Blogging
New blog: Stuff Catholics Like
With an obvious nod to the hilarious and popular blog Stuff White People Like, Jeff Miller, Ian Rutherford, and several others have started the equally hilarious Stuff Catholics Like.
Stuff White People Like is a satirical take on explaining the crazy things that people of European descent do and value. For example, recent entries have looked at the weird circumstances in which white people wear scarves—often not for warmth but for fashion; their propensity for New Balance shoes; rugby; free healthcare; and music piracy. It’s not that these are peculiarly “white” topics, but the entries explain how white folk—i.e. upper middle class Euro-Americans—put them to unusual use or approach them in a funny manner. What makes it funny is how it turns the normal attitude upside, turning the behavior of people in the minority into the norm by which the behavior of the majority is judged.
Anyway, Stuff Catholics Like also takes a satirical and light-hearted look at all things Catholic. Some entries extol the things that Catholics love from a timeless perspective, while others examine those peculiar modern inventions that drive some of us crazy. So for example, there are entries on holy water, babies, and rosaries, as well as non-Catholics wearing Catholic stuff (think the recent sighting of Clinton wearing a “Brazilian Mary bracelet”), clapping in church, and felt banners.
While it is fun—and it is important that those of you without a sense of humor, and you know who you are, should not go to the blog—it is also an opportunity to learn a thing or two. So go there, and enjoy it, and when your non-Catholic relatives, friends, and co-workers ask you “Why do Catholics…?” you’ll have a place to send them to have a laugh and understand.
Papal visit wrapup; how did the blogs affect your experience?
Texts of the Pope’s homilies and addresses as well as video and audio recordings of the various events are available at the USCCB Papal Visit Site.
So this was the first blogger-era papal visit to the US. Was it a different experience for folks, beyond watching the TV coverage? Did you have a different experience of the visit through what you read and saw online?
I’d love to hear people’s reflections.
Why won’t you leave me alone?
What do you call someone who you ignore, but they won’t stop writing about you? Who imagines a rivalry with you when you just want to ignore them? Who once asked people to stalk you on your honeymoon? Who you banned from your site because of their incoherent rantings? Who just sent a seemingly friendly and complimentary note and on the same day trashes you on their blog? Who points out your family holiday photos and makes wisecracks about them?
Crazy? Stalker? Take your pick.
Frankly, I wish they would just go away and forget I exist. Look, I’m not writing all that much anymore. Just leave me be. Sheesh.
The Book Meme, again
I first did this meme back in May 2006, but since it’s come around again, I’ll take another whack since Tony at the “Will You Marry Me? —God” blog tagged me.
Book Meme Rules
- Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
- Open the book to page 123.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the next three sentences.
- Tag five people.
Here are the three sentences:
You may find you have a tendency, while processing your in-basket, to pick something up, not know exactly what you want to do about it, and then let your eyes wander onto another item farther down the stack and get engaged with it. That item may be more attractive to your psyche because you know right away what to do with it—and you don’t feel like thinking about what’s in your hand. This is dangerous territory.
Can you guess the name of the book? The title is below the jump.
New blog: Catholic Media Review
There’s a new blog from some of your favorite Catholic bloggers called Catholic Media Review. Their goal is to offer reviews of movies (and TV shows, if the writers’ strike ever ends) from a distinctly Catholic perspective. In their own words:
Our hope is that there also will be some discussion about what makes a good movie. We’ll be looking not only at which movies might have a positive impact on society (The Passion of the Christ, Amazing Grace, Into Great Silence, Bella) but also highlighting when secular mainstream films have underlying themes that support Christian values in general or those of the Catholic Church in particular. For example, Waitress and Juno have had their pro-life messages touted widely but few people are talking about the Christian themes underlying I Am Legend or Sweeney Todd.
Bookmark it, add it to your RSS feeds, and see what they have to offer.
SciFi “sound” geek quiz
 |
I received 85 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you? |
| Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is | |
Back in the kitchen with Bella
Due to popular demand, we’re blogging again at our food and cooking blog: In the Kitchen with Bella. Over the past couple of days I’ve blogged on making chicken stock as well as a really delicious leftover soup, with the latter being done as a visual recipe.
This time, we’re going to focus on food and cooking experiences rather than solely on recipes, which I hope will allow us to post more frequently. Let’s see how this goes.
Blogger Quiz
RobK at Kyrie Eleison tagged me with this quiz.
