oxymoron67

Codex Deryianus by Katherine Kurtz

This is an interesting book. It's basically an encyclopedia of all the Deryni books, with all the characters in the various books and short stories getting an entry. It also includes a timeline of the history of the Kingdom of Gwynedd.

What makes this a little more interesting is that Kurtz also includes entries of various sizes for people never mentioned/only mentioned in passing in the books.

All the kings and queens of Gwynedd, for example, have entries.

Many of these entries have tiny snippets of stories attached to them, which show how much work Kurtz has put into this world, but .. I don't know... after a while, I was wondering why, if she had all these interesting stories, she wasn't fleshing them out in short story or novel format.

I think this book does highlight one of Kurtz's shortcomings as an author. She's one of those "I've run out of things to do with this character, so I'll kill him/her off" authors. So, in the Codex, there are descriptions of how everyone dies. Huzzah.

This is only for people who really like the world of the Deryni.

A Few Figs from Thistles by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I had to recite one of Millay's poems when I was in 8th grade, and I've had a soft spot for her since. When I found this on The Gutenberg Project, I had to download it.

I admire poets in general because my mind doesn't work that way. (If you saw the "poetry" I wrote as an anguished teen, you'd understand. Fortunately, I threw it all out decades ago.) I appreciate the mind that hints for rhythm amongst words.

I'm really enjoying it. I may rotate Millay in for my Voice and Diction class and take the Brownings out for a while.

The Best
1. Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Laclos
A book written by a French general about sex, betrayal and interpersonal politics amidst the aristocracy of pre-Revolutionary France, this book was impossible for me to put down.

2. A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens
I'm not a Dickens fan, yet I loved this book. This could be because I read a graphic novelization of ti when I was 8, then read the book itself a few years later.

3. Wind, Sand and Stars by St-Exupery
I read this when I was fourteen. We all had to read a book and write a book report for Freshman English, and I chose this one because no one else was doing an international author and I wanted to be different. I didn;t think I'd fall in love with the beautiful language and the meandering, stream-of-consciouness storytelling style.

Even the scene where he is vomiting in the desert is almost lyrical.

The Worst
3. Lord Foul's Bane
God save me from anti-heroes. The man we're supposed to be cheering for rapes a woman on page 90. Thanks but no.

2. The Pain by Marguerite Duras
Good lord. This book was written as if the main character was in a fog, so, in the conversations in the book, the author chooses not to tell you who is saying what. But, since she didn't really give us much idea of the various characters' personalities, you have to read scenes over and over again to figure out what was going on.

This is not good writing. It is not avant-garde. It's bad writing in dire need of an editor.

So you'll never have to read it, allow me to summarize it for you:
"I'm so lost, I'm so lost... my life is fog... my boyfriend was part of the resistance here in occupied Paris, and was taken to a Concentration Camp. Whatever am I going to do... it's awful... I'm in a fog... Oh, hey... some new guy has moved in down the hall. He;s CUTE. I think I'll fuck him."

There you go. That's the entirety of the novel.

1. Farnham's Freehold by Heinlein
Hideous. In a post-nuclear world, Blacks have taken over, and whites are now slaves. This could be an interesting premise. Instead, we're treated to an almost-castration and more idiocy tha you can imagine.

Especially the Deus ex Machina ending... basically a giant "This was just a social experiment" button, that reset everything to what it was before the war, giving the Farnham family a better chance to organize.

Mind bogglingly awful.

I've been feeling kind of lost lately.

I have tenure now. (One of my students threatened to go to my department head to have me fired -- over my refusal to let her redo her Elisabeth Barret Browning reading-- and I just laughed and laughed. That confused her.)

I'm in a very "Now what?" place. So much of my life was focused on tenure, and now I have it.

I don't know what to do next, and it's an odd feeling.

I ordered four books from Amazon. They haven't arrived yet, but here are the titles:

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

The six Mitford sisters were born into low-level aristocracy in the UK. They lived amazing, scandalous lives: two became authors, one married into Winston Churchill;s family, one married a Hitler supporter etc.

Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age

Archie Chanler was the oldest of the Astor orphans: heirs to the Astor fortune whose parents died young. Amelie Rives was a goddaguhter of Gen Robert E. Lee and author. They fell in love and married. Theirs was a stormy relationship, as was the relationship between Archie and his siblings, who had him committed at one point. This is that story.

