Around the internets, Vol. 3

Welcome to another installment of (dum-ta-da-DAAAAAHH...) Around the Internets! This awesome feature is one which I originally described as "[a] quick digest of stuff which I've seen, read, noticed, thought 'Gee I ought to blog that', etc. over the last 4 or 5 months." Actually the time-frame is a bit shorter this time. So without further ado....

Firstly, it's always a good idea to check in with Sistah Raccoon in St. Francisville, Louisiana. She always has something interestin' to share with us. Her latest:

Ain't you glad you not related to Lil Ray?

Lil Ray now telling the whole world how old an feeble an helpless Big Ray be now.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher...

Old age be a humiliation, say Lil Ray. Telling about old people like Big Ray crapping they pants in the hospital. Course he telling ever body all this about Big Ray out a LOVE, you understand, umh-hnh.

Slow down, Lil Ray. You gone get all that land in good time.

Just be glad Lil Ray not telling the world what happening in YOU pants.

Whoa. Let that be a warning to all y'all who be lettin' y'all's kids borrow those bloggin' computers, let alone willing them over all that land. They'll be puttin' up pictures on billboards of you sitting in wheelchairs next!

Meanwhile, in an entirely different part of the internets which Diane pointed out to us (thanks, Diane!), there is some discussion about animals and human sexuality and Rod Dreher's take on it. Near the end of the comments, our friend Owen White reminds us of an incident in Paris back in 2012. From the link provided by Owen:

The taste was electric, almost indescribably good. It was one of the few times in my life when the experience of tasting something delicious made me feel a sense of exaltation. They were like cold sea grenades exploding in my mouth, bursting with saline, iodine, and that metallic taste you only find in oysters. I slurped them from the half-shell, holding them in my mouth longer than usual to savor the new sensations. I have never, ever eaten oysters that prepared me for these glorious creatures. Later, I e-mailed Julie that eating French oysters was like licking the ta-tas of Poseidon’s favorite concubine. She was not amused. But it’s true! The aesthetic frisson was absolutely erotic. Dominique Strauss-Kahn lives around the corner, at the Place des Vosges; I think his proximity to Le Bar a Huitres (Oyster Bar) might explain a lot.

So why was Rod Dreher's wife not amused by his description of eating good oysters being like licking a concubine's breasts? I don't know; maybe it's because she is a Christian. Well, he went ahead and put it out there anyway, along with her reaction. I guess he has a shorter memory about this

So many times, I’ll put something on my blog, and my wife will say, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

than we do. Just for a sanity check I read this to my wife. Fortunately the floor wasn't damaged when her jaw hit it. But I have to saw that Dreher has bigger ones than me; that doghouse don't be looking too good this time of year. The obvious takeaway is this: it's okay to have sex with animals if they are dead and being served by a Parisian cook. For the record, I'm still going to pass.

This all reminded me of the time (and you'll see why in a moment) that Dreher referred to conservatives as "mongoloids" and then made the weak excuse that he meant it in "the Ignatian sense", referring to the character named Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. My memory had been jogged about a link Topix Pat provided to another man's experience with the book; excerpt:

One scene, near the beginning of the book, had an especially dizzying effect on me. (I’ve read it hundreds and hundreds of times.) It’s where we find Ignatius practicing a little "self-love" in his bed; an innocent, even saintly, wank to a happier time in his life. He had accessories nearby: a rubber glove, a piece of fabric from a silk umbrella, and a jar of Noxzema:

Ignatius manipulated and concentrated. At last a vision appeared, the familiar figure of the large devoted collie that had been his pet in high school...Ignatius’s eyes dilated, crossed, and closed, and he lay back among his four pillows, hoping that he had some Kleenex in his room.

This is the page where I went fag. The solitude and isolation, the very sadness of it all, didn’t turn me off—on the contrary, it was the hook. Sex scenes had always been filled with gorgeous people. Ignatius wasn’t gorgeous. But he was sexual. I think it must have been the first time, in literature or film or life, when it occurred to me these were two different things. It was loud and clear. I had been fooling myself. I wanted something else from the Ignatiuses of the world. Something if much more than hugs.

So we find out now that the inspiration for Dreher's famous referring to conservatives as "mongoloids" is a grown man with over-valued intelligence who thinks about the collie he had as a boy while he is "practicing a saintly wank". I don't know if everyone who reads A Confederacy of Dunces becomes a homosexual the way Giancarlo DiTrapano says he did, but it's probably not worth the risk. At any rate, this might explain why the topic of sex with animals is of interest to the Working Boy; it's been in his wheelhouse for a long time, or so it would seem.

By the way, you all might want to give that entire oysters post a read. It has a lot of interesting material about going to a Novus Ordo Mass celebrated in Latin in Paris and how great it was. I think it's just one more piece of evidence that, like Casella noted, Mr. Dreher remains "culturally Catholic" no matter how incessantly he insists that he's not.

Update: Pikkumatti has provided a pertinent link with this very interesting selfie. (Title translation: Ignatius, my love)