The sloth day of Christmas.

I tried to get motivated to work; I really did.

I have a job due, but not until next week -- but the sooner it's done, the sooner I'll be ready to take on something else. It's an editing job, and I already know enough to loathe the book and be offended by it in every way. However, I'm not going to be like those crybabies who refuse to work on books by authors with whom they disagree. That's anti-American and a dereliction of duty. 

However, getting motivated to work on such a thing on a day that was technically a federal holiday (since Christmas fell on Sunday) was more than I could handle. 

I also have a book of my own to work on, but I'm trying to work out the structure for a chapter. Chapter two, that is. So you see, I'm not deep into that one either. Easy to let it slide for a day.

Oh, sure, I could blame the six bandages on my fingers from burns and cuts acquired during cooking and the recent cold snap. Makes it hard to write, literally. And I could protest that I was not entirely inert all day Monday. I took Izzy out for a long walk in the morning. I got the dishes all done from Sunday. I got my wife's car tires inflated, because when the temperature drops like a stone, so does the tire pressure, and her car is not shy about complaining. I showered, and was responsible for preparation of meals (leftovers, however).

My most ambitious idea of the day was to load Izzy into the car and take him to a gathering at church. Not in the church itself; this is a group in a meeting room, a meeting I was not expected at, but I thought it would be fun to drop in and say hello at. And it was. Izzy was a perfect gentleman and enjoyed attention and love. However, he got antsy after a little while and wanted to eat someone's Lorna Doones, and I knew it was time to go. He isn't service dog material. Plus, I figured he had to pee, and I didn't want him to desecrate the churchyard.

Um, I should mention that Izzy is a dog, if you're just joining us.

Then it was back to the sofa for a nap, and now I'm writing this for Tuesday.

And now I'm worn out from all this blogging, so back to the sofa! Wake me up in time to post this in the morning. 

😴😴😴😴😴😴

CONFESS!

Okay, it wasn't like that at all. 

I was very relieved to finally get to Confession after two and a half years, staying away from church entirely (but for one funeral Mass) since the outbreak of Chinese Death Virus. 

I got there early on Saturday, as I hoped to have some time to talk with the priest about something weighing on my mind, but by the time he arrived there was a long line behind me. So I stuck to the sin part of the situation and he ignored my hints at the larger issue. That's how it goes in the Reconciliation Room; you're not there to gossip or be psychoanalyzed or complain about your family, you're there to confess your own sins and leave cleaner and stronger, ready to start the fight again. A priest is always willing to discuss things in more depth, but not in the Confessional.

Frankly, though, I've found that even counselors don't want to listen to me. They seize on what they see as the issue and don't listen any further. Well, it's been a long time since I went to one. Maybe I should try to get my head shrunk again.  

Fred's Book Club: Oh So Bad.

Greetings, book lovers, and welcome to the Humpback Writers, our Wednesday (Hump Day) book feature -- this week, the Ash Wednesday book feature. No actual humps have yet been detected, but that doesn't mean our authors are all beauty pageant contestants, let me tell you.

Since it is Ash Wednesday, I considered profiling a book of great theological wisdom, humility, penance, and historical importance, like The Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross. But I decided to go the other way.

Sinner is a sort of book of confession by Lino Rulli, host of The Catholic Guy Show on SiriusXM radio's Catholic Channel. When I say it's a book of confession, I mean like Confessions by St. Augustine, except nothing at all like that. Well, maybe a little. It's just that Lino is nothing at all like that. Maybe he's akin to St. Augustine as he tries to live a Christian life, but like all of us he doesn't quite pass the Augustine bar. In fact, he rarely passes any bars. (Rimshot.) 

From the introduction, Lino discusses his intentions:

Having me write a book about the Catholic faith is like having a really bad actor write a book about the craft of acting. (Speaking of which, why hasn't Pauly Shore written a book about acting yet?)

The only way I could wrap my head around writing this book was if I called it Sinner, because that sums me up.

