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Acting Out the Gospels with Mimes, Puppets, & Clowns
DeAngelis
1982

I have often referred to mimes, puppets, and clowns as a trifecta of evil. Integrating things inside a Catholic Mass is just horrific on so many levels. Maybe it is a way for those attending Mass to glimpse what Hell would look like. The images of a clown face on a crucified Jesus or the Apostles is so disturbing. This is the stuff of nightmares. I am just Catholic enough to be weirded out about this book.

As a librarian, I realize that my opinion is just my opinion. If this was truly something that my community wanted, I would do my best to accommodate them. This book is nearly 40 years old and it looks it. If you want to break out the clown stuff during Easter Mass, than rock on with your bad self. I will cheerfully help you find the right book (if such a thing exists) but I will not be in attendance.

Mary

 

The post The Trifecta of Evil Goes to Mass appeared first on Awful Library Books.

Why is that somehow less scary?

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This is only not a true story about Kelly because it hasn't happened *yet*.

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Ooh, a package! What could it be?

Calgarians are picking up the pieces after a massive storm brought tennis ball-sized hail and flooding to the city Saturday night.

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It was the doggie Halloween costumes that finally pushed them over the line. After that, we didn't stand a chance.

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Since Wednesday’s cold front, Houston has had 50 consecutive hours of dewpoints below 60°, which continue as of 7 AM Friday. Recall, dewpoint is a much better gauge of “comfort” in summer than relative humidity, and for Houston anything below 65° generally feels really nice this time of year. Anything in the 50s is very comfortable. To put in context how rare an event this is in Houston in summer. We have only done 40 consecutive hours of dewpoints in the 50s in June, July, or August two other times since Bush Airport was established as the official reporting station for Houston in 1969:

• June 8-9, 1996 (43 consecutive hours)
• June 24-28, 1974 (110 (!) consecutive hours)

It appears that this one will place firmly 2nd on the list. This air mass would be a first ballot inductee to the Hall of Fame of Comfort for Houston summers. And it continues.

We do have a couple things to monitor. This dry weather is going to have an impact on soil moisture in much of Texas. We’ll discuss that more in-depth next week. In addition to that, this dry, offshore breeze is certainly aggravating for allergy sufferers (raises hand). But other than that, we have little to talk about.

So in lieu of much text today, our forecast will be shared primarily in gif form.

Today & weekend

It will be tough to let go of the current weather pattern. Thankfully, this weekend won’t be too bad!

Expect highs in the 90s and lows in the 60s or low 70s this weekend, with continued low humidity for June. Sunshine and nil rain chances.

Next week

Onshore winds resume Monday, and that means our friendly neighborhood Houston humidity will be on the rise.

But it won’t be that bad of a week.

Alright, yeah, it will end up being a pretty hot week. Look for mid-90s at least, with lows in the 70s.

The next chance of any meaningful rain at all, outside of a localized downpour? Maybe next weekend?

We’ll check back in with you on Monday with more. Enjoy the weekend!

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I should probably switch from newspapers to websites, but dammit it just isn't as good.

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New Cyanide and Happiness Comic

Quit the Twitters? You think I haven't tried?

The event was originally planned to be held in Charlotte, N.C., but will now move to Florida after pushback from the North Carolina governor regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

(Image credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Christina Rees and Brandon Zech make a case for a road trip to Beaumont, plus a show that keeps one artist’s legacy alive, and some annihilation and rebirth in San Antonio.

“There’s a lot of art that has become… accidentally very relevant right now.”

To watch last week’s episode in which Christopher Blay and Brandon Zech run down a list of the best ongoing online programming from Texas museums, please go here.

1. a.) Patrick Turk: Higher Planes
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
March 21 – September 13, 2020

Via AMSET:

“Patrick Turk explores traditional histories and ancient mythologies viewed through a psychedelic lens. By combining historical illustrations with concepts from science fiction such as time travel, sentient planets, and hypothetical biology, he creates kaleidoscopic depictions of religious, mythological, and mystical allegories.

