Nisi Dominus

If the Lord has not built the house,

in vain will those who build it toil.

If the Lord does not protect the city,

those who keep it watch in vain.

It is vain for you

to rise before light.

Get up after you sit down,

you who eat the bread of pain.

The Lord will to his beloved give it in their sleep.

Lord's gift are the children,

His grace is

the fruit of the womb

The Lord will to his beloved give it in their sleep.

Lord's gift are the children,

His grace is

the fruit of the womb (3 times).

Like arrows

in the hand of the mighty,

so are the children of exiles.

Blessed the man

who met his wish of them.

He will not be muddled

when he treat with his enemies

at the gate.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

As it was in the beginning, and now, and ever shall be, and unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

Translated by Pietro Lignola at https://lyricstranslate.com/en/rv-608-nisi-dominus-if-lord-has-not.html

Way too Late at the Movies: The Bob's Burgers Movie

I feel bad I didn't like 2022's The Bob's Burgers Movie.

No spoilers, first of all, so you're not worried about that.

It's a murder mystery, with plucky Louise, Tina, and Gene on the prowl to find out who really killed Cotton Candy Andy at Wonder Wharf six years before this story.

I liked the joke of the prizes at the wharf being the only witnesses to the crime.

But the rest of the movie, well . . .

They made it a musical, first of all. And while Bob's Burgers in general does a lot of fun things with music, in this case it's a miss, with Grover Fischoeder's song being almost incomprehensible in the falsetto voice the actor used.

And I know they unpersoned the voice of Jimmy Pesto due to the voice actor's politics, but not to give Jimmy a single line in the movie was, well. stupid. What an opening for him, so see a gigantic hole and plume of water suddenly erupt out of the street in front of Bob's restaurant. Sure, Bob has the typical stress of having to make a payment to the bank on his restaurant equipment, but is the stress really there is Jimmy Pesto isn't there to razz him about the situation?

I was worried when they announced a movie that what was going to happen is that they'd take a script more fit for one of their episodes and stretch it out into a movie, and that's what they did. I mean, they could have taken a better episode, like The Belchies, for that treatment, but we got a Bart and Lisa solve the crime thing instead.

I still feel for Bob, though, as he's staring through the window at the hole, literally watching his business go down the drain. That part spoke to me. And seeing Lin and Gene's fascination with buttons was also pretty funny. But as whole, while the story worked, it just felt drawn out. And the musical numbers were mediocre at best.

The Plight Before Christmas

So I happened to catch the latest episode of Bob's Burgers yesterday -- a rare feat -- and it just might be my favorite "new" Christmas episode in a very long time.

It's one of their shorter episodes, but it packs a simple punch akin to "A Charlie Brown Christmas," in that it quietnly supports a simplified holiday season focusing on family togetherness.

The story concentrates on Bob and Linda having to juggle their presence at three separate Christmas-themed performances:

Gene performing with others in the fourth grade in a xylophone concert at Wagstaff Elementary.

Tina performing with her Thunder Girls troop at the City Hall Plaza.

Louise reading what they suspect is a jokey poem at the city library.

All events occur at 6 pm on the same day, bringing on this exchange between parents:

Bob and Linda [responding to the news that Louise's performance is the same night as the other two]: That's TONIGHT?

Linda: I thought it was tomorrow!

Bob: I only know what she knows!

I feel ya, Bobby. Been there many times.

Mrs. Merkin planned on just winging her students through the performance, but has to have an emergency appendectomy that night. The school brings in a substitute -- the only one who answered the phone -- to help, but she knows nothing about music and has no idea what Mrs. Merkins' plan was in the first place.

Gene has the idea to remove most of the bars from the xylophones, giving the players fewer choices (a simplified holiday season) and they turn in a stellar performance. Tina sacrifices her role as the Christmas Star to race to the library in time to hear Louise deliver a non-jokey poem, with Linda hot on her tail:

What's Around the Tree, by Louise Belcher

I can't see what's around the tree

when I'm pawing through the presents.

But when I sit back and get my present unwrapped,

I look up and I see my parents.

I see and smell my brother,

and that's clearly where the gas is.

And I see my sister with something

that looks like gingerbread on her glasses.

And we don't have gingerbread.

So this is odd.

We made funny ornaments for the tree this year,

And we make funny ornaments sitting here,

Around the tree. So jolly.

Didn't expect to feel this way.

I was focusing on Santa.

But the best presents are sitting here,

and they aren't even wrapped up.

And that is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

From the Best Books, or at Least from the Mouth of Bob

We all know people who have friends everywhere.

When I was Scoutmaster, for example, my assistant scoutmaster knew all sorts of people. That became cemented in my mind when on two occasions, on hikes out in the middle of nowhere, we met other hikers and he knew them. He's a natural for making friends, though. Has the kind of personality that's always interested in people.

My Dad also knew people from all over the place. But the older I get, the more I suspect that wasn't a skill that came naturally to him. It's something he had to learn to cultivate.

I do not have those skills.

Enter Bob's Burgers.

I recently re-watched the "Driving Big Dummy" episode, and this exchange near the end really hit me:

BONNIE: Oh Teddy, you like asking people about themselves, don’t you?

TEDDY: Well, yeah. People are interesting.

