At Patheos: TFTM: The Antichrist’s inbox

Fred Clark published a new post, TFTM: The Antichrist’s inbox, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about part 6 Left Behind II: Tribulation Force.

Excerpt:

One of my favorite lines from Shakespeare in Love repeats an old theater joke. The actor cast to play the nurse in what will become Romeo and Juliet is asked what the play is about. “It’s about this nurse …” he says. That sums up the difference between what Cameron and Johnson are doing in this movie. If you asked Johnson what the movie was about, he’d have told you that it was about a pilot humbled by the sudden loss of his wife and son. If you asked Kirk Cameron what the movie was about, he’d tell you what he thinks the Bible says about the End Times and the Rapture and the Great Tribulation. He would never say, “It’s about this reporter …,” and so when we see him there on the screen we never see that reporter.

[Fred Clark, TFTM: The Antichrist’s inbox, February 13, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]


Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

 

Comments

[Firedrake]

If you (generic) want us to hate the Antichrist, maybe you should point out that he's the one behind all the world's spam. (Make Glowing Eyes Fast?)

As I was suddenly reminded on Mouse's Musings... who is it who shall be known as the Prince of Peace, again?

[Ordinary Mom]

I don't understand why you are still running pieces by this Fred Clark, given the anti-Catholic hatred he has been spewing on his blog lately. I suppose you won't be happy until we Catholics are all rounded up in death camps.

[Mmy]

@Ordinary Mom: Read again -- this is an excerpt and link to an article on Patheos.

I suggest that you follow the link and make your comments there, where Fred Clark can see and respond to them.

If you stick around here long enough you will find that some members of our community are also Catholics.

[Raj]

@Ordinary Mom:

Riiiiight, because someone who defends American Catholic laity in their disagreements with American Bishops must hate all Catholics, amirite, amirite, amirite? So if Fred weighs more than a duck, he is made of wood, and is therefore...a Catholic hater! A Catholic hater!

As for "death camps", nice way to trivialize the experiences of people who actually have been sent to such places.

Also, what Mmy said (indeed, one of the administrators of this forum is Catholic).

Best advice I can give you:

Read this article and as many of Fred's articles as you can manage. Actually read them; don't just skim them for Catholics-are-less-than-perfect statements.

[Froborr]

Knew I was missing one. Dangit.

How to Spot a Troll (cross-posting to a couple of threads):

While it is never possible to completely confirm whether a given commenter is a troll, some warning signs do exist. I recommmend, during periods of high troll activity, to ignore comments that contain all or most of these warning signs, at least until successive comments by the same person indicate it was a legitimate attempt to engage:

1) You do not recognize the username.
2) The comment misinterprets the post or comment it is a response to in a seemingly obvious way, or is a non sequitur.
3) The comment uses "buzz words"--emotionally charged words or phrases we use frequently in this community that are not in as frequent use in the general lexicon, but applied in such a way as to suggest the commenter does not understand that the terms have an actual meaning beyond the emotional charge.
4) The comment references the topic of a previous thread that was subject to trolling.
5) Comments that match warning signs 1-4 appear from different commenters in multiple threads in a short period of time.

[Mmy]

@Raj: (waves) well, one of us is a theist of what the English used to call the "high church" variety and another is culturally Catholic.

@Froborr: you could add:

6) if someone who you are used to seeing post suddenly sounds "off" someone else could be spoofing their username.

[Froborr]

@Mmy: Ah,* point. I will add that if I have to post this comment or similar again.

*I would normally write "Mm" or "Mmm" here, but it looks really weird next to your username.

[sarah]

*waves* Catholic here. Not seeing any death camps in my future. Plus, criticism does not equal hatred. I wish we'd learn to recognize this.

[Ross]

I'll admit that I've felt that some of Fred's recent posts include some arguments that go beyond "The catholic leadership is wrong on these points" and into "The catholic church by its very nature is a bad thing, and needs to change in a way that would cause it to fundamentally stop being the catholic church," but that's a very different thing from "Fred's calling for all catholics to be rounded up and thrown in death camps".

Now, there's been a fair number of commenters -- including many who wouldn't identify as christians at all -- who took it as license to pull out what sounds very much like the anti-catholic rhetoric I used to hear from Religious Right protestant christians growing up.

[Froborr]

The actor cast to play the nurse in what will become Romeo and Juliet is asked what the play is about. “It’s about this nurse …” he says.

Apropos of nothing, just a little factoid I've always enjoyed that this reminded me of: The first version of Shakespeare's Hamlet ever published was actually a pirate edition. One of my professors argued* that the actor who played Polonius was probably responsible, and recited the play to a printer from memory, since Polonius' lines are spot-on, other characters' lines in Polonius' scenes are pretty close, and scenes Polonius isn't in occasionally descend into nigh-incomprehensible gibberish.

