Thoughts of a Canary

This blog has been petering off of late. That's such a weird phrase. A long time ago I guess there was some guy named Peter who had serious issues following through with things.  So it's been a busy few months. I've had a lot of thoughts to write down, but little desire to make the time to do so  I suppose that might be because every time I decided to write on a topic I had been thonking about a new one took hold all the more strongly. To reflect that I thought that it might be a good idea to tweak my TOC format a bit.  This blog is titled thoughts of a canary; what greater aptitude could there be than to give a bulleted list of my thoughts once a week! So please text/phone/email/carrier pigeon me your thoughts on the format tweak. You can tell me that A) You like it B) You love it or C) You only read this because I constantly pressure you to do so.  So without further ado, here's your 4/27/15 TOC: •Sexism is discrimination because of the sex of the person. The liber...

I had a good Lent. I think I benefitted from this Lent in a few different ways. Why, then, did Easter feel almost like a letdown??? I was at P3 last week (Prayer, Penance, Pub) and the priest giving the talk to all of us young people said something that I could really relate to. He said "It's easier to be holy during Lent." That's it. Pretty simple.  I look forward to Lent every year; it's actually my favorite ecclesiastical season (the hipster in me). The reason I enjoy it so much is that subconsciously I recognize that it brings us back to our roots as human beings.  Something I've mentioned in a couple of posts in the past is how radically the speed of our gratification has increased with the technology boom of the 2000s. Want to watch a show with your friends? You can watch the whole season in a day. Would you like to ask someone a question? Hit a couple buttons and it's sent.  What this power has done in the members of our culture is, in a word, coddl...

Happy Ash Wednesday to everyone! The advent of the Hipster Uprising has brought many unpopular things to the forefront of the trendy parade for the sake of simple irony. It's really quite amusing and for those in less urban areas completely unintelligible. Unfortunately this ironic effect is spilling over into the ancient and aesthetic Christian observance of Lent.  The purpose of Lent to the Chrisitan faithful is simply to unite with the sufferings of Jesus through sacrifice, and gain virtue through habitual practice of this sacrifice. I'll come right out and say we ourselves have lost the forest by focusing on the trees in this ecclesiastical season.  As a disclaimer this post is not directed at any individual or group of individuals, except for the group of Christians as a whole. It's a trend I've seen in myself and others, and it's gotten to a point where it's absurdity needs to be proclaimed.  We have all become a people of excuses.  In the time period wher...

There are very few things that I have found to be universally loved by humankind. While we have disagreements about things we fundamentally disagree on, we also have enjoy having fundamental disagreements about things we agree on simply for the sake of argument. We even gave this a fun name: Trolling. Anyone that has taken philosophy (read that in a snobbish voice) knows that there are some fundamentals that we have clung to for dear life through historical de-culturalizations, renaissances, and dark ages. As individuals we have disagreed on so much that in the past twenty years especially we have had to bring to the forefront some mutual human feeling so that we don't lose our kinship with one another. In the 1930s and 40s it was Nationalism, in the 60s it was free "love", etc. In spite of (and more to the point because of) this ramification of human identification, and in deference to the careful "tolerant" and "morally neutral" culture we've...