“The exhibition features an immersive site-specific installation as well as hand-cut paper assemblages which are often materially sourced from science-fiction novels, encyclopedias, history, and scientific diagrams. Says Turk, “The intense levels of detail become a microcosm, forming a reflection of the human relationship to the plasticity of time and space, and to the process of self-unfolding.”

 

1. b.) Kana Harada: Celestial Garden
Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont
March 21 – September 13, 2020

Via AMSET:

“This exhibition features paintings and sculptures by Dallas-based artist Kana Harada, who works with hand-cut foam sheets, along with watercolor, paper, and natural materials to create pieces that embody a wish for peace, a love for humanity, mother earth, and the universe. This artwork evokes the serenity of the “Fuji Sanctuary,” a peace gathering site at the foot of Mt. Fuji in Japan, near the artist’s birthplace of Tokyo, Japan. A peace ceremony will be held at the opening reception, inviting visitors to take part in a spiritual gathering, aiming to spread peace to all of the earth. Celestial Garden will include a site-specific installation, suspended sculptures, and two-dimensional cut paper and watercolor paintings.”

2. Taihu Rock
San Antonio Museum of Art
November 6 – November 6, 2021

Via SAMA:

“On April 22, 2019, a six-and-a-half-ton Taihu rock was loaded onto a truck near Wuxi, China, then shipped from Shanghai on the container ship Cosco Santos for a month-long ocean voyage to Houston. It then traveled by truck to the San Antonio Museum of Art and arrived May 30. This gift to the City of San Antonio from its Sister City Wuxi will be installed at the San Antonio Museum of Art.”

Read Ruben Cordova’s recent piece on Taihu Rock here.

3. Through an African Lens: Sub-Saharan Photography from the Museum’s Collection
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
February 27 – November 8

VIA the MFAH:

“The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, presents Through an African Lens: Sub-Saharan Photography from the Museum’s Collection. Featuring a dynamic range of work by 20 artists from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, this exhibition of 70 photographs explores a variety of artistic styles and expression from the 1950s to the present.”

4.  Artists-in-Residence Exhibitions
Artpace, San Antonio
Through August 23

“Colombian artist Carlos Castro Arias’ literally incendiary I Came To Set The World On Fire, And I Wish It Were Already Kindled is a hallucinogenic, terrifying and exhilarating baptism of flames. Castro’s show works with simple elemental symbols and images — churches, fire, ashes, and flames.”

“Milagros de la Torre is a Peruvian-born artist working in New York whose work combines sculpture, video, photography, and installation. In Systems and Constellations she explores the mysteries of the human face. De la Torre has the memory condition prosopagnosia, or face blindness, which makes remembering a human face very difficult, and so Systems and Constellations ponders the measure of a face, and the tools used throughout time to map it”  

“Daniel Ramos’ The Land of Illustrious Men takes an earlier art book he’s created and transforms it into an affecting, immersive personal epic. The shows chronicles Ramos’ family journey — his father paying a coyote to take him across the border, growing up in inner-city Chicago, and spending summers with his grandmother in Lampazos De Naranjo, a small town in Nuevo León, Mexico, to avoid falling in with gangs.” 

“The art of David McManaway (1927-2010) has an underground cult following. Research for this exhibition and numerous conversations with his friends and colleagues tells me that he would be pleased by this state of affairs. But, many McManaway collectors and former colleagues lament the apparent lack of credit his work has received since his passing in 2010. The mission to spotlight McManaway’s life and work in a solo exhibition has officially become a cause célèbre.

The post Top Five: June 11, 2020 appeared first on Glasstire.

