I am a big fan of tradition and ritual.  For a brief time, my internal, unexpressed career goal was to be a Roman Catholic bishop. (OK, I liked the hat and the crooked stick..)  I’m down with the “we’ve been doing it this way for 2,000 years” bit.  I’m not about to get into church politics, moral theology, or ecumenical philosophy- at least not here.  But what ‘s the deal with Tonto in the Sistine Chapel?  They’ve used this same potbellied stove for decades, and similar ones for centuries, but the damn thing doesn’t work.  Yeah, I’m sure the little scraps of paper (“Eligo in Summum Pontificem…”) burn up nice, and the naked cherubim in Michelangelo’s frescoes aren’t the least bit chilly.  But it’s supposed to be clear-cut:  white=habemus papam, black=we need more time.  What happens if it looks gray, like it does practically every time?  Well, in addition to cell-phone jammers hidden in a false floor, the techno-freaks at the Vatican had a few other tricks up their sleeve.  The first, installing a decidedly non-traditional power booster for the chimney, and adding chemical smoke cartridges, has left me unimpressed.  What amazes me, however, is the huge, Springsteen-concert-sized jumbotrons they erected in St. Peter’s Square  that show the chimney.  If they’re going to show us TV, why can’t they just get Tim Russert and his white board to demonstrate where we’re at:  “OK, now at this crucial stage of the game, if Ratzinger’s delegates move over to Tettemanzi’s camp, and the Indian guy…” Better yet, how about Latin versions of the red-state, blue-state game?

Moving along from traditions forged before the Renaissance, to 21^st century pop culture…

I caved this weekend and got myself an iPod.  While I think it will open doors for my expanding appreciation of music, it hasn’t been entirely without its hitches.  First and foremost, Jesus H., are those things expensive!  300 bucks and you don’t even get a case!  I have about 2,000 tracks, most ripped form my CD collection, but a hundred or so from my days messing with Napster, Kazaa, and LimeWire.  Some friends of mine told me it was easy to trade music with the iPod…you just traded iPods and dumped the new stuff into your software.  Well, I tried that, and succeeded only in wiping out the entire content’s of my nephew’s player. Then my wife finds Napster To Go, where you rent an entire iPod-full of music by the month.  The only problem, obviously, is that it doesn’t work with iPods, just the knockoffs.  That sucks, since I was planning to expand my horizons…just not by forking over $0.99 a song.

Philosophically, I’m not entirely against music piracy.  Most bands get more popular, and thus more powerful, the more people that listen to their music…not the more people that BUY it.  Look at bands like the Grateful Dead…they allow professional-level recording of their shows, and encourage unlimited, unregulated trading of them.  They were consistently among the highest live draws every year.  Yet, the RIAA folks have started to do a good job of intimidating the casual trader/thief (like me), and erecting technological barriers to make it a PITA to get new music.  Think about it…they say that the record industry has taken enormous losses over the past years since the inception of mp3 compression and the Internet.  Yet so many of us never paid for our music in “the old days” (for me, the 70s and 80s)- we taped it off the radio using our Plymouth-sized Sanyo boom boxes.  I can recall sitting every summer and taping the top 500 countdowns on my favorite classic rock station.  In the months between graduating from high school and shipping off to Chicago for college, one of my primary missions was copying my entire record collection, and that of my parents and friends, onto cassette tapes I bought by the case.  Among my prize possessions packed away in the steamer trunk for the trip West was a brown, purpose-built suitcase filled with innumerable musical assets… at a time when record companies and the bands they shilled for were making money hand over fist.  Now, you sign onto a peer to peer network to get one song, and you have to worry about the FBI knocking, or worse…downloading piles of spyware and viruses.  What has this world come to?

So, for the moment at least, my collection is limited to the 1,769 songs currently resident on my little grayish friend.  The cool part, though, is the unlikely combinations you get when shuffling.  On the bus ride home yesterday, I heard the theme from “Gilligan’s Island” followed by “My Hero” by the Foo Fighters.  My cd-based mp3 player’s idea of “random shuffle” was playing every third song…the source of mondo-boredom given that my music is nerdily organized in alphabetical order:  Springsteen, Bruce; Clash, The, etc.

