Author: simchajfisher

I feel so moron

what the hell is planet aid

what is the process of wearing my shoes

is it stupid to have 3 kids under 3

what time does snappy’s close

very short cut porno pants

don’t have an hourglass figure

your a wiener

snapy sex

scotch taped rabbit

dog

lori petty

lori petty

lori petty  + boobs

simcha fisher horses butt

lori petty nude

why does my guy on harvest moon a wonderfull life always look unhappy even if he isnt hungry?

simcha fisher “moral theologian”

dont ha ha

lucky charms make me fart

zimcha fisher

dont you shush me

big dog teeth

huge dog teeth

blue haired doberman spells like outside but lives inside

male hair blond and pretty

jesus is you pall

i look is happy

i feel so moron

Brilliant Men in Dark Boxes

(cross-posted at Inside Catholic’s blog)

My heart sank when I saw this picture on Creative Minority Report:

 

The NAACP hid a prominent statue of George Washington inside a wooden box during a MLK Day rally, offering the terminally lame excuse that the box would make a more suitable backdrop for the rally’s speakers.   The NAACP denies any intention of disrespect, but their narrow view of history is no secret:  anyone who owned slaves is a racist, and anyone who is a racist cannot be called a great man.  This is what is taught in history class, and several generations have been nourished on these junk food ideas.

Students are taught that they must not squander their exquisite admiration on someone who owned slaves.  They are taught, by implication, that it’s not enough for a man to give up his family and his safety for the noble cause of independence.  It’s not enough to inspire and command.  It’s not even enough to triumph in a way that directly benefits millions of people today.

He must also be . . . EVERYTHING MAN.

He must leap out of his time, and see with the eyes of every possible future type of enlightenment.  Did he accomplish the massive victories that his generation desperately needed?  Not good enough.  We also require him to be the role model for solving any type of conflict that might ever turn up, or else he’s no good to us.  Into the box you go, little George.  You don’t impress us anymore.

Where else do we see this same lazy, self-absorbed analysis of history?  In the sour voices that grumble over John Paul II’s beatification.   He may have been good, they say, but oh, he was not great.  Oh, sure, he was very charistmatic and all.  He clearly prayed a lot, and that’s commendable.  But what a hash he made of the Church!  It’s all his fault!  He’s the one who wrote all those lame hymns, he’s the one who offered free butch haircuts to nuns, if you’ll recall.  And who can forget those Woodstock-style World Youth Day rallies, where he encouraged the youth to hold hands during the Our Father?  Never mind that the number of Catholics worldwide grew from 700 million to 1.2 billion while he was Pope — the guy was a squish, a pushover, a washout.

Listen to me.  God sends certain men to achieve certain great deeds while they live.  They are not responsible for what future generations may require:  that is up to the heroes born of those generations.  Great men are great because they do what needs to be done at the time.  They put their own desires and frailties aside, and they make the world new with their particular strengths, their particular form of brilliance.  Heck, that’s what Martin Luther King Jr. did.  A holy man?  No.  He was a serial adulterer.  And Washington owned slaves, and John Paul II allowed the monster Maciel to flourish.

But they were great men.  They took their personal, God-given talents and turned them into something immense — something that made the world better.

It’s not just that we should forgive the wrong they did because they did so much good (although that is also true).  No.  I’m saying that these men were good in the way that they were designed to be good, great according to their own natures.  George Washington’s great strength wasn’t as an abolitionist, you know?  John Paul II’s great strength wasn’t as a disciplinarian.  It wasn’t his calling.

Do we criticize Fra Angelico for not figuring out how to split the atom?  Or do we sneer at Herman Melville because he couldn’t outrun Carl Lewis?  I mean, what do we wantfrom these guys?  And can’t we even imagine that whatever  heroes we admire today may someday be judged harshly by our great great grandchildren — and wouldn’t that seem unfair?  Men are men, and they live when they live.   Who is good enough for us?  Who can escape our endlessly dissatisfied dissection?

There was only one perfect Man.   The other great men of the world — Washington, King, John Paul II, and any hero you can name — are only mirrors, who catch and show to us a little bit of His radiant light.  The world is dark enough already.  Let’s not become so enlightened that we spend our time setting up boxes around the brilliance of great men.

 

Wednesday Throwback: In which I try desperately to edify myself

(This post originally appeared in my old blog a few years ago.  I know it’s Wednesday, which is not a good day for a Thursday Throwback, but at the last minute [specifically, 2 a.m., when I was up getting my son some codeine for his throat], I decided that the post I had scheduled for today was too personal, to weird, too easily misconstrued, and above all too full of lady talk.   So,  you’re welcome!  And yes, it is Wednesday.)

