Just a quick note: I just posted on The Inside Blog, if you’d care to take a look. Eventually, I will grow enough brain cells to have a sidebar for this kind of thing (and a blogroll, and a reader . . . ) on my own blog.
But don’t forget to read today’s other post, below, which is much more fun!
(and may I add that the difference between this guy and most other guys is that his tush is in front)
BEHOLD THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN:
(A true story — not about me, though.)
Woman: Hey, our 20th anniversary is coming up, and we have a little extra money. I was thinking it would be really practical, and kind of romantic at the same time, if we went out together and got replacements for all our old-worn out wedding gifts! You know, all the pots and pans and towels and sheets and everything that people gave us? We could really use new ones, and wouldn’t that be kind of romantic?
Man: Or we could get a motorcycle.
You all surprise me. You really do. As I write, there are seven comments on The Jerk’s first movie review, and not a single one expressing moderate to quivering righteous indignation at the implicit endorsement of a trashy piece of work likeRoadhouse. I was expecting a nice loud chorus of, “AND YOU CALL THIS A CATHOLIC BLOG?” Boy, if this were Inside Catholic, I’d have been excommunicated at least twice by now (although the second time wouldn’t count, because Pope Michael of Kansas has had his excommunication privileges temporarily taken away by his parents, who do, after all, own the garage apartment he lives in).
My flexible friend.
I guess I’ll just chalk your laxity up to the heat, and go ahead and write what I was planning to write anyway, because I think it’s an interesting topic.
I mean, we have to have some standards, yes? You really can’t call yourself a good Catholic and then just go ahead and do whatever you want. Seriously, no matter how many college courses we took, there must be some movies that Catholics shouldn’t watch, some music we shouldn’t listen to, some clothes we shouldn’t wear, words we shouldn’t use, quantities we shouldn’t drink, and so on. That’s the whole catch in that “Love God, and do what you will” thing: if you actually do love God, then you’re not going to want to move away from Him; and certain activities certainly do make that gap wider.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I am fairly susceptible to the “It’s okay because I’m edgy” trap. It’s not conscious, but I tend to feel that I’m sooo smart and ironic and a anyway a good mother and all, so it’s probably really okay for me to do . . . well, just about anything, as long as I have lots of babies and pray most days.
In fact, it’s more than okay: why, I’m rendering a valuable service to the reputation of the modern Church. By indulging in various seemingly unholy activities (and I’m talking about medium-bad stuff like drinking too much, showing a little too much skin, swearing, speeding, telling dirty jokes, etc.), I’m not only not a bad Catholic, but it makes me an extra-good Catholic, because I’m not one of those fearful, novena-haunted zealots who can’t see past their own mantillas to the rich and burgeoning sensual world of culture and art. No water in the wine! We’re Catholics, not Puritans — we can handle it! After all, how are we going to share the Good News if we’re too timid to step out of our crisis bunkers? How will secular folks take us seriously if we look like weirdos?
Tell me they don’t look like weirdos.
Actually, despite the above picture which I couldn’t resist posting, the matter of how we dress is a whole other kettle of fish, which I definitely want to talk about later. But for right now, in light of yesterday’s post, let’s just consider the movies we watch. We watch a lot of movies at our house. Fairly often, my husband and I discuss whether or not it would be a good idea for us (just us, not the kids) to watch something–usually because it has too much graphic sexual stuff in it, but sometimes because it just has too much of a nasty feel. We talk it over, based on what we know of the reputation of the director, the trailers we’ve seen, etc., and then decide together whether or not to see it (and if only one of us says, “Let’s not,” then we both don’t).
Sometimes it’s pretty obvious that a movie is not for us (or for anyone). We discussed Sin City (this link is to the parents’ guide, which, in describing why the movie is inappropriate, is itself fairly inappropriate!) for about two seconds before we nixed it. It looked like it might have some artistic merit, and yet it didn’t seem worth going to Hell for. On the other hand, we did watch Eastern Promises, which was sexually explicit and violent and grim as all get out. But it was a good movie, maybe great. I cautiously recommend it.
We don’t want to miss out on good movies. But I guess the best possible thing to do would be to err on the side of caution, and always always skip movies that we’re afraid might have a bad influence on us.
Or is that the best possible thing? We love movies so much, and have such good conversations about them, that I have a very hard time believing that Catholics should confine themselves to G movies (do they even make those anymore?), although I do have some respect for people who have that much will power. After all, approximately 94%* of western culture was made possible by the Church in one way or another, and not all of it is paintings of fat cherubim.