*I do not recall whether this was his opinion, or a general scholarly consensus.

[Mmy]

@Ross: Yeah, I was trying to analyze my responses as well. As American Catholics know there has, historically, been anti-Catholic sentiment among nativists and the Klan -- and so one gets a trifle tense when things get too close to "that line."

The other thing is that, as I read Fred, his take on the Catholic church seemed to be, for lack of a better phrase, rather Baptist. Not that there is anything wrong with being Baptist but Fred was bring Baptist sensibilities and understandings of Church organization to an institution that is most definitely not set up the way Baptists would set up a church.

@Froborr: As I understand it the first published versions of most of Shakespeare's plays are like that. Actors got (or learned) "sides" which included their own lines and the lines they were responding to. So in order to assemble the entire play one had to collate all the available "actor's visions" of the plays.

[Froborr]

@Mmy: Does not surprise me. That particular class was focused on Hamlet (well, the first half was, the second half was mostly on Web-based nonlinear poetry).

[Mmy]

@Froborr: I have a number of radically different versions of the Hamlet (including the "to be or not to be" soliloquy. Did you hear the snark about Branaugh's version? That is was so uncut that it had 150% of the original production?

[Froborr]

Ha!

Yeah, our mid-term paper for that class was to read all three versions published in Shakespeare's lifetime, select any speech of 10 lines or more other than "to be or not to be," and then compile a single version of that speech while defending each and every choice we made in the process. It was fun!

[Lonespark]

That sounds fun. People do that stuff with Edda translations for fun in my circles.

[Sixwing]

Froborr, that sounds like a blast!

... what a cool mid-term.

[AnaMardoll]

I am now writing down and storing "topics to talk about INSTEAD of reflexively feeding the troll". Ideas? Food always seems to be a good one. :)

[AnaMardoll]

And since some people have a reaction to the work "troll", ye shall know my posts because I will say:

SMOKE ALARM!

Pies. I like apple best. I really want a nice savory pie to try but I can't really eat any vegetables beyond corn, potatoes, and a very few peas. And there does not seem to be a savory pie recipe out there that isn't drowned in carrots and onions and other things I can't have. Hmm. Thoughts?

^^ This has been an example post of not feeding a troll. Were this a real emergency, you would have been expected to help me find a nice savory pie recipe I can eat. ^.^

[Mmy]

@Ana: Topics:

1) whether one can ever, really, put too much garlic in a potato onion fry up. (I think you know where Sarah and I stand on this.)

2) worst "revisions" of a Shakespeare's works

3) e-books -- do they make you buy more or fewer books (here mmy looks over her glasses at Ana and mutters about daily deal being the gateway drug to buying more books online.)

4) debating the question -- what "immigrant" cuisine has become most mainstreamed in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia or other countries. (Curry, for example, is become very mainstreamed in England.)

5) has the internet led to the death of reading (yup, that was one of the predictions some number of years ago.)

[AnaMardoll]

OMG, stealing those, but ESPECIALLY #2. Must fight the urge to save that one for an ACTUAL troll.

And LOL @3. Yes, they are a gateway drug. I was feeling overwhelmed and tired today and I actually said to myself in a very cooing voice, "Would you like to buy some books? That will make you feel better." AHAHAHAHAHA, no irony AT ALL.

[Mmy]

And Ana, speaking of pies -- do you have any old cookbooks around? The kind that instruct the cook to use lard when making pies? Do you know that lard was commonly made of/from in those days?

Arghhh

[Sixwing]

Haha! Re: 1, there is obviously no way to put too much garlic in a potato onion fry. (Or at least, I've never managed it, and I am noted for excessive garlic use. If I can't do it, I conclude it can't be done. Garlic universalism!)

Hm. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to make a savory pie using a potato-thickened meat stew, using your meat of choice (assuming, of course, that you eat meat! Which I probably shouldn't!)

I mean, I've thickened stews with either potatoes (chopped finely, thrown in before long cooking time and boiled into their basic components, so a nice thick broth) or rice (same, but if you use too much you get rice!splosion, which is not the point of stew) so it seems like a stew thickened that way would make just as tasty a filling as one that was thickened with something else. (Lamb and potato stew.. mmmm.)

And then put it in a pie crust and cook it some more.

Has the recipe for lard -really- changed that much? I was under the impression it hadn't.

[Ross]

The other thing is that, as I read Fred, his take on the Catholic church seemed to be, for lack of a better phrase, rather Baptist.

That's a very good way to put it. It seemed not so much like he was slamming the church per se as that he had overlooked (or rejected) a fundamental part of what makes Catholicism different from protestant christianity.

[AnaMardoll]

assuming, of course, that you eat meat! Which I probably shouldn't!

