Saturday, July 19, 2008

Nevermind the Rhythm Method, How About Random?



Okay. Tonight I will attempt to start with the title and see what happens. Instead of the usual, I'll creep outside my box and try something new. Here goes....

Silence ensues.............."Um, Hmm, Let's see"................................(tapping feet)............(looking out the window now)...........(scooting chair in closer like that will help goose something loose)................................... "Aw Sh...#*@! uh F^%%#*",...............(Tapping toes and fingers now)..............."I know. Music. Some music might help".......................... (wasting 5 more minutes picking music with one hand and my nose with the other).............................. "Okay, now I'm ready"...................

Dammit! Come home tonight with a great new blogging plan and it gets shot out of the water before the decoys are even set out. So far all I've done is find a spelling error in the title. Making some real progress here. Tonight's post ought to be a real page turner.

No, forget it. Fall back on the tried and true - find a picture that might just inspirate. Hmm,"inspirate". Is that a word? I'll have to look it up. If not, it should be. I am sure W would agree it should be a word. Christ, I bet he's been using it for years. I wonder if he ever looked it up. Does he even own a dictionary? Does he even know what a dictionary is? He did go to college. Yeah, I bet he knows what a dictionary is. But I wonder if he knows how to open it?

All of this wandered around inside the synaptic cavity while I sought and then found this excellent pie chart up top on Photobucket. I am disappointed though. Instead of the usual 400,000 hits when I type in words like "toilet" or "Britney Spears", "Rhythm Method" only popped up with a paltry 8 hits. 8 hits. Folks would just as soon waste megapixels recording for posterity the acts of Mankind infla..... uh, naked than pay their respects to God's working plan as laid out by the Holy Roman folks who wear funny hats. Seems the only thing worse than no sex is sex on a schedule. Slap the tag "schedule" on anything and it always seems to look like work.

I was never and am now definitely not a Catholic. I was raised in that church of wannabe Catholics, or is it disgruntled ex-Catholics? Anyway, I was raised to be foot loose but tight with God by the Anglican Church. I guess you could call us The Catholic-Light Church. More taste but less filling. All the pomp without the circumstance.

So I took a few moments to study the chart. I am fascinated. Not by it's existence, but by it's complexity. We have here a scholarly work that must have been years in the making, knowing how much Catholic mucky mucks like to chew everything to death. It has low risk days. It has really low risk days, the ones that last about 5 days a month. It has some secret square days squeezed in between the high risk days for those who want to live on the edge. And it has the don't do it today days, today is an "unsafe day". Hmm. Unsafe day? I never found any day with sex in it any more unsafe than a day without sex. The risk was who you chose to have sex with, not what day of the month it was. But then I am an ex ex-Catholic married but not married to a former catholic but now booted out because of a thing called divorce. I have been living in Sin for 28 years and my daughter is a bastard. How's that for an image to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

To think that a bunch of chaste old men, who supposedly had no working knowledge of any of this, sat around and came up with a calendar that helped their flock not get pregnant. Maybe I am missing the point of being a good Catholic. As convoluted as that chart is, I can see why so many Catholic families are huge. Unless Dad is one Hell of an Iron Man, the last thing he will want to do is look at a calendar when his horns stiffen up. Unless it's that power tool calendar he has secreted away in his "Man Space". The one with the lucious young ladies holding jackhammers and big wrenches, whispering for you to use this for those big nuts and all the while wearing but a couple of strings and a smile.

"Jeez Darlin, my body says yes, but the calendar says no. I'll be right back."

Yeah I can't see that happening. And thus the idea of 8 is not enough was born.

I dunno, but I would be extremely suspicious of a bunch of tensed up guys wearing robes who, up to this point, coined expressions like "Go forth and multiply", "Don't touch that, you'll grow hair on your palms, or one of my favorites, "Girls, never pee in the men's room. The toilet seat might get you pregnant." Any plan they come up with just has to have some serious flaws. By design or not, I would not be the first couple on the block to trust that this might even work.

Interlude
While I actually look up "Inspirate". Hang in there. Be right back...................................................Well, W is going to have to find a new word to relay his feelings of being divinely prompted. There's "inspiration", "inspire", "inspirational", "inspirable", "inspirer", and last and maybe least, "Inspiratory", a word that means whatever you want it too as long as you breathe in while doing it. But no "Inspirate". Interlude over. Post over.


Keep it 'tween the Ditches.

CRUM


PS
I walked away from this for a couple of hours after I finished whatever it is you want to call what is above. How it turned out and what it says is directly related to the words as they formed but before the censors got wind of them. Maybe it was watching the Sam Kinison video I found over to El Cerdo Ignatius . Residuals from laughing harder than I have in at least a couple of hours. Or I really am an escapee from the basket weaving class over to The R.U. Madd Memorial Asylum. You will make up your mind and hopefully have enough left to help me to make up mine. If I can find it that is.

Oh, and apologies to Mr Ignatius. I see that he says he is a devout Catholic. Remember, the Church encourages forgiveness, especially towards swamp rat heathens such as myself. Honestly, we really cannot help ourselves. Says so right in the Bible somewhere. I read part of a review once and they covered that. I will assume Mr Ignatius' devoutness will soften any hard feelings I may have conjured up. ;) Pigs Rule!!!!

And no. I am not drunk. I am not stoned. This is a normal day for me. Gave up the demon rum a long time ago. And kinda, mostly, almost all the time gave up being stoned. Hey, a mild sensation once in awhile doesn't make me want your daughter any more than I do now. Okay, Okay. I will stop now. Well aimed lightening is about to strike.

