My Italian class is hilarious. I took 4 years of Italian in high school where I participated in 3 Italian district competitions. Now, in my senior year of college, I need to fulfill my langauge requirement. And, instead of broadening my horizons and learning another language, I’ve decided to take a trip down memory lane and visit BEGINNERS ITALIAN!!! Needless to say, it is easy ridiculously easy!!!!
Va bene!
So, my roommate Dennis convinced me to shave my head, which isn’t exactly the most remarkable thing in the world considering I’ve taken more bic to the head than…well, we’ll leave it at that.
The rub is that I flippantly said that I would shave it into a mohawk…and Dennis latched onto it! So here it is…Kujo’s new do:
I'm mean muggin' like a mofo!
So the weekend started out with the events that transpired in the previous posting. I was on that train for nearly 9 hours, so naturally I was bored to tears. Thankfully, I had brought my laptop with me, so I watched some Scrubs. But, as the hours wore on, I began to become more and more bored. And once it became apparent that I was going to be stuck on this train until the chocolate milk I had curddled, I thought it would be fun to make a music video, only that was interrupted by one of the train attendants announcing that we were stuck there “for an indetermined amount of time.” I thought that I had stopped recording myself, but I did not, instead capturing about 10 minutes worth of footage of me joking with my mom and my fellow passengers. I showed it to my mom and she thought it was “the funniest thing she’d ever seen,” so I figured I’d throw it on here:
Me. Train. 5+ hours.
So, I’m taking a train down to Coral Springs for the weekend. I left at 1:10 p.m. and was supposed to arrive at 5:30; however, somewhere between West Palm Beach and Deerfield Beach, there was an accident with the Tri-Rail which has resulted in me being stuck on the train for an extra hour with no end in sight. It is currently 6:25 p.m. EST…and I want to blow my brains out.
***UPDATE***
I finally arrived to my train station at 9:45 p.m. EST, a mere 8 hours after I departed Orlando, which is 3 hours away from my home in Coral Springs. I will post a blog about my weekend, including the shenanigans I got into on the train as well as my reunion with my LIFE TEEN friends (and my high school girlfriend) when I return to Orlando. SEE YA!
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Is it just me, or does this video make you want to cry shards of glass that have been soaked in Tabasco?
What’s worse?
The plan actually MAKES SENSE!?!??!?!?! AHHHH!!!!!!
My boy Socrates made a good point on Phatmass earlier today. They were discussing whether to use the term “pro-choice” or “pro-abortion” :
What if some sicko were to propose that rape be legalized and universally protected by law?
“How can you possibly be pro-rape?” you exclaim in horror.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” the man answers, “I’m not pro-rape. Personally, I’m against rape. I think it’s a terrible thing to do to a woman, and I’d certainly never rape a woman myself. However, whether to rape a woman is a man’s choice to make, not the government’s. A man has a right to choose what to do with his own body, and that decision is not the government’s to make. I’m not pro-rape. I’m pro-choice.”Would you humor this guy by agreeing to refer to his position on rape as “pro-choice,” or would you call it out for the offensive nonsense that it is?
(You can also substitute murder, theft, or any other serious crime here and get the same idea.)Abortion is an even more serious evil than rape, so what is it that makes the term “pro-choice” acceptable in the case of abortion?
So I was looking through some old pictures and I came across what is, by far, my favorite picture I have ever taken. It’s the tabernacle at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the University of Notre Dame. I took it while on a LIFE TEEN leadership retreat on the campus in 2004.
This is where I'd live if I were Jesus...
It’s a well-known fact that my sense of humor is…enigmatic. Perhaps a better word would be “eclectic.” Yes, we’ll go with “eclectic.”
My sense of humor is eclectic. I find a whole host of things funny–irony, fart-jokes, anatomy, puns, “that’s what she said” stuff, irreverance, anger, women, etc. If you looked at my movie collection (which is quite ample and organized by genre), you’d see a pallette of paradox: movies like American Pie and Superbad sitting next to classics like National Lampoon’s Christmas and Dr. Strangelove, Anchorman and Billy Madison going hand-in-hand with Finding Nemo and Monty Python. But perhaps one of my greatest acquistions, and a movie I enjoy more and more each time I watch it, is Dogma, a Kevin Smith movie satiricizing religion as a whole, and Catholicism specifically. Now I, unlike a sad bunch of my Catholic brothers and sisters, am strong enough in my beliefs and convictions to laugh at some of our odder idiosyncracies. And Dogma catches them dead-on and goes with it.
It tells the story of a woman who must stop 2 fallen angels (played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) from entering a Church in South Jersey, for the archways of this Church have been granted special status as a plenary indulgence. This is where I would like to pause so as to clarify a few things that Kevin Smith misconstrues. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines an indulgence as “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints” (CCC 1472) So, the first thing to note is that forgiveness of a sin is separate from punishment for the sin. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we obtain forgiveness, but we aren’t let off the hook as far as punishment goes. When we go to confession, the priest gives you penance, which is usually a bunch of prayers or good deeds you must do in order to atone for the sins you’ve committed. Still, the effects of our sin may still be present, in the form of dispositions towards committing the same sins again. Thus, the Catholic Church teaches that often times, when a person dies, he or she must endure a period of cleansing whereby our soul is washed clean as it prepares to enter Heaven. This purifying process is known as “purgatory” and is the place where the consequences our sin have on our souls are dealt with. Indulgences are kind of like extra credit, things we do in order to work towards cleansing our souls while on earth so as to minimize what God must do when we die. In other words, it’s like working towards getting “time off of purgatory.
