Personal

  • Moved into our house with a lot of help from our friends.
  • Taught the Life of David in Sunday School.

My Thoughts

  • Omnilector: an om­ni­vore of books
  • Sketch: gameshow called, “Hottentot or Huegenot?”
  • Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.
  • The be­lief that every­thing must be spir­i­tual (for ex­am­ple, you should only lis­ten to Christian mu­sic) is util­i­tar­i­an­ism with “utility” re­placed by “spirituality”. Both try to op­ti­mize in a sin­gle as­pect of life to the detri­ment of the oth­ers. But we’re called to live good lives, not op­ti­mal lives.

Writing, Links, Podcasts

Notes

  • Jonathan Pageau
    • Pattern of Genesis is Eden on a moun­tain, clothes, thorns, pride. Repeats at Babel, Jesus walk­ing on wa­ter. Most sto­ries have death-res­ur­rec­tion.
    • Monsters lie at the edge and bor­ders. They are ex­tremes (giants, lep­rechauns) or mix­tures (dog-headed men, chimera, drag­ons (lizards + birds + mam­mals)). Amazons.
    • Gargoyles are out­side the church.
    • Monsters on the bor­der guard against big­ger mon­sters: Cerberus guarded against worse mon­sters in hell. X-Men guard against other mu­tants and cos­mic mon­sters.
    • St. Christopher (Easter Orthodox saint) was a gi­ant or dog-headed man.
    • Carnival cel­e­brated mon­sters, spin­ning, op­po­site day.
    • Purim: Jews dress in cos­tumes, get drunk, spin till they fall down.
    • Rainbows are fluid. They are the break­down of light.
    • Eastern Orthodox bap­tize ba­bies by im­mer­sion be­cause bap­tism is a pic­ture of death.
    • Medieval Byzantine kings had their star charts and knew their place in the cos­mos. Astrology for sooth­say­ing was for­bid­den.
    • Christian his­tory is not lin­ear. Genesis cy­cle re­peats, Jesus ful­fills, con­tin­ues to Revelation when the City caps the moun­tain, ful­fill­ing Eden.
    • Okay with mar­tial arts but would not do yoga.
    • Eve comes from Adam, all mankind comes from Eve. Christ comes from Mary, the Church comes from Christ’s side.
    • Lilith is the mother of the pre­his­toric mon­sters.
  • Jordan Peterson: Nietsche thought it a tragedy that God was dead
  • Doug Wilson: the line be­tween good and evil is ver­ti­cal, cut­ting through sex, class, race. Ideologies like so­cial­ism and CRT make the line hor­i­zon­tal.
  • Anthony Dodgers: We must give our chil­dren a Christianity to grow into, not a Christianity to grow out of.
  • Oscar Wilde was al­ways in­ter­ested in the Catholic church, and the priest at­tend­ing him at his death says he con­verted.
  • The name “Cholmondeley” is pro­nounced “Chumley”.
  • Tolkien said Hobbiton was at the same lat­i­tude as Oxford.
  • The Golden Age mys­tery writ­ers started the Detection Club. They asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to be the first pres­i­dent, but he de­clined due to poor health. Chesterton was the first pres­i­dent. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, Hugh Walpole, Margery Allingham were all mem­bers.

Quotes

  • “Those who say our thoughts are not our own be­cause they re­sem­ble those of the Ancients may as well say our Faces are not our own be­cause they re­sem­ble those of our fa­thers.” — Alexander Pope

Words

  • Brown study: state of deep thought, melan­choly with deep thought, men­tal ab­strac­tion or se­ri­ous reverie
  • Den: cave used for con­ceal­ment, shel­ter, pro­tec­tion; lair of a wild an­i­mal; se­cluded room for study or re­lax­ation
  • Fuligin: a color darker than black (Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer) (from Italian for soot)
  • Ham-handed: clumsy, tact­less, hav­ing large hands
  • Hamfisted: clumsy handed
  • Lector: reader (Latin)
  • Mountebank: one who mounts a pub­lic bench sell­ing fake heal­ing elixirs
  • Paramount: su­pe­rior to all oth­ers; pos­sess­ing the high­est ti­tle, as lord para­mount
  • Quillon: arm of a sword’s cross-hilt
  • Sumpter: pack-horse