Category: Miscellaneous

Michael Barber has memed me with a spiritual devotion meme, so here goes:

1. Favorite devotion or prayer to Jesus.
The Chaplet of Divine Mercy.

2. Favorite Marian devotion or prayer.
It’s a mix between an individual Hail Mary, the Rosary, and the Memorare. I have different occasions on which I say each of these.

3. Do you wear a scapular or medal?
I have, but not at present.

4. Do you have holy water in your home?
Yes, including a bottle with water from Lourdes.

5. Do you "offer up" your sufferings?
Yes. This is something I often do for various intentions, including in a general way for my own sanctification and for the salvation of souls.

6. Do you observe First Fridays and First Saturdays?
I have not yet explored these devotions.

7. Do you go to Eucharistic Adoration? How Frequently?
Yes, though the frequency varies.

8. Are you a Saturday evening Mass person or a Sunday morning Mass person?
Neither. I don’t have a set Mass time on weekends. I normally go either late Sunday morning or early Sunday afternoon. (I like to sleep in after square dancing Saturday night.) If there’s a special reason, I sometimes go to Saturday evening Mass (before dancing).

9. Do you say prayers at mealtime?
Yes, though as part of my diet, I don’t do full-blown meals (makes you too hungry and puts you at risk of eating more than you mean to). Instead, I snack, trying to eat the minimum needed to satisfy hunger at the moment (followed by fiber). Because I don’t have a formal meal time, I may forget to pray, so what I do is say "Lord, bless this, and all I eat and drink," including the last part to cover those times I forget. When eating with others, of course, I do the "Bless us, O Lord."

10. Favorite saints.
Mary, Paul, Peter, Luke, Justin Martyr, Augustine, Jerome, Patrick, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Gianna Molla.

11. Can you recite the Apostles’ Creed by heart?
Yes, but I have to fight myself not to get it mixed up with clauses from the Nicene Creed.

12. Do you usually say short prayers (aspirations) during the course of the day?
Yes, very frequently.

13. Bonus Question: When you pass by an automobile accident or other serious mishap, do you say a quick prayer for the folks involved?
Yes. I also pray for the people involved whenever I hear a siren (police car, ambulance, fire engine) going by. I generally say "Lord, please help the people involved, and all in similar situations." The clause "and all in similar situations" is something I often try to add whenever I’m praying for someone who has a special need or is dealing with a special problem.

I don’t tag specific people, so in keeping with the Akin Meme Mutation, I hereby meme anybody who wants to be memed.

JA.O has run pictures before of the work of sand-sculptor extraordinaire Steven D. Greydanus.

But he’s got competition in the field of religious sand sculpting.

Here’s hoping you’ll take on a challenge like this one, Steve!

SOURCE.

It’s obviously of a couple at their wedding, but who?

Hard to guess, ain’t it?

Well, here’s a clue–a photo taken last month with the grandkids . . .

If that ain’t enought, I’ll just tell you who it is: It’s Janet and Steve Ray.

Today–Monday–is their 30th anniversary.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, GUYS! MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

GET THE (JOYFUL) STORY!

I haven’t posted here at JA.O for a bit, having been busy with "life stuff"… family, art competitions, inner ear gremlins… but thought I would check in and spout off on a few things just because I can;

The Mid Term Elections – This reminds me of an exchange I saw on an episode of the Andy Griffith Show; Founders Day is coming up and someone asks "Who’s going to be Potato Queen this year?" and Andy answers something to the effect of "Well, I don’t know… who’s turn is it?". It’s now the Democrats’ turn. I just wish we had more than two girls from which to choose our Potato Queen.

Ojay’s Book – Does this whole thing sort of disprove the idea that protests don’t work and only serve to give the protestee free publicity? People hollered and complained and the thing got torpedoed – sounds good to me. Now we need to get that nasty black book out of Wal-Mart.