American Eve

In 1906, Harry Thaw, heir to the Pittsburgh based Thaw family, shot and killed architect Stanford White over Evelyn Nesbit. This led to the first great American "Trial of the Century". this book is a biography of Evelyn Nesbit.

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

A Vermeer was stolen from an Irish estate. This is that story. (Recommended by a friend)

Can't wait!

How does the response below answer the question?

6. Does your state have any historical monuments? To what?

The Appalachian Mountains proved to be a major impediment to Ohio’s settlement and development.
____

The Civil War was fought in Rhode Island in 1890.

Rhode Island was one of 13 colonies owned by New England. (At least I understand how this one happened.)

Virginia’s City is Virginia’s only desert. (I ... don't know.)

Ohio has no professional sports teams.

There was a battle called “The Revolutionary War” that occurred during the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Apparently, one can discuss reasons to visit Wyoming and never mention Yellowstone National Park.

Colordao was not owned by any other country besides United States. but...

In 1800 Napolean Bonaparte agreed to sell the entire area including different states to United states as Civil war was piling.

We talked for three hours last night. Most of it was fine: we were talking about job issues and family stuff. But, of course, we had to talk about the gay, religion and the big lie that is "Al Gore's Global Warming".

Let's go through the issues:
Him: A lot of homosexual activists say that it's genetic, that there's nothing you can do about it... and maybe..
Me: What difference does it make? The APA says it's not a pathology...
Him: But the only people researching this are gay. So I can't believe them.
Me: Again... what difference does it make?

I never did get an answer on that one.
_______

The Kennedy v. Church brou-ha-ha

Him: Kennedy put the bishop of Providence into a box. He had to deny Kennedy communion.
Me: It bothers me.
Him: Really?
Me: Well, the whole "communion denial" thing can easily get out of control. Suddenly, it becomes a bigger witch hunt than it already is.
Him: And I think the bishop in DC is doing a brave thing, threatening to stop doing charity work in the city if the gay marriage bill passes and the Church has to give benefits to same sex couples.
Me: Really? I like what the DC council said which was "Well, you only provide about 6% of those services... we'll find someone else."
_______

Global Warming

Him: ... and one of the things that Global Warming causes is Global cooling? How is that? (Insults directed at Al Gore)
Me: ....

_________

On a lighter note:

Me: Well, I finally have extra money this month, so I went to Amazon and bought books!
Him: Buying books? Surprising.
Me: And they're in entirely new genres... stuff I never read.
Him: Really?
Me: Yes! Biography and history!
Him: (sarcastically) Biography? And history? Wow. That IS new for you. Enjoy broadening your horizons.
Me: You know, I can't discuss this with my friends in NYC.
Him: What?
Me: They think that if I'm not reading Jane Austen or Charles Dickens I'm just wasting my time.
Him: Seriously? Why waste your time with these people?
Me: Which is funny, considering that I'm better read in three languages than most of them are in one. Plus the last great book I read was Thoreau's Walden and, frankly, I was not impressed. I mean, there may be something of value there, but I couldn't get past the whole "I spent 2.5 cents of a bag of beans and built my shed from five planks of good wood and six nails."

I just don't think my class has a sense of humor. Which kills me because the only reason that I have what sanity is left is BECUASE I laugh.

For instance, this is the banner image I put on my Blackbaord site this week:





They saw it on Tuesday. No reaction. Nothing. You know those Warner Brothers cartoons where Daffy Duck is performing on stage and when he stops you hear crickets in the background? That's what this feels like. (It's surprising how many moments of my life can be compared to Warner Brother cartoons, though I'm not obsessed with roadrunners...)

Maybe they just don't get me: they may not be used to instructors with a sense of humor. It's just... with the other classes I've taught here, I managed to have some sort fo connection with my students... with this class, by and large, I don't.

In better news, they did a really nice job on the St. Crispian's Day monologue from Henry V. We went over rhythm and breath control this week, which will help (hopefully) with The Gettysburg Address, which is Tuesday's reading. We'll see. I've done both myself (If I'm going to require my students to recite something, I'm going to recite it first, to test out its difficulty and also, I don't think it's entirely fair to require my students to do something I haven't done.) and Gettysburg is all about rhythm and breath control.

