What can you end a sentience with an awareness of?

I know, lame joke. But I'm writing on sentience at the moment, and if you can't end a sentience with a preposition, what can you end it with?

Enchanted (mostly): 2 hedons

The Fam did see the Dis' Enchanted yesterday, and we liked it.

As Disney fare it's pretty good. The previews make it look like a goofy cartoon spoof. There is actually substance to the story that is probably redemptive.

Of course, this is Disney, so any such redemption is aimed at merchandising, park profits, and the corporate bottom line.

That the film is deliberately ironic about "true love sells" and "fairy tales are better than real life" is still an acknowledgment of true love and the goodness of fairy tales.

Look for Giselle to join the pantheon of Disney princesses on shelves and in parks near you. Nobody could really be that good, but we all want to believe.

Huck Chuck!

I'm inclined to vote for Mike Huckabee just for doing a Chuck Norris Facts ad.


I don't know anything about Mike Huckabee. And I'm almost surely the kind of voting sucker every candidate would take a vote from if it came to running a hilarious ad.

Besides, Chuck Norris trained in Tang Soo Do and taught Bruce Lee the Tang Soo Do kicking techniques that became part of Jeet Kune Do. And I did Tang Soo Do and have seen at least one Bruce Lee movie, so I think Chuck Norris is very trustworthy.


Good thing my grandmother is still around to advise me on matters of substance and be sure I punch the right chad. If you need someone to explain how a breakfast taco should be made I'm your man. Picking a leader of the free world is more of a challenge.

Kulix libation to The Shark for this one.

ODCC take a price plunge

Amazon is selling the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church for $67.76 including shipping. Fr. H would say, "Why have you even waited thing long to buy it?"

Normal price is more like $150 for the 2005 3rd Edition. I'm sorely tempted to get this edition but maybe the cheapness is due to a newer one coming out? Or maybe the price will go even lower?

Eucharist in Genesis 40

In the Joseph novella of Genesis Jesus makes a cameo.

Joseph interprets the dreams of Pharoah's cupbearer and baker. After 3 days the cupbearer is restored to the right hand of his lord. The baker is hanged on a tree.

This is eucharistic symbolism with christological implications. Bread is body and for body, sustenance for this life. Cup is blood and for spirit, sustenance unto life eternal. In Genesis.

I maintain you can read an awful lot of the Bible in such lights. This is perhaps the earliest unmistakable eucharistic instantiation. In fact I'd be thrilled to know if there's an earlier one that I haven't found.

Bovver yourself: Cathering Tate hits Region 1

The Catherine Tate Show is available now on DVD in the USA. Amazon has it. Netflix has it. You should have it if you aren't offended by BritWit.

Ms. Tate is about what you get when you cross Monty Python and Carol Burnett, just with less singing and perhaps more hilarity. Who else has managed to get a sitting Prime Minister into a cameo on their show?

Video also linked here since I can't seem to get YooToob to link in vids and let me edit post settings.

The official BBCWorldWide channel on YouTube has a bunch of her stuff up. And the pirates have had a heyday as well.

Beowulf PrognOscartication

Last night in a fit of TGIF me and and the boys went to see Beowulf Imax 3D. Short opinion: I predict Beowulf wins Best Picture 2007.

Cinematically it reaches within swiping distance of Return of the King. Though smaller in scale the motion capture allows for the kind of camera effects reality does not.

Scriptically Mr. Gaiman's license with the epic is more creative and thoughtful than anticipated. This isn't a bonehead thriller. I doubt his conclusions about Christianity or immortality are very good but they are very pagan and provocative. And it's complicated enough that I can't decide if it's redemptive without a re-watching. Add this as a reason it will win Best Pic.

Hero Quotient does go to 10. If you wonder how a man could fight beasts and demons you might start to believe after watching this film. Much better than 300 in that it is not perverse-fetishistic nor gratuitous. Though, plenty violent in a hero-mashes-monsters-who-mash-thanes kind of way.