MR. ESTOCK:  Teddy fixed the porch for me. He wasn’t here half the day and he got me talking about my late wife’s cornbread recipe. How was it, by the way?

TEDDY: It was really something.

MR ESTOCK: I ran out of corn. 

TEDDY: That explains it. Well, we better get going. Why are you staring, Bob?

BOB: Hey, Teddy, I . . . I wanna say something. I guess maybe I thought you were lonely. But you’re really not. At all. You make friends wherever you go, and you’re so interested in people. All the time. I, um, am never interested in people. I don’t like people that much. Not you guys; you seem great. But I don’t really like that about myself and I guess I really admire that about you.

TEDDY: Oh, thanks. And hey, don’t beat yourself up, Bob. You are like that, kind of, with the six people you already know. But yeah, maybe you could branch out a bit.

BOB: I’ll try. Thank you again, Connie.

BONNIE: It’s Bonnie.

I'm the Bob in this situation. And I need to branch out a bit. And I need to remember that when I'm around other people who do know a lot of others and spend time with them, I should be learning how to do it. Or at least learn to tolerate it better.

Life, a Bob's Burgers Tryptich

 

"They Expect Results"

So I'm close to being back to full-time work at the full-time job.

Still working at home thanks to King Corona, but it's been busy. Most everyone else, if I'm not mistaken, is back at the office, leaving a few of us still on the outskirts. That means projects that were forsaken for a while are now hot commodities, and all at once.

I'm trying not to complain. After all, this is what I signed up for with that full-time job with good pay and benefits.

Still, it's like Dean Yeager has paid that visit and I'm being tossed out.



Or tossed back in, as it were.

And it's fine. I mean, I'm contributing. Doing valuable work and all that. Feeling better since the weekend. I think.

Michelle and Lexie spent the last 2 1/2 days at the council Trail to Eagle merit badge scramble at Krupp Scout Hollow. Lexie and Sam worked on Eagle-required merit badges while Michelle did whatever it is Scout leaders do at events like this when the Scouts are occupied. They worked on three merit badges, which is a good thing -- Personal Management, Personal Fitness, and something or other else. Emergency Preparedness and/or Citizenship in the Nation.

The boys and I stayed home. I may as well have stayed home alone, as the boys weren't worth the powder to blow them up. If any dishes got done this week, it was because I did them.

And oh my gosh I am laughing at the camping episode of Bob's Burgers:

*NOT* by Salman Rushdie

One of the things you learn while reading “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” as it is presented in Lyle W. Dorsett’s “The Essential C.S. Lewis” is how short the book is.

In this presentation, it’s a mere 77 pages.

In standalone paperback editions, it’s up to 208 pages long.

But the story’s word count belies whatever formatting it appears in. Per the Internet, it is 37,492 words. Or 36,362 words. Or 38,421words.

(The Internet, as is its wont, disagrees. Suffice it to say, the book is not long, and variations in number from place to place probably depends on the edition, and whether forewords, etc., are included in the word count.)

Nevertheless, that seems really short.

(The Hobbit, by comparison, clocks in at about 95,000 words [won’t quibble here on word count; just wanted another contemporary “children’s novel” for comparison].)

Then again, he probably had time to write a short novel, if Mark Twain is to be believed.

Why should I fret that the story is so short, given that it’s part of a seven-book series?

Probably because I recognize that at 103,000 words and counting, my Doleful Creatures could probably do with a paring down to sharpen the story.

Now, we don’t know how much cutting Lewis and/or his editors did with his book before it was published. But I suspect, given the economy of the story, that not much was cut.

Or maybe some was moved to a subsequent book?

I’m not going to fuss about it. I’ll just finish reading it for the umpteenth time and marvel in the story, and in its anthropomorphic and spiritual perfection. And in this section, which since I read it the first time has made me loath to kill mice:

I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night, but If you have been – if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again. At any rate that was how it felt to these two. Hours and hours seemed to go by in the dead calm, and they hardly noticed that they were getting colder and colder. But at last Lucy noticed two other things. One was that the sky on the East side of the hill was a little less dark than it had been an hour ago. The other was some tiny movement going on in the grass at her feet. At first she took no interest in this. What did it matter? Nothing mattered now! But at last she saw that watever-it-was had begun to move up the upright stones of the Stone Table. And now whatever-they-were were moving about on Aslan’s body. She peered closer. They were little grey things.

“Ugh!” said Susan from the other side of the Table. “How beastly! There are horrid little mice crawling over him. Go away, you little beasts.” And she raised her hands to frighten them away.

“Wait!” said Lucy who had been looking at them more closely still. “Can you see what they’re doing?”

Both girls bent down and stared.

"I do believe!” said Susan. “But how queer. They’re nibbling away at the cords.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Lucy. “I think they’re friendly mice. Poor little things – they don’t realise he’s dead. They think it’ll do some good untying him.”

It was quite definitely lighter by now. Each of the girls noticed for the first time the white face of the other. They could see the mice nibbling away, dozens and dozens, even hundreds, of little field mice. At last, one by one, the ropes were all gnawed through.

The sky in the East was whitish by now and the stars were getting fainter – all except one very big one low down on the Eastern horizon. They felt colder than they had been all night. The mice crept away again.

And just a reminder, it’s NOT by Salman Rushdie.