Safe assumption in my case! It's tricky to be a vegetarian when you can't eat any vegetables. Or at least it was for me. :/

[Mmy]

@Ross: The other thing that many commentators (not just Fred) are forgetting is just how incredibly big the Roman Catholic church is and how many different cultures and countries are included within it. Depending on how one defines "Catholic" and "Roman Catholic" the size of the church ranges from 1.1 to 1.8 billion people.

There might be 74 million Roman Catholic Americans but there are 95 million in Mexico, 37 million in Nigeria, 137 million in Brazil and 75 million in the Philippines.

It is a very big, very diverse, very old institution.

[Mmy]

@Sixwing: Has the recipe for lard -really- changed that much? I was under the impression it hadn't.

Lard, as far as I know, was always made from pork fat however in many places (certainly in many places in North America) people who cooked read "lard" and saw "shortening." And shortening was any fat that was solid at room temperature. As the years went by this "any fat" was more and more a vegetable fat.

I have elderly relatives who remember being given pieces of bread spread with lard as something to, as the saying went, "stay their stomach" until dinner.

[Deird, who needs a good kangaroo pie]

Why not just head all the way for meat pies? They're yummy and wonderful, and involve no veggies whatsoever.

(anti-troll topics: which Star Trek captain is the best, our preparedness in case of zombie attack, the usefulness (or otherwise) of Oxford commas)

[Literata]

Just stopping in to say hi! I hope to have an update on Mom by the next This Week post. Everyone's support continues to be invaluable,

Can't find the graphic at the moment, but I recently saw an excellent explanation of why The Oxford Comma Is Your Friend:

We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.
VS
We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.

Cue further discussion of anti-Catholic biases present or absent in this example...

[chris the cynic]

@mmy,

I wonder if a big part of it might be because he's responding to actions of the Catholic Church in the US. He's not talking about the Pope, or the Vatican, or anything like that. He's talking about the US bishops. If you're going to talk about the US Catholic bishops then it makes a certain amount of sense to be thinking primarily of the US Catholic laity and not so much about the Nigerian Catholic laity.

But if you do restrict your scope in that way, it can also make you not really notice important things like the fact that what the overwhelming majority of Catholics in the US believe is not necessarily what the overwhelming majority of Catholics as a whole believe. While they ought to be primarily concerned with the Catholics in the US, as part of a larger organization it does matter to the US bishops what everyone else believes.

-

That said, I do not fully understand the power dynamics of the Catholic Church. When learning about either socialism or John Paul II I seem to remember learning that at one point the bishops of South America basically told the Pope and Vatican, "No, you're wrong," about socialism and refused to change their approach. If that memory is accurate then it implies that the local bishops do indeed have a certain amount of autonomy and have in the past used it to support the beliefs of their own local laity over the global laity and in defiance of the hierarchy. Which, again if that memory is accurate, would seem to suggest that what Fred is saying isn't completely outside the bounds of Catholicism.

But, based on the responses of various people toward what Fred has said, I'm leaning increasingly toward the conclusion I must be remembering it wrong.

[Ian needs a nickname]

"topics to talk about INSTEAD of reflexively feeding the troll."

Which provides superior habitat: suspension bridges or cable-stayed? Discuss.

[Mmy]

@chris the cynic: I think what you are remembering (South American bishops re the Vatican) may have been about Liberation Theology. At one point some priests and nuns (and bishops) in SA were on the front lines of the fight for social justice and the overthrow of non-democratic governments. And when I say involved I mean that they were being kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated.

Things in the Catholic Church have never been as simple as "group of laity here think this -- therefore the Bishops must respond to the laity" -- at any time in the last 2000 years. There is a complicated tension and interplay between the laity and the clergy, between "national" churches and the church and one oversimplifies at one's own risk.

But it is never as simple as "the laity therefore the bishops." In fact right now the word is that there are major power struggles going on in the Vatican itself.

[storiteller]

Can't find the graphic at the moment, but I recently saw an excellent explanation of why The Oxford Comma Is Your Friend:

Also, a favorite of mine mentioned by my former editor in a going-away party after I had converted him to the use of the Oxford comma:
"Much thanks goes to my parents, God and Ayn Rand."

Heehee.

@chris the cynic: I think what you are remembering (South American bishops re the Vatican) may have been about Liberation Theology. At one point some priests and nuns (and bishops) in SA were on the front lines of the fight for social justice and the overthrow of non-democratic governments. And when I say involved I mean that they were being kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated.

They still are in some places. Dorothy Stang wasn't murdered that long ago, and there's a lot of that conflict still ongoing. Even in less conflict-ridden places, a lot of priests and nuns are more on the "we'll do whatever we need to do serve the community regardless of what the bishops or Pope says" side than anything else. My favorites are the ones I volunteered with in Maine, who convinced me that Catholics could be just as devoted - if not far more so - than any Protestant to their faith. I really should read up more on liberation theology - everything I've heard I would be very on-board with, but I just haven't read enough to be comfortable talking about it well.

