Grief

This picture so clearly shows sorrow at a loss. Seraphim's painting is sublime, but not beautiful. The rich textures, the deep lines and wrinkles all convey a sense of grief at the loss of a loved one. I believe Seraphim painted this work based on a photo taken at St.Peter's after the passing of Pope John Paul II had been announced. Her sense of loss is all but consuming, except for the gloss on her eyes. In these one can sense a glimmer of hope in the flash of light they emit. My father has had to go into the hospital tonight because of his heart; his doctor thinks he had a mild heart attack. If my father were to die, I would grieve his loss. I am praying he will be fine, so that I do not have to lament and grieve. At least he has been blessed as described in Psalm 128:6. To quote Leithart quoting yet another, "I think my liver is diseased."

Powder, argggh! The man is coming to the mountain...

Just check this shot out, it gives me goosebumps and causes me to make manly grunting sounds:Doesn't that get your mojo running? Not that your mojo is the end, for if it were, then I'd go do this on every Sunday; but this is a manly activity nonetheless. Check out this one:
Serious kicking. In this next image, it is as if the photographer were to have caught me flying down by a cave.
Whoa, I bet you didn't realize a wildman like me could fly? Oh gravity where is thy sting? Soon...soon...not soon enough:P

blowfish

Puffiana Jones at your service.

walk the line: a fine film I will spoil for you...

If you care what I think about a film, then you will be delighted by this post. I have a couple of comments to make about it that are constructive. If they had only asked me...

The first being that the film minimizes the influence of Christ on Cash's development through his turbulent early career. Even though the film's focus is on this period in his life, when Johnny ostensibly led a depraved life, the influence of his relationship to Jesus only materializes when Cash wants to play Folsom Prison; and this scene gives the film its second-best line. When Cash wants to play the prison, the record executives see it as a bad business move which will alienate his main audience, the Christian gospel music lovers. Cash replies if they don't like it, "they aren't Christians then." This leaves one with a very difference sense of Cash's relationship to God than is true. In reality Cash's depravity was more out of a reaction to fame and making himself a god unto himself. To lose sight of this minimizes his loyalty to Christ from 1968 onwards. More of Cash's Christian motivations would've enriched the film with other great lines like that one had they been explored further by the film. The second piece of criticism is about the initimation of a sexual fling between Johnny and June. The truth is that there is no evidence they ever did have a sexual affair; and the movie doesn't show them rolling in the hay per se. But it would leave you with the impression they just had sex if you didn't know the biographies. And while it is true Cash had numerous flings with young idolizing girl fans, the point must be made that Johnny held the true love of his life as something to be kept 'pure' and with all honour.


These two points aside, the film is so fine in portraying this period in Cash's life. I particularly appreciate the manner in which Viv Cash, Johnny's first wife, is characterized. One can sympathize with her desire to divorce Johnny. This is one of the great strengths of the film: there is no attempt to cover up any of this holy man's warts or weaknesses. It has often amused me that God's great sense of irony can be exemplified in this: from the great depths of depravity, come the greatest heights of spiritual union. Examples could be multiplied to illustrate this, not the least of which include St.Mary of Egypt and St.Paul. I figure they see the darkness, and its pointlessness, and thus learn to love the light so much so that their sense of gratitude knows no bounds.

The best line in the film is delivered by Jack, Johnny's 14 year old brother, who was aspiring to know the Bible front to back like my priest Fr.Lawrence does. I could almost hear Fr.Lawrence delivering the line when Jack said to Johnny, "if I want to be a preacher, I need to know it front to back. To help somebody, you need to know which story to tell him." A poignant film indeed. It is the best new film I have seen in 2005.

Bye bye

The fat lady is singing, this blog is no more, it is no longer going to be updated as thomasw-. If you are interested, I will be posting here from now on. You may or may not want to update your links. This is not a blog which will change your life or anything. I post off the cuff, very temporally; nothing here is meant to be of lasting worth.