- Do you attend the Traditional Latin Mass or the Novus Ordo? We attend the Novus Ordo and in fact, the first time I ever attended the TLM was just a few weeks ago. I don’t have any intention of changing our regular attendance, but have nothing against the TLM and hope it spreads far and wide. However, I also hope that the Ordinary Use of the Latin Rite goes through a new renewal and we see more Latin-language Masses in that usage.
- If you attend the TLM, how far do you drive to get there? As I said, we don’t attend, but the closest one is about an hour away in Newton. Not exactly convenient for parish life.
- If you had to apply a Catholic label to yourself, what would it be? I am completely comfortable being called orthodox, conservative, or traditional, although I wouldn’t quite qualify as Traditionalist since I’m not a TLM’er.
- Are you a comment junkie? Not really. I’ll post occasionally, but if I have something to say I’ll usually write it up as a blog post on my site. I don’t know if that’s better or not.
- Do you go back to read the comments on the blogs you’ve commented on? Usually only if the blog has some type of “new comment posted” notification system, like my blog has. Otherwise I can never remember where I commented.
- Have you ever left an anonymous comment on another blog? Yes. Let’s leave it at that because if I said any more it wouldn’t be anonymous.
- Which blogroll would you most like to be on? That’s tricky. Do I want the link for the Google-rank that it gives or because I like the person? For the latter, it would have to be Instapundit or one of the heavy-hitting conservative bloggers. Otherwise, I’m grateful to anyone who blogrolls me.
- Which blog is the first one you check? That’s a difficult question to answer since I don’t read blogs by loading them in my browser. Instead I use an RSS reader which aggregates all the new posts. But if I didn’t have access to that, I would say, first, Melanie’s blog, since of course my wife is brilliant and witty and posts fun stories about our daughter. A close second would be Catholic World News’ Off The Record, since I think Diogenes is always intelligent, insightful, and funny. And because I had a hand in the creation of the blog, lo these many years ago.
- Have you met any other bloggers in person? Ooh, I hope I don’t forget anyone. Let’s see. I’ve met Fr. Rob Johansen, Genevieve Kineke, Richard Chonak, Karen Hall, Barbara Nicolosi, Patrick Coffin, “Wimsey”, Rod Dreher, Kelly Clark, Jen Stewart, and G. Thomas Fitzpatrick. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone, and please don’t that personally because I’m getting old and senile. Even so, I’m a bit surprised by the length of that list. I didn’t think it would be that long.
- What are you reading? At the moment, I’m finishing up S.M. Stirling’s latest Changeverse novel, “The Sunrise Lands.” I’m also reading “The Lobster Chronicles” by Linda Greenlaw and the audiobook of Stephen Lawhead’s “Hood”. I’m sort of in-between theological/spiritual reading at the moment. I’ll probably pick up one of the Pope’s books next.
- Bonus Question! Has your site been banned by Spirit of Vatican II? No and I find that annoying.
That was fun. If you want to answer the questions too, either in the comments or on your blog, be my guest.
What you need to know about this blog
I’ve been receiving a few inquiries, not all of them as rude as the following (some have been even more rude):
Your blog has gotten incredibly boring lately. What happened to your commentary about things happening in the Church in the United States.
As of tonight, I will not be logging on to you anymore.
But I thought I should clarify for those of you who have not figured it out yet. As of June 18 of this year, my yearlong unemployment ended when I started working for the Archdiocese of Boston.
As an employee of the archdiocese it would be inappropriate for me to blog about any news or controversy having to do with my employer. That would be no different if I worked for a secular company. If I worked for Fidelity Investments, it would be imprudent of me to blog about that company’s appearances in the news.
In addition, it would be inappropriate for me to blog about other dioceses and other bishops for similar reasons.
Look at it from my point of view, or that of my employer: If I were to write something critical of the Bishop of East Iguana, it’s no longer just some blogger doing so, but an employee of the Archbishop of Boston. Those of you who’ve been around the blogs for a while may remember an employee of the USCCB getting himself into hot water by doing just that.
On top of that, I was a journalist who was often vocally opinionated about controversies within the Church, which adds another layer to the delicate situation I’m in.
I still have opinions about the news of the day and I wish I could share them with all of you and have the interesting discussions we used to have. I cannot. This is the kind of sacrifice you have to make when your first responsibility is providing for your family.
I know that most of you understand that and I am most grateful. Hopefully, you find my other musings on life and the world interesting and continue to read them.
Others are not so considerate. To them I offer this admonishment: Treat me with the dignity I am due as a human person and not as a mere object for your news and commentary gratification. If I no longer provide some “utility” to you, don’t act like a spoiled child and throw rude insults at me. Get some perspective and realize that on the other side of the screen is an individual with responsibilities and needs and hopes and dreams. It would be the Christian thing to do.