Probably the best feature, though is the ability to have you entire music library available to you at any time.  For me, it’s helped me rediscover a band I love, but haven’t listened to as often as I used to.  If you like kick-ass rock rooted in Irish folk music, influenced by hip-hop and rap, featuring trombone, tin whistles, goatskin drums, and bagpipes, and laying historical themes alongside stout-fueled romps, you should give them a listen.  Better still, go see them in person. www.black47.com

An open letter to my beloved, yet small (and dwindling, to be sure) readership:

My apologies for not having posted in so long.  I'd like to be able to say that I've been summoned by the Cardinal Camerlengo to the Vatican to participate in the Conclave.  Or maybe to Toronto to heal the schism between the National Hockey League and it's Players' Association.  Alas, the truth is I've nothing worthy of committing to history in this space.  Several false starts, where I wrote a paragraph or two, then did the computer-age equivalent of ripping it up in shreds ("Do you want to save?" NO.)

I have a few glimmers of inspiration I might act on today...thanks for your patience!

Currently Playing Jubilee 2000: 2000 Years of Sacred Music By Anonymous, Cortona Anonymous, Gregorian Chant, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Gabriel Faure, Wojciech Kilar, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, Arvo Part, Giovanni Pergolesi see related

Right about now, I’m dying of anticipation.  No, the Carly Simon song about oozing ketchup isn’t filling my head- I hate condiments of practically every variety.  But that’s another story altogether.  I’m anticipating my next vacation, which is scheduled to commence in just 3 ½ weeks.

I’m a bit of a travel nut.  I’m not as adventurous as I could be- my experiences are much more milquetoast than a colleague whose leisure travel destinations are determined more by studying the State Department’s “Current Travel Warnings” list than flipping through Conde Nast Traveler.  This time, my wife and I are taking a weeklong cruise from LA along the Pacific coast of Mexico.  In the past, we’ve cruised to the Eastern Caribbean, driven along the Pacific Coast Highway after a short sidetrip to Yosemite, wandered about London, and for our honeymoon, taken a fortnight to make a full circuit of Ireland.

I tend to be one of those annoying planner types.  I don’t go as far as preparing a minute-by-minute itinerary, to be adhered to under penalty of death, but I like to have at least a vague idea of what I’m doing on a particular day:  museum or shopping, nature or culture, red wine or white.  I tend to be somewhat obsessive about travel planning, which of course has drawbacks.  Sometimes, I’m afflicted with the horrifically incapacitating disorder tripus interruptus, for which no Viagra- or Cialis-like cure has been developed.  Just a few months ago, we abandoned a trip to Rome for no apparent reason.  Sure, the dollar’s tanking against the euro, but that was a cop-out.  The real reason, I fear, was much more depraved.  I believe I might like travel planning more than the travel itself.  The Rome trip was pretty much ready to pull the trigger on- flights were reviewed, hotels researched, even plans to dig through piles of bones were made.  But then, at the moment of truth…nothing. 

So it comes as no surprise to me that I’ve spent many of my free hours over the past few weeks repeatedly going over my options.  Land or sea?  Which cruise line?  Caribbean?  Pacific?  April or summer?  Inside or balcony.  Snorkel or tequila-making?  I use a lot of resources to feed my wanderlust.  The internet’s a great source- if you know what to believe, and whom to trust.  Just today, I’m skimming over a site dedicated to tips and trip reports filed by cruise enthusiasts, when I come across this gem, posted as a “travel hint for new cruisers:”

“clorox wet wipes for any thing that you think might still be germy (the whistles on the life jackets…)”

Sure, the poster meant well.  I mean, this was just one among many useful suggestions.  My real favorite was “bring twice as much money, and half the clothes.”  That one prepares you the best, in my experience. But think about it.  If you’re in the unfortunate situation of having to don your USCG approved floatation device, do you REALLY care about the whistle being “germy?”  If you’re bobbing about in the shark-infested waters of the Pacific, and need to signal a passing boat, do you care if you get a bit of a sore throat or a cough?  Me, I’ll take my chances, though hopefully I won’t “drownd.” (Another “non-word” entry heard on TLC’s “Moving Up” last night: “…drownding in a sea of pink.”)

Anchor’s Aweigh!

