Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- a Little Doglessmatic Doggerel

Mack Hall

The Catholic Keyboard Commando -- A Little Doglessmatic Doggerel

Dedicated to Certain More-Catholic-Than-You Bloggers

A species of Catholic, brave and true,
Humble, spiritual, intellectual too,
Corrects us heretics – give him a hand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!

His keyboard’s inspired by the Holy Ghost;
Just ask him; he’ll make you no idle boast.
Together they make a righteous band-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!

“Sede vacante” is sometimes his style;
With these two words he makes a barnyard pile.
He’s holier than the Pope, and oh, so grand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!

He hates anyone who is not like him –
“You liberal!” is how he dismisses them,
Because opposition he cannot stand-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!

He is so perfect in his thoughts and prayers,
Burdened with all of Holy Church’s cares,
So God should listen to this holy man-doh:
Petty Pelagian keyboard commando!

This includes a blogging priest (or two):
He drools vile thoughts, attributes them to you.
Caritas, no, he’s busy with his glands-o:
Lecherous Catholic keyboard commando!

But now it’s time for this dog’rel to close
While God’s chosen ‘blogger looks down his nose
In judgment smug from his fairyland-o:
The carping Catholic keyboard commando!

Monday, December 28, 2009

Explosive Ivanas

Mack Hall


Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.

Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.

Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.

If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?

Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.

As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.

The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.

The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.

Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.

Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.

Explosive Ivanas

Mack Hall


Ivana Trump, who is famous for her marriages or something, was required to leave a commercial aircraft at Palm Beach for misbehavior after she waxed wroth at some children who were running and screaming in the aisles. There is no word as to whether the running and screaming children were de-off-un-boarded too.

Anyone who has flown with children will surely sympathize with Ms. Trump; most rug-rats should be stowed below with the other live animals.

Perhaps Ivana and the children should all have been punished by being made to sit together and share a Happy Meal.

If vulgar old women can be shown the way to the bus station, why can’t the terrorists?

Just last week a wealthy Nigerian studying engineering in London tried to explode himself on a flight into Detroit. People who have been to Detroit report that such a desire is common. The terrorist – um, misunderstood youth – boarded at Amsterdam, where airport security is reputedly, like, whoa, dude, this is some good stuff we’re smokin’, huh? He carried on his person explosives which he assembled in the potty and then attempted to touch off on the approach. Some of the other passengers, insensitive brutes who probably watch FOX and have read Sarah Palin’s book, jumped on the unfortunate son-of-a-(rich man) who was but crying out for understanding.

As usual, the perp’s acquaintances report that he was a good fellow, a fine student, and a great basketball player. Well, hey, we all know that terrorists are old grouches who have trouble spelling and don’t like sports.

The poor fellow’s lawsuits against the airline and the other passengers and the makers of his flaming underwear are soon to be announced. The meanies who saved the airliner and over two hundred lives must be punished.

The next day another Nigerian on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit also locked himself in the potty (which most of us do) and refused to come out during the approach, pleading illness. This time the situation appears to have been one of funny-tummy. Perhaps the man had to sit next to some rotten children. Or maybe he was coming to America for the Obamacare.

Security Czar Janet, one of our republic’s many czars (ironic, eh?), hastens to assure us that air travel is safe, which is why airport security are hassling twice the usual number of little old ladies.

Safe airline travel, eh, your Czar-ness? With screaming children, cursing Ivanas, scheming terrorists, and Nigerian businessmen with explosive diarrhea if not explosives, maybe booking space on the Titanic should be an option again.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

An Advent Valentine

Mack Hall

An Advent Valentine

For, of course, happy Valentine Marie Petty

And now comes Valentine, an autumn gift;
Vertumnus and Pomona thus withdraw
In recognition of the seasonal shift,
Saluting, they, this Advent child in awe.

The pagan year recesses to its close;
The Christian year commences with a child
Born as the second candle softly glows
(Saint Nicholas is happily beguiled).

Her family journeys to Bethlehem,
A little family in a Star-lit night,
And Simeon, perhaps, joins in their hymn,
As they present their love to living Light:

Rare gifts for the Christ Child ‘midst sheep and kine,
And not among the least, His Valentine

The Arts of Christmas

Mack Hall

Christmas is pretty. Of all the holidays, both religious and secular, Christmas inspires more and better attempts at literary, visual, and musical art than all the others. Easter, the premiere Christian holy day, ends its somber Lenten anticipation with beautiful music celebrating the Resurrection, but in popular culture is almost ignored. Independence Day is red, white, blue, explosions, and John Philip Sousa, which are okay, but no one spends four weeks in preparation for the Fourth. The religious holidays of All Souls and All Saints have been perverted into the ghastly Halloween, and Thanksgiving barely makes a nod at the Pilgrim fathers before dismembering a turkey and then yelling at a footer match on television.

But with Christmas comes art.

Arnold Friberg, who painted one of the most famous versions of Washington at prayer, wisely said that art which has to be explained is not art at all.

And so it is with Christmas. A Christmas tree needs no explanation, not even to an infant – it simply is, with its colored lights and angels and glass globes and “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. Adults argue whether Christmas trees are pagan in origin (they probably are), and certainly the aforementioned Pilgrim fathers banned Christmas trees (and Christmas itself) as Romish corruptions, but a child in his wisdom delights in trees.

Christmas music, too, never requires National Public Radio gaseous exhalations invoking such Charlie Brown teacher-isms as “fusion,” “inculturation,” and “textual analysis.” Handel’s glorious music is as clear to an atonal simpleton like me as it is to James Levine of the New York Phil. Fr. Franz Gruber’s simple and sublime “Stille Nacht” and Gene Autry’s jolly “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” as a contract piece for Montgomery Ward both have their places in the canon, one to honor the birth of the Savior and the other to honor the cash-register.

