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A Christmas Gift
Last year I posted several Polish Christmas carols for visitors. Stylistically, they were a mix.
This year, I thought I’d put up a few Christmas carols in a more “formal” style.
I’m not sure about my translations of some of the titles. Some of them just don’t sound right…suggestions?
[Files no longer available for download.]
From last year:
[Files no longer available for download.]
Kinga and I wish you the best this Christmas season.
The Great Deception
If you rearrange the letters of "Santa," you can make the word "Satan." Coincidence? Another term for "Satan" is "Old Nick." Another term for Santa Claus is "Saint Nick." Coincidence? Santa Claus descends into fire -- just like the Devil. Coincidence? Santa is dressed in red. The traditional images of the devil have him dressed in red. Coincidence?
In most people's world, yes, all these things are coincidences. But in the tilted universe of Blow the Trumpet, it's most decidedly not a coincidence, but rather part one of the greatest deceptions ever pulled over mankind's eyes.
It leaves you shaking your head and very pessimistic about the general intelligence of our species, but it's worth it.
And so, I now present "The Great Deception."
The Ageless Tradition
New instructions from Bennie XVI about gay priests.
"The criteria of the Instruction are also entirely consistent with the teaching of the church for the past 2,000 years. To portray the Instruction as 'gay bashing' or 'gay banning' is to misrepresent it," [Cardinal Francis George] said at the conclusion of his statement. (Chicago Tribune)
Read: the Church has been homophobic for 2,000 years, so this is nothing new.
Is the Catholic Church trying to make itself a sociological relic, or does it come naturally?
And what about claims that the Church is doing this to try to head off the kind of bad publicity it suffered from the sexual abuse scandals or recent years?
"At best, it's a distraction; at worst, it's damaging," said David Clohessy, national director of the advocacy and support group Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests. "It will feed the mistaken notion that [the abuse scandal] is about the behavior of priests and not the behavior of bishops. Gay seminarians didn't hire and transfer and cover for child-molesting priests. It was bishops who did that." (ibid)
Cardinals' archbishops' blindness to this simple fact is a sure guarantee that this "solution" will not work.
I wonder if left-handed seminarians are beginning to feel the heat...
Thanksgiving 2005
Classroom Clean
Pots and Kettles and Dark Hues
The recent brouhaha over the war in Iraq has drawn Bush and his gang out of its shell of silence. Cheney has recently stepped into the fight:
Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday lashed out at Democrats who accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, saying such critics were spreading "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired" in Washington.
Cheney also suggested that the Democratic attacks could undermine troop morale.
"The saddest part is that our people in uniform have been subjected to these cynical and pernicious falsehoods day in and day out," Cheney said in a speech in Washington to a conservative think tank.
"American soldiers and Marines are out there every day in dangerous conditions and desert temperatures . . . and back home a few opportunists are suggesting they were sent into battle for a lie," Cheney said. (L.A. Times)
In a sense, he has a point. If the administration did indeed admit to “selectively choosing” intelligence so as to make the war a little more attractive, would the average soldier be inclined to go back out, day after day risking his/her life? Probably not. In other words, troop morale would be affected were the charges admitted (and I’m not even saying here they’re true).
But Cheney’s claim that merely suggesting it, his claim that asking tough questions about the origins of the war affects troop morale, is absurd. It amounts to using the soldiers’ daily risks for political gain – a way of stifling the critics. Not the race card, but the soldier card.
And then he calls Democrats "opportunists."
But what choice do they have?
After all, a little honesty can go a long way. So it’s better, in the end, I suppose, to shut up and die for a lie, knowing that its for the greater good, because now that we’re involved we can’t withdraw, even though our involvement was finagled by intelligence massaging…
It’s all more convoluted than that attempt at a grammatically based illustration.
If the Bush administration has nothing to hide in this matter, why is it historically tight-lipped about everything? Why is it swinging away with such panic blows?