I’ve read a few religious mommy blogs in my time, so I know the routine. You’re doing some unpleasant task, and you hates it, you just hates it. It’s hard, it’s boring, if only you had some money you could hire someone, and why did you go to college if you were just going to end up thisaway, and you bet Julia Roberts doesn’t have to do it, and she’s not even very talented! And so on.

You go on, you go on, you’re pouting and grousing as you work, when suddenly, right in the middle of your lousy attitude, the sun comes out and suffuses the workaday haze with a glow straight out of Zeffirelli; or else your chubby little toddler toddles up and says, “You wook pwetty wiff that smudge on your cheek, Mommy”; or a triple amputee you happen to know calls to thank you kindly for the used tea bag you sent him as a Christmas gift.

Everything comes into focus. Right there on the bathroom floor (or whatever), you get on your knees and thank God, or repent, or just generally get a new outlook on it all. The rest of the day is sanctified, and as you drift off to sleep that evening, you murmur a sleepy prayer of thanksgiving for the lesson in grace.

Well, me too! Why just today, I

oh ha ha, no, just kidding. Not me.

Here’s what I do.

I start off really great. Today, the crummy job was shoveling. I’m shoveling away, and in the first four minutes alone, I thank God for, in no particular order: the fact that I have a driveway to shovel in the first place; the fact that I’m strong and healthy; the fact that it’s not icy snow; the fact that it’s so beautiful out here; the fact that my husband cheerfully got up early to do as much shoveling as he could before heading off to work; the fact that the older kids can watch the baby and keep her safe while I work; the fact that my husband gave me a lovely warm scarf just yesterday; and the fact that we found the shovel.

(And if you want to know whether 1.25 acres is a lot of land to own, picture yourself shuffling around in that 1.25 acre yard hoping to stumble over your only shovel, which the kids were playing with but abandoned somewhere before it snowed 18 inches.)

That goes on for a good half hour! I am a thanking fool. I’m Corrie Ten Boom, thanking God for the fleas. I’m Padre Pio and St. Francis. I’m the Pilgrims. (At a certain point, I tell myself to relax — it’s just clearing out the driveway, after all, and the canonization process can be extremely slow even in these lax times.)

After another 20 minutes, the industrious glow cools a bit, and my mind is more or less a blank. I advance to myself certain theories for making the job go by more quickly, such as:

–Probably this will get easier if I switch hands and start tossing the loads of snow forwards like a discus thrower, rather than slinging it backwards over my shoulder. (Ow; no.)

–Probably I will be more encouraged at the magnitude of the job still undone if I go ahead and delineate the area I hope to clear with little chops. There! (Crap; no.)

–Probably the driveway would get cleared faster if you wouldn’t dump the loads of snow in the spot you’re going to shovel next, yuh idiot.

–Ditto for flinging a giant boulder of snow on top of a peaked heap of snow, from which it will tumble down and land on your feet.

–”Hey, Eddie, Can you Catch Us A Ride,” while probably underrated in the Springsteen canon, loses some of its frisson of urban despair after about minute 46 of the mental loop that it’s playing on.

I spend a certain amount of time “neatening up” what I’ve already cleared (because everyone knows you can’t park your car on un-neatened driveways). I get a drink of water. I check on the kids. Seeing that they’re all happily trying to claw each other’s eyes out, I go back outside.

I make another stab at being of good cheer. “Thank you, Lord,” I begin, “forrrr . . . um, well, I certainly thank You that I’m not in a concentration camp in Siberia. Because I know that some people were, and that was worse than this.”

Then I think, If I don’t get mail tomorrow after expending 4,600 calories digging out the mailbox alone, I am going to assassinate that delicate genius of a mailman, whodoesn’t even have to get out of his car seat, but only to stick his precious little paddy paw out the window and put the Netflix in the little box, see?

At this point, a song from Annie starts playing in my head. Figuring it for divine retribution for the provisional curse I put on the mailman’s head, I submit to the will of God and just dig, dig, dig. Don’t really care, as long as they’re miiiiiiiiiine . . . how long, o Lord?

Well, it’s done now. And thank God for that.

Ordinary Time: A Revelation

Ooh, doesn’t that sound like a good post?  You can read it at Conversion Diary, where Jen Fulwiler has graciously lent me some space for a guest post today.  It’s about something I just figured out:  baby Jesus being born is a lot like a baby being born.  No, really!

If you don’t read Conversion Diary regularly, you’re nuts.  Jen is a Catholic convert from atheism, now expecting her fifth child, and always has something unusual, insightful, or funny to say about her growing understanding of the Faith — sometimes unusual, insightful and funny, all three!  Sometimes just two.  But never fewer than two, I would say.