Gettysburg is much harder than St, Crispian's. Yes, St. Crispian's is Shakespeare, but Gettysburg is also antiquated language, and, unlike St. Crispian, where the words are the problem, Gettysburg requires a great deal of breath control and knowledge of rhythm and stress.

I had to explain what "fourscore and seven years ago" means, which was fine: I wasn't surprised or upset about that. We also went over some of the more difficult words and phrases. I also posted their final readings: excerpts from 12 famous 20th century speeches -- including selections from RFK, JFK, Margaret Sanger, Clarence Darrow, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. We talked about the historical background of these speeches. Some of my students were immediately enthralled with one or another. Some weren't. That;s fine, they have until Tuesday to decide.

Meantime, one of my former students thanked me this week. She won an award for her e-portfolio, and her state project (on Alaska) was pointed out for special praise. It;s nice to know that the things you do are considered worthwhile by someone.

I really should do more with e-portfolio. Maybe have my students pick their best recordings and place them there. I don;t know. Clearly, its not something I can do this term. But I'll think about it.

One of the things I love about my job in the lab is that I get to see other professors' lesson plans. I've learned an awful lot about teaching from seeing what they have their students do. Sometimes, though, their plans leave me scratching my head. For instance, this term, we're running two sections of Voice and Diction. Mine is one, and the other is at 8:00 am. The 8 am class's professor professor gave us his syllabus, which had all the lab instructions on it. Its full of things like "embrace your inner child" and "seize your performance" and "control your destiny", which... ick.

This would bother me less, but sometime in October, he changed his course ... which is his right -- I've done it, most instructors have... but he never updated our copy of his syllabus, so we can't help his students when they're in the lab.

Finally, remember last week when the administration said that they wanted us to drop all visual components from the Oral Communication Assesment? Well, I found another reason. I was confirming a video taping and audio recording session with one of the professors in our Co-operative Education Department (they handle our internships) when she told me that she complained to the administration about assessment.

These assessments are supposed to be anonymous, but if they submit video, as required, well, that removes anonymity. I guess there is a point there, But I would have thought that the college would have dealt with this already.

I don't know.

Most of it is work/education related... dropping out of college for three years and then going back and completing my BA is a good one, as is the Master's degree.

With the MA, well, I was originally in the French Department, but they treated me like their red-headed stepchild, and there really aren't any jobs available at the PHD level in French, so I switched to the ESL program.

If you think changing majors as an undergrad is bad... try doing it in grad school.

I was always scrambling for funding in grad school, and I'm proud of the work I did not just in my studies, but in the large variety of jobs I held.

But I have to go with tenure. Given that less than 50% of people hired here actually get tenure, I'm proud. Of course, I worked my tail off for it. A partial list of what I've done: e-portfolio, oral communication across the curriculum, helping write the rubric and the major, information literacy, going paperless in the lab, helping instructors include technology in their teaching, all the conferences where I've presented... I earned my tenure thank you very much.

Me: So Dawn and I were talking about retirement.
Mom: Oh?
Me: Hopefully we'll live on the same block. She'll be the crazy cat lady
Mom: Hee.
Me: I'll wander around my front yard yelling at those damn kids while wearing my snuggie.
Mom: YOU MOST CERTAINLY WILL NOT!
Me: I... what?
Mom: No child of mine will appear in public in one of those... things.
Me: Well, it's not like it'll be the only thing I'll be wearing.
Mom: Doesn't matter.
Me: I'll have a bathrobe on...
Mom: A snuggie! No way. I will not have it.
Me: Although, I figure that, at age 70, underwear becomes optional.
Mom: WHAT? Who do you think you are? Lindsay Lohan?
Me: No, I'm aging better than she is.
Mom: I raised you better than this.
Me: It's not like you can stop me.
Mom: What do you mean?
Me: When I turn 70, you'll be 97...
Mom: No, I'll still be 29.
Me: Okay... when I'm 70, we'll be closing in on the Diamond Jubilee of your 29th birthday.
Mom: hahahah.
Me: You won't know that I'm doing.
Mom: You're saying this just to upset me.
Me: I think of it as my version of extreme sports.
Mom: What?
Me: Some people snowboard down glaciers, I tease you.

