More and More Trouble...By Ancient Greek Philosopher and Everglade

"THE CURSE OF CHESTERTON
PART TWO

The saga continues...

"Hello?"

"Is this Mrs. Winter."

"Right-o!"

"WE'VE FOUND YOUR SON!!!!"

"My goodness!!! Where is he? What happened?"

"Well it's quite an anomaly. We located him hitchhiking along the highway. He seems to be experiencing some form of amnesia. The only thing he seems to remember is a strong dislike for a fellow named Chesterton. Apparently he was preparing to organize a rally of Chesterton haters. Does this seem at all like him?"

"..."

AND SO THE PLOT THICKENS!

"B-b-but I don't understand! He is (insanely, profusely, utterly, and all-consumingly) OBSESSED with Chesterton!"

"Obsessed with disgracing him, apparently."

"No, no, no! This just isn't like him at all! Here, let me show you his library of Chesterton."

"If you insist."

Gazing at the complete works of Chesterton adorning Evan's walls, suddenly Mrs. Winter spots a small piece of paper thrust between two of Chesterton's books. She snatches it up, quite puzzled, and reads:

THE SECOND HALF OF CHESTERTON'S DYING WISH

I have made my opinions toward dancing as intelligible and non-negotiable as is humanly possible. Therefore, if any of my devoted reads fail to comply with my dying wish, they will receive the following fate. I shall disown them completely. They will no longer be considered enthusiasts of my work. Not only this, but they will find themselves at the opposite extreme, spending the rest of their days intent on smearing my name and my writing, until the day they chose to attend contra dances. Some may never be redeemed, but some I'm sure will see the light.

From G.K. Chesterton:

A note regarding contra dancing:

I have expressed my deep desire for my followers to participate in the form of American folk dance (derived from French and English folk dances) called Contra Dancing. Failure to comply ostracizes the guilty party from the nations of England, France, and the United States. The first stage of this deportation is the participation of a reformation class in Florence Italy. The next stages are to be determined by my associates."

A note from OFL

Oh dear! Chesterton is against vocations to the priesthood! Hee Hee :)! Priests and seminarians aren't supposed to dance, you know (at least, not in my diocese).

The title is the link.

A link to a blog with a link toan essay inspired by the ideas from a chapter in a dissertation written by a
fan of Chesterton.

When your friends don't like Chesterton as much as you do...

Thought you might want to see this joke. I couldn't just post a link because it was on an readers-by-invitation-only blog.

Saturday, May 2, 2009
Chesterton's Dying Wish

To be obeyed to the letter:

"In an attempt to combat the pessimism of our current society, it is my expressed last wish that all of my readers display their joyful spirit by attending a form of both English and French folk dancing known as contra dancing at least once a month. Those who do not comply will lose all understanding of my works. This applies specifically to the founders of my societies at universities in Lincoln Nebraska."

Note: This quote is not intended for all of our blog authors, only the parties of whom it specifies.

Another note: This is a joke .
Posted by Ancient Greek Philosopher

THE CURSE OF CHESTERTON

"When exactly was the last time you saw young Evan?"

"I---I... I think, it was last Saturday."

"Last Saturday?"

"Y-yes."

"Please stay calm madam. What were the last words you remember him saying?"

"He was talking with his friends Aaron on the phone about how he didn't want to go to contra dance. I remember he became very angry and started yelling at poor Aaron, to make sure Aaron understood his true feeling towards dance."

"I see."

"He slammed the phone down and stormed out the door... and I haven't seen him since! I told him over and over he should have listened to Aaron. He offered such wise words! Evan knew the dangers of skipping out on his contra dancing duties, but he was reckless enough to ignore them!"

"Thank you for you time. We hope to locate your son soon, though be prepared for the worst."

