typical infiltration of Gay Pride nonsense into our armed forces (and the media to completely ignore it).

The counter-argument is summed up by Goldwater's shallow dictum that "You don't have to be straight... to shoot straight." Libertarian conservatives remind us that these men and women merely want to serve our country and protect our freedoms. I answer that, if our Nation is to be worth defending, our armed forces must form an elite in virtue and exemplify our national and religious ideals. Even the Masonic French Third Republic understood this~ practicing Catholic officers were systematically removed from the military because, they correctly surmised, they didn't exemplify the Republic's laic ideals. What kind of freedom, I ask, do armed forces filled with servicemen embracing an entirely perverse lifestyle defend? We have forgotten true freedom of Christians, the freedom to choose virtue and holiness without undue temptation; America has long embraced the libertine freedom to choose sin over virtue. Practical considerations aside, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was always a happy aberration in our law, so it is no surprise that the Left and much of the Right are uniting to overturn it, and Senator Brown's brave opposition is a great credit to him. The Nation's Christians, and most especially its Roman Catholics, should know better than to support this offensive initiative, and recognize it as yet another effort to eliminate every trace of Christian morality from our law.

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If the first movement didn't make you happy, the second movement, I promise, will not fail to make you gay. A few hours ago, I finished an absolutely magnificent anime, a masterpiece in the tradition of Don Quixote and A Confederacy of Dunces. I speak, of course, of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. To bring in some Hindu terminology popularized by an irritating movie, Haruhi Suzumiya is no less than the latest avatar of the Ingenious Hidalgo, Ignatius Reilly, and even me, Crusader88. A flamboyant and gorgeous high school freshman who restyles her hair every day, Haruhi couldn't care less about guys, making friends, or normal activities--unless you're an alien, time-traveler, slider, or esper, she doesn't care about you! Enter Kyon. Attempting to engage the nonchalant femme, he suggests that, since she didn't like any of the established clubs, she start her own. And so, she founds the SOS Brigade, which stands for Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade (see, I told you you'd have a gay old time). Determined to solve mysteries and gain publicity for the SOS Brigade, Haruhi endeavors to make the world more interesting, and despite herself she inadvertently succeeds every time. If you feel like joining too (were I not so involved at Assumption, I could devote my time to founding an SOS Brigade-imaged anime and manga club, only with me as Ultra Director instead of Haruhi), the club pin's available from this fine (Arizona) anime accessories dealer for the low, low price of $1.25!

The two season anime is based on a light novel series I hope to begin soon. Cervantes and Toole in literary minimalism: I can't wait! And this being summer, you my dear reader have an excellent opportunity to start off with Episode 1. The show wasn't broadcast in chronological order, and is best watched in the same fashion. Yes indeedy, gotta watch that Episode 1. Perhaps because the series, which followed the light novels and manga, was a guaranteed success, this pilot episode is the best I've even seen--it simply must be seen to be believed (if you need more enticement still, it stars a buxom girl in a bunny suit). C'mon, it's summer! What else are you gonna do? Lie around in the kiddie pool? Watch Friends reruns? I insist that you have at least 25 free minutes. ***What are you waiting for?*** Accept Haruhi's cordial invitation and join in the SOS Brigade fun today!