Currently Watching Titanic By Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet see related

I ordinarily don't go for the dagger-like hit and run posts, but something I'm hearing repeatedly today leaves me no choice.

More Bad Usage:

"Happy Good Friday"- how does that work?  Isn't Good Friday a solemn, somber day?  In the Catholic Church, it's the only day of the year when Mass is not held (the 3PM service is just that, a service, not Mass!), the candles attesting to God's presence are doused, and the altar is laid bare.  Have a nice day!

"Ect." at the end of a series.  Come on, et cetera.

And finally, "diagnosises."  One diagnosis, two diagnoses (pronounced -eez). It might sound Greek to you, because it is.  Drives me nuts.

Happy Good Friday.

UPDATE:  A satellite radio DJ just signed off at the end of his show, thanking his listeners for joining him for the "Good Friday festivities," and telling them to "have a happy weekend...and a holy one, too!"  I submit, dear reader, that the end of times is drawing nigh.

Well, in the case of the battles pitched by her family to decide whether to let her die naturally or prolong her “persistent vegetative state,” no one does.

The Schiavo case is a horrible one, where a husband, allegedly following the patient’s wishes, wants to remove her enteral feeding tube and allow her to die.  Her parents, devout Roman Catholics, are vehemently opposed to such a move, and hold out hope that with therapy, she will regain some quality of life.  15 years ago, Schiavo was deprived of oxygen after a cardiac arrest caused by electrolyte imbalances.  Ever since, she has been unresponsive, and physicians caring for her have declared that the prospects for any improvement at all are nil.  Recent CT scans of her brain show that her cerebral cortex, the area that controls higher functions like thought, emotion, and moving around, no longer exists, and the space it once occupied is filled with spinal fluid.  For the past 12 years or so, the players have been duking it out in the Florida courts…with the courts ruling in favor of the husband- and removing the tube- all along.  Over the past 2 weeks, the case was taken up by Federal courts, which concurred with the local jurists.  In a bizarre and disturbing development, the US Congress passed legislation specifically addressing the case, which President Bush immediately signed into law, having flown back from vacation in Texas to do so.  Today, the US Supreme Court, affirming a decision of theirs made years ago, refused to consider the appeals. 

On paper, at least, Terri’s husband won.  I’m not sure I envy his position, though.  Whether the tube is removed or not, he still will live the rest of his life without his wife there to celebrate his successes and share his pains and fears- certainly no change from the last 15 years.  However, now he’s being cast in the role of cold, heartless murderer.  No, Michael Schiavo can’t be the winner.

The parents, Bob any Mary Schindler, feel very strongly that Terri can improve with God’s divine intervention and lots of physical therapy.  Hoping against hope, and volumes of evidence, they’re fighting to prolong the inevitable.  Yet, the strongest argument can be made that “the inevitable” occurred 15 years ago, when Terri last had a thought, felt an emotion, or performed some meaningful act.  I feel enormous pity for them, but being in such denial means that they can’t win either.

The Republican officials trying to intervene in the case, likely trying to adopt another “faith-based initiative” and further forge a link between government and religion are assuredly not to be the winners, once all is said and done.  I side with the Republicans on a lot of issues…but they lost me on this one.  I can just imagine what their opponents fell about the “small government” people poking their holier than thou noses into a family’s personal heartbreak, to say nothing of the hypocrisy of supporting the state killing someone in capital punishment, while precluding another person from dying naturally.  So much for the “culture of life.”

The biggest losers?  Us.  You, and me, and every one of those hundreds of people each year who are in the same situation as Terri and her parents and her husband.  That’s right, hundreds of people have the plug pulled, or the tube removed, each year.  Why hasn’t Congress, the Governors, or the President intervened in their cases?  If I had the hideous misfortune of being in similar circumstances, I’d much rather prefer to struggle with the ethics of my decision in private with those I rely on for advise and counsel.  It seems like our government, and many shortsighted people they represent, want to stand in the way of an already impossibly difficult decision.

No one wins.  And we all lose.  The only consolation we have, one that Terri Sciavo doesn't, is that we're around to bitch about it and second-guess each other.

Currently Reading How to Write Your Own Living Will (How to Write Your Own Living Will) By Edward A. Haman see related