And I knew I had come up with the right name when not one person disagreed with it. If I called it The Catholic Guy's Path to Sainthood or Holy Lino's Guide to God, there would have been protests in the street and the burning of my image in effigy.

But everyone seemed to agree on one thing: I'm a sinner. 

Lino's youth, as the only child of one and a half devout Catholics, was not particularly ordinary. One day while praying in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel at St. Peter's Basilica on a family trip to Rome, his father (the half-devout one) felt God was telling him to leave his career as a parole officer to become... an organ grinder. Of course, every organ grinder needs a monkey:

My dad sat me down to explain. "Lino, we can't get a monkey. First off, we can barely take care of the two cats in the house. Second, there's no room for a monkey around here. And third, we can't afford it. The insurance is too expensive. He could bite someone, they'd sue us, and we'd be stuck." 

This all sounded like common sense. And I couldn't help but wonder if there were any other father-son conversations taking place on the planet at that moment about why the family couldn't get a monkey.

"OK, Pops," I said, thinking he just needed to get this information off his chest. As I got up to go, he stopped me.

"Since we can't get a real monkey..." There was a pause. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out on my own. Maybe his conscience was getting the better of him.

"I need you to dress up like a monkey and ask for money."

He got up and left the room, but walked back in with one more thought.

"Oh, and don't bite anyone or we'll get sued."

And with that, I became a monkey boy.

Lest you think he's making it up, there is a picture in the book of Monkey Lino, Pops, and the organ.

So we are entertained by stories of his eccentric Midwestern youth, his quest for a Mrs. Lino, and his tortuous career path. But you may be wondering if Lino ever gets around to the Catholicism stuff. And he does, quite a bit. He is a big fan of the Sacrament of Reconciliation, known colloquially as Confession, and he has some advice on the topic:

Welcome to the least reverent guide to confession you'll ever read.

After you've committed to the idea of going to confession, you've got to figure out which lucky priest will hear your sins. If you find a parish that has confession by appointment only, move on to the next parish. A parish of three thousand people that offers confession on Saturday from 4:00 to 4:05 might not be where you want to pour out your soul, either. Find yourself a parish that offers confession frequently. Daily is preferable.

Advent or penance services are a great opportunity, but make sure it actually involves going to confession. Don't be fooled by those "communal penance" services that involve thinking about sins but not saying them out loud. That's not confession, that's reminiscing.  

Around the time this book came out, I was driving to Westchester for work every day. My wife got me a subscription to Sirius, which is how I discovered The Catholic Guy Show. Eventually I had to start going into the city by bus, so I dropped the service, but I still sometimes catch the podcast version of the show, especially if I know I'll be in the car more than usual. It's entertaining. Since Lino wrote Sinner, he did find a wife and moved back to his native Minneapolis (he had been doing the show from Manhattan), so he's got a whole different set of things to complain about now than he used to. 

If you're Catholic, you'll probably find the book funny. Amusing for anyone, really. 

For a Catholic guy who hosts a show called The Catholic Guy Show, Lino Rulli is not much of a booster for the religion. He spends half his time knocking dull Catholic radio hosts, overzealous Catholics, and others who might be considered part of his fan base. 

But Lino's boss and friend Cardinal Dolan has seldom had to swat him for sinful radio, so he must be doing something good -- sinner though he is.

Boredom and dumbdom.

Many commenters, including our commenting pal P.L. Woodstock, have surmised that one reason the recent peaceful protests turned into an orgy of violence and destruction so quickly is that being holed up for months due to Chinese Death Virus caused a crush of animal spirits to be sprung on the cities of America. People have been so frustrated and angry at things beyond their control that something, somewhere had to give. I believe it. I also believe there are bad actors who wanted to use the genuine outpouring of outrage to vicious ends, but let's give frustration its due as a major contributing factor. That and boredom.

I am convinced that boredom is very much underestimated as a motivating force for humans, both human achievement as well as human destruction. It sure doesn't look pretty.

Get a job, kid.

