Happy Advent eve to all who celebrate. Ad te Domine levavi animam meam.

I don’t know what real editors would say to this, but I’d say that in my experience, problems with sentence cadence, having too many all the same length, for example, is a solid tell for a very amateurish writer. And also, one of the easier things to help a writer with. So, a sign of poor editing.

Happy Grey Cup Sunday to all who celebrate! Allons-y Alouettes!

For those who, like me, are HUGE Lois McMaster Bujold fans, there is a new Penric/ Desdemona novella out. Always a couple of evenings of pure pleasure.

The Louvre heist made me think about heist novels, an honourable and venerable genre, and I really don’t understand why no one has made a series out of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder novels. They made one movie with Redford, and no one has done anything since.

The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he did not exist. The second greatest trick was convincing occultists that there was anything arcane about summoning him. Forget the circles and symbols, just go hang out at Mar a Lago. He’ll drop by your table.

Browsing new restaurant listings, I saw one that advertised “chicken halal bacon and ranch poutine”. That’s my city.

I saw a post that said, with an air of stating the overly obvious, that the antidote to fascism is communism. No, It was one of them. The others were Massive War, Death of the Dictator, and Seeing What Happened To Other Countries. Communism was the antidote in Yugoslavia and East Germany

Another way I know I’ve strayed into the Discover feed: people are describing unpleasant sounding meals with great moral satisfaction. Oh, you put your quinoa in a BOWL, did you? With kale and beets? How nice. I’ll just wipe this chicken gravy off my face with a handful of lasagna so I can read that

You know what would cheer me, in this mire of fascist misery? If the Nobel committee gave the Peace Prize to Biden. Lord alone knows what it could be for, but I’d laugh and laugh and laugh…

Sometimes I think, hey, I started in IT in the mid-nineties, I should have become one of those guys who spouts a bunch of techie sounding nonsense and gets a billion dollars for it. Then I remember my soul.

I just opened my Divine Office app to see that today is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He was murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz, after offering to die in place of a man with a family. A new saint for the times ahead.

Just watched the first hour or so of Everything Everywhere All At Once and it confirmed my previous impression that it was way overhyped. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not all that great a movie, either.

People who enter a discussion of beliefs and say, “religion is nonsense” are a special sort. Sure, whatever. But for the record, religion isn’t nonsense. Religion is the human response to the perception of the sacred and the spiritual. It may be a bit silly. But then, we are.

Speaking as a resident of one of the world’s great pierogi centres (we spell it perogy here, we’re simple people of the plains) I am not at all surprised that pierogi makers have been revealed as heroic defenders of justice and truth. Slava varenyky!

Times are bad but there is one tiny comfort in all the darkness. Now, when you’re lying awake at night, reviewing in your mind how you have been pretty much a total waste of life, you can reflect “at least I never starved an entire population”. Even if I’d had the chance, I don’t think I would have.

As a tech manager I worked with people who were extremely intelligent, but in a certain limited way. I liked them a lot, but they were who they were. In particular, their tendency to a kind of game-oriented reductionist materialism make the current tech CEO ideas about AI very understandable.

I’m a little surprised by the lack of ‘Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine’s father, was a senior Mossad agent’ discussion in the MAGA meltdown over Epstein. I’ve never read the book that started the allegations and I have zero idea whether they have any merit at all, but they’re the sort of thing they like.

For those familiar with Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment, I have a strong suspicion that Trump’s pronouncements are going to become increasingly Nuggan-like until you’re seeing threats of a 500% tariff on scotch terriers and Brazilian wax jobs.

A lie is a word spoken against the fabric of reality. It’s like a metaphysical stitch ripper. When someone lies the way Trump does, there is simply no way to predict the resulting destruction. Last time there was a plague.

Apropos of nothing, people die all the time. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Some mornings I like to tell myself that.

The debate about the semantics around “fascism” was always absurd, because a characteristic of radical right movements is that they are chameleon-like. They can be futuristic and iconoclastic. They can be traditionalist. They can be royalist. They take on the colour of the nationalist spirit.

The Modern Herod I admit no illegally Held fascination With the prospect of imminent Assassination But maybe there could be A curtailment of terms If, like Herod, he suffered A surfeit of worms

Just like I have no idea what Americans mean by “liberal”, I also don’t know what a “democratic socialist” is. Is that what the rest of the English speaking world calls a social democrat? Or does it mean a socialist who belongs to the Democratic Party? Dog alone knows what they mean by socialist.

The current state of American politics seems to be roughly this: they have elected the Antichrist, he has begun the process to bring about Armageddon, and the evangelical church is happy about it because they see the Second Coming on the horizon.

“You have started to look cruel in pictures” is a good line. The current crop of rightwing types both in the US and the UK are often vivid examples of a kind of Dorian Gray Determinism. The interior malice and evil of these people are smeared across their faces like greasepaint.

