Here and there

I attended my first Knights of Columbus meeting last week. I'd tell you about it, but then the Ninjas of Columbus would track me down and make me disappear.

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I sang at Mass today. The music wasn't anything to write home about, one way or the other. Good and solid, but standard stuff. My wife requested that I sing Be Thou My Vision for Communion, and then Frodo got sick and she stayed home. I also intoned Alma Redemptoris Mater after Communion, as well as the proper antiphon in English before. I won't be singing again until Lent. The down side of Lent is that our hymnal doesn't have much. On the plus side of singing in Lent, I won't be singing that Gloria, so there's that.

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Speaking of my singing, I don't often get feedback, but the other day a few people told me they wished I sang more often, or even that I became the only cantor for our Mass. They say they like hearing a male voice for a change. (I am one of three or four in a rotation, the only male and the only volunteer.) Being the only cantor would probably be a bad idea. They would get bored of me eventually and start longing for a female voice 'for a change', or I would get bored of me.

On the other hand, if I were the only cantor, I could insist we change the Mass setting from time to time...

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Found this video last week. It's an example of 'hyperreal art'.



Here, then, is one of the differences between abstract and realistic art. In abstract art, either you get it or you don't; you either see something or you don't, and if you don't, there is nothing else to look at. But in well done realist art, even if you don't 'get it'- after all, a crushed coke can?- you can still admire and wonder at the skill and the technique of a near perfect representation.

Now I want to break out my pencils and try and draw a can of coke.

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Incidentally, Frodo looked over my shoulder while I was watching that video, and then indicated that he wanted to see more like it, so we spent the better part of an hour together watching more of the hyperreal art videos. I wonder what he saw in them.

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Lot of death in the news. Another Mountie has died, may he rest in peace. Toller Cranston has died, may he rest in peace. Fr. Richard McBrien has died, may he rest in peace.

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Anyone else find themselves looking back on their lives and wishing they had told more people to go shove it? Or is it just me? Being nice to people generally just lead to them regarding me as weak and, eventually, screwing me over. Sometimes I think it might have been better to have been rude, struck first. Make them the doormat. Trying to be nice to people, getting along to get along, really never got me anything. On the other hand, it is better to endure a wrong than inflict one.

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Anybody have anything else to add?