Indulgences come in two forms: a partial indulgence and a plenary indulgence. To gain a plenary indulgence, a person must exclude all attachment to sin of any kind, even venial sin, must perform the work or say the prayer for which the indulgence is granted, and must also fulfil the three conditions of sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and praying for the intentions of the Pope. The minimum condition for gaining a partial indulgence is to be contrite in heart: on this condition, a Catholic who performs the work or recites the prayer in question is granted, through the Church, remission of temporal punishment of the same worth as is obtained by the person’s own action.
Now that the theology lesson is over, we can back to the topic at hand…Dogma. The fallen angels–Loki and Bartleby, the former Angels of Death famous for their exploits in Sodom and Gomorrah– feel that their eternal earthly exile can be ended once they “transubstantiate into humans” by cutting off their wings and have all of their sins forgiven by the plenary indulgence they receive by walking through the archway. Aside from the fact that Kevin Smith gets the definition of and effects of the plenary indulgence incorrect (plenary indulgences DO NOT FORGIVE SINS) this plotline is advanced by an intervention by the Metatron (played brilliantly by Alan Rickman), the angel who functions as the voice of God, who informs our protagonist that allowing these angels to walk through the archway would undo all of existence, for it would prove God wrong. From there, the movie progresses inevitably leading to a final battle in front of the church.
I love this movie because it combines the outrageous with some pretty sincere theological discussion. The viewer can’t help but giggle at the irony in casting the late George Carlin to play Cardinal Glick, the spokesman of Catholicism Now, the organization behind the declaration of the archway plenary indulgence, and this succulent bit:
At this point, I have to make a full disclaimer: a lot of what the movie preaches–that the Virgin Mary had children other than Jesus, that God is a woman, that organized religion is dangerous– is blatantly false and antithetical to true Catholic teaching; however, as Kevin Smith point out in an interview about the movie, much of what he raised in this movie are merely “tough questions” which are not inherently “blasphem[ous]” (Dogma Press). There’s nothing wrong with questioning things, for searching for truth involves looking for answers to questions our heart desires to have answered. What we must do is seek these answers with the same passion that we question with. Too often, people–myself included– get all hot and bothered about something, but don’t take the time to research and find out the answers. We should be better than that.
My favorite part of the movie happens to be a rant that Bartleby (Ben Affleck’s character) goes on following an altercation on a train. Bewildered by the fact that God has sent people to prevent them from coming back into heaven, he says the following:
In the beginning, it was just us and Him. Angels and God. And then He created the humans. And He gave them more than He ever gave us. Our’s was designed to be a life of servitude and worship – adoration. But He gave the humans more – He gave them a choice. They can choose to ignore God, choose to acknowledge Him. All this time we’ve been down here, everyday I felt the absence of the Divine presence. And it pained me… as I’m sure it must have pained you sometimes, even though you’d gloss over it with jokes. But we feel his absence, and why? Because of the way He made us -as servants. Had we been given free will, we could ignore the pain… like them. It’s the humans – it’s always the humans. They were given paradise; they threw it away. They were given this planet; they destroyed it. They were favored best among all His endeavors; and some of them don’t even believe He exists. Their ego-mania corroded Hell and made it dark and crimson.
Re-read that for a second. Amidst all the vulgarity and profanity, Dogma examines a profound truth. God loves us so much that He gave us the choice to love Him or not…He doesn’t coerce us, nor does He force Himself on us. He wants us to come to Him beacuse He know that then, and only then, will we truly love Him the way He’s designed us to. Sometimes, I think it would’ve been easier for Him to make us slaves. When I see the atrocities committed in His name, not just by Christians, but by Jews, Muslims, and other religions, it makes me sad. Earlier this evening, my friend Alycin and I were discussing “Christian” cults like the Children of God people and the Westboro Baptist Church. And we kept coming back to the same point–the faithful and unfaithful are being lead astray by false prophets, people who have hijacked religion to suit their own purposes. In the case of the WBC, it’s to further a radical social agenda; with Islamic terrorist groups, it’s to push their religion and quest for a global Islamic hegemony. The common theme is that horrible things are being done in the name of a God of peace and love, who wants nothing to do with the genocides, the abuse, and the hateful words spewed by these false prophets.
Seeing all this transpire, any rationally-minded person would offer up the same prayer– “My God, my God. Why have You abandoned us? Why would You let such things happen?” And the answer is…I don’t know. I simply don’t know. I am not sage enough to offer anything other than a shoulder shrug to one of life’s greatest questions. I can tell you that God has a plan for us, and, no matter how painful it may be, it is ultimately for our best interests. Our Lord is a Lord of Love who wishes only what is good and prosperous for us (Jeremiah 29:11). We must put our faith in the God of eternity, who sees all as it is. We must place our love and trust in the God who made us, who forgives all of our failings and yearns for the day when we will be united with Him. My priest at college is famous for saying that, on the day we enter Heaven, God will walk up to us, gently tap us on our shoulder, and say to us the 7 words we all long to hear: “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” It is this Lord that we love and serve on earth.
So this is what I learned from Dogma. It is a crude, sophomoric, irreverant farce on Catholicism, a mixed bag of silliness and profundity that makes you think about what you believe and why you believe it. And isn’t that what our any good film maker, and our Buddy Christ, wants in the first place?
Come on...how could you not love Him?
As anyone who knows me can tell you, I am a big fan of the show Scrubs. I love how they combine goofy, zany humor with touching stories. The emotional center of the show is a character named Dr. Cox, a flawed resident at Sacred Heart Hospital who spends most of the time as the begrudging mentor of JD and Elliot. He’s known for going on endless rants and raves and being a bit of an ass. Still, throughout the 7 sevens of the show, the most heartwrenching of episodes have involved exposing Dr. Cox’s humanity.
With that, I offer you a compilation of my favorite Dr. Cox moments:
