Long Day. I wrote the morning post here, then went grocery shopping. I did some cooking and cleaning up

J worked then came home We put gas in the tank of her Honda CRX, then checked the tire pressures.

We had lunch at First Watch. We had homemade chili for dinner.

Now I am tired. J is asleep or maybe just in bed.

It is hard right now to imagine change around here.

I feel tolerated, appreciated. I am frantic to make J laugh. It is the only way I know I am loved or might be. Guess I will go to bed.

Right now on Turner Classic Movies, one catch watch Where The Boys Are. Who had lead billing in this film was Dolores Hart. She was an up and coming Hollywood engenue of the Sixties,until she left “Tinsel Town” to become a ….. Benedictine nun. Over on YouTube I am watching the liturgy from Svyatagorsk Lavra, (roughly the Holy Mountain) à Russian Orthodox monastery in the Don Bass region of Eastern Ukraine.

Who takes on the religious life today, particularly as a cloistered contemplative? Yet, in nations once part of the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, we see monasteries forming at a surprising rate. YouTube has plenty of videos of Communist mobs at work, destroying the churches, the bells, and icons of Russia about a century ago. Now the churches and monasteries are resurgent, as the people reclaim what was taken from them by those atheistic heralds of “Progress”.

We think our materialistic, hedonistic culture offers greater appeal than the religious life. I use “religious” purposefully over the more appealing term “spiritual” “Religion has its origin in the Latin word for rope, where we get our word “line”. Religion ties us to the spiritual, to God.

The Church seems confused about its mission as a stronghold for the spiritual life. Go into a Catholic Church built post Vatican Two and look for the Tabernacle. Here is where the consecrated Hosts are kept. This is the Body of Christ., present in the species of bread. It may not make much difference to most contemporary Catholics who don’t believe in the Real Presence in the elements of the Eucharist. Search also for the Stations of The Cross, where Catholics retrace the walk of our Lord to Calvary. The Stations are a fundamental spiritual exercise.

What the Church is not is some quaint and quirky combination of “art museum and NGO”, as Michael Voris put it. But it is hard sometimes to recognize it performing its mission of assisting souls in getting to Heaven.

Rejecting the emptiness of Social Justice “wokeness” is counterintuitive in our time. Since the middle of the Nineteenth Century, we have been trying to “fix” the culture. Some things needed, desperately, to be fixed, slavery and other exploitative systems of labour, and racial segregation made for a good start. But what we carry into every new dawn of progress is the same old us. You know, the part of us that wants inexpensive consumer goods at the expense of human worth and dignity. There is a part in nearly all of us that relishes having power over others, and a part that denies our need for honest and loving interpersonal relationships. These are flaws and faults of human character that another law or government agency can’t fix.

Recently the Episcopate has been falling over itself decrying the “sin” of racism, as if the laity pays attention to them these days. Sorry, You Excellencies, you lost your moral authority a couple of decades ago. Covering up rape puts you at a disadvantage to counsel about anything. So the leadership, our pastoral fathers, give us stones when we need and ask for bread.

The Russians and Ukrainians know what the State tried to take from them. We, in this culture of religious “freedom” reject our Churches ourselves, with a little help from the larger atheistic culture and a lot of help from the spiritually dead within the clergy, who have failed at catechesis. Simply listen for the phrase, “I used to be Catholic but….”.You will see what I mean.

I can’t undo my life, a life where I wanted one foot in hedonism and another in spiritual life. Jesus Himself tells us, “No one can serve two masters, for he will either love the one and hate the other.”

Relentlessly our machines steal a little more of our human dignity. The film Metropolis becomes a little more prophetic every day. “Steal” isn’t the correct term. We give the machines our dignity, as we think the machines and our knowledge can assuage our fears over the things that we feel threatened by, environmental degradation, racism, nuclear war, overpopulation, rapacious capitalism, Marxist regimentation I’m not saying to ignore our God-given gift of intelligence or the tools it creates. We all have to make choices with what we have. A little mindfulness goes a long way.

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I was probably asleep for most of that time. I can’t guarantee it though. I woke up to urinate. And I started thinking. Not thinking really, just having thoughts.

She snores. There, it’s out of the bag, that particular cat.

I’m in the other room in the other bed. And I will fall asleep again.

Sexy Scents, Gwyneth Paltrow’s new candle smells like her orgasms: Bang Media

That was a headline in the news feed on my phone.

I have been desperately holding on to my sanity for the last few weeks. Now there is Gwyneth, her candle, and the smell of her orgasms. Do they smell like cinnamon, sandlewood, bubble gum?

I try the best I can.

https://articleshubspot.com/surajit-khanna-stop-child-trafficking/

This blog seems like such a puerile exercise really.

The news would have us think the country is collapsing, while most of the markers of my experience remain the same, if only slightly askew.(My Church runs a lottery to decides who goes to Mass. Kind of reminds me of the Roman legionnaires who cast lots for the robe of Our Lord, as He died in agony on the cross.) Other than that rather odd state of affairs and the Y’s reduced schedule, it’s all pretty much the same.

