is a blog by Brendan
Dear gentle reader: this blog has been operating continuously since I was a teenager. The writing below is at least a decade old. In that time every molecule of my body has been replaced, along with many foolish ideas and flighty beliefs. I want to keep some of those things public out of an honesty and humility I owe the world. I trust you to carry that context with you.
Right, Lent. I’m giving up french fries. Starting tomorrow because I didn’t know I was doing it when I got lunch.
Interesting theory over at Achewood: is telemarketing really just the phone calls of the damned?
Sumana sent me pretty cool article.
“Louisville Christians are demonstrating that the Church is indeed one. Predominately black Forest Baptist Church has joined predominately white Highland Baptist Church in commemorating those killed by violence in the Louisville area during the past year. Church members drive white crosses into the ground outside their churches equal to the number killed during the past twelve months….”
Times like this, I like to remember my city’s motto.
Louisville: Hey, we’re not Cincinnati.
On Saturday, Father Joseph Pilger was found beaten to death in his home in Lexington. That the article mentions his criminal history is a pretty clear indication that the AP has already decided on the motive; it barely mentions the fact that oh yes, he’d been living with an unnamed younger man for a month, and also his car is missing.
Father Pilger wasn’t someone I knew, but he could very well have been. It’s frightening. Lexington’s not a great town, but it’s not a hot spot for priest-murder, either.
Two hours of sleep last night, as I stupidly stayed up until three before I even realized that I still had to do my homework. I say “stupidly” because I wasn’t even staying up for any specific purpose–I just hung out with Michelle and Jessica and David, beatboxing and rhapsodizing about the Neptunes. That’s college, I guess, but then I thought I was supposed to get good at time management someday. Ha ha ha!
That wasn’t exactly the best night to skimp on sleep, either, as today was a big day: not only our biggest crowd at Chalk Circle, but my first ever show as the drummer for Grandma’s Genius! And it rocked! We’d practiced together on exactly one song, which we didn’t end up playing, and the PA was crap, which made for a frustrating beginning. As it turns out, though, once we got started we had a pretty flawless forty minutes. We’re good at this!
Then, just as we finished our last song (BNL, “Brian Wilson,” where I get to go crazy thundergod at the end), the first drops of rain started to fall… all over the band that had earlier refused to swap us time slots.
That’s right. God loves Grandma’s Genius more.
(Also, found while searching for Neptunes sites: Conch is their specialty!)
The heat appears to operate entirely independent of my control, turning itself on sometime around 10 am and turning itself off around 10 pm. The knobs on some of the radiators don’t turn at all,and the ones that do turn have no effect. I wasn’t under the impression that this was how radiators worked! Evening is interesting, at least, as I have to open windows around 6 and turn the space heater on again by 11.
Things that have distracted me lately:
Update 0757 hrs: In response to any questions you may have about the show, the answer is “yes.” Whoo.
Three entries in three days is almost unprecedented. Maybe I’m trying to make up for the fact that I’m heading home for the weekend–again–and when I get back I’ll commence trying hastily to ink this week’s toon. Ah, the jet-setting life of an unpaid cartoonist! Ha ha! See you Sunday.
Update 1353 hrs: But before I go, I feel I should mention that my roommate has purchased his very first professional team from Yahoo! Shopping. I mean, with prices like these, who can refuse?
Less than a week until Anne makes her presence known on the Centre campus. It’s an event we’ve been looking forward to all year. Ken stuck a little portrait of Ms. Murray on our markerboard in August, and it’s been saying horrible and profane things daily ever since; now that the countdown has begun, she’s taken on positively demonic aspects. It’s only a matter of time until we see her in concert, and I fully expect some kind of pyrotechnic battle between good and evil when the curtain opens. Ph34r!
Heading home for the weekend. This has disadvantages, such as the fact that I won’t be able to hang out or play videogames; it also has advantages, in that I will miss at least a day and a half of Rush Week. Ah, those crazy fraternity boys!
Reconciliation service tonight–aka drive-through confession.
Until I was about eight, I lived in a very Catholic community–I went to the same Catholic elementary school as most of my friends, lived down the street from the church, CCD, prayer at dinner and bedtime, the works. After we moved to Richmond, and especially when I started going to Model in seventh grade, that world got bumped around a little. I started realizing that not only were most people not Catholic, but that a few of them believed some pretty absurd things about what I’d grown up with.
So I’ve been explaining (or trying to explain) stuff like reconciliation and communion for what seems like a long time. I think I let my own self-deprecation bleed into it too much, actually, so it’s kind of a surprise how good I feel after something like this. It wasn’t a real confession, talking straight to the priest (no, you don’t have to have a screen) and getting stuff out in the air… but it was something.
Before we got started, everybody in church (sixtysomething sinners and a couple of priests) got together in the middle of the pews, held hands and said the Our Father. There was something about the sound and the timbre of all those people saying the same thing, so close together–I could feel it humming, reverberating in my lungs. It was palpable. I forget sometimes how much simple human power and trust there is in ritual.
Explanations aside, I don’t talk about my beliefs much. But the fact is that I take a very deep and quiet joy in being Catholic.
