the guilt of a confessed pre-prayer

Guilt. Guilt is a major factor for me. It is something we Catholics specialize in. Sin is human. You must confess your sins. This is ingrained in you. You step out of the confessional and you glance at a young woman in your seventh grade class and her breasts are pressing up against her blouse, purchased by her parents a year before she bloomed, not replaced because it was all they could afford, nicely pressed of course, and seventh-grade-you notices perhaps too much. This is followed quickly by the realization that “damnit, now I have to get back in line. shit. it’ll have to wait until next week when we all wait in the freezing church on a wednesday morning in connecticut for confession.” And you prayed. Not to be forgiven for looking at breasts. No, you prayed that next week would not be a week when the Monsignor was working the confessional. The girls in your class were probably just as curious, although all parties too innocent to ever verify any of that. But the Monsignor, while a good and blessed man (see what I did there) did not seem so innocent on these matters. No, in fact he scared the ever living shit out of us. Me in particular I believed. I knew.

I killed time waiting for my turn in confession (never go first. you don’t want a fresh and energetic priest. you want a tired-and-i-wanna-go-back-to-the-rectory-priest) by pre-saying my prayers. I mean, I had time. You knew it was going to be some combination of Hail Mary’s (mostly) a few Our Fathers (the old-reliable) and if you were particularly bad you would get an Apostles’ Creed. And the prayers were doled out as if they were the same. (For the record, they are NOT. To say a Hail Mary, even speed-talking in your little brain can easily take 20 minutes. So the penance of “Say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys” kind of made you mad at the lady of the house.) But back to the point. I never asked if pre-saying prayers for penance counted because I didn’t want to know. I figured nobody ever told me that pre-praying explicitly was not allowed. Surely every other kid had thought of it, right? So I ran with it. I pre-prayed. This worked well and sometimes reduced post-confessional-penance to one or two prayers. I thought this must impress my teachers because they would think I was a really good kid so the priest didn’t give me much of a penance. Who doesn’t like the kid who got one Our Father and could scoot?

But I felt guilty about it.

You get over it.

No, actually you don’t.

Guilt is permanent.

Bless me Father for I have sinned….

an oversupply of women = more sexually permissive culture

Sex is cheap. And in a female dominated society, as the US is quickly becoming, men have the upper hand in bed. From the article “Sex is Cheap” on Slate:

…a significant number of young men are faring rather badly in life, and are thus skewing the dating pool. It’s not that the overall gender ratio in this country is out of whack; it’s that there’s a growing imbalance between the number of successful young women and successful young men. As a result, in many of the places where young people typically meet—on college campuses, in religious congregations, in cities that draw large numbers of twentysomethings—women outnumber men by significant margins. (In one Manhattan ZIP code, for example, women account for 63 percent of 22-year-olds.)

The idea that sex ratios alter sexual behavior is well-established. Analysis of demographic data from 117 countries has shown that when men outnumber women, women have the upper hand: Marriage rates rise and fewer children are born outside marriage. An oversupply of women, however, tends to lead to a more sexually permissive culture.

and

Michelle, a 20-year-old from Colorado, said she is in the same boat: “I had an ex-boyfriend of mine who said that, um, he didn’t know if he was ever going to get married because, he said, there’s always going to be someone better.”

and

And yet while young men’s failures in life are not penalizing them in the bedroom, their sexual success may, ironically, be hindering their drive to achieve in life. Don’t forget your Freud: Civilization is built on blocked, redirected, and channeled sexual impulse, because men will work for sex. Today’s young men, however, seldom have to.

And interesting follow on to this post on FB regarding the WSJ Where Have the Good Men Gone article.

I don’t question the game theory economics. I do find it sad. Keep the standards high ladies. For the good of the country. (via Shannon Buggs on FB)

the way that you have sex

There is an entire generation growing up that believes what you see in hard core pornography is the way that you have sex.

More: http://makelovenotporn.com/ via brain pickings. I have talked about this before.

eligible-bachelor paradox

The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox explained on Slate. Game theory is a bitch folks.

This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”

Via this thread on facebook

as such informal appearances may be thought to discredit

“… example of backstage difficulties may be cited from the contingencies of being an exalted person. Persons may become so sacred that the only fitting appearance they can make is in the center of a retinue and ceremony; it may be thought improper for them to appear before others in any other context, as such informal appearances may be thought to discredit the magical attributes imputed to them. Therefore members of the audience must be prohibited from all the places the exalted one is likely to relax in.”

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman. pg 120

ebert’s this is a dog

We look at others and think, One of / not one of us. Then we make a value judgment depending on who “us” is. Some people may look with distaste at a woman with body piercings, ripped jeans, a studded belt, a streak of chartreuse in their hair and a good-sized tattoo on their shoulder. Consider that it took that woman a good deal of time and trouble, not to say money, to leave the house looking like that this morning. She must believe there’s a show to be won. In her breed or category, that’s what the judges are looking for this year. Other people may look at a man whose job requires him to always be dressed in a certain way, like George Clooney in “Up in the Air,” and think That poor asshole. There but for the grace of God go I.

From the post this is a dog by roger ebert (via robert)