Oh, and she is also, of course, the brilliant inventor of Seven Quick Takes, which has saved my sorry hide more times than I can count.  Probably seven!  But not fewer than seven, definitely.

Yes, yes, come see my post at Conversion Diary today.  I wrote it a few days ago, when I was able to write actual sentences.  And welcome, Conversion Diary readers!  I hope you stick around.

 

7 Quick Takes: “Things that fell out of my poor suffering brain” Edition

I have taken up being sick and angry as a full-time job this week.  So this is what you get.

–1–

We got about as much snow as anyone did the other day, and now we can’t find our garbage cans.  Usually my husband shovels, but when his back is out and the rest of us are half dead with our post-strep throat cold which we picked up in the hospital when my son got his tonsils out – – well, then we call the plow guy.

Being a hard-working New England girl, I always feel guilty about hiring a plow until I see the work that he does, and how it takes approximately four-and-a-half minutes.  Then I think about how it would take us approximately four-and-a-half hours to do a much crappier job with a shovel, and I think, “That is what money is for.”  He’s cheap, too!  And nice.

In fact, after he plowed, he told me that if we ever wanted work done on the house (last summer he converted our old shower into a laundry area), he would be happy to do it at cost.

Why would someone do that?  I’m seriously wondering.  Does he just like being with us?  Or has he secretly spotted gold ore in the walls and wants a piece of it?  Or what?

–2–

This:

was a huge part of my childhood, along with these things:

(On the flip side of the record was “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.”  In this recording, they seem to have taken out the “Let me abos go loose, Bruce.”  I didn’t find out until much later that “abo” was offensive slang for “aboriginal.”  I always thought he was saying “elbow,” and thought it was an odd desire for a dying man.)

–3–

It’s funny enough when kids pronounce things oddly, but it’s even funnier when they used to say it right, but suddenly, for reasons of their own, start saying it in some new, strange, wrong way.  Every morning, the three-year-old asks for oatmeal.  About a week ago, though, she expressed a strong desire for “oitmeal,” and that’s what she’s been saying ever since.  And the baby, who is 21 months old, started saying “hyelp” instead of “help,” for some reason.  So we hear, in a suffering little voice, “Mama, mama, hyelp me!  You come hyelp my sock!”

She has gone back to asking to “nurse,” however, which is sad.  Originally, she said “nurse,” which transformed into “nurd,” which morphed, to my delight, into “nurdle.”  “Mama, I want to nurdle!”  And nurdle we would.

–4–

Relatedly, I’m still getting a huge kick out of having a baby who is still nursing, but can talk.  She is something of a comedian, and likes to think of punchlines while she is nursing.  Then she unplugs for a minute, makes sure I’m looking at her, and says, “Aaaa-OOOOO-gah!”  and then latches back on, grinning.  Or a couple of times, she was apparently thinking about Godzilla, because she took a break just long enough to say, “Grrrr. Aaaahhh!”

–5–

I think this machine has been around for years, but I guess it’s now smaller and available to the public?  It’s the Thing-o-matic, “a ‘factory in a box’ that claims to create any three-dimensional object out of plastic in a matter of minutes.”  You have to start with a 3-D schematic image, I guess, which apparently you can get with Google in some way.  This video seems to show an earlier version of the machine, making a model of the Statue of Liberty.

 

Astonishing machine, but the name needs some hyelp.

–6–

I was behind a car with so many enlightened bumper stickers, I expected the whole thing to start levitating on a cloud of self-righteousness.  The most egregious one said, “I’m already against the next war.”  Excellent!  I’ll be sure to notify the alien overlords, when they come to attack, that the occupants of that car are such fine, gentle, wise people that they do not wish to be defended.  I also wonder if they are against all past wars, as well as potential future ones?  Big fans of George III, slavery, and the Third Reich?  And whatever that French and Indian thing was about?  Bah.

I also saw another car that had the following decals lined up across the rear window:  Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Knights of Columbus, Rotary, and KISS.  I think I’d rather be friends with them.

–7–

Saw another bumper sticker yesterday:  “My other vehicle is my imagination.”  My kids asked me why I was throwing up all over the dashboard.  I guess I’m just sensitive to these things.  Anyway, my 8-year-old son offered that, when he grew up, he was going to have a bumper sticker that says, “VENGEANCE IS SWEET.”  His younger brother wholeheartedly agreed, and it turns out that the two of them were under the impression that personal and bloody vengeance is a thoroughly brilliant and moral career path.

It’s possible that our Bible readings have been a tad heavy on the Old Testament lately.