One of the two funeral homes in my hometown was Lorenzo's. Several of my family members were buried from there. One of the most remarkable things about Lorenzo's was its statue of Jesus. Jesus had arms over his head, as is He were giving a speech, but Lorenzo's always placed him on a pedestal at the foot of the coffin.

I'm guessing that Jesus was there to symbolically greet the deceased, but for all the world, it looked as if He was about to dive into the coffin with the deceased. As a result, my family referred to this statue as Swooping Jesus.

There were other odd things about Lorenzo's. One was the doors. I didn;t notice them until, one warm summer night, we were driving around town, and my sisters both pointed out that Lorenzo's fromt doors had very stylized "D"s on them. We were puzzled. Finally, one of my sisters asked mom the following question:

"What does the 'D' on Lorenzo's door stand for, Death?"

My mom laughed out loud, then she explained that the D stood for the Dumas family, who used to own the funeral home when she was a child, but sold it to the Lorenzos in the 60's, and no, she didn't know why, all these years later, the Lorenzo family hadn't fixed it.

Ever since then, not only do I remember Lorenzo's as the home of Swooping Jesus, but also as the place with the D-for-Death doors.

The Lorenzo family has since sold the funeral home and the doors have been replaced.

Well, after two days of substitute teaching, I was looking forward to work returning to normal. Alas...

On Sunday, I received an e-mail from my boss (he sent this out to the whole Speech area, not just me). It seems that the college-wide assessment committee wants to alter the Oral Communication Assessment Rubric, which I co-wrote.

Now, I am the first to admit that the rubric has its issues and that we went about writing it the wrong way: we wrote it THEN looked at student work. It makes more sense to look at student work and isolate what is important/necessary than to do it the way we did.

So, in other words, I'm open to modifying the thing.

But no this way. The assessment committee wants us to drop the visual cues section of the rubric. Why? So they can just use audio recordings to do the assessing. They claim that in things like debates and poetry recitation, such things are unnecessary.

Since when are non-verbal forms of communication not necessary in a debate?

Also, poetry recitation (and I know I do this myself) is only good for one thing: assessing pronunciation skills. Hearing if the speaker has a grasp of English rhythm and stress and if he or she can pronounce the two th-sounds.

However, there is more to Oral Communication than proper pronunciation: argument construction, socio-linguistic concerns (the relationship between speaker and listener) and non-verbal cures all play a part in this. Spoken discourse and argument construction is very, very different from written discourse.

As one friend of mine put it, "It's like telling the English department to not worry about punctuation."

The Met is massive, This is my fourth? fifth? visit to the place and it marks the first time I managed to get off the first floor. I planned my visit: I wanted to see the Vermeer exhibit, the photography of Robert Franks exhibit and, of course, the Egyptian temple that is housed there.

When I got there, I saw two more things that I decided to check out: the Art of the Samurai exhibit and the sculpture of the Young Archer, which is attributed to Michelangelo.

I decided this time to START with the exhibits on the second floor. So I scurried up the stairs... okay, I took the elevator... besides anyone who knows me would have a hard time picturing me scurrying. The exhibits on the second floor were the Franks exhibit and the Art of the Samurai.

The Franks exhibit.
In the 1950's, Robert Franks received a grant to travel across America, in order to photograph everyday life across the country. He chose 80-90 of them to be published in a book titled The Americans. This book was an instant hit and made Franks an artistic star.

The photos in this exhibit come from the book and from other photo shoots around the world. They are amazing, Definitely a must see. When you enter the gallery, you see Franks' earlier work from Peru, France and Spain (among other places), then, in order that they appear in the book, photographs from The Americans are displayed. Finally, snippets from his later work in film are shown.

An excellent exhibit It runs until January 3rd.

The Art of the Samurai
While an interesting exhibit, this was a bit of a letdown for me. The first half of the exhibit is devoted to the development of the sword in Japan. After a while, I got tired at looking at all the swords. It's not my thing.

Later on in the exhibit, though, the armor and tapestries and fascinating. The armor was highly decorated, and the helms, in particular, are neat, with all their embellishments. The tapestries? Beautiful.

