Aspiring toward superfluity

Moloch, Moloch, Moloch!

Update: Maybe a hoax, maybe not. I hope it's fake; the culture of death and the transgressive spirit in art are bad enough without something this sick being added to their ledger.

Update 2: She's insisting that it's real.

I just got back from DC, where Nik was able to get Luke and I in to see the Pope's arrival ceremony at the White House. Good times.

But mostly profit. I'm back from spending Easter with my lovely Julie, and was bumped from a late flight back last night to an early one this morning. I'm sleep-deprived, but a $300 voucher richer.

Watching Obama's speech now: the man is a sophist.

On a related note, I finished reading Liberal Fascism. It was pretty good overall, but disappointing. It did a great job of pointing out the dirty part of the progressive and liberal past, a good job of showing the totalitarian tendencies and ties of modern liberalism, and a very poor job of offering any alternative. If the fascist tendency is, as Goldberg correctly asserts, a perverted religious impulse, then it must be countered through true religion.

Who just got engaged!

Hillary has been bloodying Obama nicely for us. The dirt coming out on his loony pastor/mentor, his shady ties to players in Chicago's political machine, his million-dollar earmark for his wife's employer, his Weather Underground terrorist chums...all of it would have been swept under the rug by the media in the general election. Thanks to Hillary's tenacity, Obama is bleeding, and all these subjects will be fair game for McCain.

Meanwhile, spring has arrived here in the DC region. Almost Birkenstock weather...

So it's back to classes for Julie and I at our respective schools.

The National Review tribute issue to Buckley arrived today, and is worthy of the great man.

I picked up Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism at the airport on the way home for some light reading, and have found it pretty good. It's not academic, but it's not Ann Coulter either, it is seriously researched, and what I've read makes good points about fascism's place on the Left in European politics and the nasty side of American progressives like Wilson.

I'm still trying to shake off the cold Julie gave me. What can I say except that we're getting a head start on that whole "in sickness" bit?

For the sake of my soul, I'm trying not to enjoy the Spitzer scandal too much.

Wedding planning has begun...

Reading Rousseau's Confessions is not a task for the weak of will (or stomach). 600 pages of elegant tales of how horribly the world treated him. Imagine Michelle Obama's whinging about how hard life is for Harvard Law grads going on forever and you'll have an idea of what it's like.

On that note, long live the Democratic nomination process!

Julie and I are back at Notre Dame, since we're able to work much more effectively here than in Chicago with her mother and sister. We indeed managed to book a wedding date on the day we wanted, though the only slot left was at 9 in the morning. By the time we had gotten through, there weren't any afternoon spots left in the entire year. Still, we're happy to have gotten something.

No, I'm not talking about that annoying Verizon dude or the iPhone. Rather, I'm in Chicago with my lovely Julie for spring break, and we're trying to book wedding dates. And since ND takes reservations for 2009 starting at 8am EST today, over the phone, every prospective bride and her family and friends bombard the poor folks answering the phones. I'm devising better systems in my mind right now.

The greatest conservative since Edmund Burke has left us for heaven.

Felt rather ill last night, and didn't go to church this morning on account of that. I'm not happy I missed church, but it was probably the best choice to make.

As regards the election, McCain should run a hard negative campaign against Obama if, as looks likely, the new left-wing Messiah gets the nomination. Obama is as radical as they come. I'd love to see an ad where McCain looks at the camera and says "while I was being tortured by the communist North Vietnamese, Senator Obama's friends were building bombs to kill American army officers in terrorist attacks."

The media and the Democrats (my apologies for the redundancy) will howl, of course. But imagine the reaction if it came out that McCain had friends (even casual, political ones) who were unrepentant abortion clinic bombers. I rest my case.

My lovely Julie was here this last weekend for a brief visit. Highlights include a lunch with Dr. Ryn and going swing dancing. Well, the highlights that can be easily conveyed, anyway. I make no attempts to convey the whole "seeing my fiancee whom I haven't seen in a month" feeling.

Also, I'm trying to give up profanity during lent. As I mostly swear when driving (still haven't adjusted to the traffic out here), I've taken to calling bad drivers "candidates of change" instead of the usual short words mostly beginning with the early letters of the alphabet.

Finally, I had a Latin test today, and was lucky because it was very difficult. I didn't know the material so well as I should have, but it was far to long for the time (no one came close to finishing) so I worked on translating passages from the Vulgate rather than the grammatical analysis of them, the former being easier for me. So it should all work out.

Had a horrible time getting home last night because of freezing rain. They had closed several overpasses and on ramps on 95. Fortunately, I was able to get around them and make it home only 150 minutes later than I had expected.

Seriously. Europe is surrendering to the Muslims even faster than I expected, and you know who will be next.

Here's a very interesting piece in The Atlantic arguing (from a secular standpoint) that women need to "settle" for a husband earlier in life. Basically, it's an admission that the conservative anti-feminists were right.

Now, I think it goes a little too far in its Charlotte Lucas-esque tone, but then, I've managed to land a great future bride at 23, which is, I think, settling in the eyes of many today. I suspect that many today think that it is settling to not play the field until you're at least 30. And by the time they realize they were wrong, it's too late.

Also, playing some Starcraft (still a great game) with the Beehive over the net. A few thoughts.

1. If you want to win evangelical voters in a Republican primary, you can be a Mormon, or you can be a flip-flopper on key issues. You can't be both.

2. A lot of Republican pundits seem to have a "how could Huckabee still be winning votes, I don't know anyone who voted for him!?!" thing going on. I would suggest they get out of NYC and DC and mingle more with the folk they consider themselves to be representing/leading.

3. I still have a preference for Romney, but short of McCain falling over dead, the race is probably over.

4. Whoever the Democrats nominate (I bet Obama), will probably win. It will be bad for the country, but not the end of the world.

I'm not watching the Super Bowl.

At least Rudy's out. McCain would be my last choice from the current field, but I'll at least vote for him.

I've started going to a Friday night fellowship group through my church, and am enjoying it a good deal. It's helping me get to know people (not usually my strong point) and the Bible study is good.

Thursday my car had a flat tire due to it getting a bit too cozy with a screw that someone apparently left in the road. Annoying, to say the least. Still, I figured out how to use the weird jack my car has (really, it looks like half of a normal jack).

I've had a hard time getting into the swing of things this term, but hopefully I can get over that soon.

For the second time in two weeks, my Latin class was canceled. I don't find myself minding much, though.