Playstation Craziness – Can’t they find a better way to do this? Isn’t it a bit ironic to crush and pummel others for the chance to buy a Tickle Me Elmo? How about this… the store hands out lottery tickets (one per customer, checked against a database) in the weeks leading up to the release of the game. On that day they hold a raffle in the parking lot and call out the names of the winners. They then invite everyone inside for free hot cocoa or – for you city folk – a latte. This ought to make everyone happy and avoid the frightening crowd scenes reminiscent of a European soccer match. Unless, you know, people are just that nuts for hot cocoa.

B16 in Turkey – Now here’s a man’s man… into the teeth of the storm. Please join me in praying a Rosary for his safety and that he will be powerfully used by Christ on this trip.

The Portrait (above) – Warning: Shameless Self Promotion – Why did I post this? Only because it is my latest portrait (still wet) and because my portrait prices are RIDICULOUSLY LOW right now. So low that I am loath to advertise them publicly (I have my reputation to think about). I am also offering my regular still-life pieces at a mere fraction of the website price for readers of JA.O. Just mention that you saw this on Jimmy’s blog. See, I am keen to make some extra money to get the missus a nice anniversary bauble. 25 years and not so much as a stray smooch. She really deserves something special for putting up with me… you have no idea…

Visit my WEBSITE, or e-mail me at timjonesart@yahoo.com

As long-time readers know, I am an enthusiastic square dancer.

I go dancing several times a week (in addition to keeping up the blog). At my peak, I danced five nights a week, though in a major metropolitan area like San Diego you can go seven nights a week if you want to.

Lately, I’ve pulled back and have also focused on learning to round dance.

Over the summer, I pulled back to the extent that I didn’t regularly go to the club I’m formally a member of–the Alpine Squares–which meets on Friday nights. So I hadn’t been there in a while.

But I got a letter telling me about an important club meeting that was coming up on November 17, and I went.

After we were done dancing for the evening (and square dancing is MORE FUN THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE–join your local club AS SOON as they start a new class!), we held the meeting, and it became clear that the principal thing the club needed was to elect a new board that included new blood among the officers.

In most social clubs, people don’t want to put themselves forward as potential officers, and so getting new officers is hard.

I would have been willing to serve in any office that the club needed filled, but I was embarrassed to put myself forward since I hadn’t been attending regularly of late.

The meeting began, and during it I asked a number of questions that I hoped were helpful.

I was trying to steel my nerve to volunteer for secretary or treasurer, though I was embarrassed to do so.

Then people who had served as officers in the past volunteered for these positions, and I thought, "Well, that’s it for me. Those are the only positions I could conceivably volunteer for."

And then a former president of the club turned to me and said, "Jimmy, what I want to know is: Would you be willing to step forward for the office of president?"

I was flabbergasted.

I said I was hesitant to volunteer for anything, given my attendance over the summer, but I like the club and want to do whatever it needs. And maybe I would be a good secretary or treasurer, but I was willing to do whatever the club needed.

So she said, "All in favor of Jimmy being president say ‘Aye.’"

And people shouted "Aye!" and raised their hands.

After we talked about it for a bit, I said, "I’m not sure there was a majority," and they shouted "Aye!" all the louder and more people raised their hands.

At the end of the meeting there was a voice vote on the entire slate of candidates, and it passed without opposition.

And then everyone congratulated me and my fellow officers elect.

So now I’m the president elect.

Come January, I will be the new president of Alpine Squares and will do my best to serve the club.

But it’s something I was not expecting.

Please pray for me and support your local (INCREDIBLY FUN!) square dance club.

When it comes to the culinary arts, presentation is not everything, but it is something.

Kentucky Fried Chicken seems to have forgotten this.

Lately I’ve been seeing ads for what KFC calls its "Famous Bowls."

That itself is offputting. I always hate it when marketers suddenly proclaim some newly invented product that nobody has ever heard of before "famous." Fame is not something you can simply proclaim right out the gate. It is something that only can be known with the passage of time, and it is a form of dehumanizing marketing that treats consumers as objects rather than subjects to proclaim something "famous" from the very first moment it is released to the public.

Same thing goes for declaring things "hits" or "best-sellers" before they are, in fact, hits or best-sellers. I remember back in 1978, when the original (and ultra-campy) Battlestar Galactica was about to debut and I saw an add in a sci-fi magazine for some product (a toy or something) based on the "hit" TV show Battlestar Galactica–which wasn’t a hit at all in that it hadn’t even hit the airwaves yet!