This exhibit runs until January 10th.

Then I went to the first floor where I saw The Young Archer. It's a beautiful piece, though it's not as... um... manly and big as, say, David. Interestingly, the exhibit addressed this, discussing how this was probably very early in Michelangelo's career, and might have been a youth or maybe an depiction of Apollo.

Vermeer
In 1609, the Dutch, led by Henry Hudson, explored the region that would become New York City. To celebrate this, The Dutch government shipped Vermeer's The Milkmaid over to the Met. Vermeer was active at the time of the exploration and later founding of New Amsterdam.

The Met took this painting, along with the Vermeers in its own collection and a few paintings from other Dutch masters of the time, and turned it into an astonishing exhibition. The Vermeers, with their use of light and their technical brilliance were amazing, as were the painting and drawings of the other artists.

The only problem is that the exhibit was PACKED. Clearly, I should have done this one first.

This exhibit only runs until the end of them month. If you are in NYC, you owe it to yourself to see this one.

Finally, I went to the Egyptian Temple of Dendur. It was built around 15 BC. It's an actual Egyptian Temple, given to the MEt by Egypt after the Army Corps of Engineers helped with the construction of the Aswan Dam. IT is the only Egyptian Temple int he Western Hemisphere. Whenever I'm at the Et, I always stop here.

I'm not the Egyptophile that my sister Erin and my good friend Michele are, but I do love it.

After that, I had spent a little over two hours there, and the crowds were starting to get to me so I left.

The Met is an amazing place: so huge. I don't think you CAN do it justice in one day. You need to pick and choose what you want to see. But always leave some wiggle room, because I promise you, once you get there, a special exhibition or two that you didn't about will jump out and scream "Visit me!" Give in to the impulse.

One of our full time faculty fell this morning and opened a huge gash on her head.

This would be a concern at any time, but especially since she's over 70.

We don't know how long she'll be gone, though I'd think that it's at least until the end of the week. She is the second full time professor to be placed on the injured reserve list: the first one has complication from surgery.

Since all our classes are running this term, we have no adjuncts to spare for the four classes that this professor is teaching. So, even though this will also cause problems, my office mate and I have been called in, to teach two sections each.

My office mate called off today and doesn't know the situation, so I may end up doing all four classes.

God help us all.

Okay... since I started this, I have been on the phone with ... lots and lots of people. I now have lesson plans until the end of the week for the classes, so I can indeed sub for them. Lord. What a mess.

Boycott giving to the Democrats until they actually do something for the gay community!"

Sign me up.

I am disgusted with the current administration on gay rights. No repeal or even suspension of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The president could suspend it: he hasn't. A representative in the House presented a Bill that would defund it -- the White House opposed it.

The Justice department has defended the Defense of Marriage Act is some quite inflammatory ways -- including comparing gays to pedophiles. A general lack of action by the Democratic party in support of gay marriage.

So yes, I'm in.

Before you say "But this means the Republicans will win!" You know, I have to give them credit: they openly hate us. They're bigots and proud. (At least on the national level.)

Whereas the Democrats say they don't hate us, but don't do anything for us. That's hatred,too, they just hide it.

1) To make up for the Ozark mountains moving to Ohio, Arkansas now has the Grand Canyon.

2) Minnesota "features many mountain peaks" but "There aren't any mountains in Minnesota, only hills." Yes. these two sentences were right next to one other.

3) There were no battlefields in South Dakota, which, you know, Wounded Knee. Given the massacre that happened there, you'd think it would be easy to find.

4) The one place of interest in Minnesota? The World's Biggest Ball of Twine!

5) No battles in Alabama. Which, again, stuns Civil War buffs, as the Battle of Mobile Bay, a major naval engagement, occurred there.

6) No battles ever took place in MASSACHUSETTS! So, Bunker Hill... Lexington and Concord... the various encounters in King Philip's War... took place elsewhere. Perhaps Arizona, since it no longer has the Grand Canyon.

7) Also, no mention of the Boston Tea Party.

When I get home, I think I'll drown my sorrows in egg nog.
Mmmm... egg nog...