And, yes, the film is titillating. In fact you see pretty much everything but Ms. Jolie's titillation (and plenty of other mead hall raunchiness). I don't know how B-wuf escaped the MPAA without an R. I won't endorse the sensuality. Don't take your anybody-unmarried to see it. It does however play to a more profound theme about the seduction of glory and does so effectively. But I reiterate that the sensuality is a deal-breaker for anyone sensitive the the ugliness of lust. Not sure I could have gone to see it had I known.

Magnificent film. Perhaps not redemptive. Beware the seduction.

Containment: Redress

I told myself that I would not respond to people commenting and sending email about my previous post. I failed to listen to myself. Here are 3 responses:

1. There should a blogging rule that anonymous commenting is allowed, but in the cosmic calculus of fairness any anonymous commenter owes the commentee 1 beer. Then everyone would be too happy to care. Or comment.

2. I am about to be lambasted as frivolous and irreverent in addition to orthodox/heretical/megalomaniacal. Please leave an anonymous comment about how I should be (with special reference to my personal failings) staying mindful of #1. You can PayPal me the $beer.

3. My brother, who perhaps has the gift of encouragement, offers the following words of reassurance: Just remember that whatever happens you are MICAH SNELL. You can give people some MEAN CHILLS, and then retreat to your SMALL NICHE, where you can call them some CHILL NAMES and exult in the CHAIN SMELL, and then soothe your soul by giving some LICHEN ALMS.

4. Oh, there were 4: Sarcasm is never suited to the blogosphere and should be avoided.

Containment: Released by Los Angeles

Ordinarily (ordainarily?) I do my best to keep this space away from goings on in my own life. It now appears necessary to suspend that practice. I am the center of a disagreement that has gone public and become blog-worthy in the eyes of some.

I don't wish to overplay what is happening. I think it a minor thing in the grand scheme of current issues. But since it got picked up by a credible Episcopal blogger I offer you the facts and my perspective, hopefully before this gets distorted, exaggerated, and worthy of David Virtue, Fr. Jake, and whoever else out there wants to take a shot at me or the Bishop of Los Angeles.

Since 2004 I have been a Postulant for Holy Orders in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. +Jon Bruno has supported my vocation with personal and financial generosity. I am finishing my last year at Nashotah House where the bishop was pleased to let me attend. In mid-October my Candidacy interviews took place with the LA Commission on Ministry. The CoM did not recommend me for Candidacy or ordination, and the bishop thus did not recommend me for Candidacy to the Standing Committee. By the bishop's written notice I am released from any obligation to the diocese.

Those are the facts.

Before I become anyone's whipping boy or sacrificial lamb I wish to state the following:

• +Jon Bruno is a discerning man who has on multiple occasions given me extremely good advice on spiritual and practical matters. I have great respect for him and his office - an office he has held under significant duress and personal attack from almost every side. I have been given no reason to doubt that his discernment about this matter is more perceptive than my own and that he has made the best decision for all affected.

• There are important facts about this matter that are confidential. Charity and discretion command that private concerns between myself, the bishop, and my rector remain private. THE WHOLE STORY HAS NOT BEEN TOLD. And I will not blab it. Those who have rushed to judge are ignorant of important and private matters.

• The FACT is that I have been released from Los Angeles as unsuited to serve in that diocese. Do not interpret this as condemnation of my vocation or an official diocesan antipathy towards orthodoxy. Many are presuming these are inextricable. Give +Bruno his due and take him at his word. With charity.

• Again, it is my express wish that I not become fodder for speculation or uncharity.

Brad Drell has blogged the contents of my public email about what happened and he has picked up some hot comments. I am also asking that he update his post with the contents here.

And finally I ask that the matter now be let to rest. Instead of wasting electrons on me, maybe you could go tell someone about the atoning work of Jesus Christ through his incarnation, death, and resurrection. An awful lot still don't know about this.

