Mark P. Shea's Blog, page 1284

Trollhunter

One of the nice things about living in Seattle is that it is a film town. In addition to the Seattle International Film Festival, there are beaucoup little art houses and second run theatres where you can go to find unusual indie films and different foreign features that never make it to your giant Cinemaplex 2000 Giganto Screen with THX AWESOMENESS SOUND.

The nice thing about these little theaters is that they neighborhood places, small in feel, cheap, and they remind me of places I used to go when I was a kid (on those very rare occasions I got to a movie when I was a kid).

So I'm surfing around today on the web, looking for something nearby to take the guys to and I find a Norwegian film called Trollhunter playing at the Crest in Shoreline (Seattleites know the place). I know nothing about the film, but the premise intrigued me: cinema verite "documentary" about some tough old dude who hunts trolls in the Norwegian wilderness, all on the QT because the government, natch, doesn't want us to know trolls are real.

Good enough for me. I wake the wife from her lovely Sunday slumber, grab the kids and announce "We're going to see Trollhunter!" (To be fair, I did ask the wife if she wanted to go and she said yes.)

The kids are skeptical, particularly when they find out it all in Norwegian, but I manage to overawe them with my sheer boyish enthusiasm and they went, one eyebrow raised in doubt and the other lowered in tentative trust.

Turns out the film is gobs of fun, in a sort of dark Norwegian way. Very dry humor, fun thrills, no gore to speak of. Sort of the X Files, crossed with the Blair Witch Project and the Lord of the Rings. Go see it with anybody 13 or older. Jolly fun.

The Great Thing About Having a Democrat in the White House...

...is that there's no bad news. Peter Sean Bradley remarks on the big fat thick meta-irony sandwich the NY Times serves up as it pretends to wonder why nobody (in the media that is) is discussing our soaring unemployment rate.

Reminds me of that great line from Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust: "Everybody agreed that it was nobody's fault."

Prayer Request

Would appreciate your prayers for our younger daughter. So much going on right now and I won't go into detail, but she is in process of divorcing her husband, is taking care of their daughter, broke, and has made at least one token attempt at suicide - I say 'token' because it consisted in wine and pills and then 'phoning her friend to help her. My wife and I are praying to St Philomena for her.

Father, we ask that you would grant the grace of hope and faith to your precious daughter, so beaten down by life right now. Help her to refuse the path of death, to take hold of your Son's hand, and to get the help and support she needs. Bring your Church to her aid and surround her with her guardian angels. Protect her daughter as well and grant grace, peace, strength and prudence to her and her family in this difficult time. Mother Mary and St. Philomena, pray for her. We ask all this through Christ our Lord and pray that this will all issue in glory to your Name and joy for her and all who love her.

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

Please pray for my co-worker who just found out yesterday that she has cancer. For the last 2 years she has gone through seemingly endless medical and personal tragedies and I know she is feeling very overwhelmed right now.

Father, we ask that you would heal this woman of cancer completely and that all her trials will be turned to blessing throught Christ our Lord. Surround her and all she loves with your guardian angels and let no further harm come to her. Send your Church to help her. Give her the actual graces both internal and external to meet this challenge and grow in Christ through it. Mother Mary, St. Luke and St. Peregrine, pray for her.

Thanks and way to go!

from the Hughes fambly. You guys and your incredible generosity did it! Josh gets to go to camp!

Much obliged, amigos! May it be remember in your favor on That Day!

Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer Request

A reader writes:

I have two: the first is for my father's health. The doctor's don't yet know what's wrong, but his blood platelet count is super low. Might be leukemia.

The second is that I might find gainful employment. I lost my job this week, and need to find a new one ASAP. I'm sending out resumes and talking temp agencies, but I don't have a heck of a lot of time before making rent gets really hard.

Father, grant health to this man's dad and gainful employment to him immediately. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen!Mother Mary and St. Joseph, pray for these two men and all who love them and depend upon them.[image error]

Leah Libresco...

...currently my favorite atheist in the world, who posts over at Unequally Yoked, is doing a geeky social science experiment and needs your help:

I was wondering if you could help me recruit judges for a project. I've borrowed the format of Bryan Caplan's Ideological Turing Test to see if Christians understand what atheists actually think and talk about and vice versa or whether both groups are just responding to the straw men they've built up in their heads.

I have a slate of 15 participants, some atheist and some Christian, who have all written answers to four questions for atheists. The atheists answered honestly, and the Christians tried to answer as an atheist would. Next week, we do it again, but with atheists trying to imitate Christians answering sincerely.
(There's a slightly more involved explanation here)

Right now I need a bunch of judges to look through the responses and see if they can pick out the fake responses. I've opened up a survey link and instructions here,
and I would really appreciate it if you linked to it on your blog. I promise interesting data and fun charts in the future!

If we get Ye Olde Statistician involved with the results, we might even get a cool sci fi short story out of all this.

I'm gonna be super busy for the next week or so

So if you feel a burning need to watch the details of Corapi tedium unspool until the last syllable of recorded time, Deacon Greg is doing a fine job of parsing the Clintonspeak over at his blog.

As I said, my big concern was that so many people seemed to be incapable of seeing what a danger he posed to souls. My sense now is that the tide has decisively turned against trusting him and that all but the most die-hard Kool Aid drinkers recognize that he is behaving like a manipulative fraud. Now that he has made his defiance to Holy Church open and clear rather than cloaked in Marc Antony piety and fake words of respect for his his superiors, I don't think I have anything more to add and will gladly move on.

May God yet save Fr. Corapi and his die-hard "fans" from the folly of rebellion against Holy Church. May God remember to his credit all that he has spoken well and truly about Our Lord and the Catholic faith. May God reckon to his credit all those lives it pleased God to touch through his preaching. May God save all his people from the sins of idolatry and factionalism. And may all the genuine love and charity being extended him--by both his critics and those among his supporters who are confused-but-good-hearted--be reckoned as love for Christ on That Day, just as we pray that He look not on what we truly deserve, but on the faith of his Church as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.[image error]

Reader and fellow blogger Chris Hill writes...

Just thought it was funny that an anonymous blog comment on my blog called you and I "evil." It was a comment on this post.

I could tell from the source history that he viewed your blog and then went to mine next, but I don't know who it is. I'm new to blogging, but I assume this is a common thing.

Source history? I don't know what that is, but it sounds useful. How do you find that?

As to the content of your reader's gripe, my guess was that he saw the words "Abu Ghraib" in your post and reacted Pavlovianly to that visual stimuli, like a dog salivating at a picture of a steak. People taught by Talk Radio to think in shibboleths rather than rationally often act that way.

It is always amusing to me that the chickenhawks and crackerbarrel patriots who anonymously post to attack their Talk-Radio-designated enemies see no problem slamming even the soldiers who serve them when it's a choice between honoring your service or giving up their fat-butted, civilian rah rah beer and brass bands nationalism. They yammer on about "honoring the troops" in theory. But the moment you are perceived to disagree with the Crazy Right, you are "evil". And they aren't afraid to say it to your face--anonymously.

For my part, I thank you for your service, Chris. Don't let the crazy chickenhawks get you down.

622 Followers!

Today, my ever-growing hordes of orcs, I command you to contemplate this bit of vocal awesomeness from some kid named Brandon MacFarlane with an amazing set of pipes:



Pray for him that he not be cursed with Fame, the destroyer of childhood.

That is all!