This new site name, to which I have transferred all my old posts, takes its inspiration from the words of Christ to Saul in Acts 26, who was on his way to Damascus for the purpose of persecuting Christ's own Body, the Church. It is important to note the identity Christ establishes between the Church and Himself in this passage. In verse 14, the risen Lord tells Saul it is hard for him to "kick against the goads." This image of futility is succinct and very clear and somewhat gross. Just think: kicking against a spike to bring it down. Obviously it does only hurt the kicker, not the spike; so kicking against a goad is futile. Kicking against anything one has no control over is like kicking against a goad; i.e., worrying over money, over aspects of your appearance or height, over other people or even about The Man Himself. More to the point is that I, very knowingly, kick against Christ, His Church and His Holy Ones quite frequently. Why? I am stupid, thoughtless, uncaring and forgetful...all true. But that is only part of the truth. Sadly the harder truth is that I don't love God or trust Christ or His Church enough. Let that sink in; and then decide if there is any point in reading or seeing anything I would post. The only thing I have going for me is that prayer of the publican; all my hope is in that simple and very profound prayer.

I hold with an iron fist to the traditions handed down, for the practical man, when all seems grey or unsure, the best course of action in this life lies in clinging to tradition.

///end.of.rant.by.the.dry.spiritual.man

Extreme mathematics and writing...

so i came home from work today and talked to luke, my son, about his maths lesson today in Gr.5. it turns out he obtained 93% on his latest mathematics geometry test. so just to challenge him, his teacher gave him a little bit of integration to learn. i do think it is great to push a kid intellectually, but this seems rather extreme. next, they will be discovering logarithms by exploring the spirals on shells:


on a side note, i have thoroughly enjoyed The White Stripes' album "Get Behind Me Satan" over the last few months. the whole album rocks my socks, but in particular i dig the tracks 'passive manipulation' and 'my doorbell'. Congratulations to the luke meister for kicking geometric butt:P (that's euclidean butt, of course).

let the led out!

people have been posting a lot about music. since so much of the music i have been reading about is not suitable for manly men, i have decided to let the led out all the way. the only thing in popular music that touches led zeppelin is johnny, and the man in black is in a class unto himself. I posted about him before, of course; as there is no good reason to deny letting your ears hear about him. the violent femmes and pink floyd play some very harsh tunes, but led zeppelin teaches manly lessons about grace and woe to the manly man. i still remember the first time i heard led zeppelin, it was some willie dixon cover not on the first album--i didn't know men could express sorrow about loss like that; even when i was ten i listened to the second side of the first vinyl record of physical graffiti containing trampled underfoot, houses of the holy, and kashmir: and i memorized all the lyrics and sang them to myself, playing air guitar and probably sounding just awful. but the music was gracious and lifted my imagination. i remember that time as one where i became more thoughtful, which isn't a bad thing for music to encourage. there is a box set of led zeppelin I-V albums out and it looks so fine. let the led out, indeed!

leithart and john paul II

peter leithart is a fine writer. I would characterize his style as terse and aphoristic. insightful would be the way to characterize his written content. in his book 'against christianity', rarely does he elaborate on his views with copious references and counter-referenced footnotes. though insightful and thought-provoking his ideas remain. take as an example this out-take from 'against the sacraments':

Romans normally excluded children from the dinner table until the age of fifteen or sixteen, at which age boys received the /toga virilis/ that marked their entrance to manhood. Family dinner as we know it was a Christian invention, not some "natural" form of family life. The family dinner is a reflection of the eucharistic meal, the meal that welcomed all members of Christ to the table.
Opposition to communion of children is pagan and seeks to reverse the revolutionary table fellowship established by the Church. It is an attempt to return to Egypt.

jenny used this a month or three ago to give her readers a feel for his brilliance. it is hard to know that leithart is outside the church. especially when he holds such pure and unstained views on the church and the sacraments. leithart is must read material: i think even victoria might like reading his sparse and succinct style despite it being non-fiction.

i put seraphim's pope john paul II up because i loved the man and most of what he stood for; he never wavered. indeed, this is incredibly rare to find in our present day rulers. once i took this test and found myself almost identical to john paul II.

Extremely holy

My friend Seraphim painted this for my wife and I. This image of the Mother of Christ has held me in a charmed state since I first stumbled upon it in my second year at UBC. I was just a punk back then, but it seemed so, so...well, I couldn't find the word to describe it at my tender, foolish age. Now I would just call it holy; in the sense of being set apart for God.

Some of us just don't comprehend holiness; and I think it has to do with vile idols; i.e, in the sense of turning vile by desiring that which is but a vile idol. I understand a sliver of that which is holy, but I do not escape the battle against a few vile idols in my life.

With Dylan Thomas, I say, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light..."; and smash that which is vile.