See Ya.

6 comments:

Gary ("Old Dude") said...

"Inspirate"----hot damn a new word, and created by somebody I call friend----it certainly makes this almost virgin blogger all excited and tingly----(usually a sign of an being in a inspirated condition----ready to blog, the event preceding it known as an "Inspirator"----not to be confused with "Conspirator" which is something totally different,and I have no idea why you would confuse the two??----(will go take my meds now)

Gary
http://threescoreplusten.blogspot.com/

El Cerdo Ignatius said...

I dunno, but I would be extremely suspicious of a bunch of tensed up guys wearing robes who, up to this point, coined expressions like "Go forth and multiply", "Don't touch that, you'll grow hair on your palms, or one of my favorites, "Girls, never pee in the men's room. The toilet seat might get you pregnant." Any plan they come up with just has to have some serious flaws. By design or not, I would not be the first couple on the block to trust that this might even work.

Just a small point: I'm not sure ALL of those bits of advice come from the Church.

Oh, and apologies to Mr Ignatius. I see that he says he is a devout Catholic. Remember, the Church encourages forgiveness, especially towards swamp rat heathens such as myself. Honestly, we really cannot help ourselves. Says so right in the Bible somewhere. I read part of a review once and they covered that. I will assume Mr Ignatius' devoutness will soften any hard feelings I may have conjured up. ;) Pigs Rule!!!!

"I read part of a review once and they covered that." Good heavens, man, I laughed almost as hard at that as I did at the Sam-Kinison-on-the-Tonight-Show video you mentioned! Hahahahahahaha!!!

In all seriousness, you may hold whatever (and pardon the pun here) conceptions and misconceptions about the Church that you wish. Doesn't bother me a bit and there are no hard feelings. I cannot guarantee being able to hold back the angry adherents among my colleagues at Opus Dei, though, so you may want to stay alert. In your favour, their calls to holiness in the ordinary life shall likely prevent them from doing any real harm other than that caused by piercing, disapproving stares as they pass through Acton.

I usually don't enjoy debating or discussing religion. But I'll willfully, and in a spirit of respect, take a look at three other points you make:

It has some secret square days squeezed in between the high risk days for those who want to live on the edge.

You mean to tell me that you're just learning about the "secret square" days now? After all these years? Wow. Look, an open secret: ain't nothin' better than the dangerous feeling one gets on the secret square days.

But then I am an ex ex-Catholic married but not married to a former catholic but now booted out because of a thing called divorce. I have been living in Sin for 28 years and my daughter is a bastard. How's that for an image to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

I am certainly not going to try to sugar-coat the way Catholic canon law treats marriage and divorce. The only things I would say here are that even the most conservative clergymen I know feel nothing but sympathy for someone who has gone through the pain of divorce. As for children, no child is denied any right or benefit or Sacrament of the Church, nor does any receive any label, such as the one you use, even if the child's parents are unmarried or in a marriage not recognized by canon law. The term "bastard", which is uncommon nowadays, was more of a civil legal term with many consequences in days gone by. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution pretty much squelched the term, as a legal one, forever.

Maybe I am missing the point of being a good Catholic. As convoluted as that chart is, I can see why so many Catholic families are huge.

By historical standards, Catholic families today are much smaller than they used to be. Modernity is a bigger draw than obligations of the faith. My family of four children is considered a large family today.

For the "Pigs Rule!" remark, I will submit your implied application to my fellow pigs to have you join our brotherhood. "Crum the Pig", or pretty much any name you choose, would have a nice ring to it.

Respectfully yours,
Ignatius Pig, Esq.

P.S. I shall pray for your conversion. :-D

Dawn Fortune said...

Wow. Been raining a while down there, has it? Gone a little stir-crazy indoors of a Sunday afternoon? Yikes.

MRMacrum said...

My wife grew up Catholic and attended Mass dutifully and Catholic schools through High School. My sister in law had the same upbringing. Both of solid if somewhat twisted Irish stock. I always knew of the Rhythm Method as I also dated a devout Catholic who loved living on the edge during those "secret square" days. I actually poached the term from her.

I really like Catholics. I just have issues with the guys in the funny hats. Like their attitude toward divorce. Time to fire off some new canons I think. The fact that the church my wife grew up in rejects her now for having divorced kinda bothers me.

It's odd but I actually like the latin Mass better than english. I can imagine anything I want about what they are saying. And I really think the sin release clause is right handy. A few Hail Marys and your slate is clean for the next round of debauchery.

Believe it or not, I was sort of like Kinison. In a good clean anal retentive Episcapol way. I was an Alcolyte (alter boy) and actually considered briefly making it my life. But then I discovered girls, drugs, and caught the Priest stepping out on his ole lady. Had my crisis of faith early and never looked back.

Unknown said...

I've had one of those crazy weekends that's all about Work. Work. Work. This post made me laugh from beginning to end. And this may well be the most entertaining three sentences, ever, from Lost in the Bozone:

"Unless Dad is one Hell of an Iron Man, the last thing he will want to do is look at a calendar when his horns stiffen up. Unless it's that power tool calendar he has secreted away in his "Man Space". The one with the lucious young ladies holding jackhammers and big wrenches, whispering for you to use this for those big nuts and all the while wearing but a couple of strings and a smile."

Brilliant. Thanks for the early morning laugh.

toklas

Anonymous said...

Catholics refer to the rhythm method as "Vatican Roulette" .... and to Opus Dei (God's work) as Oopus Dei (God's mistake) ....