If you like bad writing...

...and if you are reading this blog, odds are you do, then you will be delighted to know the annual Bulwer Lytton fiction contest results came out.

One must be very careful when one puts pen to paper: One never knows what may come of it.  For those of you who don't know, the contest is to write the opening line of what would be the worst novel ever written. It is named after Victorian novelist Bulwer-Lytton, who gave us such lines as "The pen is mightier than the the sword," or "The Great Unwashed" or "The almighty dollar". His novels included "The Last days of Pompeii" and "The Coming Race" which, through a very twisted path, gave rise to a very nasty Nazi mysticism, all centred around the search for some mystic power Lytton named "vril". Lytton would have been horrified to know what the Nazis had done with his work, but it is possible he may have been amused that a soup stock company took his little made up word of mystic power and combine it with the Latin word for cow to name their product, suggesting they were tapping into some kind of mystic cow power, or Bovril.

His most famous line, however, came from a now forgotten novel by the name of Paul Clifford. The line, loved and parodied many times over, is the opening words of the book: "It was a dark and stormy night..."

I've been thinking about "pain management"

As the birth draws near, I have been thinking about pain associated with birthing.

With Elder, I got demerol, which I liked because it took the edge off, but I could still feel the contractions and I knew what was going on. It did make me sleepy but they managed to time the doses so that it all wore off by the time I had to push. It also allowed me to get some sleep between contractions.

When Younger was born, they stopped the demerol, and offered me an epidural early on. I told them I'd wait and see. By the time I wanted the epidural, the anesthesiologist was unavailable to give it to me. So I had no pain relief with younger, and I didn't have any way of hypnotising myself against the pain. That's not totally true - near the end they gave me nitrous gas(laughing gas) which did nothing for me.

Now, with the lad, I have the option of an epidural, morphine, nitrous gas, or nothing. They don't offer demerol anymore.

My major concern with the epidural is that I will move, and instead of the epidural space, the anesthesiologist hits the transdural, and at best I get a four day migraine headache. But there is less than a 1% chance of that.

The morphine is a narcotic, and my concern is the doses not being properly timed and the lad and I being too sleepy to push when the time comes.

And as stated earlier nitrous gas does nothing for me.

But, I find at times that when I pray I can put myself into a trance like state. Usually I can only do it for a few minutes and only with a short prayer or ejaculation, usually the Jesus Prayer:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

But labour and delivery lasts more than a few minutes, so although I will be praying I am not good enough to put myself into a continual or continuous trance.

Bear says that if it were him he'd go for the epidural. I love him.

Still waiting, part 5

Another misfire. Never made it to the hospital.  We had the usual doctor's appointment this morning, and he has made arrangements for inducement, so, unless labour starts soon, Puff will be induced on Wednesday.

On the upside, unless labour starts today, I will be able to see Doctor Who tonight, which can only be regarded as a Good Thing.

To answer LarryD's question: At the risk of dating myself very badly, for me, Tom Baker will always be the Doctor.  Okay, that's not the question you asked.  Just thought I would toss that in.  Matt Smith is a good Doctor thus far, but the real heart and soul of this series thus far is Amy Pond.  I also really liked the woman in the Weeping Angels two parter.  Matt Smith's greatest strength thus far seems to be a willingness to occasionally step aside and let someone else carry the scene.  That is a good thing.

The Daleks' episode did have some weaknesses, although I must admit I did like the whole Spitfires in Space thing, cheesy as it was.  The Spitfire is the symbol of the War and Victory to the British, so they would have seen it as awesome, but what would have been even more awesome, in my humble opinion, is if they could have wrapped a few of those gravity bubbles around a couple of battleships, and floated the King George V and the Rodney and the Warspite up there.  Flying battleships pointing their monster guns at a space ship and just pounding away would have been among the most awesomely awesome sights in the history of Scifi. (In truth and fairness, the Japanese already did this in Starblazers, but that was anime.  This could have looked like the Real Thing.)

Back to the pregnancy, Puff is very uncomfortable and is having spasms and contractions off and on.  Twice now they have become regular and steady, then faded.  She wants this over and done with.  It is entirely possible that the pregnancy will not last until Wednesday.

Meanwhile...

...my father-in-law is still dying.

Post number 1,000

Yippee.