Also, despite my repeated (at least three times) statements that Wikipedia is not a valid source (oh, and including that very statement along with "nor are any other encyclopedias or almanacs"), at least half of my students used Wikipedia.

They lost five points on a 20 point assignments for it. I will announce that, if they do it again, they'll lose ten points.I wish I could blame this on the whole "recent immigrants" thing, but only seven of my 23 students are non-native speakers. And, frankly, most of them did well.

1) Rhode Island has a desert? It actually may: I've seen it mentioned on the web, though I can't find more information about it.

2) Ohio only has one major city: Columbus. This is okay, though, because the Ozark Mountains have been moved there to compensate for the loss of Cleveland and Cincinnati.

3) Even though Tennessee has no mountains, it is home to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

4) No battles were ever fought in Tennessee. Which comes as a surprise to Civil War buffs everywhere.

5) There are no mountains in North Carolina. No beaches either.

( Click here for a Hallmark Moment! )

*Sigh* The bigots win again. I hoped Maine would uphold day marriage but fear and stupidity won out.

The worst part of this, though, has been listening to the people who want to ban gay marriage. The whole "this is not hate" nonsense.
It is totally about hate and creulty and exclusion. Being anti-gay marriage means that one opposes the idea that gays deserve the same role in society that heterosexuals have. That we are somehow less than heterosexuals.

That over half of the voting population believes this saddens and angers me. That my mom and brother are among them? Infuriating.

I was checking on Yahoo, and under popular searches, the number three slot was held by The Berlin Wall.

Is it odd that my first thought was "What is Mrs. Berlin Wall up to now? I hope it's not divorce because if a woman and the no longer in existence wall of her dreams can't make it in this crazy world, what hope do I have?" and not "It *IS* almost 20 years since it fell."

The Archbishop of Guam holds suicide bombers in higher esteem than he does gays. Charming.

A domestic partnership bill is up for consideration in Guam, and the archbishop released a statement opposing it. In this statement, he says some fascinating things:

The culture of homosexuality is a culture of self-absorption because it does not value self-sacrifice. It is a glaring example of what John Paul II has called the culture of death. Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. That is why they repress such behavior by death.

I'll just ask... how do gays not value self-sacrifice? What about all those gays in the military, who sacrifice for for their country? Or those gays who donate time and money to charity? Or any time any of us goes above and beyond the call to help someone? Is that not self-sacrifice?

Is it really because when we have sex, it doesn't end up in babies? Is that the ONLY reason that we "(do) not value self-sacrifice"?

But it gets better...

(Islamic Fundamentalist) culture is anything but one of self-absorption. It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers (women as well as men) is a culture that at least knows how to value self-sacrifice. Terrorism as a way to oppose the degeneration of the culture is to be rejected completely since such violence is itself another form of degeneracy.

MURDERERS AND TERRORISTS ARE BETTER PEOPLE THAN HOMOSEXUALS? Really? That's the point you're making here?

One, however, does not have to agree with the gruesome ways that the fundamentalists use to curb the forces that undermine their culture to admit that the Islamic fundamentalist charge that Western Civilization in general and the U.S.A, in particular is the “Great Satan” is not without an element of truth. It makes no sense for the U. S. Government to send our boys to fight Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan, while at the same time it embraces the social policies embodied in Bill 185 (as President Obama has done). Such policies only furnish further arguments for the fundamentalists in their efforts to gain more recruits for the war against the “Great Satan.”

That's right, GAYS are the reason that the Taliban hates us. The Taliban looks at the US and sees a culture of pansy, pastel wearing, dance-club going sissymen. And that offends their hypermasculinity.

N.B. Bill 185 is the Domestic Partnership Bill in Guam

Of course, the archbishop was widely criticized for these statements. Which led to the traditional non-apology apology.

I (want) to make it clear that persons with same-sex attraction were not the target of my pastoral letter, nor was it meant to condemn anyone in any way. If I have hurt anyone, please forgive me,

If homosexuals weren't the target of a letter in which you compare them unfavorably to BOMB WIELDING TERRORISTS, who was? And how can you POSSIBLY be surprised that people are upset and offended by this? Either you're painfully stupid or painfully arrogant, my dear archbishop.

I swear, the current management of the Catholic Church really doesn't want me.

Let this macro say it all: