This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You are not getting nearly enough chicken fat, beets, or fish jelly in your diet. Or tzimmes (which sounds delicious, but is basically a bunch of strangled root vegetables with hot prunes). Yes, gentiles, if you ate more food that looked like this:
you wouldn’t need this:
Found in my local grocery store circular. Oh, New Hampshire.
Cute little story on NPR’s Morning Edition today: Parvum Opus: Followers Flock To Pope’s Latin Twitter Feed. I didn’t realize this, but the Pope’s Twitter account was only available in Latin as of this year.
When the Latin account was launched in January, Vatican officials didn’t expect more than 5,000 Latin nerds, that is, followers. But by May, it had surpassed Polish and was in a tie with German at more than 100,000.
“The surprise is that nerds are in all walks of life — cab drivers from South Africa, homemakers, journalists,” says Monsignor Daniel Gallagher, one of the six language experts working in the Vatican’s Latin Office.
[…]
Gallagher says his office gets letters — as well as tweets — from all over the world. Many are from Muslims and atheists who don’t necessarily like the Catholic Church but are grateful it’s keeping the ancient language alive.
He acknowledges that Twitter can encourage shallow thinking and knee-jerk reactions, but is convinced Latin’s economy makes it better suited for tweeting than many other languages.
“It tends to express thoughts as briefly, as concisely, as precisely as possible,” Gallagher says.
I was never good enough at Latin to enjoy unpacking those dense words — “The sailors bring flowers to the beautiful girls” was about my speed. I was planning to take more Latin in college, but the conversation went like this:
Me: I want to take Latin.
Course advisor: C’mon, take Greek.
Me: Oh, I dunno, I think I want to take Latin.
Course advisor: Simcha. Greek. C’mon.
Please understand, he had a southern accent and blue eyes, and I was 18. So I took Greek. And now I can say, “Do the gifts of men persuade the gods?”
Anyway, it was a trip to hear Sylvia Poggioli say “ancient language” instead of “dead language.” Gosh, what a weird century.
Or become a 1970′s lawyer, one or the other. Check it out. (language warning)
When I ask my kids an impossible question in a high-pressure situation — say, something like, “You thought it was okay to use a toilet plunger, a real, used toilet plunger, that is used for REAL POOP, for your Dalek costume? What were you thinking? Huh? What made you think that was okay?” — they don’t know what to say. They’re the ones who put themselves in that situation, and yet they know and I know that there is no acceptable answer to the question. But I’m all caught up in the passion of the moment, and I actually stand there, glaring at them, waiting for an answer. More than once, the answer I’ve gotten is ” . . . bep . . . ”
I don’t know what “bep” means. It’s some kind of croaking that comes straight from the soul of a person who’s face to face with the impossible, I guess.
“Bep” is more or less what Miss Utah said in a widely circulated, widely mocked video from the Miss USA Pageant. Someone named Nene Leakes asked her, “A recent report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?” Here’s Miss Utah’s response:
Dopey, right? Of course it is. But my response was pretty much the same as what NPR blogger Linda Holmes says here: that there’s no possible way anyone could give an intelligent or meaningful answer to that question, especially in that setting.
Not to put too fine a point on it, what kind of a simultaneously (1) dumb and (2) impossible to answer question is that? First of all, it’s three questions rolled into one — what does it say that in 40 percent of homes, women are the primary earners, or what does it say that women earn less than men, or what does it say that we allow these two facts to coexist?
Second of all, “What does this say about society?” Really? Not “What kinds of help do families need to make ends meet?” or something with at least some policy meat on the bones, but “What does this say about society?” Asked by NeNe Leakes? While you’re standing next to Giuliana Rancic, whose other job involves making people walk their fingernails down a tiny, hand-sized red carpet? What would have been a good answer to this question that could have been delivered in the time frame she had?
I think about this kind of stuff a lot. I’ve studied it. I’ve had about 20 years longer than Miss Utah USA to think about it. I have no idea what I would have said if someone had asked me such a moronic question on live television.
This isn’t the kind of question that actually tests what you know; it’s basically a test of your ability to generate cow patties on command.
What do they want from this poor woman? They starve her and paint her and wrap her up like a rhinestone mummy, dangle a cash prize in front of her, and then ask her about women’s place in society.
I don’t suppose she stumbled because she was suddenly struck by a paralyzing bolt of irony. I suppose she just got mixed up, and didn’t know what to say. But still.
I don’t have any particular opinion about beauty pageants. They used to seem exploitative and demeaning, but boy, you have to work pretty hard to stand out in that field these days. It almost feels wholesome and reassuring that all these women have to do is trot around in bathing suits and have very white teeth, and nobody expects them to live tweet an orgasm or something.
What does that say about society? Ohhhh, I don’t know. Bep.
Yesterday, as I pulled into that treacherous intersection that always makes drape my forearm across the steering wheel so I can steer better, I said to myself, “I’m not going to accidentally honk the horn today. I’m not going to accidentally honk the horn today.” And then I was all, “AUGHHH, WHY ARE YOU HONKING AT ME, JERK?” Then, to cover my confusion, I wadded up an old Burger King bag and vehemently threw it into the backseat. That’ll show ‘em.