8. No hockey. (Except for in Canada, where some people settled from the Underground Railroad).

7. Atlanta has U.N. Headquarters.

6. CMT is dismantled.

5. British Parliamentary wigs are 3a-4c curls.

4. The U.S. Constitution finally decrees viewing Greta Gerwig films as optional.

4b. There’s a new amendment, which is just a photograph of James Baldwin looking stern.

3. White people pay 3/5ths more for cotton underwear.

2. Snoop Dogg inherits Martha Stewart’s empire — if he wants it.

1. I get personally paid $2 every time I hear see a chin beard, hear Vanessa Carlton in public, or mayonnaise appears unexpectedly on my food.

I've been living in Montreal for 15 years now and this still remains one of its many charms.

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Ah, but is it not so that with pants they can now know the pleasure of the taking off of pants?

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Hey SMBC Theater fans!

Every afternoon for the past eleven days, Taye Johnson has followed the same routine. The 38-year old dons a pair of old-school running shoes, a baseball cap, and some cargo shorts, and tucks a pair of goggles and several bottles of Gatorade into his pockets. Then he heads to Austin police headquarters, where he’ll remain for the next eight or nine hours. Once there, Johnson, who is black, slips through the crowd of demonstrators, until he finds himself face-to-face with the rows of police officers standing guard, often in riot gear. Sometimes Johnson talks one-on-one with officers; other times he joins those yelling chants at them. He says that ever since he was a teen, he has been harassed by abusive police officers—pulled over for…View Original Post

The post The Military Trained Him in Iraq. Now, as a Protester, He’s Watching Police Use Similar Tactics. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

After George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis on May 25, protests condemning police brutality and racial inequality have reverberated across the nation. “This George Floyd moment is different,” the San Antonio Express-News editorial board recently wrote. “Never has the death of one person stirred the conscience of this nation and mobilized so many into daily, nonviolent, multiracial and multigenerational protests.” In Texas, demonstrations and vigils took place all over the state—from major cities like Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio to smaller ones including Marfa, Lubbock, and Odessa. We’ve seen a historic civil rights rally in Vidor, which we once described as Texas’s “most hate-filled town”; protesters on horseback in Houston; and a big shift in how local demonstrations are being approached by police. Every…View Original Post

The post Photo Gallery: Black Lives Matter Protests in Texas appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Twitter is about to deal with one of the greatest threats to meaningful discussions on the internet: people who forward articles they haven’t even read. It’s starting an Android test that asks you if you’d like to open an article you’re about to retweet. This should help foster “informed discussion,” the company said.

The social network told Engadget it doesn’t have a timeline for bringing the feature to iOS.

It’s not surprising that Twitter would explore a feature like this. The company is stepping up its fight against misinformation as the 2020 US presidential election looms, and encouraging users to read what they’re sharing could prevent false claims from spreading as widely as they might otherwise. WhatsApp has forwarding limits on messages for similar reasons. Twitter clearly doesn’t expect everyone to use their critical thinking skills before sharing a bogus article with friends, but even a momentary pause might be enough in some cases.

Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you may want to read it before you Tweet it.

To help promote informed discussion, we're testing a new prompt on Android –– when you Retweet an article that you haven't opened on Twitter, we may ask if you'd like to open it first.

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) June 10, 2020

Nearly three months have passed since we first addressed COVID-19 and the then-unknown effect of weather on its spread in warmer climates. Since that time we have learned some things, and have three months of data to draw upon in Texas. From this we can conclude that although weather may have some modest effect, it is not likely to have a significant dampening effect on the transmission of the disease.

COVID-19 and Texas

We’ll start this post by looking at the spread of COVID-19 in Texas. I encourage you to visit this site, put together by Peter James Walker, which provides amazing visualizations of coronavirus data (from the Texas Department of State Health Services) with regard to testing, positive cases, deaths, and hospitalizations. This allows us to understand trends in the data.

Here we can see that cases are more or less increasing in line with more testing across the state. However, after initially dropping, the share of positive tests seems to be increasing, up to 7 percent from 5 percent about one month ago. So far, at least, deaths have not caught up to cases. This may be due to better care, or some other factors. It’s just hard to know.