Just on a small, personal scale, boredom can cause all kinds of trouble. Bored with eating healthy (as who wouldn't be)? Obesity and diabetes and such. Bored with your spouse? Infidelity and lawyers and court orders. Bored with the ol' nine-to-five? Embezzlement and arrests and lawyers and ugly orange jumpsuits.

Boredom can be a positive thing, too. Maybe some theoretical scientists would enjoy thinking deep thoughts for laughs, but I suspect that if engineers weren't bored by regular tasks they wouldn't tinker and try to make new and useful inventions. Really, if you have food, clothing, shelter, and a reasonable expectation you won't be killed, why bother with anything? You could lay around in your spare time. But boredom impels us to find something interesting.

An article in a former newspaper called the New York Times made me think a little more about this; it examines the benefits of repeating familiar experience vs. encountering novel experience. And there are benefits to the former, because we do not process everything the first time around. I dislike seeing movies over and over, but if I watch one I haven't seen in a while I always see something I'd missed. That's even more true for day-to-day experience, as no day is exactly like another, as much as it may feel that way when you pull into the company parking lot on Monday morning. Heraclitus's famous quote, that you never step into the same river twice, still applies. Everything in life is in flux. But it doesn't feel that way, especially when you've stepped into that not-same-but-kind-of-same river a hundred times.

Boredom seems like it should be just a non-motivator, a big nothing. And indeed bored people can find it hard to get motivated by almost anything, a situation that smacks of depression. But boredom is not a mere nothing. It feels like a heavy weight, and that's something. It also has a powerful partner in frustration. Where one is the other generally follows.

It may be that boredom is the main impulse for so many of our advances. Maslow's hierarchy of needs tells us Safety First, but something impels us past the point of safety. Those upper tiers of the pyramid must allow for the fact that boredom and other impulses may drive us to sacrifice the lower basic needs.

Why did the human race ever keep moving till it covered the globe? Was it all just because food ran out here or the weather got bad there? Was it turf wars with other tribes, or resentments within our own? Or were we sometimes just sick of looking at one another and wondered what else might be over yonder?

The problem is, the really creative ways of relieving boredom, the ones that lead to advancement, are difficult, and may require talents and skills we don't have, like musical gifts, analytical thinking, navigation, a knack for math or looking at problems different ways. But setting crap on fire, beating someone to a pulp, or breaking windows? That stuff is easy.

Like so many things, it's hard to build straight with the crooked timber of humanity. Our flaws are inextricably tied to our virtues. Sometimes I wish things were better than they were, but a lot of the time I'm surprised things things aren't a lot worse.

Ranking the sins.

We all have heard of the Seven Deadly Sins: PAGGLES, or Pride, Anger, Greed (Avarice), Gluttony, Lust, Envy, and Sloth. Some may call them faults, character defects, or poor behaviors. We know they're bad. But how do they rank?

For the purposes of our poll, we ranked each sin in order by the following criteria: Popularity; Amount of Damage Caused By; and Enjoyment Factor. Each sin got the points for its place in the ranking. The fewer points the sin got, the higher it finished. The sin with the lowest point total is... the winner, I guess.

Here are the results of our polling:

Lust is the surprise winner! Well, maybe not to some of you. Pride follows, with Gluttony edging out Greed for third; Envy and Anger are all knotted up at fourth, which is probably appropriate, and Sloth brings up the rear, which is very appropriate. Here are the judge's comments:

LUST: A perennial favorite, Lust's fun ranking helps put it at the top of the list. It certainly can lead to a lot of damage -- broken marriages, unwanted children, horrible diseases, poverty, prostitution, Lambada -- but that alone is not enough to propel it to the top. Lust is enjoyed by many even when the action it impels is not immediately available -- e.g., Obsession is a perfume, not a pancake mix.

PRIDE: The king of the sins, the sin that tells us that all other sins are our due, Pride always comes in at the top of the heap -- but not this time. Because while Pride is the engine that drives the motor of sin, it is only fun when it's fulfilled, and as the appetite of Pride grows with the eating, it never can be for more than a moment. By plummeting to fifth place on our list of enjoyable sins, Pride drops out of the top spot -- but only by the criteria used for this survey. Don't worry, Pride; you'll be back on top soon.