Net-Approval Of Donald Trump: All: -74% Liberals: -98% NDP: -98% Conservatives: -28% EKOS / June 4, 2025 / n=1529 / MOE 2.5% / IVR

How long will the wicked triumph? They utter speech, and speak insolent things; All the workers of iniquity boast in themselves. They break in pieces Your people, O Lord, And afflict Your heritage. They slay the widow and the stranger, And murder the fatherless.

There are few subjects that I, as an old white guy, am less qualified to discuss than feminism and trans issues. But I can’t help thinking that Rowling et al. have mistaken the essence of feminism in attacking trans people. They reduce the feminine to the biological. Surely feminism is not that?

I just realized yesterday was the Glorious 25th, and I missed it. I did have a drink under my lilac, though, even if I forgot to wear one. How do they rise up GNU Terry

I’ll say this for the tech bros, they have managed to take AI from being a minor curiosity to full-on Horseman of the Apocalypse status in a remarkably short time.

I don’t know about you guys - I’m watching American events at a distance - but it seems to me that the congressional and establishment Dems are woefully unprepared for the “herding of political opponents into black vans” era that appears to be on the horizon.

See, by my metaphysical understanding, it makes perfect sense that their airplanes are flinging themselves off their aircraft carriers. I’m not anthropomorphizing them - I am understanding the deeper nature of chaos.

Crowning of Mary at Mass today (we’re VERY anglo-cat) so we had Salve Regina which is a banger. If there were any parishes which used to sing it in a reverent, solemn manner, I think that all ended with Sister Act.

A terrible head cold, the like of which I haven’t known since the pandemic, is keeping me from the Triduum and Easter this year. I don’t want to kill any old people so I’ll forego the services. I will miss the new fire.

I never understand what Americans mean by “liberal” and I just saw someone using “neoliberal” in a way that seemed to have nothing to do with Reagan, Thatcher, privatization, deregulation, or any of that stuff. In fact it seemed he meant something more akin to third way politics. Most confusing.

Trump knows what most Americans don’t - those penguins were laughing at you. They weren’t buying a single thing from you, and they were just rolling around in fish and laughing. You can laugh all you want (or actually maybe better not) but Trump is fixing those penguins.

This is a good succinct message. I hope it gets widely spread.

The “America is deeply unprofitable” thing is ridiculous, and the whole ‘government as business’ concept is an example of how the right depends on fuzzy thinking among its minions, but even if you accept those ideas, surely any sane business would, in those circumstances, TRY TO RAISE REVENUE!

You ever get stuck somewhere really uncomfortable and unpleasant for a week, like a really tedious conference? But the hotel or conference centre had a brilliant kitchen, and the food was great? If Trump was destroying civilization but the stock market was soaring, it would be kind of like that.

A Byrd Mass for Quinquagesima Sunday this morning. Sitting in silent prayer through the Sanctus it struck me how music like Byrd and plainsong can be extensions of silence, or doors into silence might be a better way of putting it.

Yesterday I learned that the Cowichan Bay Area of Vancouver Island is called the Cowibbean, and that is very sustaining information.

Start using airquotes when referring to “President” Trump. It’s childish, and won’t really help anything, but it’ll piss him off.

A lie is a word spoken against the fabric of reality. It’s like a metaphysical stitch ripper. When someone lies the way Trump does, there is simply no way to predict the resulting destruction. Last time there was a plague.

A hint for the Dems from the early eighties: if the press is whining about you, don’t say geez, what a bunch of babies, give the assholes what they want. They want three things: to be treated like Very Important Writers, to be in on the jokes, and drinks. How hard is that?

It’s difficult, for those who are not Americans, to adequately express our feelings at this time. I recognize that there are literally hundreds of millions of Americans who feel as I do, or much worse. Nevertheless, indulge me for one moment. You stupid, stupid fuckers. Thanks, I feel better.

People are very hard on the Dems for not reacting to Trump’s nightmare cabinet nominations with sufficient public abhorrence, but it occurs to me that the calculation: He’ll just nominate someone worse, maybe someone with a visible demon sitting on their shoulders, so fuck it - may be at play here.

The thought occurred to me today: for the want of a helicopter, the west was lost. It’s glib, and there is a tiny sliver of truth, but no. Even if Carter had won a second term in 1980, Reagan and neoliberalism were waiting in the wings. It was coming.

This morning I saw a post that included a portion of an academic paper that used a passage about British psychopomps to argue about the nature of tribute overlord relationships in Merovingian Europe. I love that idea so much, and now I can’t find it again.

The Christmas movie I haven’t got to watch in several years that I’d love to see again is We’re No Angels, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray. For some reason TCM always puts it on late at night. As if murdering people with a little snake wasn’t the true Christmas spirit.