Here is what we have figured out: it’s kind of like chastity**. Say you’re abstaining. So you’re not going to have sex today. But, dammit, you are a married couple, and the chaste behavior of a married couple is different from the chaste behavior of a pair of dating teens. So, yes, you’re allowed to do more, without doing everything. But you have to be smart about it. And you have to understand that your standards and limitations might change from month to month, or even day to day, depending on your mood, your attitude, your spiritual state, your current relationship with your spouse, what you did yesterday and the day before, etc. What could be some good clean married fun one day can be a disaster the next, even if it’s objectively the exact same behavior — it all depends on the context, your motivations, and on what you know will happen to you if you do it, if you can be honest with yourself about your own weaknesses. (And of course, there are some things which are always off-limits, no matter who you are or how you feel today.)
So, in the same way, a movie that is fine to watch one evening, and gives us food for thought, and provokes rich, marriage-building conversation and camaraderie–this same movie might be an occasion of sin, or even a sin, the next week. It all depends.
So, what’s a movie viewer to do? I think this is the point at which many good Catholics throw up their hands and decide to play it safe, and just stick with super-safe fare. Which means you are going to end up seeing a lot of Doris Day
and then you will have to claw your own eyeballs out, which would be a shame. There are other approaches, however. Here is what we do:
Well, that’s it. There’s my brilliant three-point strategy for avoiding hellfire without having to watch Calamity Jane.
I once posted a silly review of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (in which I compared it to the Odyssey; yes, I did), and warned the readers that the movie contained “some tough scenes, including partial nudity and various creepy and depressing conversations.” Well, someone who signed himself “Scandalized” responded:
I watched this movie based on the author’s recommendation. I’m sorry I did as I believe it’s offensive to God to sit through a movie like this. The nudity, the gay kissing scene, the trashy dressed room mate? What the author describes as ‘tough’ scenes to watch would be more accurately defined as occasions of sin.
[snip]
There was a time when this kind of entertainment would have been blacklisted by the Catholic Church (under pain of mortal sin we would have watched it)….but now (for the mature viewer, anyway) it’s become entertainment good enough to be praised on a Catholic blog.
So I says to him:
I’m truly sorry you were disappointed. If you never watch movies that have nudity or immorality in them, however, I’m not sure why you decided to watch this one, when I warned you that those scenes were in it! I thought the photo of the shark graffiti would serve as warning, also.
Maybe it will make you feel better if you know that my husband and I cover our eyes and make stupid noises during certain types of scenes in movies. Then we quickly peek at the screen – uh oh, they’re still naked – look away again, bah bah bah bah – and then look again to see if it’s safe yet.
You see, I agree with you that movies can be an occasion of sin. We make an effort not to watch those scenes which are bad for our souls, and we do make the decision to skip certain movies altogether, even if they seem like they would be entertaining.
The Church no longer lists forbidden movies, but she still holds us to the same standards — it’s just that we’re supposed to impose those standards on ourselves.
So, one question: did you watch the whole movie, or did you turn it off when it started offending you?
Durned if he never got back to me on that last question. But that’s what it boils down to, it seems to me. If the movie offend thee, then turn it off.
_______________________________________________
*Shut up, I said “approximately”
**By this hugely misunderstood word, I do not mean “celibacy.” I mean living in such a way that your sexual behavior is appropriate to your station in life.
Good morning! Last week, I told you my favorite joke, and asked for yours. (If you still want to send me yours for pubbloglication, don’t put it in the comments – mail it to simchafisher@gmail.com.)
So my second favorite joke was actually sent to me twice! More coincidence: it was sent to me by two sisters! Furthermore, if you can believe it, they both happened to bymy sisters, which may explain why the joke hit that sweet spot for me. Nepotism schmepotism, it made me laugh. (I also have twoadditional sisters, for a grand total of five people who liked the last joke) but one of them has six little kids and is in Arizona in July, is temporarily carless and husbandless, while she prepares to move; and the other is in her eleventieth month of pregnancy — so asking either of them to make with the ha ha seems a little rude.)