///end of rant:it felt grand to get the word 'smash' in there:P

puffy

This is a very groovy and apropos image for OpenBSD: secure, hard to attack; and extremely functional. And those lips....whoa, the smooooch-ability factor is high.

Just returned home from seeing the latest Harry Potter flick; I enjoyed the battle with the dragon for the golden egg, but I felt the ending was rather anti-climatic. My kids thought it was spectacular.

I had really wanted to see the new cash flick, but ramone has to work early so we couldn't go:/

Lights are going out, I will rest my weary mind.

long day

i worked from 7:15am to 9:15pm yesterday. and considering i taught for half a day, and then did parent-teacher conferences for the remainder of the time, it was an extremely tiring and mentally draining day for a briggs-myers INTJ. Way too many people, way too many names and faces: interaction overload. fizzle, crack, boom: thrrrppppt! yes, i am glad it is friday, though i am a bit sad that my wife must work all-day saturday and that means we can't get together with the krut-o-nator and his cash-loving woe-man.

looking forward to christmas: i will be putting up the first decorations this weekend. luke and i will hang the lights today. i love coming home from work to see the lights shining and glowing as christmas approaches.

my snowboard cometh

i am told that my custom x board is a sweet ride for a manly man; soon it will come. all i know is that it is black, white and red and that it goes vrooom. can you dig this shred? it is a glimpse of what will come when my custom x cometh and i goeth to ride baker.

looking forward to installing OpenBSD this weekend; my friend vic will be assisting me because she digs the blowfish. and how can she not? indeed, how.

church temple

our parish needs a new temple and i think this one by spanish architect, gaudi, has loads of potential for glorifying our lord. no one seems to be commenting on my recent posts, and so i think i will stop writing about openbsd and other stuff i think about. it is too bad that unix bores people.

thinking about the guidelines for determining a theme in a piece of literature. also i am dreaming about snowboarding this winter; hemlock and baker will be where we go most often.

a christmas poem in german; hellos from thomas and ramon0s

i hope it plays well. i tried to sound very macho; ramone said i was merely a goof-ball. however that may be, at least i know north from south and west from east:P

mittens and socializing

i am on the grad social committee for the current gr.11 kids at my school. what this means, i do not quite know. but for certain i will be able to put all my superb socializing skills to work....Oh yeah, baby, let me loose at those parties where i can just work the room, chatting up a storm about meaningless drivel with people i hardly know: i dig that, being the elite, manly socializer that i am. ah the sarcasm. the truth is the reverse; usually i find other people to be tedious and draining. i have a struggle remembering and even pronouncing other people's names, especially if the name is ethnic or unusual or just weird. to me socializing is like trying to sing; i know i am so limited in my skills, and there is a point at which the challenge and comfort level goes way, way above my head: and i freeze and need to step away and hide. getting away from the social scene is for the most part what i am thinking about. i have no idea why the students would want me to be the sponsor; the only part i look forward to is the idea of going skiing or snowboarding for a day with just the grads. this reminds me that i need some good mittens for snowboarding this winter. mittens are macho and manly; don't be deceived.

looking forward to seeing dave's new castle. hanging out with krut and vic is one of the tender mercies for me in this life. i wonder what the homily will be like this sunday, it is always difficult for me when fr.lawrence isn't delivering the homily. but this is probably a good spiritual exercise for me....i write 'probably' because i am not sure what i am supposed to gain out of not having fr.lawrence deliver the goods.

ksh

The korn shell is the sine qua non of unix shells. All one needs to do is set -o emacs in your .profile and you are in business. Along with ksh, the other main modular programs I use regularly include irssi, lftp, ssh, lynx, unrar, cdio, mplayer and mp3blaster. More and more I am seeing the efficiency of running programs from within my korn shell -ksh- even on OS X with Aqua, the most beautiful GUI in any OS I am aware of. Of course on OpenBSD, I run all programs from the commandline within ksh.

One of the thrills in using the commandline is building programs from source. On OS X the easiest way to learn is by using fink or darwinports.