*See previous post*
Labels: Propaganda


posted by Everglade @ 11:04 AM 9 Comments

Saturday, May 2, 2009
Chesterton's Dying Wish

To be obeyed to the letter:

"In an attempt to combat the pessimism of our current society, it is my expressed last wish that all of my readers display their joyful spirit by attending a form of both English and French folk dancing known as contra dancing at least once a month. Those who do not comply will lose all understanding of my works. This applies specifically to the founders of my societies at universities in Lincoln Nebraska."

Note: This quote is not intended for all of our blog authors, only the parties of whom it specifies.

Another note: This is a joke .

The Joke's on Chesterton

Here's some Chestertonian humor (meaning about Chesterton, not from him).

1. Three Scots are going to play a musical trio. It is written for Bagpipe, Tuba, and Bells. Being a valuble family heirloom, the bagpipe is kept in an old trunk. The tuba of course is very heavy. One of the players, while asking the other two what instrument they want, stubs his toe. This is what he says:

"Dee yee want the instrument o' chest, or ton, or Bell...Och!"

2. Q. If Mrs. Chesterton had had a child, and they had gone to play at a playground, and Mrs. Chesterton had died from playing to hard, what would we call her?
A. St. Frances of A See-Saw.

3. A not-so-absurd sentence:

To the painted Ball, add a White Worse with A Piece of Chalk; make it Leap into a
fence, Or, though ducks be in it, a lake (for the purpose of removing insects from its hide; make sure the ticks are in the hair, not the Hair on ticks).

Gype...not yet

I did a google search for gype, to see if I could find the rules or compile them from all the Original Chestertonian sources. If you type in

"gype chesterton -"Dr. Thursday"" you get about 170 answers.

Paradoxically, if you type in "gype chesterton -"Dr. Thursday" -aaa" you get about 101 answers.

The sites that were excluded when you typed in -aaa were sites that seemed to be lists of all the words there are in alphabetical order.

I also learned that practically the only things you find on google are blogs that mention gype but tell you nothing about it, G.K. Chesterton's autobiography, and Maisie Ward's biography of Chesterton.

I also found:

Lawrence D PO Box 635 Chesterton IN 46304-0635 26421 Andersen Paul Frank ...... Olmsted OH 44070 50920 Gype Lawrence Keith 5980 Whiteford Dr. Highland ...

Apparently, someone has actually played this game within the last 10 years and it involved water pistols as a form of punishment for the outside version and scrabble letters for the inside version.

It is my personal conclusion that gype is a game for which the rules are to be decided democratically by the players. The idea of the game is absurdity. The game is meant to be adapted to the situation. Apparently, Chesterton's sedentary version was meant to be a visual-spatial strategy game. If you can find, in Chesterton's works, more descriptions of the game then the ones I found, I might try to give you a set of real rules.

It is my personal recommendation that we, as the Innocent-Smith style nation of "The Flying-Ins," form our own official set of rules so that we may play it over the internet or take it to the next convention.

A Couple of Quotes

I've been reading The Wisdom and Innocence (highly reccomended by the way) and I found this quote from The Thing: Why I am a Catholic. I certainly can not claim to fully understand it, but I thought it was worthy of being posted here:

In short, what the critics would call romanticism is in fact the only form of realism. It is also the only form of rationalism. The more a man uses his reason upon realities, the more he will see that the realities remain much the same… If the real girl is experiencing a real romance, she is experiencing something old, but not something stale. If she has plucked something from a real rose-tree, she is holding a very ancient symbol, but a very recent rose. And it is exactly in so far as a man can clear his head, so as to see actual things as they are, that he will see these things as permanently important as they are. Exactly in so far as his head is confused with current fashion and aesthetic modes of the moment, he will see nothing about it except that it is like a picture on a chocolate box… Exactly in so far as he is thing about real people, he will see that they are really romantic. Exactly in so far as he is thinking about pictures and poems and decorative styles, he will think that romance is a false or old-fashioned style. He can only see people as imitating pictures; whereas the real people are not imitating anything. They are only being themselves- as they always be. Roses remain radiant and mysterious, however many pink rosebuds are sprinkled like pips over cheap wallpapers. Falling in love remains as radiant and mysterious, however threadbare be the thousandth repetition of a rhyme as a valentine of a cracker-motto. To see this fact is to live in a world of facts. To be always thinking of the banality of bad wallpapers and valentines is to live in a world of fiction.

