Clothes Done Right

August 6th, 2009

I figure speaking at an event with the words “World” and “Congress” in the title means I get to buy a new garment. So on Tuesday, I went to my local clothier for a really top-notch shirt. He looked at my coat and ties, picked one out, and told me the stripes are pronounced enough to tell everyone I’m the latest young hotshot, but restrained enough to put it respectfully. Here’s our post-purchase banter:

Ditch: “…and I think I’ll be back soon for pants. You warned me not to buy clothes in malls, and I did anyway, and the seam opened at the pocket after a week.”

Stitch: “Yeah, you know, I just can’t remember the last time I went to a discount superstore for thyroid surgery, either.”

I will most certainly be back for pants.

Say What?

August 3rd, 2009

On the top of Google’s listing for weird emails today:

Dear Father,

Bad news: When I set the tenth Sunday after Pentecost as the first day for the Kinkoriites to sing the Propers, I’d forgotten that my boss is expecting me to attend the World Congress on Thyroid Cancer in Toronto. So I probably can’t make it. I am raking south-western Ontario for a replacement cantor for you. Very sorry for the mess.

In Christo,

Ditch

Friday

August 2nd, 2009

Certainly, the chief purpose of Friday abstinence is penance, but let’s not forget the collateral benefits of leisure and luxury. If you don’t know what I mean, then sit on your front porch next Friday at supper time with a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, an apple and a mug of beer, and eat them slowly. Here is real leisure: there was no cooking, and there will be no dishes to wash. And here is luxury: at the end of a day without beef, you remember just how delicious an apple tastes. A good Friday meal is not a wallowing in culinary gloom, but a reminder of the extravagance of God’s smaller gifts, in the light of which you can see the bigger ones more clearly. No one enjoys the filet mignon so well as the one who revels in the potato next to it.

Summer Recipe

August 2nd, 2009

1. Leave thick-skinned onions on the barbeque at medium-high heat until they burst.

2. Add butter, salt and pepper.

3. Feast.

Cursum Consummavi

July 28th, 2009

You know you’re sick when the surgeon tells you that if your couple of cigarettes a day are a small pleasure to you, he won’t ask you to quit.

Perspective

July 28th, 2009

The best thing about working in a head and neck oncology clinic is meeting patients with missing eyes, throats, ears and even noses, whose voices sound like well-controlled burps, who cough thick mucus from holes in their chests, and who are more visibly cheerful to be alive than I am.

CMAA Sacred Music Colloquium 2009

June 30th, 2009

And here’s how you all should have spent this past week:

Keep an eye on Corpus Christi Watershed, who put together this video. They were taping all week, and I hope they’ll have more to offer soon.

Humour at the Bottom

June 30th, 2009

Then there was the aboriginal woman I picked up during paramedic preceptorship a few blocks from the notorious intersection of Hastings and Main in Vancouver. We found her lying in pain half on, half off her bed, surrounded by well used crack pipes, roaches, empty prescription bottles and a brand new box of needles she could only have stolen from a hospital. A stream of limp complaint poured slowly from her mouth. Her back hurt. Her head hurt. Her stomach hurt. She felt weak. She couldn’t walk upright. In the ambulance, I started a brief medical history, but ran out of paper before it was half done. She had diabetes, hypertension, depression and asthma. She was in an abusive relationship. “My kitney’s are no koot. My heart’s no koot either. My liver’s no koot.” (”Big surprise,” I thought.) “But my onions are OK.” My pen hovered over the paper as I pondered what organs she could possibly be calling onions, and I looked up just in time to catch her sharing a knowing grin with my preceptor. She nodded in my direction. “Blondy’s a little slow on the uptake.” The car errupted in laughter at my expense, and we traded jokes for the rest of the trip to St. Paul’s, most of them too off-colour to post on a Catholic blog. We left her to entertain the ER nurses, and for the rest of the shift, no one called me by my Christian name: ‘Blondy’ was more than sufficient.

On Sandwiches

June 29th, 2009

The more Chesterton I read, the less that unmistakable smell of a Subway joint reminds me of food.

A Rare Linguistic Beast

April 21st, 2009

In a feat of ipsiflagellant Narcissism that shouldn’t be possible in only four words, the seemingly innocent phrase “free gift with purchase” manages both to restate itself unnecessarily and to contradict itself. Which makes it a redundant oxymoron. The species remains on the endangered list, but shows signs of vitality that give preservationists reason to hope for an eventual recovery.