For anyone interested, I am very keen to start shredding turns on my snowboard this season. I think on Saturday we will attend the snowboard buy/sell at the TradeX in Abbotsford; there are a number of items we still require.

hyssop

Psalm 51:7 reads "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." When I read that Psalm in my childhood my mind wondered how God could use a weed like hyssop to clean someone of such a terrible sin as David was repenting of. As I grew older I thought starting a soap company called 'Hyssop Soap' would be a rather cool venture for a business. Verse 6 explains poetically where the real cleaning would take place; "...in the inward being; ...in my secret heart." Hence the soap would be quite useless at cleaning up sin. But it was a nifty idea nevertheless, at least for a little chap.

Even now I wish there was cleansing soap for sin; I'd use it instead of my daily dose of Pears!

theology in fairy stories: indeed!

I have long been of the suspicion that the best theology is lived out; and that this is best documented in the fairy stories many of us have grown up with. The Narnia series, the Tolkein Trilogy, the Wind in the Willows and the Brothers Grimm all exemplify some of the best Orthodox theology. This was recently confirmed for me in a homily my priest gave. Furthermore, Fr. Thomas Hopko told me much the same when I was casting flies with him. With two such giants as back up, what more need I add? The answer being an unequivocal 'nothing'.

Yet, which stories best relay the relations between man and God best for you?

ibooks > ibm clones

i am going to buy my wife a laptop for church record-keeping. the lame thing is it won't be an ibook, but some sort of ibm clone with bill gate's software pre-installed. i really dislike windows as an OS. the ibm clones are nowhere as tough or aesthetically pleasing as the apple laptops; and to top it off, the OS is ultra-insecure compared to os x or any bsd. but fortunately a buddy of mine, dave, is spotting me an old pc which i can use as a firewall: i will put OpenBSD on that puppy and let puffy the blowfish keep my wireless network somewhat secure. still i really dislike wasting money on llama semi-adequate pc hardware. if it were a real ibm x40, then i'd be singing another song. enough of this rant...off to costco tomorrow evening.

i am getting very excited about snowboarding this winter! there is a snowboard-equipment buy/sell at the tradex centre in abbotsford this coming weekend; we will attend it.

for christmas i hope my wife gets me that nikon d100 digital slr i have been desiring for the last five years or so. or, an ipod nano; that would be groovy. or some really good wool socks from aj brooks. {i think i will end up with the socks...}


on the other hand, i don't really want anything other than some time with my friends and family: and not having to work the next day! i do enjoy the time off during christmas immensely. my bio-rhythmns are so tuned to the academic calendar; each month has a certain feel and is understood in relation to the next reporting period or break.

check out the smooooch...not so bad?

Not bad at all, indeed!

That was a smashing smoooch; one of the finest I have ever delivered or ever seen.

I would rate this smoooch quite highly, perhaps an eight out of ten....or more, especially when you consider it was delivered in public. As a rule I find public displays of romance rather tacky and worthy of all disdain. But this was an innocent smoooch at my wedding.

Yes, it was a fine and dandy smoooch.

Orr

There has never been a better defenseman. I still remember this moment in 1970 when Bobby Orr scored the winning goal in the last game of the Stanley Cup that year. Furthermore, I recall getting Orr's hockey card at the Dairy Dale Grocery on Dunbar between 27th and 26th Avenue with my first ever 'allowance' of 10 cents. Man, that was a manly joy for a little guy. I rode my tippy two wheeler home to show it off to my father and my friend Roger. I foolishly traded it to Roger for a Bjore Salming card, a Toronto Maple Leaf defenseman wearing number 5. I know now that was a very bad move, but weird things happen to 5 year olds when left to trade hockey cards with their eight year old next door neighbours. I did eventually obtain a 1965 Orr rookie card; today I wish I still had all my old hockey cards. But I don't miss the stale, hard gum that came in the packs.

Glad the canuckleheads won tonight; I predict Cloutier will lose his job, or at the very least, that Auld will be playing more and more of the games. Auld reminds me of Dryden. But Orr is the manliest defenseman ever: accept no substitute in this.

I have to deal with a lame matter on Friday after work and all day next Wednesday; I have to trust in Christ in this matter and hope to be strong and honorable.

my nuts...

i love cashews. they are the nut of nuts.

i enjoy yogurt, just plain yogurt, and cashews.

i love my nuts.

almonds aren't bad, but i prefer using them to make into a spreadable butter.

the gomery report is such a joke.

our tom-dick-and-harry-o-cracy is so lacking in nobility..... it will be better when the man who is the king starts to manage things more directly.

i dig this picture of johnny .......it reminds me so much of the way i'd like to be but won't be because of the man who will come.