A man was searching for the meaning of life. He traveled all over the world, spending time with various spiritual masters of different religions. All of them had partial answers, but none of them was completely satisfying. But the more of these masters he spoke to, the more he kept hearing about one guru, on a mountain-top in the Himalayas, who really knew. But no one was exactly sure which mountain-top. So the man traveled on, gathering information, tracing leads, making maps, until he had it narrowed down. It took ten years. Then he hired a guide, and climbed the mountain. The guide died on the way. Finally, oxygen-deprived, starving and half frozen, he made it to the mountain-top and found the guru in a little cabin, sitting in front of his fire. He said,
“Oh master, I have dedicated my life to finding you! I have searched for you for ten years, and I have finally found you. Tell me: what is the meaning of life?”
The guru slowly turned towards him and gazed at him for a full minute. Then he said, “Life…is like a fountain.”
“Oh, thank you master, but please tell me: what do you mean? How is life like a fountain?”
The guru said, “You mean…life isn’t like a fountain?”
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Second order of business: starting tomorrow, this blog will become a GROUP BLOG. A very small group. I invited some guy I met in the woods to join me, and he will be writing movie reviews for your reading pleasure (not to be confused with reviewing movies you would watch for your viewing pleasure. Not). If you are going to read his work while eating hot dogs, I suggest cutting them up. Not into disks! What kind of a mother are you. Cut them into spears, then dice them.
“He’s . . . so . . . funny–”
photo source
So please join us tomorrow to give a warm and hearty welcome to . . .
When he gets finished, there won’t be a dry seat in the house.
Hope This Helps Edition
In which I solve seven common problems
–1–
Did you spill soy sauce all over the place? Need a mother’s day present? Or just a crapload of squares? Try this amazing new product.
–2–
Are you a really, really good mother who somehow understandably forgot to brush your daughter’s hair for a week, and as a result did not catch her major head lice infestation until a well-meaning relative, who probably mostly just wanted everyone to realize that the BBQ was dragging on a little too long, saw fit to do a “Hey, everybody,guess who has HIGH ANXIETY?”
to let you (and everyone within a forty mile radius) know that your daughter has a major lice infestation? Well, you should try this fairly new system of blow-drying Cetaphil. It Actually Works (although our kids needed four weeks of treatment, not three), and you don’t have to wash everything you own and spend a million hours picking nits, which isn’t as much fun as it sounds like.
–3–
Are you ready to leave the beach, but are miles away from home with a miserable baby whose fat, fat leg folds are coated with gritty sand? I am all for packing lightly for the beach (three rules: no food unless it’s a major birthday; if you want a toy, you have to wait till a non-resident beach goer is looking the other way; and I don’t want to hear about your towel), but one thing we always bring is baby powder. Sprinkle it generously on the baby (or anyone else, koff koff, whose fat legs make them cranky), and the wet sand comes right off, and you won’t feel like such a monster strapping an uncomfortable little one into her car seat.
–4–
Are you craving chips and salsa, but looking for a healthier alternative? Try pretzelsand salsa. It’s less fatty, and tastes just as good as pretzels and salsa.
–5–
Were you absent during grades K-12? Here is a handy reference to all you need to know:
Bonus College Quick Reference:
There, now you are all caught up.
–6–
Thinking of home schooling? Here is the single greatest piece of advice I’ve heard (and I just gave the book away, and can’t come up with the author’s name). I was immediately drawn to this book because, unlike most home schooling books, the cover didn’t look anything like this:
Which is a lovely picture, but discouraging. Look at that posture! And the kid is wearing white, and her face, while solemn, is not tear-stained! And the curtains don’t appear to have any poop on them! So instead, on the cover of this book was picture of a girl wearing a bathing suit and cowboy boots, doing her math on the floor under the kitchen table. Now, add someone smearing Spaghettios on the wall and calling it art, and another kid deliberately ripping the first kid’s math work and calling it justice, and that would be a good day in our home school. So the piece of advice was this: whatever kind of mother you are
that’s the kind of home schooler you will be.
This sounds terribly obvious, but every year I fell into the trap of hoping that home schooling would, among other things, fix my defects as a mother. It would force me to become organized, encourage me to be patient, ensure that I would follow through on projects, motivate me to go out and meet other people, etc. etc. Now, I did improve in all of these things. But I did not become transformed. I was just me, home schooling. This should not discourage you from deciding to home school; it’s just something you ought to know.
–7–
I don’t know exactly what this is good for, but it seems like it might come in handy.