What concerns us is that hospitalizations have reached a record high in Texas for COVID-19. You may have questions about the test data, or false positives, but hospitalizations for COVID-19 are measurement that is difficult to fudge. The trend is upward, and real. We are still a ways away from reaching hospital and ICU capacity in Houston or across the state, but the concern is where does the trend go from here? I don’t think anyone can say.

Weather and COVID-19

What we can say is that this spike in hospitalizations (and thus, severe cases) due to the virus is occurring at the very moment when summer heat is beginning to descend on Texas. The state’s average temperature in June reaches 90 degrees. Much of the state is humid most of the time in summer. And still, the disease is spreading. In fact, based upon the hospitalization data, it seems clear that COVID-19 is more widespread now in Texas than at any time before. The disease is spiking even harder in other, similarly warm states, such as Arizona.

This supports the emerging science viewpoint on weather and COVID 19, that summer heat will not be much of a factor in slowing its initial spread through the human population.

The public health messaging from the World Health Organization and the U.S. government amidst this pandemic has not been consistent or particularly good. However, the data are telling us that COVID-19 is still spreading in Texas despite the heat. It may become even more widespread this summer as we (understandably) seek to return to a business-as-normal posture. What seems prudent is the continued wearing of masks in locations where social distancing is not possible. When you wear a mask it may be uncomfortable, you may think it makes you look funny. But you’re also telling the person next to you that you value them, and want to do your part to prevent spreading COVID-19 too far.

Sponsor Note from Reliant

To support our neighbors across Texas, Reliant has committed $765,000, including $440,000 to the Greater Houston area, for local community relief funds, initiatives to protect frontline workers and those adversely impacted by COVID-19, and treatment/prevention solutions. The donations are part of our community program, Reliant Gives, to provide support across the state of Texas and our parent company, NRG Energy, Inc.’s $2 million donation to pandemic relief efforts. Learn more about our commitment and customer support resources here. Now more than ever, we’re working to light the way and keep Texans powered and connected to one another.

I will present you with a beautiful, silk-wrapped gift. It may be a tasty treat, the corpse of a competitor, a twig, or — psych! — nothing at all. While you unwrap it, I’ll mate with you, hopefully finishing before you realize it’s the last option.

I know you ladies are in the mood only 8-12 hours a year, so I won’t waste your time. I’ll climb up a tree, about 7 feet above you, and drench you with urine. If you appreciate that, we’ll mate. If you don’t, I’m in major trouble.

As soon as we’re done making love, my balls will literally explode, killing me instantly. But my exploded genitalia will block the tunnel for any competitor males. Winning!

I will sink my teeth into you, attach myself to you permanently, and live as a parasite on your body. I will eventually become absorbed into you, with only a pair of gonads remaining to remember the good times. You can use those ‘nads whenever you feel like making babies. You’re welcome!

I can poo and pee at the same time! But wait, there’s more! Using a combination of my spinning tail and the most powerful farts on earth, I will helicopter-spray my Winner’s Blend far and wide. If you like what you see, just shower me with your dung!

I shall perform a dance that I inherited from my father, and his father before him. It’s a really cool, showy dance. Daddy has been training me for it my entire life!

My trusty wingman is my detachable penis, which I’ll float your way to say what’s up and then impregnate you. Don’t spazz; he’s a great guy.

I will tap your body to make sure that you are indeed a female of my species. I will then sing you my courtship song. If you reject me, it will take me a looooong time to recover. I’m sensitive!! I will eventually look for love again, but definitely not with a female who smells like you.

I like a woman who’s bigger than me. If you do choose me, and if something tragic should ever happen to you, I will turn female, take your place, and have my pick of suitors. Then I’ll know how you’re feeling right now. But it will be too late.

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Coming in September 2032, the Only Trolley Problems SMBC Collection.

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