Didn’t like this kind of deceptive, dehumanizing marketing then, and don’t like it now.

I suspect, however, that KFC’s "Famous" Bowls may come to be regarded with time as its infamous bowls–and for reasons that have nothing to do with the adjective.

The fact is, the product strikes me as simply disgusting. Basically, they’ve taken everything they happen to already have on hand at KFC and jammed it all into a bowl. It’s like taking everything you might eat at a KFC meal and mixing it all up together (especially onces your spoon, or fork, or spork starts digging into it).

Here’s how their web site describes it in an attempt to make it sound appetizing:

We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken. Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend. It’s all your favorite flavors coming together.

Seeing the thing doesn’t make it seem any more appetizing:

If you see them layering these things together one at a time in a TV ad, it’s even more disgusting.

This morning at Catholic Answers, two of my colleagues and I were discussing this, and we were all appalled at the fact KFC would even consider marketing something like this. One of my colleagues referred to it as "a heart attack in a bowl."

(Which is not surprising since sudden, massive jolts of carbohydrates can cause arrhythmias–one of the reasons heart attacks spike after Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

They don’t exactly make finding the nutritional information on this monster easy, but if you poke around enough, you can come up with it. Here are the stats:

Calories: 720
Fat: 32 grams (that’s half the fat the USDA wants you to have in a day)
Saturated Fat: 9 grams (again, that’s half the saturated fat the USDA recommends for a whole day)
Cholesterol: 65 milligrams
Sodium: 2390 milligrams (that’s all the salt you’re supposed to have for a whole day)
Carbohydrates: 81 grams (it takes me three days to eat that many on my diet)
Protein: 29 grams
SOURCE.

So . . . you wolf one of these things down at lunch and your system gets hit with a massive load of fat, carbohydrates, and salt all at once. Just what your heart and circulatory system needs.

This bad boy is thus high-fat, high-carb, high-salt. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

But the most startling thing is not how unhealthy the "Famous" Bowls are. It’s the idea that KFC would think that people would actually find this combination appetizing.

Yes, I know that when you eat a meal it all goes to one place and gets mixed up there, but–as I noted at the outset–presentation is an important part of the culinary arts, and this product completely ignores that fact in a lazy attempt to get a new product by simply dumping ingredients they already have on hand into a bowl.

I might not have had a problem (when I was on a high-carb diet) eating deep-fried, breaded chicken and mashed potatoes at the same meal, but I didn’t want deep-fried breaded chunks of chicken in my mashed potatoes. Nor do I want gravy on corn or cheese on gravy.

YUCK!

So while what you eat does all go to one place, I have no desire whatsoever to eat a KFC version of "Stomach in a Bowl."

Now, I know what you’re thinking: De gustibus non disputandum est, interpreting rhe de gustibus part quite literally in this case.

I’m sure that KFC has done some market research that shows at least some people will like this thing. Some here on the blog may even find it appetizing. But I can’t shake the feeling here that we’re looking at a potential marketing disaster.

I mean, not one of "New Coke" caliber, but . . . say . . . the kind of product flop that met Ray Kroc when he found his burger sales plummeting in Catholic areas in Lent back in the 1950s and–since he didn’t want to allow his McDonalds’ restaurants to sell fish sandwiches so that fish would be "stinking up the place," he proposed an alternative and let the customers decide which they preferred.

Which did they prefer?

Let’s just say that McDonalds started serving Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.

It bugs me, too–though I suspect not for the same reason it bugs PETA.

GET THE STORY.

GET THE STORY!

Mother and baby both doing fine!

I haven’t decided how often to have prayer request posts here on the blog (probably not every week as was suggested, but once in a while).

I’d like to begin one today, though, and with a special prayer request of my own: SDG and his wife are expecting a new baby and, since the little one is significantly overdue, they are finally having labor induced today. I’d like to ask folks to pray for the safe delivery of mother and baby.

So that’s my prayer intention.

Please use the combox to add your own prayer intentions.