Liberty Island (a right-wing entertainment website and publisher) occasionally sponsors short fiction contests. The most recent was their “July 4th Blockbuster Fiction Contest.”
Why is this relevant, aside from the fact that today is July 4th? Well, you can read two stories there by two Catholic Geeks authors! Continue reading
Every year, someone will complain that we’re losing sight of what this day means in the United States. Someone always complains about that sort of thing for a holiday.
So what is the spirit of Independence Day in this country? Is it a celebration of war? Is it a celebration of the military? Does grilling in the back yard somehow violate the struggle that many had to give us that freedom, and others later to keep it?
As I write this, I’m a few hours from hearing the sound of fireworks in the distance . . . the snap, crackle, and pop of freedom. If we take anything for granted this day, it’s this: that fireworks are fun. In some countries, people flinch at the sound of explosions just like those. The bursts of light and chemicals don’t herald entertainment, but instead promise terror. They don’t release pretty lights. They produce sights of horror. Continue reading
We’ve all seen the war between the Confederates and the Skittles on social media. Well, someone came up with an app that will overlay the Vatican flag on top of an image of your choosing. (I recommend cropping your image to 400×400 pixels first, as otherwise it will be stretched to fit.) Have fun!
I have to give all the credit for this post to Marina Fontaine, who posted this article and requested a fisk. I clicked on the article, and was more than happy to oblige after reading only the first sentence.
I’m not sure who this David Brooks fellow is, but he seems to think quite a bit of himself and his opinion, so he is a prime candidate for the fisking skills of Lori The Organist Extraordinaire.
With all the recent social upheaval over the Supreme Court’s many recent decisions, like the death penalty, Texas abortion clinics, and of course, gay “marriage,” sooner or later some silly person is going to try and “address” all of the “problems” that those “crazy conservatives” have. After all, they’re not really that important or scary. They’re doomed, and they know it. Blah blah blah. Continue reading
The idea that gay marriage will endanger religious freedom is an old and common argument. So old and common, in fact, that it’s frequently dismissed on its face. After all, no one is forcing any religion to alter its practices. This is just about not imposing religious practices on secular society.
Of course, nearly every time I suggest to someone who fervently supports gay marriage that perhaps this argument would be best addressed by removing all state recognition of marriage from our society, I’m met with scorn, derision, and hatred. I was even, on one spectacular occasion, faced with a crowd of people who insisted that this proved I wanted to impose my religious beliefs on them. I’m not sure how the suggestion that state not dictate to religion meant religion dictating to state, but there you go.
The fact of the matter is that the inevitable result of this situation is that the state must dictate to religion. Continue reading
https://player.cinchcast.com/?assettype=single&show_id=7716959&version=2.0&platformId=1
My first words to my husband were “Live long and prosper.” During our wedding, the priest directed everyone to greet us with the Vulcan peace sign. Our kids won’t remember, but they wore Star Trek onesies (science blue.) So you could say Rob and I are pretty big fans of Star Trek.
We still watch the old shows, especially DS9, our fave, but there’s something exciting about new material. I’ll admit that I like the reboot – once I got over Kirk skipping graduation, commissioning, and FOUR ranks to Captain his own starship. (Okay, maybe I’m not quite over it. But imagine if they’d done ST: Reboot like the Honor Herrington series. Wow.) However, Rob and I have been pretty impressed by some of the fan films that are coming out. Another day, I’ll gush about Star Trek Continues – and talk about Star Trek: New Voyages, which I just discovered looking for the STC link. (Where have you been all my life?) Today, I want to geek out about the exclusive we got to see this month: Star Trek: Renegades. Continue reading
In my teens, I wasn’t a very strong or knowledgeable Catholic. I’d converted when I was twelve, but that was more about me getting brought along when my mother and older brother took the plunge. I had the worst of both worlds: no convert’s fervor, and no cradle education. I had a lot of strange ideas in my head, picked up from books and movies and TV shows, not to mention people like my first girlfriend.