Well, I hope that answers all your questions. See Jen at Conversion Diary to leave a link to your own Seven Quick Takes, and don’t forget to link back to Jen! Have a lovely weekend, everyone, and remember, it’s important to throw a firecracker when you light it, but NOT AT DADDY.
Jane (The View From the Foothills) gave me a lift by asking,
Is there any chance you could re-publish your story on defrosting the hamburger in the washing machine. A very good friend of mine is about to have her 4th child and I would like her to have a fabulous laugh. That story, which I passed along a lot when your old blog was up, has kept many friends laughing over their life with a newborn mistakes, “Well, it wasn’t quite hamburger in the washing machine but I ……”.
Well, I am happy to oblige, and even happier to post something I don’t have to write! So here it is:
The Hamburger In the Washing Machine One
The baby, with her Svengali eyes,
hypnotized me into believing that she was sleeping through the night.
We would solemnly put her into her bed promptly at 9:30, and she would sleep until 6 AM.
After several nights of this, I would actually be in tears by morning, unable to believe that it was already morning again, and sleeping time was all over, and why was I so tired, when the baby was sleeping through the night?
Sure, she would get up for a little snack when we came into bed and disturbed her; and occasionally, when she has a cold, or was fighting off a cold, or recovering from a cold, she would need to get hydrated; and all of us, including babies who can’t tell time, were a little confused by daylight savings time; and as long as the sun is almost up, or almost up, that counts as breakfast time. And of course she’s often teething. Butbasically, she was sleeping through the night, I would say.
For as much as two hours at a stretch, all through the night.
I couldn’t make toast without consulting the recipe. I would try and start the car when it was already running. I would use “thing” to substitute not only for nouns, but for any part of speech, as in: “Could you please thing this thing in the other thing over there? Yes, you. Thing with the red thing on.”
And of course I lost things — school books, hot cups of coffee, children . . . you know, things. I spent a good half hour hunting for a misplaced bag of parsley, which couldn’t have roamed very far from the soup pot of origin, could it? By sheer chance, while searching for my keys, I discovered the parsley tucked safely inside the dishwasher, where, oh yeah, I put it because, um, because of some reason, surely.
In light of this mental disintegration, my husband suggested that the baby might sleep better across the room, where she can’t easily see, hear, or smell me. She can still be nice and close in case an eagle breaks into the house and I need to be there for her, but a little distance will encourage her to quit sucking the life force out of me night after night.
Well, it worked. She now sleeps from 9:30 to 7:30 — for real, as in remaining quietly in her crib, and waking up happy and hungry. She’s been doing this for almost two weeks. I’ve been getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep, day after day . . . and I’m still stumbling through my life like a amnesiac with autism and a death wish.
Yesterday I lost three-and-a-half pounds of ground beef. Where could that meat be, where could it be? The previous day, I had forgotten to take it out in time to have hamburgers, but left it out so that, if I forgot again the next day, it would at least be partially defrosted. But then I forgot to put it away. So where was it now?
So I asked my husband, who knows me, What the hell did I do with that meat? and he had an inspiration: maybe it’s in the washing machine! In fact, it must be in the washing machine. That’s where I put it to defrost, because — I dunno, to make room in the refrigerator for some laundry?
Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I know you were looking forward to reading about how I didn’t notice that the meat was in the washing machine until the horrible, gristly disaster was complete — how I let all the cycles run, including “agitate,” which is very hard on chop meat — how I didn’t even notice how oleaginous the wet clothes were, even though all the hundreds of tiny drainage holes were each stuffed with a wad of raw, soapy hamburger — and chunked the whole meaty mess into the dryer, and of course set it to “high heat,” and how now my husband will be getting sock jerky for lunch and hamburger khaki casserole for supper for the next few days, which is not covered under the warranty.
Nope. All that happened was that I located the meat while the washer was only half-full of water and soap. The situation was saved before any kind of whirring, churning, or centripetal force came into play.
The worst part was that the blood leaked all over the clothes; but if you think about it, that’s really pretty good timing in a bad situation. It’s like breaking your leg in the lobby of the hospital, or punching your brother while in the confession line.
Well, at least that hamburger got defrosted. And clean! (Yes yes, I threw it away. It sat out for 36 hours, was sopping wet, and smelled like a combination of a mountain breeze and warm, wet meat. We’re just going to have to eat socks or something tonight.)
So that’s one mystery solved: I did find the meat. But where did I put my brain? Now let me see, I was using it to correct some math the other night, and then I put it down somewhere . . .