[P J Evans]

I really want a nice savory pie to try but I can't really eat any vegetables beyond corn, potatoes, and a very few peas.

Some years back Teresa posted a recipe for a savory pie at Making Light. It's delicious (and filling). I don't know whether the veggies in it would work for you, though. (No carrots, but it does have apples in it.)

[sarah]

[[mmy: And when I say involved I mean that they were being kidnapped, tortured, and assassinated.]]

Oscar Romero's a hero of mine. As is Sr. Dianna Ortiz, who founded TASSC (Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition) down in DC.

[Froborr]

@Ana: Can/do you eat dairy? I have a good simple recipe for Leftover Pie, as my mother called it: shredded cooked chicken, mashed potatoes, whatever frozen veggies we had lying around (peas and corn should work fine), and some cream in a pie crust, bake until the crust is cooked.

[AnaMardoll]

The kind that instruct the cook to use lard when making pies? Do you know that lard was commonly made of/from in those days?

I've seen conflicting sources on this. Anecdotally, I'm SURE they've changed the recipe in shortening because there's an old family cookie recipe that was my FAVORITE recipe and it hasn't cooked right in years. A key component is shortening and I know, I'm just sure as can be, that they've changed it. Somehow. This makes me so sad. My cookies! :(

[Sixwing]

Ah! I had relatives who used (the pork-derived kind of) lard until just a few years ago, and only recently switched for soybean-oil based shortening instead. I think one of them had bad cholesterol?

The biscochitos haven't been right since. :(

[Coleslaw]

It is still possible to buy lard, as opposed to shortening. Maybe that would work for the cookies?

[P J Evans]

I'm not sure but what I'd prefer lard to the more recent shortenings. If you're going to use something bad for you, make it the best kind of bad. (My mother went back to using butter after she passed 70. She figured it wasn't worse for her than margarine, and it tasted better. And at that age, why not?)

[Rakka]

I've thickened stew with red lentils. They boil into porridge-like mush that fills the gaps between veggies and beans and such nicely. And they give a little more protein for the food, which is nice.

Why lard and not butter? Although if I got organic free range pig that didn't cost an arm and a leg from somewhere I would use the lard, but not for baking but with rest of the piggy to make sausages or something else historical and tasty. Maybe if the savoury pie was to contain other parts of the pig, but... I feel that it would make the food taste too piggy. Don't like pork, though, so maybe for others it's a bonus.

[Lonespark]

Would you like to buy some books? That will make you feel better.

Yesssss. In my case, the book sale in the church basement is the Precious. Paperbacks for a dollar! Buddhist stuff, Sufi stuff, environmental stuff...Some days it is a good day to hang out with UUs. If you have the shelf space, which I don't.

[Coleslaw]

Why lard and not butter?

I think lard is cheaper than butter, but also, sometimes you just don't want a buttery taste. Lard is taken from different areas of the pig, with "leaf lard" having the most neutral taste. We've used it in pie crusts for fruit pies and they did not taste piggy. It's also not a transfat (neither is butter) so some people prefer it to hydrogenated oils, which is what vegetable shortenings are.

[AnaMardoll]

It is still possible to buy lard, as opposed to shortening.

I've seen people say this, but I've never been able to find it in stores. :(

[Anonymous]

You can get lard from the butcher's.

[AnaMardoll]

In my case, the book sale in the church basement is the Precious.

Yes!

True story: I got hired out of college as a Software Engineer, which meant that I would soon have more money in a weekly paycheck than I usually had in a month. The other new hires went out and bought new cars, stereos, televisions, and the like, but I was still stuck in "poor college student" mode (and in some ways still am) and didn't. The turning point for me was standing at the $1 aisle in Half Prince Book saying to self, "Which one of these books do you want most? You can only have ONE."

And then my brain suddenly realized... "Wait... I can have... BOTH."

It was an amazing feeling. I bought six $1 books that day and didn't look back.

Gah, this post is dripping with privilege, but so am I, so I guess it stands to reason.

[Ross]

IIRC, Lard, Shortening and Butter all melt at different temperatures, so when used in baking, you'll get different characteristics.

The first time I tried making cookies from scratch, it was already after the discovery of how evil Transfats were, so I used all-butter instead of a combination of butter and shortening. The resulting cookies, instead of remaining cookielike in shape, spread out into each other to form a wafer-thin sheet of cookie matter with a crackery texture and a buttery flavor.

Which I count as an epic win. (I really hate soft cookies. I wish they'd indicate on the box when you buy cookies if they're soft or crunchy. I found a grocery store whose house-brand cookies were awesome, and then discovered to my horror that *whether the cookies were crunchy or chewey varied from store to store*)

[sarah]

@Ana: I completely understand that feeling. Sometimes I still feel like I'm in student mode.