GLUTTONY: It's hard to say that a culture with an obesity crisis doesn't have a problem with Gluttony, so we won't. Obviously Gluttony is popular; just have a look around Disney World if you don't think so. It's also fun! People may abstain from other sins, but everyone has to eat, and only the most ascetic of us want to eat things that don't taste good. Dietitians and doctors would probably disagree that Gluttony should come in sixth for damage-causing potential, and certainly anyone whose eating has brought on heart disease, diabetes, liver disease, or other potentially deadly problems could think so as well. But being fat never started a war, and it's not contagious, except perhaps psychologically. Don't worry, Gluttony, we still love ya (obviously).

GREED: What do you get the man who has everything? Whatever the next man up on the totem pole has. Greed had multiple tines on its pitchfork -- it is fun to shop (for many people); accumulating wealth offers security; and it is a great source of Pride to have lots of good-quality stuff. So Greed has fun, prudence, and Pride on its side. Plus, it leads to stealing, imperialism, and cheating, and a great friend with Envy. No wonder it is so popular. It's just hard to pin widespread disaster on Greed, unless the one doing in the pinning is a freaking socialist Commie, in which case that sin is coming up next.

ENVY: Envy's awfully popular and popularly awful. The guy on the pedestal wants a bigger pedestal so he can look down on the guys on lower pedestals. Everyone can envy someone. As Benny Hill once said, "Poor men wish they were rich, rich men wish they were handsome, single men wish they were married, and married men wish they were dead." Envy has led to mass slaughter, wars between nations, Communism, and butt implants. If it were any fun at all it would rank higher, but envy feels like pain.

ANGER: You might think Anger should rank higher in popularity because so many people are angry these days, but our judges felt that while anger is often employed, it's very seldom enjoyed. There are those who really do dig getting mad, the ones for whom the fun ranking would be higher, but most of us would just prefer that everybody do what we demand and get out of our freaking way -- then  we would not have to be angry. Anger ranks higher for damage as it can cause any amount of violence, from a toddler smacking her twin sister to a nation going to war.

SLOTH:  I guess Sloth could be a big problem if you let the farm go fallow and die of hunger. Or are too lazy to rush to the country's defense and the barbarians invade and kill everyone. But it still seem like an also-ran in the Deadly Sin field. Thus, it was too lazy to climb out of the cellar for danger. And its popularity is pretty low; proud people are too busy to be slothful. No one is busier than the Devil. But Sloth also refers to mental, spiritual, and emotional laziness, as seen in the kind of person who thinks no one and no cause is worth disturbing his torpor. Add that to the number of people addicted to the sleep alarm, living in their folks' cellar, applying for unneeded government benefits, even refusing to help with the damn dishes, and we see why it roused itself to the fourth spot on our popularity ranking.

I'm pretty proud of this list, and the minutes of research and thought that went into it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna get a snack and take a nap -- that is, if my friggin' neighbor isn't playing with her deluxe chain saw again. Although she is kinda cute....

Bright, sunshiny friggin' day.

Blarg.

Pardon me if I growl and spit.

Growl. Spit.

Thanks.

Sorry, but Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day and it kind of sucked. It sucked for various reasons, some mildly bad, some more bad; none awful, but all sucky. With your patience I shall briefly describe the reasons, in no particular order, in sections I shall label Trash, Blood, Dog, Envy, and Elvis.

TRASH
Yesterday was recycling day, which means bottles and cans and paper -- all things that are reusable and lightweight. Last Wednesday it snowed; no pickup. The two Wednesdays before that it was windy, and my crap blew all over the street and I had to go chase after it. Trash can blew over, cans and stuff everywhere. The week before that, same thing. Yesterday there was no snow, so of course there was wind, because it's winter and everything sucks. But I said Aha! I said. I will use my heavy trash can, the mighty can that I use for trash instead of the lightweight one I use for recycling. Contamination be damned! So later I was working in my office upstairs when I heard the thump outside... of the heavy can blowing over and my crap blowing all over the street. Which I had to chase after.

BLOOD
I had a bad experience over the weekend at a blood drive. I don't want to get into it here, as I filed a complaint and am expecting to hear back, but I thought I was treated pretty roughly for a guy who has been a steady donor for a long time and have previously endured poor treatment with little complaint. I've sat outside in the rain because the Bloodmobile had no room and no one thought to bring an extra tent for the people waiting; I've had phlebotomists so concerned with where they were going to drink after their shift that they lost track of me and my draw stopped after half a pint and they had to throw it out (after I'd been lying there quite some time in pain, and for nothing); I've started a drive and I've given at drives and I've invited friends to give blood with me and I've even subjected readers of this blog to entreaties to give, and I've never gotten any reward more than one coffee cup, one plastic bottle, and a bunch of Oreos. But I will not be treated like cattle. (These examples, by the way, are all about the New York Blood Center; I've also given through the Red Cross too and they've never been anything but nice.)

DOG
Once again, Tralfaz the big dog cannot sleep through the night, and wants to go pee at two or three in the morning. He is four years old; he is too young for Depends and too old for Pampers. The vet thought it was anxiety, and wanted us to dope him up, but we have been reluctant to do so. So one of us, often me, has been taking him out when all the world's asleep. Broken sleep is among the things for which I too have gotten too old. We're trying different things, but nothing has helped and so there's no end in sight.

ENVY
I was working on a book written by a guy who has become a millionaire cranking out volumes in a popular series. I think they're cute, but formulaic, and I've seen the quality plummet and the political correctness rise as his books go on. But what really bugs me is that he is so goddamn rich and popular now that he can put out garbage like this last book, which really was lousy, and he and the publisher know it will sell like crazy. And I imagine it must make other writers of quality fiction, writers who have slaved away in obscurity for years, sink into an impenetrable morass of envy, sin, and loathing. Not that I know anyone like that.

ELVIS
I had one of my all-time favorite sandwiches for lunch Wednesday, the peanut butter and banana sandwich. That would refresh the day! I always think of Elvis when I have one, although he liked his with bacon, too. Lately, though, I find that PBB causes me indigestion. (TMI follows!) Maybe the binding quality of the banana is duking it out with the laxative quality of the peanut butter, a free-for-all in my GI tract. It makes me wonder how Elvis ate the stuff he did. Then I remember that when Elvis was my age, he was dead. So that doesn't make me feel much better. As Lewis Grizzard once noted, Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself. And guess what? When Lew was my age he was dead, too.

While there were genuine reasons for my discontent, or at least proper targets, I know the bulk of my problems remains between my ears, not in my gut or anywhere else. If my character flaws were not running rampant, half these things wouldn't bother me. Sometimes I have a very hard time with gratitude. Sometimes I just can't let go of things.

Sometimes the best thing I can do is look at the nightstand clock and say, well, at least I didn't die or kill anyone today.

Confess!

A couple of weeks ago I whined about how poorly my Lent is going, and while perusing the archives I found I whined about the same thing two years ago. In both cases I note that I had not yet done my Easter duty, going to Confession. Guess what I still haven't done?

I have not been avoiding it, I really have not. Many Catholics I know do. This is how they tend to picture Confession:

And certainly that's the image most non-Catholics have of it.

This has not been my experience as a Catholic. I find Confession, or Reconciliation (its more modern, more friendly, and also accurate name), to be more like a psychologist's office, but with less judgment.

I'm not kidding about that. I've felt a lot more judgment at the gym than in Confession. I even felt more judgment at my old office, that kale-sucking barn of vocal fry and uptalking. People who say they don't make judgments are being untruthful, for everyone does, but Confession specifically focuses on the sin, not the sinner. Unlike at the gym.

My experience of Confession has always been positive, even with -- sometimes especially with -- the more old-fashioned rigorous priests. I don't go skipping out of church, the weight of the world shrugged off, as many of my coreligionists report. That's never happened to me. I suffer from perfectionism, and so I always feel I have been inadequate in holding up my end of the sacrament. But I feel forgiven, and a little more hopeful.

So why haven't I been yet? Scheduling problems -- really. I may try to sneak in during the week, but to arrange that I have to ask the priest. I'm more of a behind-the-screen confessor, enjoying the anonymity, and that's out the window if I have to ask in advance.

Our local parishes only do regular Confession on Saturdays, unfortunately. When I worked in Manhattan it was easy to go, since they had Confession at lunchtime during weekdays. They need more of it down there. They should probably have 24-hour round-the-clock Confession down there.

Worst Catholic ever.

Yes, now that's it Easter, I feel the need to unburden my soul. I am, as far as I know, the worst Catholic in the entire universe.

He's disgusted.

It may be a common feature among Catholics. There is a legend that when asked "What's wrong with the world?" G. K. Chesterton said, "I am." It's unconfirmed, but it sounds like him.

As Catholics, we are taught right from wrong; that ignorance of morals is a mitigating circumstance, but those of us who have received the blessings of the church must shoulder the full responsibility for our actions. So I may have better morals than Heathen Harvey, but his bad behavior may be the result of ignorance, while mine comes from stubbornness, selfishness, pride, greed, all the usual stuff.

Now, there may be plenty of lapsed Catholics who don't think of themselves as Catholic anymore whose behavior is abominable. They can't claim ignorance, but they have removed themselves from the church, so I can't count them among worst Catholics. (From the church's point of view they still are, unless they very specifically and officially renounce their baptism and demand excommunication, and very few do that.)

As for me, I suck. Here are some reasons why I am the worst Catholic ever.

1) I hate social justice. I hated it even before the Social Justice Warriors began using it as a rallying cry to commit despicable acts in the name of goodness. The French Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution began their butchery the same way. There is no question in my mind that in the modern sense you cannot have any kind of "justice" without someone being punished. And yet the church and many Catholics love and embrace the term, as if it were not a well-trodden path to violence and societal collapse. The term may have come from a Jesuit in the 1840's, but is generally used more by people who want to burn and break than help and aid. Their interest is not so much in elevating the lowly as tearing down the high, a purely Communistic instinct. We should not be making common cause with Communists of any shade of red. Given the choice between ruining the rich and saving souls, they'll grab the guillotine every time.

2) I am a bad person. I get furious with God. I keep thinking I am receiving heavenly guidance on matters important to me while I am probably just listening to my own wishful thinking crap, and then I get my heart broken and I blame Him. He made me, but He didn't make me a moron. I do that to myself. And then blame Him.

3) The viper's nest of greed, pride, cowardice, and spite deep in my heart is nothing I have been able to vanquish. I can't get anywhere with it. St. Paul and C. S. Lewis said that becoming Christian naturally brings us to better things, makes new men of us, but try as I might I'm still the same old jerk. I have changed nothing about myself except out of the most dire and selfish need. This is progress?

4) I'm told to love God, which I still can't figure out how to do, and to love my neighbor as myself, and I'm not sure my neighbor would be happy if I did. As you can tell, I'm not always high on Freddy. Lewis knew he could be that way, and pointed out that even when he didn't like himself, he always loved himself, in that he wished he would be better and be happier for it. Maybe. Doesn't feel like the kind of love that moves one to action, though. And love without works is like faith without works.

5) All too often I wake up in the night with my faith in doubt, thinking about death. Oh, well, back to sleep! (Atheist Philip Larkin wrote about this in "Aubade"; his friend Kingsley Amis advised him to get up and do something, or "put the light on and read Dick Francis.") If I had the slightest solidity to my faith I am sure I would not have these nocturnal bouts of horror.