Thank you all for reading. I plan to continue posting here on my faith, family, sports, books, movies, technology, local news, and whatnot and if any of that interests you, stick around. If not, there are plenty of other Catholic blogs that will give you what you want.
IE hack for Bettnet
I found an Internet Explorer hack that works for my blog’s template. So IE-using folks should see the Twitter feed correctly on the right and the date header above. Of course they don’t look exactly right, especially the date, but that’s because IE (and Microsoft) insists on doing things its own way. As I said before get Firefox and your Internet experience will be much improved.
New(er) look
I’ve been fiddling with the layout for the blog recently. It was feeling very cluttered. Tim Harrison had originally given me a very nice re-design some time ago, but it’s become crufted and munged over time with my tinkering and various accretions. With my new lighter schedule of postings and shift in focus, I thought it was time to simplify.
So, I’ve removed many of the elements that were cluttering up the main page or trimmed them down. Gone are the Google News bar and the member sign-in. The latter is still on the comments page. Membership hasn’t been required for commenting for some time, but if you still have a membership and would like to comment while signed-in, you can do so there.
The Paypal buttons and front-page Google ad are gone too. No need for those right now.
I do know that some things don’t work correctly in Internet Explorer, like the new date bug that’s supposed to be at the upper left corner of the last post of the day. I’m tired of trying to compensate for Microsoft’s browser and since it’s mainly cosmetic, I’m not going to worry. If it bothers you, I’d suggest getting Firefox. It’s a much better browser and inherently more secure anyway.
If you see any serious problems, please let me know in the comments or, failing that, at my email address blog @ bettnet.com. For your reference, this is what the page is supposed to look like.
Update: Okay it doesn’t look exactly like that. Something went wrong with the Twitter feed so it looks a little different. No big deal.
Latin in Maine and the Boston-LA connection
I feel like we’ve driven 500 miles this past weekend. Not quite but not far off either. In fact we drove more than 330 miles, first to Maine and then home, then to Newport, Rhode Island, then to a little town in Connecticut and home again. Poor Isabella started squawking every time I tried to put her back in the car.
Of course, it was all worth it in the end because we visited my mom and my sister at their house in Windham, Maine; attended the Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Missal at the cathedral in Portland; traveled to Newport, Rhode Island to meet up with Karen Hall and drive with her to Connecticut for lunch at the home of the parents of Barbara Nicolosi.
Maine and the Mass of Bl. John XXIII
Let’s start at the top. We headed to Maine on Saturday morning, making good time by avoiding the Friday night rush. first stopped by a farm stand that had some animals out for petting, including a llama that took a liking to Isabella’s hair. Then we took a jaunt by a park and then picked up some lobsters. (Only the second ones I’d had all summer.) On Sunday, my mom wanted to go out for breakfast before Mass, but miscalculated on how long it would take on the holiday weekend and we missed our Mass. Our only other options were the ExtraForm Mass at Immaculate Conception Cathedral at noon or a Spanish Mass at St. Dominic’s at 12:15. Now, mind you Isabella had very little nap the day before, did not get a full night’s sleep that night and now had not had a nap yet.
I was afraid we were on the edge of a full-blown cranky child meltdown. To top it off, I was dressed for a vacation-weekend Mass, not a ExtraForm Mass (i.e. I wasn’t wearing a suit or tie). On the other hand, a Spanish Mass was likely to be a whole lot longer. So we went to my first Mass of the Extraordinary Form of the Missal of Bl. John XXIII.
What did I think?, you’re asking. Um, it was long. And quiet. Yes, I know a low Mass is not necessarily a good first introduction, but my main impression was that I understand the desire for authentic reform. The fact that the prayers were said inaudibly bugged me. Yes, I know I can sort of follow along in a missal (if I’d had one), but only in an approximate “He’s probably saying this prayer now” sense. Certainly, there was plenty of reverence and I was impressed by the precision shown by the altar boys. I didn’t catch the name of the priest who celebrated the Mass, but he was very elderly and when he spoke in English he spoke. Very. Slowly. But when he prayed in Latin hespokeveryrapidly. The homily was a half hour if it was a minute, which is unfortunate because he could have said what he did in 20 minutes if he didn’t. Speak. So. Slowly.
So we went to my first Mass of the Extraordinary Form of the Missal of Bl. John XXIII.