[AnaMardoll]

The resulting cookies, instead of remaining cookielike in shape, spread out into each other to form a wafer-thin sheet of cookie matter with a crackery texture and a buttery flavor.

This is the problem I'm having with my cookies, exactly. And since I do NOT like wafer-cookies, I am frustrated.

Maybe I should try margarine, but... ugh.

[Ross]

@AnaMardoll: There's an episode of Good Eats which goes into a lot of good detail about how to choose your fats in order to achieve the desired cookie texture. Three Chips for Sister Marsha Also happened to find a transcript here. There are other factors you can tweak (such as the protein content of the flour and the white-to-brown sugar ratio, but my experience is that it's the ratio of the fats that dominates everything else, with shortening producing thicker, chewier cookies and butter producing thinner, crispier ones.

[Froborr]

@Ross and Ana: I will have to dig to find it, but there is an *awesome* recipe my boss gave me for chocolate chip cookies that uses butter for the fat, and has the brown sugar levels just right to create a cookie that is both crispy *and* chewy... it is the awesome.

[AnaMardoll]

@Ross, you are an angel. (I nearly called you an angle. In which case you would be acute!)

Very educational. I'm reading where he says that chilled batter spreads less. That may well have been part of my problem. I foresee experimentation in my future. Saved, and thank you!!

[AnaMardoll]

These cookies, since we're talking about texture, were a "chocolate-chipless" (Sugar, I guess you'd call it now) cookie that had edges firm enough to hold the shape and a center that was soft. As a child, I liked to push my finger up through the puffy center like a little volcano.

[Froborr]

Blech, sugar cookies. What a sad waste of cookie batter, its potential for deliciousness sadly unfulfilled due to a lack of chocolate chips, or at least some peanut butter. ;)

[Sixwing]

Ooh, there's a bit of heresy! Sticking things in a perfectly good sugar cookie batter, bah. /steam out the ears

Though really, I favor cream-cheese sugar cookies, which are gloriously chewy and have to be refrigerated after they've been made. Not that they ever make it to the fridge anyway... and they would probably be amazing with chocolate bits baked in.

[Brin]

Froborr: its potential for deliciousness sadly unfulfilled due to a lack of chocolate chips, or at least some peanut butter.

But not sprinkles. Never sprinkles. Even plain sugar cookies are better than those things.

[Raj]

{{{{{{{{{{Literata}}}}}}}}}

I'll be with you in spirit and prayer tomorrow.

[Raj]

*waves back at Mmy and Sarah*

After responding to OrdinaryMom, I actually had to step back for a bit and use some Wiccan self-control techniques Literata taught me. Such a viciously ugly attack on Fred DO NOT WANT.

@MMy:

Thanks for the additional info. btw, here's yet another version of That Soliloquy for your Hamlet collection.

[Raj]

Since lard seems to be a hot topic on this thread, ...

One evening, as C.S. Lewis was running down a dark corridor at Oxford, he tripped over something. Being in a hurry, he didn't have time to investigate the cause of his accident. A few days later, he made several inquiries, and was assured that the only objects that had ever been left lying in that corridor were an ancient Greek string instrument, a rock-sampling tool designed for use on a future Lunar mission, and a tub of lard. Lewis concluded that there were only three possible explanations for his accident:

Lyre, Lunar pick, or lard.

*ducks*

[Lonespark]

Thank you for the goofy laugh, Raj.

[Steve Morrison]

I nearly called you an angle

Non angli, sed angeli.

[Froborr]

But not sprinkles. Never sprinkles. Even plain sugar cookies are better than those things.

Marry me?

[kbeth]

Mmm, lard! I cook with lard a lot, especially with recipes that start out with "Melt butter on the stove and then add [whatever you're cooking]." This is because I'm lucky enough to live in an area with enough of a foodie population that I have access to pastured, free-range meat/fat/etc for relatively cheap, though also because the smell of hot butterfats tends to make me nauseous, and lard is a close-enough approximation. I too have never seen lard at a supermarket, but I did once read that lard sold at supermarkets has generally been processed to the point where transfats are a concern, although I'm not sure I could find that article again.

Also, a great way to get more texture with cookies is to make your cookies bigger. They'll end up soft in the middle, chewy around the middle and crunchy on the outside. Since I like soft/chewy cookies, I've taken this to its extreme and just put all my cookie dough in the pan in a giant blob, then cut it up into bars afterwards. It is the absolute best and I can't make cookies any other way now.

[Froborr]

Tangential, I did recently discover the joys of cooking with lardons, which are awesome sauteed with potatoes, onions, and apples, or alternatively with asparagus. I suspect they might be good with mushrooms, too... hmm, I should try that...

[AnaMardoll]

Lyre, Lunar pick, or lard.

Bwahahahaha!