So yes, I understand how easy it is to get a strange idea of what the Church teaches. Between a media that focuses on its own agenda and no longer even attempts investigative journalism (seriously, citing Wikipedia would be an improvement at least half the time, and I’m probably being too generous) and an entertainment industry that treats the Catholic Church about as well as the laws of physics in a summer blockbuster movie, it’s one of the easiest things in the world.
It’s also one of the easiest to rectify. Every scrap of Church doctrine, discipline, and theology (and yes, there’s a difference between those three) is online, indexed by your favorite search engine, and available without a subscription. And yet we still have people who think that Jack Chick is a more reliable source of information about what the Church actually professes.
And, more relevantly for right now, we have people who would rather condemn the Church for not fitting in their personal political ideology than accept that the Church doesn’t fit into any ideology . . . except perhaps its own. Continue reading
We all know that the lamestream media’s favorite topic is gun control: how evil gun owners are, how guns are the source of all our problems, how they manage to fire themselves and are to blame for every gun-related tragedy, and most of all, how much they should be banned.
Our dear Pope Francis has, unfortunately, made the lamestream media’s week with the comments he made to a youth rally during his visit to Turin. Of course, all of them immediately jump on the “Pope Francis says you can’t be Christian and own a gun!” which is, of course, the biggest load of bulls**t on the internet, which is saying a lot.
Of course, Catholics who own guns freak out over it; non-Catholics who own guns say “See? See? I TOLD you those Catholics were insane!”; liberal non-Christians say, “Now look, even the Pope agrees with us!”
Well, looks like we’re going to have to clear this up.
In the words of Bishop Fulton Sheen:
There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.
This is one of those instances. What the Church says and what people say She says are two completely different things.
We’re going to do you a favor and give you Four Reasons Not To Freak Out.
Why can’t I kill someone? No, seriously, why not? Oh, look, this guy is bullying my kid / my friend / hurt someone I care about. Why can’t I just go up to him and shove him into traffic? Why can’t I run over that little bastard with my car? Seriously, why are you sauntering in the middle of the street with the ear buds plugged in while you’re staring at the smartphone that’s got a higher IQ than you, and why shouldn’t I turn you into road kill?
Murder is frowned upon in the Catholic Church. And, as the old saying goes, crime doesn’t pay … enough.
Okay, that’s if you’re part of the mystery writers guild.
http://player.cinchcast.com/?platformId=1&assetType=single&assetId=7697729
Parents, you know how hard it is to find good, clean movies to give your kids. Stuff without immoral elements, or with questionable heroes, or stuff that might just confuse them. And then, even if that’s all satisfied, it’s hard to get quality.
In that case, you should go see Inside Out and plan on adding the DVD to your home library. Continue reading
Depression is one of those topics that people usually either don’t get or don’t want to talk about. If you haven’t experienced it, well, you don’t get it. Not really. And if you have experienced it, you tend not to want to talk about it; that’s not so much because you want to avoid it, but rather it’s practically impossible to describe.
In that way, depression is like being a combat veteran. The inability to communicate the experience with others isn’t a factor of language, but instead one of experience. Different vets might have experienced very different wars — the freezing winters of Korea, the oppressive jungles of Vietnam, the scorching heat of Afghanistan — but they can still communicate with each other that someone who has never experienced the terror and horror of war just can’t grasp. Just as two people with depression can instantly grasp what the other has experienced, without having shared the exact same struggle . . . and yet can’t communicate that even to friends and family.
So, of course, I’m going to try to communicate it today. Continue reading
It is a period of civil war.
The spaceships of the rebels, striking swift
From base unseen, have gain’s a vict’ry o’er
the cruel Galactic Empire, now adrift.
Amidst the battle, rebel spies prevai’d
And stole the plans to a space station vast,
Whose pow’rful beams will later be unveil’d
And crush a planet: ’tis the DEATH STAR blast.