Any time a Hallmark Christmas movie is broadcast an angel rips its wings off, but there is a lengthy catalogue of great Christmas films, including Holiday Inn, The Bishop’s Wife, The Shop Around the Corner, Miracle on 34th Street, and Christmas in Connecticut. John Wayne’s Three Godfathers, with its themes of sacrifice and redemption, is laden with Christmas allusions. Every year Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas reads to us the infancy narrative from St. Luke, and he doesn’t need a voice-over narrator to explain it all to us.

And, hey, don’t shoot your eye out.

In the 13th century St. Francis of Assisi set up the first Nativity scene, forever giving serious sculptors and even more serious manufacturers a subject for artistic endeavors of varying quality. Perhaps the best Nativity scenes are the cheap ones the children can play with. Since World War II this Catholic tradition has become popular with other Christian faithful, just in time for public displays to be shut down by some local courts, who understand it very well.

Happily there was no Martha Stewart at Bethlehem to instruct Mary on decorating the Stable just so. If Christmas begins with a stable, as St. Luke and Linus remind us, need it continue in a museum-display living room on the cover of Southern Living? One does not imagine the Blessed Mother apologizing to the shepherds because “the stable is a mess.”

Nativity scenes remain simple, which is a small miracle. In churches one sees other Christian symbols, including statues and crucifixes, which appear to have been beaten out of scrap metal by a disturbed chimpanzee with a sledge hammer. Church committees are often deceived into paying good money for debris when a disciple of Billy Mays saliva-sprays them with polysyllabic adjectives explaining what his purported art means. As with the emperor’s new clothes, few people have the courage to say “I DO know something about art, and this ain’t it, pal.”

But art has left the humble Stable alone, not fitting it out with rocket pods or even running water, and a little child can place the Infant Jesus in His manger between Mary and Joseph, set the camels here – or maybe there? – and the ox and the shepherds where she feels they need to be, not where a decorator with a color chart and the rule of three says they must be. Little children pretty much know how Christmas should be, and their play is the best art of all.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

The National Christmas Wish List

Mack Hall

Tiger Woods – a new set of golf clubs. Or at least a new driver.

American soldiers – the same medical care and legal protection granted to this nation’s enemies.

President and Mrs. Obama – a few extra place settings for those drop-in dinner guests.

A.C.O.R.N. – industrial-strength, high-speed paper shredders.

For all children – no more dinner-table shootings. Holidays aren’t supposed to include casualty lists.

Rhode Island Representative Patrick Kennedy – a King Henry II action figure with a voice chip that says “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

Global Warming true believers – a stocking full of carbon credits. And maybe a brain.

Windows Vista users – an Apple computer.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – Obedience. So let it be written. So let it be done.

Sarah Palin – Levi’s for Levi. Put on your clothes and go home, lad; your fifteen minutes are up.

Some of the prissier Christian bloggers – books on Donatism and Pelagianism.

That special woman in your life – more shirtless vampire dudes.

United States Army Major Nidal Hassan – the customary book and movie deal.

Former President Jimmy Carter – please notice him. Then maybe he’ll go away.

Finally, for the little children: may they find under the Christmas tree roller skates, dolls, toy trucks and cars made of metal, cap pistols (gasp!), toy trains, chessmen, books about Robin Hood and King Arthur and The Bobbsey Twins, marbles, Lincoln Logs, little toy soldiers, Old Maid cards, and coloring books, none of it with electronic chips. And may the children, just for an hour or two, be permitted to play without the weird adult world of who’s mad at whom this year intruding. And even breakfast can wait a while, okay?

Having the Neighbors for Supper

Mack Hall

Near Herxheim, a small town in the Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists have found the fragmented remains of some 500 folks who were apparently eaten by their friends and neighbors 7,000 years ago.

The BBC was too, too pleased to locate Herxheim in southwestern Germany, but a mediaeval border incident involving a kilometer or two could just as easily have placed the little town in eastern France. And you know what they say about French cooking.

Hey, what a name for the local football team, eh? The Herxheim Omnivores. Herxheim Herbivores would be more alliterative but, alas, inaccurate.

One indication of anthropophagia was the preserved remnants of fast-food bags labeled Johann-in-der-Box and containing bits of Johann.

Noshing on one’s fellows is rare in Europe, except for that quiet little man next door who was such a good neighbor and kept his lawn tidy, so scientists from the University of Bordeaux (and a glass of Bordeaux always goes well with a meat dish) speculate that this was a rare event caused by a famine.

The Copenhagen crowd hasn’t opined on the matter of 7,000–year-old carbon footprints near Herxheim but there were certainly carbonized ladyfingers.

In those days a lunch invitation would sure make one nervous.

Hey, about hobo stew?

And dining out could cost an arm and a leg.

A restaurant advertising German cooking would mean it.

A kid playing with a friend might begin to worry if the friend’s mother appeared at the door with a carving knife and called out “Heinrich, stop playing with your food!”

“Clean your plate, son; there are kids starving in China who would love to have your cousin Dieter.”

Fast food would mean a track star from the snack bar.

Cap’n Crunch was seafood to the neoliths.

And kids speak disapprovingly of the school lunch these days.

Country cooking would be Hank Williams en brochette.

Diners might complain to the chef about the guitarist who was too stringy.

Oh, well, that’s enough anthropophagic humor in your morning newspaper. Now go ahead and eat your breakfast – whoever it was.