My street is safe and quiet. The multiracial community where I live is not roiling in tension. The stores and restaurants are open now. Today I walked around my neighbourhood just as I have done for the past ninety days. Not much different than March.

But the media depicts America as ready to explode into fragments, the way some academics talked about the “balkanization” of America a few decades ago. As if some intellectual will get a big bonus and bragging rights at the Faculty Club for predicting this goat screw.

“I told you so, didn’t I? Now I get first dibs on the soft serve!”

So there is this disconnect. Do I call the “Cash For Your House” people, take what ever they offer us, sell the rest of our stuff and high tail it out of America before there is a stampede to the border? Where is it safe? Canada? Ireland? The UK? Austria? Hungary? Russia?

Or do I stick it out? Hunker down. Buy a shotgun, and a pistol, Get freeze dried food, store water, ammunition. A suburban townhouse is a hopeless position to defend, for a 69 year old man, a 65 year old woman, no automatic weapons, or any other military resources. Check off the Steven Seagall fantasy as any sort of a viable solution.

Or do I have faith in my neighbours that this madness shall pass and we can resolve this crisis together? I say we can. This is still a country run by adults.

Nothing seems to matter any more. I am watching The Daily Woo on YouTube. Adam is at Foster’s Freeze in Inglewood, eating a hamburger. This is as good as entertainment gets these days.

That’s all.

I keep thinking of Madame LaFarge and her knitting from A Tale Of Two Cities, making note of her enemies in the stitches, for when the day of vengeance would come.

Yeah. It’s paranoid as all get out, but apropos for our time. Right now each and every one of us who has a presence in the cyber world is being followed. The books we read are duly noted. Somebody at Amazon knows that I’m reading about organized crime, but I’m also interested in the Kennedy assassination. They know what kind of pornography I read and watch, what kind I write. That’s very useful information if ever I need to be coerced into silence.

Think your particular kinks are mainstream, you’re bullet proof? That it’s ok to be whoever you are in this day and age? Think again. They will find something.

Is this a new world? Maybe. We are not moving into a new world of anything, I would counter.

And our “myths”? They were never myths. Just lies. Myths are our profound truths, our literature, our insights into the human condition.The Odyssey goes beyond the story of a soldier trying to get home to Ithaca, or Bloom on a day in Dublin. We can’t distinguish truth from propaganda. The propaganda, buttressed by video, and pictures, still works on our feelings. Nurse Cavell and the Lusitania victims were the first of many.

Trading the Lie of Confederate Heroes for The Lie of The Evil White Race is just more of what people do, like spit, jerk off or wipe their asses. They want power at the expense of others. They want to belittle and oppress. We think revenge is justice. Jesus had something to say about that. Look where that got him.

Make a note of that, however you wish to do it, on line or in yarn.

I have been scrolling through my newsfeed on my Smartphone and blocking everything, from Salon to Breitbart.

Why, you ask? Or maybe you don’t. It is all propaganda, public relations, for one point of view or the other. The promulgators care more about their point of view, than they do the facts or the truth. If a fact fits their message, we see it.

I would liken the crisis in media today to, say, hypothetically in the 1930’s, reading Правда (Pravda, English translation “truth”) the Soviet Communist Newspaper, to get a “balanced” viewpoint after reading Völkische Beobachter, (Peoples’ Observer), the newspaper of the NSDAP(German Nazi Party).

It is particularly bothersome in that some algorithm at Google is responsible for the information that I see. And if I ignore these cyber-demons, I am ignorant or bigoted or narrow minded

It’s all a scam. Your political, religious, philosophical values mean nothing to them. It is a question of manipulation. The most important thing you can do is click so you stay “engaged”, so the media monsters can collect your data and sell it. SELL YOUR DATA.

That’s it.

Here I am, back sooner than I thought. I found a bunch of TV introductions from the 1940’s. Television didn’t quite know what to do with itself back then. Comedies. Westerns. Lots of variety shows. Uncle Miltie (Milton Berle). TV seemed to be interested in selling itself. I think they operated on the premise that somebody would watch whatever it was the network put on.

I’m up because I’m hurting again.( I just saw a commercial featuring frost free refrigerators.) My back is hurting again.

Nothing like pain and sadness to take one’s mind off other sources of pain and sadness. ( Here are the Budweiser Clydesdales!)

Lots of this crap from the Fifties I remember. Time for my decaf coffee. Things I haven’t seen in 63 years I remember, even the sponsors.

“For General Electric, here’s Ronald Reagan.”

Just saw the guests for Perry Como. They were Nat “King” Cole,The McGuire Sisters, and Dick Van Dyke. Dorothy McGuire was the girl friend of gangster Sam Giancana.

Guns, lots of guns, cigarettes, cars,appliances were all part of the experience. The guns were part of the persona of the Western hero. Chuck Connors had a rifle, Steve McQueen , sawed-off Winchester, Nick Adams a sawed-off shotgun, Hugh O’Brien (Wyatt Earp) a .45 calibre Buntline Colt revolver.

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Some of the comedies like Green Acres, Get Smart, The Beverly Hillbillies are as funny today as when they first were broadcast.

Now I’m tired and I can’t see straight.

My head is messed up around women. What else is new ?