I’m telling you this story because I want you to know what to expect when you read my blog.
I’ve been blogging for about six years now — most recently for the National Catholic Register. I sometimes write for various other respectable publications, like Catholic Digest and Our Sunday Visitor, and I wrote the chapter on motherhood for Style, Sex, and Substance. I speak at conferences and events. And this fall, I’ll have my first book out: an ebook and audiobook called The Sinner’s Guide to NFP.
I write about books and more books, art (good and bad), pro-life issues (good andbad), how to raise decent kids and have a decent marriage in an indecent world, and how to tell the difference between coming closer to God, and just copy-catting people’s holiness style; and how to see stuff that you need to see and do the stuff you need to do. Among other things, I have recently covered the papal conclave, a secular company that’s bucking Obamacare, and, over the years, more posts than you mightthink it’s possible to write about modesty.
And then sometimes I just write about HONK HONNNK!
I think today is one of those days, and all of you guys out there — you know, my new readers, who have no idea who I am and no particular reason to keep on reading my stuff – you’re the people in the cars around me. Just living your lives, following the rules of the road, looking straight ahead so you don’t accidentally make eye contact with the twitchy lady driving the van with all the crooked bumper stickers and the windows that are so smeary, you can’t tell if that’s nine kids inside, or just an enormous amount of car garbage. Carbage.
Well, before the light turns green, let me introduce myself. I’m Simcha Fisher. I’m 38 years old, I’ve been married for fifteen years, and I have both nine kids and a van full of garbage. I’m a homeschooling failure, a drinker, a sorehead, a slob, a pedant, and, depending on who you ask, a prime example of what’s wrong with religious people, what’s wrong with the Church today, or what will continue to be wrong with the Church tomorrow unless we dooooooooooooo something.
The archives from my old blog should be up soon! In the mean time, here is what I look like:
and here is what I feel like:
This lady is not me, however. Repeat: not me.
My sincere thanks to Elizabeth Scalia the Great for inviting me on!
Thanks for all the times you carried me.
Sorry for the non-father’s day-related post. We’re celebrating here by weakly cheering on my husband for holding down an apple. Yep, it’s pukesville U.S.A. It’s just as well we didn’t get him the bourbon he really wanted, because Pepto Bismol makes a lousy mixer. The steak is going back into the freezer, the whiffle bat is going back on the porch, and we’re having strawberry shortcake anyway, because what the hell.
Anyway, I need some quick help from you guys, especially if you’ve been reading my stuff for a while. As I’ve mentioned, I’m putting out an audiobook in the fall. Audible.com will be using one of their professional readers, but they are letting me help choose someone. The editor says:
Casting an audiobook is much like casting a film— use any description you like, to pinpoint the voice you imagine.
E.g.: “Greta Garbo crossed with Tom Hanks and a pinch of mustard!”
Any casting notes you give me will go directly to the Audible Studio’s casting director, who will bake them in to the production of your audiobook.
I am not one of those conservatives who hates the environment. I don’t boycott my parish if the priest happens to mention Earth Day, and I don’t set a heap of tires on fire to make reparations for people who use cloth diapers. I even recycle, and use cloth dish towels, and do the laundry in cold water, and have a compost heap that is there on purpose. I like the environment.
But when I am stuck in traffic with dozens and dozens of other idling cars and trucks, and the police have closed off two lanes while a tow truck maneuvers into position to tow one of these
to the nearest Mobil station because it has run out of gas, then YES, I am going to laugh.
Need you ask? It had a COEXIST bumper sticker. I laughed!
Neato! It’s the isolated vocal track of “Under Pressure” — just the two voices, nothing else.
This song, in its original, familiar form, always gave me hives because it’s like one of those recipes where you combine two fantastic and expensive ingredients, but rather than blending and melding to make something new and great, they just fight with each other. I love Bowie and I love Freddie Mercury, but I never understood why everyone’s so ga ga about this song. This stripped down version is a different take on it, anyway, and if it doesn’t exactly make the song work, it’s fascinating to listen to. Holy cow, what talent. I forgot how powerful Bowie’s voice is, and how otherworldly Freddie Mercury can sound.
This isolated vocal track of “Under Pressure” is more of a curiosity, but I just found out that there is a stripped down version of The Beatles’ album “Let It Be,” and that is something that really needed doing. (I guess they had brought Phil Spector on board to produce it, and then the main reason they made “Abbey Road” (which was made mostly after “Let It Be,” but released first) was so they could leave the world with one final actual Beatles album, since “Let It Be” kinda wasn’t.)
I grew up listening to a lot of “oldies,” and I like the whole Wall of Sound thing a lot, but setting it up behind The Beatles is like covering the Parthenon in chrome. “The Long and Winding Road,” especially, was just screaming to be left alone, and they had to crap it up with six inches of schmaltz — unforgiveable. Here is the painful original:
and the stripped-down version, just vocals, guitar, and piano:
Whew! Much better.
