Rain, Rain, Rain

Yesterday was quite the dreary and depressing day—dark and rainy, a little bit cooler (which I am thankful for). I usually love the rain, but I think it’s mostly because of the thunder and lightning that accompanies it. A rain storm just isn’t very fun or entertaining without the spectacle of the light and sound of lightning and thunder. The window-shattering thunder and blindingly-bright flashes of lightning has fascinated me for almost my entire life. When I was younger, my dad and me would always go outside and stand just under the overhang of our house and listen to the rain come down and watch as the lightning stuck and then count the seconds before the thunder, because then we’d know how close it was to almost striking us both dead. Now I just don’t enjoy rain unless it comes with a thunderstorm, so the lack of thunderstorm yesterday just left me a little more down than usual. I also couldn’t go running because it was raining, which made me grumpier.

Since I had nothing to do, I decided to watch a movie (I have been on a big movie kick lately and I don’t really know why). I popped in Jimmy Neutron expecting just an average kid flick that would maybe lighten up the mood a little. It wasn’t even close to being an average kid flick……it was frickin’ hilarious! The movie was like a cross between Dexter’s Laboratory, Inspector Gadget, and old school, late 80’s cartoons—all done with CGI. There were so many little in-jokes to other sci-fi that I couldn’t get enough. There was a huge Dune reference where a worm in an apple was actually a sandworm and Jimmy’s teacher was its rider. Other small things in the movie also just made me love it. One scene when all the kids rebel, you can just see the word “Poop” scrawled on a statue by a kid. Another scene where Jimmy uses his radar on the radar machine there are three buttons that you can just barely read—“Near”, “Far”, and “Really Far”. There was just so much to love about this movie that I’m surprised it didn’t do better at the box office than it did. I think I’m going to go buy it next time I get a chance.

After I had gotten into a better mood, there is always something waiting to bring it back down. I saw on the news that two of the monks from the St. John’s abbey have been dismissed because of sexual misconduct and twelve other monks are on probation for alleged sexual misconduct. I go to school with all of these monks and I thought they were all good people. There is no way that any of them could be involved with this big catholic sexual abuse scandal. I guess it’s just running rampant throughout the entire catholic hierarchy. It’s still my opinion that most of this sexual abuse would end if catholic priests and bishops and cardinals and all their ranks were able to get married and have families. There wouldn’t be that sexual tension anymore because they would have an out for their urges. I know that is a bad way to term marriage’s benefits, but I think this would alleviate much of the catholic church’s problems in the sexual abuse realm. I don’t know about the rest of the students at CSB/SJU, but I will have a hard time looking at the monks in the same light of innocence that I always have—their image will forever be a little tainted in my mind now. It’s like having a perfect, innocent little sister and then finding out she’s slept around. Even if she changes back to the innocent girl you knew, she’ll never be the same in your eyes. The monks are like that innocent, little sister, and now they’ve been caught sleeping around. It’ll be hard to see them the same.

One last small note, I'm leaving for Wisconsin with the family tomorrow and getting back Monday night so there won't be any new thoughts of the day until Tuesday, unfortunately. If you're in need of stuff to read, I'm sure you can find plenty on this site somewhere.