Simcha’s Guide to Weatherization

If, by chance, you should happen to wake up in the middle of the night and you realize you can see your breath, you may be out of heating oil.

This may surprise you, since it was only a few weeks ago that you also woke up in the middle of the night and realized you could see your breath. Yes, it’s been cold, but that is an awfully fast time to burn through that much oil.  And you were so looking forward to paying the mortgage this month!

So what you do is to pick your way carefully through the basement to check the oil tank, to make sure it’s actually empty.  Maybe it’s only that some rogue vole or porcupine woke from hibernation, stumbled into your basement, leaned tragically against the “emergency off” switch, and died.  One can hope!

While you are down there, try looking around the rest of the basement to see if anything else seems amiss.  If you see something that, in terms of heating ducts being where they should be, looks about as fine as this:

 

then think to yourself, “Gee, look at that.”  Then go back upstairs, make some coffee and some cream of wheat, take the kids to school, go to an appointment or two, entertain a visitor, write some emails, make lunch, do a little laundry, and then have a seat for a minute.

At this point, you should think to yourself, “Wait a minute.”

Then think to yourself, “Wha?”

Then ask yourself, “Who the HUH?”  Again, this is what you saw a few hours ago:

Go back down to the basement, and see if you can figure out what the hell happened here.  With some examination, you may find that the heating duct has been so fabulously, extravagantly weatherized, it’s now much too heavy for the bittle little twist of rusted wire that was supporting it, and that while one end is still connected to the furnace, the other end, which is supposed to be heating the living room, is lolling on the basement floor like a comatose python.  Yay, easy to fix!

Also, it may occur to you at this point that, if there is an 8-inch pipe bellowing hot air into the basement all month

source

then that might possibly explain why you ran through that oil so quickly.  Ah so!  See how smart you are getting?  It must be the exhilarating effect of all that blood rushing to your brain from trotting up and down the stairs so many times in a single day.

From here on in, the story gets less interesting.  Pretending not to notice the pathetic little nest made by some enterprising mouse, who had clearly found a balmy but short-lived paradise inside your duct

 

source

you just thread some wire coat hangers onto the pipe, screw a few sturdy screws into the ceiling, and hang the thing back up.

It is advisable, at this point, to email your husband several times about your accomplishment, and then when he gets home, ask him if he can go downstairs to “make sure you did it right.”  Husbands: this is the part where you’re supposed to go, “Wow, GEE, nice job with those hangers!  YOU did that with those soft, pretty little hands of yours, did you?  You realize you have saved us over $75,000 in heating bills this afternoon alone!  I also really appreciate you doing this job yourself, rather than making me go down into the basement to do it!” Then, ladies, you can let him come up out of the basement.

Stay tuned next week, when I will be offering a guide on how to keep your marriage strong and healthy by treating your husband like a real man and making him deal with that scrabbling mousy sound you keep hearing in the floor.

Manners, manners

3-year-old:  WAH!  WAH!  WAH!  I WANTED TO CLOSE THE DOOR!  WAHHHH!

Me:  Well, maybe if you ask me politely, I will move over so you can close it.

3-year-old (snuffling, in her most polite voice):  Mama, will you please move your fat bottom?

Demon Pharma

I just got home from my third visit to the pharmacy to get our apparently rare and unheard-of prescription filled.  In case you missed it, we spent Christmas vacation throwing up, thrashing around with fevers, and feeling like we had each swallowed a bundle of toothpick shards wrapped in Velcro and dipped in Tobasco sauce.  Strep throat, all ten of us — and guess what the doctor gave us?  It’s something brand new, called “pen-i-cil-lin.”

Utterly taken aback by this newfangled innovation, the pharmacists requested that I wait five minutes while they get the drugs together.  You know and I know that “five minutes” in pharmacy time is at least half an hour; so I browsed around in the produce aisle for a while, because there is nothing more entertaining than a lot of bags of citrus.  After half an hour, I was told to come back in an hour.

I came back in two hours, and was told that they had most of it — – they just needed to mix it up . . .if I could come back in twenty minutes –

The kids were all waiting in the car all this time, enjoying their Christmas vacation and trying to attract the attention of whatever wandering Child Protective Services agents might be passing by.  So I went home with nine-and-a-half prescriptions.  The next day I went back.  Same routine.  Five minutes, then twenty, then “please come back after noon.”

So the next day — okay, it was actually the next next day, because I forgot — I finally got the second half of my last prescription.  But all this time, I can’t help wondering –

What what what is the deal with pharmacists?  Why are they all so crazy?  Is it the combination of working with the public, plus the emotional stress of dealing with death and disease, plus having to wear those dopey white coats that even doctors don’t have to wear anymore?  Is it the combination of supermarket music and the hissing of the free blood pressure machine?  Or are they all just natural born jerks?