One thousand posts, boring, tedious, showing a lack of insight, and perhaps the occasional flight of brilliance, if in spite of ourselves.  Our readership has always been small, at the most reaching about fifty to sixty hits a day at its highest.  It has declined considerably since then, although once in a while, and it has been a good while since the last, someone links to us, and we get a brief avalanche, a few hundred people who drop by within a day or two, and then leave, never to return.

When we began, this was a blog to discuss church music, as we were both involved with a choir at our church- I a singer and Puff as a researcher.  We discovered how a Mass should be done, and realized our church was doing otherwise, and we began to blog about it.  I left that choir over a year ago, as a new member of Parish Council showed up at a choir practice one day and demanded we play nothing but her favourite hymns, which consisted of Haugen/Haas/Schutte and their ilk.  I was always prepared to sing their works, but I never wanted to sing nothing but their works.  I left the choir. Puff researches no more for them.  Research is no longer necessary.

For a time we posted at least once a day.  We went out from music and began blogging about other topics.  Family.  Daily life.  Literature. News.  I occasionally fisked other writers- my fisks of McBrien were fairly popular, but the exercise ultimately seemed rather futile.  McBrien's writing is practically self fisking.  It is read by people already inclined to agree with what he has to say.  My fisks were also read by people already prepared to what I had to say.  No battles were won, or even fought.  No minds were changed, no opinions modified.  I find McBrien's writings tedious and repetitve, and fisks of such writing would become so as well.  I moved on. I stopped posting every day.

 I have seen other blogs come and go.  When we started out, the star blog was Gerald Augustinus' The Cafeteria is Closed.  Gerald, a staunch defender of the faith who used the word Liberal as a curse, became one himself, and shut down his blog.  Christus Vincit went through a period of fluctuation.  One writer, Jason, left the Church and went back to the Lutherans.  BMP lost his job as an organist, and delivers food now.  Posts there are scarce.  Posts are also a rarity at another one of the most popular blogs, Curt Jester,  as they are at my favourite blog, Dyspeptic Mutterings.  Other blogs came up and filled in the gap.  

It seems to me most blogs do ultimately become rather repititious, the same viewpoints repeated, the same straw men raised up to be struck down, the same dead horse whipped over and over again.  Perhaps the phenomena of blogging is burning itself out.  Looking back on it all, there are times when I think I can say of blogging, a la Churchill, that never before in the field of human endeavor has so little been said so often by so many.

I doubt I will be writing a 2,000th post, reflecting back on the next thousand.  I still may write about Literature.  I still have to write a little more of the history, as I promised someone I would.  I have an upcoming birth to announce.  An upcoming death to announce.  Some news as yet unknown to announce.  There's still a little life left in this blog.  We'll continue on; run the race; keep the faith.

Today Was Younger's First Communion.

The title pretty much says it all.  We are very proud of her.

Home Computer Tanked. Again.

Our home computer has been hit with some nasty malware which is blocking us from the internet for the time being.  Symantec supposedly has the solution, but it never quite gets rid of the problem, and the malware bounces right back. 

Long story short:  No posting until the home computer gets fixed, which, as things are going right now, appears to be "never."

I know you didn't ask for it. I know you couldn't care less about it. You're getting it anyway.

For a while I wrote for another blog which recently went belly up for political reasons.  I wrote pieces about the history of my diocese and some of the churches within it.  I put a fair amount of work into researching and writing the pieces, and rather than consigning them to the recycling bin, I will be reorganizing and polishing them up a bit and reprinting them here, starting soon.

Haloscan is off

Blogger commenting is proving tricky. COmmenting is off, but feel free to email comments to gladius-spiritus(at) hotmail.com if there is something you wish to say.

Hopefully I will fix this soon. and return your ability to comment.

UPDATE: You can comment again, please don't all rush into the combox at once.

Since Haloscan is shutting down

due to degradation of the softward and hardware, and I believe that commenting should be free. I have disengaged haloscan. The old comments have been archived and if and when importing technology becomes available I will store them on my PC. I have initiated blogger commentary.

Hopefully the edited HTML I did is successful.

TTFN

All the blog pets have been removed.

Due to several complaints about the bird's chirping, the bird and the rest of the pets have been removed from the sidebar.

Update

A few weeks back I put out a prayer request for Puff and I, saying I would explain later. The explanation can be seen in the new widget bar under the main banner.