I also loved this from Oscar Wilde: "A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

I just finished The Ball and the Cross today. All I can say for now is wow, but hopefully I'll manage a more complete review later on. For now, Goodnight!

Chesterton's Present to his Translators

O.k. those of you who translate, did you know that Chesterton wrote a passage especially for us?

When the linguistic symbol for fines-that-are-too-big-to-be-fines tested the depth of the water uh the language piece for Chesterton's favorite pet, the Divine Son of Horus boldly quashed a living ham as a pecattic word-diversion and gambled it. So a nearly avant-garde spiritual substance who deals in Egyptian communication fashions strength symbolize 'at once' by drawing (in the fashion of the animals in the jungles of Upton Sinclair) a cushy helmet followed by a trilogy of the purest mathematical symbol. It was saintly enough for the Divine Son of Horus, and it ought to be saintly enough for his more senile age of Father Time counterpart. But the aforementioned grown-up-version of what kindergarteners do must have been marvelously stimulating to the chemichals in the brain that cause one to feel pleasure to enscript or decipher these envoyances, when immersing quills in jet-liquid to create meaningful chicken-scratch or immersing the ocular organs in the same fowl-marks to pick meaning off their bare brances were in reality a thing whose birthday had just come...the Divine Son of Horus surrounded by his priests as a speck of clover is surrounded by agrarian weeds and the whole lot lionizing with hilarious flutters of the diaphram and fertilely ejecting bubbles of ideas as the Son's puns matured into things more immature and more tragic to adhere to."

Oops...That was the translated version. Here's the real one, taken from "The Everlasting Man."

"When the word for taxes sounded rather like the word for pig, the pharoh boldly put down a pig as a bad pun and chanced it. So a modern hieroglyphist might represent 'at once' by unscrupulously drawing a hat followed by a series of upright numerals. It was good enough for the pharoh, and it ought to be good enough for him. But it must have been great fun to write or even to read these messages, when writing and reading were really a new thing...the king among his priests and all of them roaring with laighter and bubbling over with suggestions as the royal puns grew more wild and indefensible."

A Smorgasbord...

...Just to prove that I am still alive!!! (:

Guess what, Dr. Thursday's posting again!!!!!!!!!

And I just stumbled across this, do take a look, it's quite lovely. A few of my favorite quotes:

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad . . . The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable . . . It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob . . . It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to avoid them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

-Orthodoxy

Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit; but, obviously, we must argue. Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent's faith is to say I must not discuss it . . . It is absurd to have a discussion on Comparative Religions if you don't compare them.

-The History of Religions from the Illustrated London News, October 10
1908

Catholics, I need not say, are about as likely to call the Pope God as to call a grasshopper the Pope.
- The Thing

I've probably linked to this before, but just in case I haven't, here it is now, and I must say it is inexpressibly useful.

ChesterCon talks are now available here, and next years Conference is going to be in Seattle! (You probably already knew that)

And finally don't miss The Apostle of Common Sense showing EWTN. (If you, like me, don't have cable, you can watch on the internet here.)

Today's News Update

Okey-doke, so you may have noticed, this blog has a new name. We are now The Flying-Ins, as we are so to speak "flying in" to revolutionize society. (Hat-tip: Rob MacArthur)

We also have two new members and SEVEN pending (agreed to join haven't accepted the email invitation yet)!!!!!

So, in case you can't tell, I am VERY happy, and more ChesterCon news shall hopefully follow soon.