Okay, maybe that’s not fair, since what he did say was pretty good if a bit heavy-handed. Um, Catholics weren’t actually the first people in the New World. I believe that honor goes to the Indians. I think he meant that Catholics were the first Europeans in the New World, not Protestants. And I think Father should have written his homily down beforehand because it was quite clearly stream-of-consciousness and off the cuff, going on until he ran out of things to say.
In the end, I’m glad the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is available and I’m glad that Pope Benedict gave us the motu proprio. But I’m fairly certain that it’s not something I would want on a regular basis, not in that form. Oh and we did not have a child meltdown. Melanie did take her out during part of the homily, changed her diaper in the car, gave her a piece of bagel, and when she brought her back the homily was still going on.
Newport and Connecticut and Karen and Barbara
So today, we got up bright and early to head down to Newport. I’d got wind on Karen’s blog that she was going to be in the area (and Rhode Island counts as “in the area” for people from Boston) and asked if she’d be available for lunch during her visit. Somehow we ended up invited to Barbara’s family’s house for lunch and off we went. We met Karen and Barbara and Barbara’s sister at Karen’s hotel. (They were only 15 minutes late; Sorry, Karen, couldn’t resist.) Unfortunately, I’d missed Karen’s last message which told me to call her to get directions directly to Barbara’s family’s house in Connecticut. But it was a nice country drive anyway.
We had a great time chatting, although between Barbara and Karen (and Barbara’s mom, who’s a real pistol!), I’m not sure I got more than a few dozen words in the whole time. 
Of course, Melanie and I were constantly having to chase Isabella who managed to destroy only one breakable during the visit. (I’m still cringing.)
Nevertheless, I had great fun listening to them talk about Hollywood and the crazy people they meet and the bizarreness that is the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. We also started making plans for a St. Blog’s Parish Retreat (I just made that up right here) and started a list of the people who have to come. Of course, we talked about blogging and other Catholic bloggers; I’m sure more than a few ears were burning out there.
Our visit ended all too soon, but I’m hopeful we can see Karen in October when she’s supposed to swing through Boston itself.
The great thing about this gathering was how quickly we felt right at home. Being an orthodox Catholic is a small enough fraternity sometimes, but being a St. Blog’s blogger is an even smaller one so you feel an instant affinity and comfort when you meet. It was quite amazing, but maybe not so when you consider what amazing people Karen and Barbara are.
I was also quite pleased by a very nice gift Karen gave me of a first draft script of an episode of “Jericho” she wrote last season. She’d remembered me saying that it was one of my favorite new shows of the season and brought it along. She also brought an only slightly embarrassing photo of one of the stars of “Heroes” taken at a New Year’s Party at his house.
Incidentally, Karen has a very interesting perspective on the intramural Church wars and how she can be friends with Catholic folks she thinks are completely off-the-wall theologically. I’m thinking more about what she said and will have to mull it for some time. Food for thought.
Suddenly lots of Catholic bloggers and blog-readers have joined Facebook all at the same time. I don’t know why. It wasn’t coordinated (at least it wasn’t coordinated with me.) I did it because I was talking with some younger co-workers about it and thought it might be a way to re-connect with some old school friends.
I never realized how cool it is to connect with other folks. So join Facebook and “friend” me (or if you’re already on Facebook, “friend” me.) Come on. All the cool kids are doing it.
What you’re missing
I know this blog has been pretty quiet lately, but my tumblelog is pretty active with new stuff pretty much every day.
It’s at Bettnetlog.com.
What’s a tumblelog?
Update: I should have made clear that I’m still be posting here, but only longer, more traditional posts on about the same schedule I’ve been keeping the past month.
So, I’m trying something new. I just haven’t had a lot of time for substantive posting here and I really don’t want to just fill up the space with random stuff I come across every day. Yet, I do find some interesting things here and there: videos, news stories I can’t blog, informative or funny web pages, cool photos, that sort of thing. Or just a random thought here or there that doesn’t merit a blog post of its own.
Thus I’ve decided to start a tumblelog I’m calling Bettumblog. Yeah, I know it’s an awful name; so sue me. If you want an analogy, a tumblelog is to a blog what a scrapbook is to a diary or journal. It’s a place to quickly publish the stuff you run across every day, as the Wikipedia entry I just linked up there says.
And if you use a RSS or feed reader to keep track of blogs and other sites, you can follow my tumblelog via RSS.
If you don’t “get” it, just check it out and follow it for as few days. It might work or it might not. Either way, it’s a fun experiment.
Technorati Tags: tumblelog |