Have I mentioned my explicit personal wish that this matter be treated with charity?

Flappy Paddle Smart!

I know that the world is falling apart climatically, geo-politically, Brangelinically, but all is not lost.

"Why?" you say. "Because," I say, "the Smart car is making sales in the USA, and as if that wasn't nifty enough, you can get a Smart with a Flappy Paddle Gear Box!


If you've watched enough Top Gear (and I have) you know the flappy paddle is a feature on supercars, and that the Top Gear boys don't like them, although apparently the later generations of flappy paddle are much improved (see F60 vid below).


The flappy paddle is crossing over into cars for normal people. The Nissan Rogue has a flappy paddle. Mistubishi makes a consumer-market rally car with a flappy paddle (I can't remember which one) and maybe it's on the Eclipse too?

A Smart Cabriolet with a flappy paddle (and a roaring 1.0L, 71HP, 3-cylinder engine) is begging to be the around-town car of the decade.

The only thing I can imagine better is if Mazda would release the RX with a flappy paddle. Then you could say "flappy paddle" and "wankle rotary engine" in reference to one vehicle, and let's honestly admit the best thing about both features is getting to say their names.

And in case you're wondering what a flappy paddle is like, here is a very scholarly YooTube vid. Paddles shift up and down, computer controls clutch and throttle for adjustment. For the apex of flappy paddling see the Top Gear segment on the Ferrari F60 Enzo.

Check out the Smart at www.smartusa.com.

IT LIVES!!! John Scott and St. Paul's win 5 hedons

Today at la House an honorary D.Mus was conferred on John Scott, the Organist and Director of Music at St. Thomas 5th Ave.




Dr. Scott mentioned in passing conversation that while he was organist at St. Paul's London they undertook the recording of THE ENTIRE COVERDALE PSALTER IN ANGLICAN CHANT.





I haven't heard the recording yet but I hereby grant it a pre-emptive 5 hedons* solely for the nature of the project.



And the recording is available at Amazon no less! I'm in the middle of a project on the psalter so the recording came right out of my book "budget". Hurrah.

Run out and get this in order to support Coverdale, Anglican Chant, St. Paul's, John Scott, and Your Immortal Soul.


*The hedonometer has lapsed as of late. For those who do not recall, I reserve the inalienable right to review animals, minerals, and vegetables and assign a score ranging from -5 to 5. To score a 5 usually means you wrote a poem and your last name is Alighieri.

Crop Circle Research: Tax Deductible!

Apparently you can make a tax-free donation to those who study Crop Circles. Without discriminating against those who think aliens make Crop Circles.

I sort of hope they prove that aliens make Crop Circles, because then we can probably blame aliens for Global Warming also.

Based on exhaustive critical research (Wikipedia) I have concluded that the vast majority of Crop Circles are man-made, but still really cool. Critics who get upset about trespassing and property damage are legally in the right. But the victims tend to make a lot of money offa being Crop Circled since tourists and researchers will pay a lot to investigate the phenomena. So you decide if they should really stop.

But the interesting thing is that a percentage of Crop Circles are not fully explicable according to human means. The nice, alien-friendly, and tax-deductible folks at BLT Research (hold the mayo) have scientific evidence about weird effects on plants and soil that can't adequately be explained. For example, expulsion cavities that occur in the plant stem nodes, which is a scientific way of saying the plants explode at the knuckles. That's awesome, and hard to humanly replicate without MIT-built microwave emitters. See the site for other weird stuff.


So, Crop Circles: I'm skeptical with a shot of agnostic. I'm prepared to believe in the natural explanations. But they don't yet appear complete.

The challenge would presumably be to find or produce Crop Circles without geometric form in fields without tractor lines.

Jump-start your own continued education on the YoobTube here.

Potter VII.5!

Tales of Beedle the Bard gets published! sort of; use the new poll to guess how much the 1 Available Copy will ultimately sell for.