Pursu’d by agents sinister and cold,
Now Princess Leia to her home doth flee,
Deliv’ring plans and a new hope they hold:
Of bringing freedom to the galaxy.
In time so long ago begins our play,
In star-crossed galaxy far, far away.
— Chorus, Prologue, Star Wars, Verily, A New Hope
No this is not a fanfiction from the darkest, creepy corners of the internet. This is a legitimate publication by Ian Doescher. Continue reading
The Catholic Geeks have been spending a lot of time on the Geek part of that title (and there’s not a single thing wrong with that, of course!), but I think it’s time for a good, non-Geek, Catholic post. The topic of choice:
Sacred Music.
Yes, I did just kick that hornet’s nest.
In my capacity as the volunteer organist for my parish, I have noticed two things that make people mind-numbingly, foaming-at-the-mouth angry: any mention of Latin, and the idea that the music they’re performing at the Mass is not appropriate.
While trying to help my parish along and give it some more orthodoxy, I’ve been ganged-up-on in public; lectured in loud voices during a Rosary in the church; passive-aggressively bullied into quitting one Mass; and been the subject of behind-the-scenes manipulation, in addition to more direct action, like finding used Kleenex left on the organ console; having the sound board messed with to make the organ sound funny; and having the organ unplugged, even though I had a sign up in two languages asking people not to do that (because unplugging it erases the presets).
After I tell those horror stories, the first question that people think of is: if it makes you so miserable, why bother doing it? It’s just music, after all. It’s not that big a deal.
Oh, but it is, and I’m going to tell you why.
Last week, I did a post about competitive gaming, as an introduction to the concept. Hopefully it helped give you some context for the future, because this time around I’m talking about some questions I left unaddressed last time around. All part of the plan, I assure you.
You thought Nintendo hadn’t done anything in a while, didn’t you?
Let’s start with this:
What is this Mass Effect spin off with current-gen FF-like open world, and Gundam -like walking tanks?
Xenoblade Chronicles? Really? Yup. This is going to be interesting as all heck. I used to play the XenoSaga trilogy, many moons ago, so this will get weird.
Yikes.
Just Cause 3
…. Huh. Funny, I thought this was an Uncharted game.
And we’re apparently going to blow up a Bond villain, and half of the island he owns.
Hmm. This is starting to feel like one of the last two Far Cry Games, only with bigger stakes…and with Batman’s grapple gun.
Seriously, who directed this trailer? Michael Bay?
Bet you didn’t know that the only reason you get published is because of white male privilege.
I read this, and, literally, was sitting in my office with my mouth hanging open, praying that no one would come in and ask for a copy of their insurance card and see me looking so horrified.
The stupid is so profound that my poor little brain just could not fathom its depths.
A modification of a Chesterton quote is in order here:
The Idiot is sane because it drowns easily in an infinite sea of Stupid; Reason seeks to refute the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion . . . the Idiot only asks to get his head into the Stupid. It is the Reasonable Man who seeks to swim out of it it, and it is his head that splits.
This is my head, splitting and spewing its contents all over the office.
Something must be done:
As usual, the original is in italics, and my comments are in bold. And don’t forget: the Asymmetrical Bullshit Principle applies.
Andy
ashetoashes
catholicgeekguest
Declan Finn
Karina Fabian
Matthew Bowman
Lori Janeski
Hannah Rose
Ross Windsor
Olivia Bushey
The Catholic Geeks 
The Seventh Doctor and the Pandorica
I recently ran across this little gem again. It’s from DragonCon in 2011, where Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor) reads the Eleventh’s Pandorica speech.
While there wasn’t anything truly bad about Matt Smith’s original version, I find myself thinking that this speech is really better for the Seventh Doctor. McCoy’s era really emphasized the Doctor’s manipulative side. His companion was Ace, and she called him Professor for a reason: he made everything into a teaching opportunity. And sometimes he’d see nothing wrong with putting her in harm’s way without telling her, simply because HE knew what was going on. Continue reading →