[Dragoness Eclectic]

True story: I got hired out of college as a Software Engineer, which meant that I would soon have more money in a weekly paycheck than I usually had in a month. The other new hires went out and bought new cars, stereos, televisions, and the like, but I was still stuck in "poor college student" mode (and in some ways still am) and didn't.

Me, too. There are advantages to doing that: you sock money away in the bank account that covers the time you're laid off for three years, and/or you pay off the house mortgage years early... just before you're laid off. The lesson of the Ant and the Grasshopper is still valid, if you have the means. Sadly, if you don't, the Sam Vimes Theory of Boots is probably the valid lesson...

[Froborr]

@Raj: The genius of that joke is that, if you had used "Lunar tick," it would have telegraphed the punchline too much. But because it was "pick," even given C.S. Lewis I didn't see the punchline coming.

[Froborr]

@Dragoness: I have always had an issue with that story. I get that the moral is supposed to be "Don't be the grasshopper," but I feel like there ought to be a version that says "Don't be ants, either," because the story plays *way* too well into the not-enough-vacation, 60-hour-work-week, welfare-only-for-"deserving"-poor narrative that has a deathgrip on the lives of everyone I know.

[Raj]

AnaMardoll likes one of my posts!

*happy dance*

---------

Thanks, Froborr!

[Raj]

Also: {{{Lonespark}}}

[sarah]

@Raj: *snicker*

[AnaMardoll]

AnaMardoll likes one of my posts!

Heh. I like MANY of your posts, but I can't NOT comment on a C.S. Lewis joke. :D

[AnaMardoll]

I get that the moral is supposed to be "Don't be the grasshopper,"

Yeah... It's... complicated?

Husband is a saver and would probably like to save every penny we get. My fear is that if everyone does that, wherefore goes the economy? Over the years since I was hired, I've been increasingly more liberal with my spending, but in ways that (I hope) will help the local community. I donate heavily to the library. I have a lawn mowing service that hires local workers. I buy from Etsy a lot, despite the fact that the prices frequently cause College-Me to gasp in shock. We hired a local realtor to sell our house (and find us a new one) even though we're capable of doing both on our own. We eat out as often as I can convince Husband to do so.

Husband struggles with this. I think sometimes HE thinks that we're lazy, spoiled, and complacent. I prefer to think of it as helping people as much as possible. I'm always as kind and polite and generous as I can be with service people and I make a point of tipping generously. It's my attempt at "trickle-down" economics because we live in an area where I think it makes a difference.

But that doesn't mean I'm not DRIPPING with Privilege for making a little over the median American income. And it doesn't mean that if we DID suffer some kind of financial catastrophe there wouldn't be people shaking their heads and saying, "What did they expect? They had a LAWN SERVICE. Tsk."

[Sixwing]

@Raj: *lol*

[AnaMardoll]

And now I want to link to that Mercury Blue post about expensive jewelry. Where was that? That was awesome.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

@AnaMardoll: Jewelry is so expensive these days.

[Deird, who also has a mowing man]

I have a lawn mowing service that hires local workers.

*nods* I hire my cousin to clean my house. She gets work; I get a clean house - it's a win-win! But my boyfriend thinks I'm being terribly extravagant.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I couldn't imagine hiring anyone to regularly work in my home. It would make me feel that my privacy was being invaded, or that I was being judged. (I've heard of people who frantically clean and tidy the house before the cleaner arrives, because they wouldn't like their cleaner to think they lived in a mess.) And it would be even weirder to hire a relative.

TRiG.

[cjmr]

We had a maid service come in once to help me out during a depressed phase. It was very nerve-wracking for me--I hate it when my own *mom* helps me clean when she visits! And these were strangers! Touching my things! (And talking about how bad the house looked in Spanish, which they didn't know I understood.) The experience was not repeated, although when we listed the house to sell it, we did hire them to come back and do the 'make the place shiny and spotless' cleaning. By then anything I really didn't want anyone messing with had been packed in the POD, and I was not there.

[Julie paradox]

TRiG: hire a company that cleans up after people who move out of social housing. I'm told they've seen it all.

(Not everyone who lives in social housing, obviously. But the outliers lie out very far.)

On the privacy thing - can't really help with that ;-)

[Mmy]

I had the experience today of making someone who was, sort of, working for me feel good.

We were at the pharmacy and we must have timed things badly (we both tend not to notice the time of day since we work out of our home) so we dropped off our scripts just as the noon-time wave hit.

From where I was sitting I could see just how hard everyone was working--assistants were putting stuff together the pharmacists were going through and checking everything (and where we go they always check your other meds for interactions so that involves calling up each customer's records and looking over them.) Meanwhile, of course, several people in the line to pick up meds has "problems" and almost every drug pickup required a "pharmacist consult" where a pharmacist goes over with you the ways in which the meds need to be taken.