Opera, persecution, and geometry

The jumbled thoughts of GilbertGirl and Ria after a busy day at Chestercon:

Meeting new Chestertonian teenagers, listening to entertaining and enlightening talks, delving deep into Chesterton's stunningly simple masterpiece Orthodoxy, and best of all, eating Stilton cheese while conversing with internet acquaintances are a few of the intellectual pleasures we've been enjoying these last two days.


The whole thing got off to a splendid start with Dale Ahlquist's "In defense of everything else," an introduction to Chesterton's introduction.

David Zach gave us a spirited, rousing talk (trying to keep us awake late Thursday night) all about Chesterton as a futurist, based off the chapter "The Eternal Revolution". Begginning by defining futurist, he showed how Chesterton thought about and invested in the future, emphasizing children and incorporating a slight thread of The Ethics of Elfland.

Tom Martin woke us up Friday morning with his electrically captivating "the maniac: Especially, Nietzsche". Supremely satisfying arguments concerning reason, faith, heresy, and other juicy subjects were displayed in a scholarly and Chestertonian style.

Unfortunately, we were absent for a great deal of Sean Dailey's talk regarding The Suicide of Thought. ): So despite the fact 'tis GilbertGirl's favorite chapter, and one of my favorites, we have nothing to report.

The clock stuck twelve long ago, and the princesses are late for bed, so we'll continue our summary tomorrow with Jennifer Overkamp's Fairy Tale talk.

P.s. If you're wondering about the three nouns comprising the subject, although they have not yet entered the narrative, they are what our heads are full of:)

What ho, Chesterteens!

A gleeful salutation from Mapaz, Ria, and myself, reporting from ChesterCon 2008 (also Abbreviated Algy - story pending)! Plunged in a vortex of Nietzcshe's nuttiness, stilton cheese, animate robots, and the stature of elves, we have no more time to spend at present disclosing the delights of the conference, as there are still so many to absorb, but will deliver a detiled update this evening. Until then, comrades!

Post #200!

200 posts!!!! Hurray!!!! And our second anniversary is coming up soon too! Anyways, it's thursday....

Poetry Thursday- For a War Memorial

The hucksters haggle in the mart
The cars and carts go by;
Senates and schools go droning on;
For dead things cannot die.
A storm stooped on the place of tombs
With bolts to blast and rive;
But these be names of many men
The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay
And visions view once more
Great Carthage like a golden shell
Gape hollow on the shore,
Still to the last of crumbling time
Upon this stone be read
How many men of England died
To prove they were not dead.

**************

At our catechism discussion earlier this evening GilbertGirl and I decided that the following quote from Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI was worthy of posting here:

And the Word became flesh and pitched His tent among us (John 1:14)

During the course of a jovial business meeting last night, Ria, Algernon and I innocently drove a select company of our dearest friends nearly mad by popping out with incessant Chesterton analogies, quotes, references, and paradoxes. They were always well timed, beautifully Germain to the issue, and (mostly) in good taste. Nevertheless the unenlightened members of the confab looked at us askance. Being unfamiliar with Gabriel Gale, and not versed in the Marquis de Saint Eustache's forty three replies, they did not appreciate our brilliance.

For the first five minutes, their composure was unruffled. After ten minutes they commented acidly on digressions. By fifteen, melodrama and sarcasm were being applied liberally, all to no avail. We waxed ever wittier, taking a merry stand now against the mixed pleadings and assaults. Emboldened by our self-appointed title, the CHESTERPESTS, we were unquenchable.

Desperate, our excited chums forged their own name, in hopes of stemming our spirits. Poor dears, there wasn't much to their name, still less to their argument. Neither one held out - it is a mystery whether they called themselves the non-Chesterpests or the anti-Chesterpests or the some-other-negative-Chesterpests, but no wonder it's obsolete.

Our insufferable crusade continues. We look forward to being a blight and benefit to society for many years to come.

... I tried (: