Ămǝ-tŭr' Kăth'ǝ-lǐk

  Used according to Creative Commons image by alabos life No alterations made to this image other than resizing. "We're just two straight dudes having dinner together" my friend sheepishly said as the waitress sat us down at our table. It was an innocent and joking comment from my friend that in some sense was meant to be taken lightly, but at the same time meant to express to those around us that we were indeed not homosexuals on a date.  However, my friend felt the need to make this comment on more than one occasion when I have met up with him for a quick bite when I was in his area of town. Even more recently, I grabbed a burger with a different friend who managed to convince the waitress to give him a free milkshake, and my friend jokingly asked for two straws for the free milkshake: one for him and one for her.  It took a moment for her to realize what was said because she was at first excited, then immediately disappointed: excited because she thought we wer...

There is a current trend in young adult literature in the mass production of what is styled as “dystopian literature.” One must wonder as to the popularity of these novels especially amongst political seasons, that whether or not it is an admission or at least an acknowledgment that Oceania is no more dystopian than the United States of America. In reality, the great crisis of nations and governments is that they have always been in crisis and are all a little dystopian.  Though there is no real proposed cure other than a violent regime change, I'd like to propose a fleeting thought of mine that Shakespeare might might serve as a kind of remedy or at least a catalyst of change for dystopia. When St. Thomas More wrote Utopia, the name for the literary genre from which we owe the negation of More’s famous work, he was writing about a no place, a nowhere, in space and time that was far from an idealistic society free of injustices. This point is missed by many high school teacher...

"But how do we find a guy who is Catholic and has all those values," one of my female students asked.  It was a similar desire expressed by a couple of the ladies in the Dating Project documentary.  One of the ladies, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of my students have been in similar experiences, during the DP documentary shared a story about how she met a guy on a currently popular dating hook-up sex , I don't know, some app where people meet for things that pose for dates but aren't really dates.  I think the app began with a "T' and ended with an "inder". Anyway, she said how she went on a couple of real dates with this guy, then by about the third date she and her match talked about sex.  She told her match that she was waiting.  Well, the guy got out of dodge faster than a Usain Bolt winning a gold, and later he ghosted her.  The clip ended with her lamenting as to where are the guys who have values and standards and are Catholic.  ...