When we finally were called I thanked the clerk and the pharmacist for being so good humoured and thoughtful while under stress. And both of them beamed and said "it is nice to have someone notice that every once in a while."

I think that we often take the hard work of the people around us for granted. Just noticing that someone else is having a bad day -- and extending appreciation (as from an equal) rather than treating them as people who, to paraphrase a current American political candidate "we enjoy being able to fire" makes a lot of difference.

[Raj]

@Mmy:

Teh Spirit of Peace Lady, yu haz it!

*presents Mmy with a shiny Internet with the Peace Sign engraved on it*

[Sixwing]

I love that entry, re: jewelry pricing.

Also, thanks for the link on how different fluids and fats affect batter - I think I have something to try now, that will make my cookies stop being long sheets of cookie matter with no definition. (See, I refuse to use vegetable shortening; it tastes nasty and it makes things I use it in taste nasty too, when compared to their butter equivalents.) But if I replace some fluid with egg, and raise my brown sugar content, I may get cookies instead of splat.

That'll be nice.

[AnaMardoll]

@TRiG, thank you!!

@Deird, yeah, Husband drew the line at house cleaning (for privacy issues which I really do not understand, possibly because I'm some sort of exhibitionist who puts all my thoughts online regardless of quality, LOL!), which made me sad because I could REALLY use it. Ah well.

@mmy, spot on!

[Ross]

@Sixwing: Huh. My experience with vegetable shortening is that it makes the things I have cooked with it taste like *nothing at all*. Which is also wrong, but at the other end of the "wrong" spectrum.

Also, a tub of crisco has a warning on it that says "Best if used within 1 year of opening". Now, I hate finding that my ingredients have gone bad because I had tried to conserve them, but food should not work that way.
----

I have a hard time having service providers do maintenance tasks for me, having been raised by parents who grew up poor. Plumbing, drywall repair, electrical repair, shoring up the foundation, these are all things I feel that I am Less Of A Man if I can't do myself, and imagine my father's tutting disapproval. (Also, there's that very Catholic thing where I feel like any service person who came in to repair my house would be secretly judging me). I also have a lot of anxiety about the actual calling and interacting with someone required to do that.

I've gotten better about it because of two things: the first is my wife's disappointment when I repair something such that it works, but doesn't look as good as new.

The other and more important one is the realization that if I call in a plumber, and then just *go to work*, I'll make more money in the time it would have taken *me* to do the repair than it costs to have the professional do the job in the time it takes *him*. Home repair isn't really a cost-saver *unless you're really good at it*.

(This is also true of car maintenance, but that's trickier. Yes, it's cheaper to take my car to the shop for an oil change than to do it myself. And because modern cars were designed *specifically* to foil any attempt by their owners to do the maintenance themselves, it would be easier, faster, and less frustrating. But the thing is, when you take your car to the shop to get an oil change, you don't get your oil changed by a professional. You get it changed by a high school student who is making minimum wage, has approximately zero experience, and is probably high as a kite. About half the people I know have had cars permanently damaged by an oil change. Seems to be hit-or-miss that the person doing it will remember *to finish doing it* before giving you your car back.)

[Izzy]

Money permitting, I cheerfully hire people to clean and fix stuff: yeah, I don't like doing this thing, and I don't do it particularly well, and thus the hiring. I do other stuff. Nobody can be good at everything; fuck that Heinlein quote.

I also have stopped caring that much about judgment, as a general rule. Are you my friend? Do I want you to give me a job or sleep with me? Then who cares what you think? I mean, treat other people with due respect for common humanity and all that, but if someone I don't know socially goes home at the end of the day and talks to someone else I don't know about how messy my house is or what weird books I have...enh, so what? (See also: co-workers, except that they have even less chance of learning anything much about me.)

Advantages of having a small monkeysphere, I think.

[Izzy]

As far as relatives go...they occupy a weird place, where they're people I'll see again, but also people who saw me when I was six and couldn't eat an ice cream cone without getting half of it on my shirt, so whatever.

I did a whole LJ thing on that this Christmas: my folks get all OMG MUST CLEAN AND DRESS NICELY when my grandparents or aunts and uncles come over. Always have. Growing up, that just seemed natural, and then this break I had one of those wait-my-grandparents-are-my-dad's-parents moments. Can I imagine going into White Tornado mode for my parents? Not really. For my *sister*? Please.

Cleaning up enough to make them comfortable, yes. Cleaning a lot for a party, absolutely. But...it's my *parents*. And my *sister*. I love them dearly, but they know I'm untidy, I know a few bad habits of theirs, and we get along fine anyhow. Can't imagine ever caring if they see a couple books left out on the sofa, or if they catch me in a bathrobe and sweatpants. Don't get that.

[Sixwing]

Izzy, I heartily agree with you on that Heinlein quote.

I have a small number of very specialized skills. I have worked very hard to obtain them, and a few of them I'm attempting to specialize even further - not by losing the basics, but by learning the intensely situational decision-making process that results in specialization. (Not so much a skill as an application, then, I suppose.)

Show me an insect that can do what I do, and I'll put hir to work in automation. I could use someone with multiple manipulating limbs and a high tolerance for endlessly repeating tasks.

[Semperfiona]

People who are trying to find lard in supermarkets, may I suggest trying a supermarket in an area with a large Mexican immigrant population, or a specialty Hispanic market? In my experience, they almost always carry it: refried beans are canonically fried in lard, as are many of the other Mexican fried foods.

(Personally, I use saved bacon grease for my refried beans. That really *does* add a piggy flavor, but then we all love bacon at my house.)

[P J Evans]

Adding to Semperfiona's comment on lard - the Spanish-language label will say 'Manteca'. I've seen it in five-pound packages. (Other stuff more likely to be found in Hispanic-ethnic markets: pigs' ears, tails, and feet, and tripe. (Mmm, menudo....)

[AnaMardoll]

Is it refrigerated or room temperature? I live in Texas, so we definitely have a large* "Mexican food" selection at most markets.

* "Large" is a relative term, of course.

[Lonespark]

Home repair isn't really a cost-saver *unless you're really good at it*.

Or you have low income. My husband redid a damaged section in the all-tile bathroom upstairs. You can tell it was done by someone who had done tile work exactly once before, but there are no holes to rot the wall.

I am all in favor of hired help. I suspect and sometimes know they're judging me, but it's not like they're harsher than I am on myself, and if someone else cleaned around here it would be less of a fire hazard/reason for CPS to decide it's an unhealthy environment.

[Lonespark]

Yeah, in New Mexico they always had lard in the supermarket. Snowcap, usually. I haven't checked here, since I don't use it.

[P J Evans]

I've seen it in refrigerator cases, usually near the meat department.

[AnaMardoll]

Thank you. :)

[Niner]

Do-it-yourself work can also be a money saver if you *like* doing that kind of thing. Putting things together is fun for me (and Ikea is my favorite store) so when I spent the last year stripping a house down to the studs and putting it back together, it wasn't just an investment, it was a fun project.

Ross - as someone in the automotive industry, I take slight at your comments. Lots of stuff goes into car design, and "can the end user do their own work" is part of it, just not the top priority. A car that's hard for the owner to maintain is harder for the shop to maintain (other than specialized tool bits, but those are usually restricted to safety parts). What does make the machine harder to maintain is usually space/shape constraints - my little Miata has the oil filter wedged in between the suspension and other parts, but the plugs are a 5-minute job. Conversely, my pickup has the oil in a nice big open area and you don't need to lift it to get under there, but you have to build a little siege tower to reach the rear plugs.

[P J Evans]

Niner, I remember when I had to replace the clutch slave cylinder on my first car - it was easy to see, looking down through the engine compartment, but I could only get at it with the car jacked up. (I changed out the radiator hoses as a precaution after one of its heater hoses blew out: reaching around the fan to get at that bottom hose, while bent double over the radiator, was Not Fun. Oil changes were easy, though.)
My current car should be labeled 'No User Serviceable Parts Inside'. It's crowded and half the parts are labeled as don't this, so I just leave everything to the professional mechanics.

[Beatriz]

Since this discussion, which is about the use or misue of uhtaority, has been sidetracked onto HV, let me just say that, at the time, everyone knew what the Commission's recommendation was going to be (a change in the Church's teaching) and, more importantly, why. The discussions had been widely leaked, books had been written about them. Everyone knew a change was coming, and they had already changed their practice in anticipation of that.When Paul VI effectively did the most public U-turn in history (people realized that he would never have set up the Commission if he did not think that a re-examination of the question was needed, and by implication that a change was required), people just wrote him off.The irony is that in attempting to defend the magisterium, the Church's teaching uhtaority, he so effectively undermined it that it has never recovered and probably never will. The increasing phenomenon of laying down the law that we see today is a desperate measure that is increasingly counterproductive in proportion to the amount that it is used.For me, the whole thing revolves around communications. We have to realize that no one can blow their nose any longer without the whole world knowing about it, instantly. This is something that the Church, and particularly the Vatican, has had a hard time catching up with, and in fact they have still not acknowledged it.HV was the first instance of the effect of ignoring instantaneous communications. I am quite sure that Paul VI had no idea that everyone knew what was coming, was eagerly awaiting it, and that doing something different would be a masssive faux pas witnessed by the entire world and discussed and dissected everywhere. The latest statement from the US Bishops feels like a kind of lashing out, displaying anger that, once again, everything is under the public microscope. (ctd)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

"Facts provide no norm for judging the morality of human acts." The Vatican Declaration on Sexual Ethics.

TRiG.