Musings After Midnight

I used to have a blog called Musings After Midnight. I thought the title was catchy and appropriate, since almost all the pieces were written in my insomniac times. Also, it wasn't really a blog, more a series of open letters without opportunity for comment.

Now that I have full time work again, my late nights have markedly decreased. In October 2007, I converted my blog to a new, real blog, Mathematics After The Fall. It's available elsewhere on the twelvefruits website. I didn't destroy any writings, though. The shorter pieces (ones on a musings page) became historical blog entries, while the longer pieces stayed where they were. This page is now a link reference, with the old titles of shorter pages and links to their new locations. The longer pages I wrote between 2004 and 2006 are at the bottom. For 2007 material, head over to the sitemap and the blog.

Short pieces, 2004-2006

The Gothic Tower, Reimagined: Notes from a Parish visit.
Nobody Roots for Duke: Basketball, the underdog, and hope.
Mathematics After the Fall: An Insult becomes a motto, or why I'm a-Gnostic.
My Clarisse: A dream to me, or as someone once remarked, what I'm looking for in a woman.
Isaiah 53: Suffering and crushing. A depression piece.
Hope in Pandora's Box: The danger of hope. The second depression piece.
Low Church, not Low Faith: Tempo, participation, and why I don't like church choirs.
There's Something About Mary: Why I think Maryology is a terrible phrase.
A Morning of Crying: An early-morning ramble on pain and suffering.
A Moment of Peace: What passes for happiness in this journal, at the Grand Canyon.
Tears: The Bible, politics, society, statistics, devotion, and failure, all in 700 words. This may be the most illuminating piece into my life, the man I am, the man I want to be.
Time for Regime Change: Why I voted for bad, instead of evil.
Daisy Day: A report from the front in the battle against dreariness and depression.
Death Matches: Humorous imaginary fights, as not everything on this page is serious.

Asian Women in Lab Coats: (Beginning 2005) Why there are many interracial science marriages.
Hope: Something I wrote for the Calvert House bulletin, talking about an oft forgotten virtue.
A Matchbook: Memories of my grandmother. A wistful and sad rememberance.
Mortification is for Wimps: Beginning to define my normative Catholicism through a negative, the problems of Opus Dei.
Community, Suffering, Redemption: A different definition of the Easter Tridium.
Salvifici Doloris: Clearing some misconceptions, and thinking about suffering. Very Holy Week, eh?
Isaiah 53 Revisited: Looking again at suffering and crushing. Not a depression piece.

Medals and Goodness: Hotel Rwanda and the heroic medal. This begins my exploration of positive normative Christianity.
Happily Ever After: Interpreting the romantic dream.
Suffering and a Nation of Kings: My response to the insane statement that there is not enough suffering in the world.
Elimidate and Confidence: Love, television-style, and my shortcomings. Not a positive Christianity piece, but there are some tie-ins.
The Loss of the Song: Love, Bible-style, and Church shortcomings.
Benefits with Friends: Clearing up a definition of Friend-Love.
The Music of My Life: Adam's five star musical mix tape. A tangent away from positive Christianity, though it is a peek at beauty.
Defending Charlie Brown: Looking at the Little Red-Haired Girl, considering the rational.
Hug: The Giant Hug, my attempt at describing a transcendent moment, a positive sensuality.
The Pixie Girl and the Power of Imagination: In response to a question, thoughts about female physical beauty.
The Violence of Nature: Hurricane Katrina and my frustrations, much closer to a blog post than usual.
The Violence of Love: Dancing, Hugs, Romero, and (finally) my definition of positive normative Christianity.

Pro-Life, Death Penalty, and Torture: The quest for life is hardest when it's applied to the least liked.
Puritans and Touch: Yet another deprivation of the culture.

About Boys: (Beginning 2006) No, not a dating musing; it's an explanation of the photo on the front page of twelvefruits.com.
Four Failures Revisited: Another year brings another review of my life.
The Fourth Best Friend: Valentine's Day and the societal bias against unmarried people.
Dancing with the Stars: The pseudo-live blog returns, for a show my parents and I appreciate.
Johnny Cash Heartbreak Scale: Sometimes, you need a way to describe romantic pain. Though not me. I'm not dating now.
The Homeless Shelter Conundrum: Why don't more men volunteer at homeless shelters?
God or the Girl: Another television review, where I make a mediocre vocations director.
Quotes and Gilmore Girls: Relationship words and a idealized case study.
A Joke: I don't invent many.
Quiz Results: A few bits from the Internet.
Heading to the Grown-Up Table: Transcribed live blogging about my life.
The Myth of John Wayne: He's not my hero.
He's Just That Into You: The signs of attraction.
September 11, 2006: Honoring.
Women Running Away: Transformation in the Movies.
One of those Delayed Blog Entries: Where have I been this fall?.

Longer Pieces, 2004-06 (ordered by topic)

A Depression Testimony: Describing what I feel, what it's like, to be clinically depressed. Not for the faint of heart.
Hope and Worth: The emotional part of depression, what I lack. Not as painful as the testimony, but still not casual reading.
Romanticism: Beauty, passion, and love, and more shots at emotionlessness.
The Four Failures: Looking at my birthday with an homage to FDR, in a negative fashion. There are four parts: Failure of Expression, Worship, Want, and Fear. There's a short summary after all four parts, at the bottom of that page.
Three Priests: My pastor resigned on Fat Tuesday 2005, because of the uncovering of an affair he had with a male seminarian 14 years ago. My thoughts and feelings on the very upsetting two weeks are in four parts, like a book. They are background on pastors throughout my life, the week beginning Ash Wednesday, my internal emotional response, and what I've learned.

Church Seating: How much room does it take to kneel?
Neither Retreat nor Accomodation: A report from visiting two vastly different takes on American Catholicism.
A New Pope, A Small Hope: Benedict XVI, remembering that in any election, the most important issues are those from the past.
Tyrants, Not From Love: On Hymnals, Communism, and Deus Caritas Est. Really.

Mate Selection Papers: A review of a book and three studies on how Americans choose romantic partners.
The Marriage Market: A Lent 2006 series on the attractiveness of altruism and other factors in partnering. This page includes reports from studies on perception of self, and partners, in romance, evidence against altruism by observing how men spend their time, my thoughts on Bad Boys, and The Myth of Economic Selection, a UChicago theoretical ditty.