6) That leads to another issue, which is that I have the same amount of emotional control as a toddler. I'm not sure you can be a good adult Catholic and behave like a twit. I would like to be one who carries on with the light of faith burning inside through failure, heartache, sickness, disaster, straight to the door of death, but I'm a whiner and a dope, and I complain for fun.

7) I don't want to wash anyone's feet in Calcutta or anywhere else. There, I said it. I want to write a check once in a while to feel better about myself and not have to think about the poor and suffering and lonely and sick and otherwise miserable, that vast ocean of humanity that is worse off than I am. I don't want to meet them, I don't want them in my house, I don't want them on my lawn. Here's twenty bucks, sad people. Go away.

And that's why I'm the worst Catholic in the world. I can't see into anyone's conscience, so I can only judge me, and on that basis I have to assume I'm the worst.

So, if you're Catholic, deep in your sins, relax; you're at least one ahead of the rest of the world. And if you're poor, sick, and needy: get off my lawn.

Atonement food.

So Yom Kippur started, and although I'm not Jewish, we all could use some atoning.

Those of you familiar with Joyva or who read my post on Rosh Hashanah may be saying, "But Fred! Joyva confections? How is kosher candy supposed to help you atone on a day of fasting?"

Silly boy! These aren't kosher! They're parve! 

But I maintain that Halvah is a form of eating atonement, at least for me. It is a treat made of sesame paste, and I remembered not liking it when I was a kid -- dry as dust and not very flavorful. Well, I thought my tastebuds might have advanced in the intervening years, as they have for many things I didn't like as a child, so I tried it again. 

Dry as dust and not very flavorful. And I had nothing with which to wash it down. Atonement! 

Of course, it was all shot to hell with the chocolate-covered jelle Joys bar:

Mmmm -- forgive me, father, for I have been a glutton!

All Saints' Day (or, Halloween: The Recap).

It was a lousy Halloween. And I don't say that because the kids cleaned us out of candy. I say that because there were hardly any kids and I got stuck with all kinds of candy.

What's the matter with you, kids? Have you no sense of decency? Do you really want to see poor Mr. Key get fatter and lose all his teeth? Do you? Where's the love of community? Where's the support for your local novelist?

It was a bit cold, almost Decembery weather, and then around seven it started to rain. Just a little; just enough. That seemed to put the kibosh on it. Normally we get hit late by teenagers costumed as teenagers wearing hoodies and carrying Mom's spare pillowcases, but even though it was a Friday night, they apparently found better things to do than run around in cold rain and try to hit as many houses as possible before town curfew. Loser teenagers! We saved the better stuff for last, you know!

On this All Saints' Day, surrounded by leftover candy I overbought, haunted by my resentment about being invited to a Halloween party (which I complained about like King Baby the other day), it's pretty clear that the obvious sins of pride, anger, and gluttony are going to keep me from being a saint if nothing else. The lack of any notable good deeds might also have an effect on the decision. No, relics of Fred are never going to cure anyone's blindness, stop anyone's hemorrhage, or get you past the driver's exam. On the other hand, that means people won't be ringing the bell asking for bits of my bones. So there's an upside.

Peter, Paul: Great saints, unpopular Halloween costumes.

Halloween/All Saints' Day does over two days what Christmas does all by itself: provide a popular children's holiday and a day you have to go and be sullen in church. (Relax; when All Saints' Day falls on a Saturday, like this year, or a Monday, the obligation is abrogated.) (Meaning, you don't have to go.) On one hand there's the candy and costumes; on the other there's sitting in an uncomfortable pew, focusing on people who are much better than you would ever want to be. Which is more popular, again? Western culture has taken solemn and important holy days, made them more palatable for children by adding fun traditions and foods, and blown up the children's side to titanic portions while jettisoning the rest.

Once again we are forced to confront our national refusal to grow up---except that you have to have grown up a little for the argument to have any impact. Otherwise you just roll over and have another Snickers.

As for me, I take my responsibility as a churchman seriously, but someone has to eat all this candy, you know. It's not going to eat itself. Other things may, but not candy.