My most recent encounter was with the Head Pharmacy Weirdo, a tall, sleek, squeaky clean man with shiny shoes and an laser-guided part in his chestnut hair. He has this “Voice-Over Man Barely Suppressing Maniacal Rage” routine.  I guess he thinks it sounds polite?  I know it’s not his normal voice, because I once heard him having a personal conversation on the phone, and he was just plain screaming, then.  And swearing a lot.  And then he swiveled back around to the counter and said, in polished tones of urbane repressed fury, “And what can I get for YOU?”

Oh-hhh, just some medicine for my kids, sir, if, if it’s not too much trouble.  I can leave if you want.  Just please don’t hit my bad ear again!

The second pharmacist is a woman who – – I don’t know what it is.  She’s nice enough, and will give me my prescription if I come back three times and prove I really want it.  But there is something about her which suggests that there might just be some reptilian life form coiled up inside her skull, hissing directly into the auditory center of her brain, “Yessss . . . tell her it will only be twenty minutesssssss . . . tell her you just have to mixxxxxxxxxxxxxx it . . . yes, yesss, make her read The Pill Book ssssssome more . . . ”  And those big, friendly eyes just stare and stare at you as you struggle to sign your name with a fake pen on the electronic screen.

Nice lady otherwise, though.

The third pharmacist is actually a rotating position.  It is generally filled by a wholesome-looking man in his early twenties, usually the tender, baby-faced type.  He works hard, shows concern, and appears to know his alphabet.   Kind of jittery, though.  Has a tendency to jump nervously when one of the other pharmacists calls his name; and he doesn’t appear comfortable turning his back to his co-workers.  Just too polite, I guess.   Tender Young Pharmacist #3 generally lasts a month or two, and then he disappears.

And then I notice there is a sale on that body building protein powder.  Special formula!  Private label.

Maybe it’s time to switch pharmacies.

Movie Recommendation: Queen of Hearts

Since my dear husband finally fell victim to the dread plague, I watched a movie by myself last night, while holding a little blue t-shirt in my lap (to signify that I was about to start folding laundry any minute now).

Well, I didn’t get any laundry done, but I did rediscover a wonderful movie that you will love, as long as you’re not my husband.  Really, I don’t know what is wrong with him.  The movie is Queen of Hearts from 1989.

I thought of it because my friend Tiffany was talking about her annual January longing for all things Roman, which she has suffered ever since we spent a semester in Rome our sophomore year in college.  While this movie doesn’t take place in Rome, or even mostly in Italy, it might assuage a little of that ache, being chock full of golden light, a “bella machina” (a gleaming espresso machine with an eagle on top), a horrible old grandmother, and lots of Italian-eyed Italians speaking Italian without subtitles.  It’s mostly in English, but it’s told from the point of view of the little boy, who understands things in his own way — part nonsensical, part funny, part heartbreaking, part exactly the way they are, or ought to be.

It will also assuage your longing for a strange and entertaining story about love and friendship, death and family.  Oh boy, it’s hard to explain this movie without making it sound sappy and awful.  It’s not!  It’s funny, knives and guns are wielded, there is betrayal and cowardice, and everyone still loves each other in the end.  It seems to beavailable for sale only on VHS, but Netflix has it on Instant View.  It’s rated PG.  There are a few brief unsavory elements, but these will likely go over the heads of any innocent viewers.

Many, many memorable scenes and images in this movie, including some incredible interior scenes through the eyes of a dying man.  Excellent acting.  Just a moving, endearing, pleasurable movie all around.  Tiffany, I guarantee you’ll like this movie.  And the rest of you, too!

Christmas Group Shot

Silly me, I thought we would never get around to taking a group photo this year, but there we all are!  I guess this is God’s way of telling us to slow down and have ourselves a streppy little New Year.  Also, He hates us.

Oh, just kidding!  If He hated us, the pharmacy would have run out of penicillin before our order was complete.  Oh, wait, it did.

Meh, it could be worse.  My husband isn’t working this weekend, so we can all have one last chance to enjoy a good old-fashioned family vacation together, sitting around the fire and sipping our disgusting pink medicine, trading good old stories about what we imagined we saw on the ceiling when the fever was at its peak, and tapping out the rhythm of our favorite old songs.  Can’t sing.  Throat hurts.

Really, really, it’s not that bad!  The worst part is the crushing guilt I feel when I think about all those friends and family eating all that fudge and peanut brittle and buckeyes I made with my own, two, plague-ridden hands. . .