It's An Oven, Get On The Fish

It was a typically chilly Texan 104* and I looked at Blue Climate Change panting in his fur coat, "Perhaps it's time to go fishing, Gar like the heat." 

The dog said nothing, he regards my Gar obsession as foolish. All he's after is a better argument for Sola Scriptura (sorry, dog, fail) and against what he calls "the Abomination of Desolation!" 

Inner Light

No, I tell him. Having a statue of the Blessed Ever Virgin Mary in your church is not a sin against the Holy Spirit or any other kind of idolatry. He refuses to listen and wanders off in search of fried pies.

So much for the dog. I went in search of space and found Gar, lots of them, but only closed the deal on two, along with one miscreant Black Drum and a couple of opportunistic Bluegill. 

Beat The Drum

The Gar, furiously, bit through the line as they were being hauled up to the pier for a photo op. 

Maybe a steel leader is in order.

Beat the Jihad and Build the Wall,

LSP

Gun Girl Kaitlin Challenges Twig Arms Hogg To Arm Wrestle

Kent State gun girl grad, Kaitlin Bennet, has challenged teen anti-gun celebrity, David Hogg, to an arm wrestling match to decide the fate of the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms.

"C'mon twig arms, you win you take our guns, I win we keep the 2nd amendment," tweeted AR10 toting Kaitlin.

Puny leftist Twig Arms Hogg hasn't replied to Gun Girl Kaitlin's challenge. 

Twig Arms Hogg

Now, I'm not a betting man but I'll wager my fighting monkey against any three yes, three, of your priestesses that the 2nd Amendment's safe.

A Typical Gay Cake

In other heartening news, SCOTUS has ruled by a strong 7-2 majority that bakers don't have to make gay cakes. Per Adrienne's Catholic Corner:

Let's get something straight (no pun intended.) Businesses are not refusing to serve people who are homosexual. Christian-owned businesses are simply not wanting to use their art to participate in practices that are clearly wrong. That would include a baker refusing to make a cake with a Nazi symbol on top, or any other offensive depiction.

A Famous Fighting Monkey

Well said, Adrienne.

Gun rights,

LSP

Justin Trudeau Ready To Rumble!

Canada's manly Premiere, Justin Trudeau, has told the world and Trump's America in particular that Canada's not going to be pushed around.

Yuck

Canada, according to it's virile Suprema, is like an even tempered moose as opposed to the US elephant.

Seriously?

Does this mean Trudeau's getting ready to rumble?

Scary

We're quaking in our boots, Justin.

Cheers,

LSP

Melania Mondays!

Here at Melania Mondays! we're saddened by the spectacle of the lying, corrupt, self-serving, venal, hypocritical, elite mainstream media's unrelenting attack on America's popular and glamorous First Lady. 

This reached new lows today when David Frum, Senior Editor at the Atlantic, hypothetically stated via social media that Donald Trump had punched his wife. Frum's aggressively sly tweet was slammed by Melania through her spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, as "disgusting."

Frum's disgusting tweet is part of a larger media campaign of smear and innuendo, suggesting that the First Lady had disappeared from public life following her kidney procedure on May 15 because of family and personal turmoil.

Melania spoke to that on her twitter account, saying that she's "feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people."

Part of this work involves hosting a reception for Gold Star families at the White House this evening. The First Lady commented:

Gold Star families have lost an immediate family member who was serving during wartime, and they are a unique and distinct category of individuals who should be cherished. These families have endured the ultimate in pain and sacrifice on behalf of our country, and I am honored to have spent the evening with them. My husband and I commit to always pay tribute to our active service military, veterans, and the families who love them.

Note to media, your unending attacks on Melania only serve to expose you yet further as agitprop shill drones of the LeftDem Hive Mind. The First Lady, on the other hand, only looks better and better.

Well done, Melania, for doing your part to make America great again.

MAGA,

LSP

Sorry, No Wommyn, No Liturgical Dance

Our Bishop visits the Missions tomorrow.

Normally, as Anglo-Catholic Anglicans, we'd be dismayed.

But not this time, this bishop is a Christian and a successor of the Apostles.

There will be no wommyn at the Altar and no liturgical dance. And there'll only be two genders, shockingly.

And that's just the way it is.

Sorry to disappoint you, 

LSP

I Fought The Gar And The Gar Won

Keen-eyed readers of this popular international mind blog will know that Gar fishing is in the air like some kind of obsession. One of the best things out there, get on the Gar.

Which I did, fishing for Gar and Gar only. It started off well, with the Triassic beasts taking shad baited hooks and running around the spillway pool. Big excitement, well done, then they'd drop the bait in disgust, just as you're about to set the hook. 

This went on for hours; moments of intense excitement followed by let down as the Gar swum off.

Some Guy With A Gar

I tried all kinds of presentations and half the time the dinosaurlike fish were receptive. They'd pounce on the bait, play with the bait, chew on the bait, snap their jaws on the bait and run with it, and then drop it after five or so minutes of surging around.

Neat to watch, less neat to see the shad dropped right at the moment you're about to close the deal. And that's just it, all I caught was an accidental Bluegill, no Gar.

The Bush War

So what went wrong? The bait was right, the hooks were right and the Gar were taking them. The failure, surely, lay in the hookset. Perhaps I waited too long, erring on the side of caution, afraid that the fish would drop their delicious shad if I moved too soon.

Well I didn't and they did anyway. Obviously a more aggressive approach is called for.

A Gar

Next time, allow the Gar to move into its second run and while its powering forward like a torpedo, lift the rod hard, driving the sharp hook into the Gar's teeth. Then you'll have a fish on and no mistake. It's doable, I know this from experience.

Saying that, why not rig up a tiny fly hook and tempt topwater? Therein, perhaps, lies madness.

I tell you, Gar, this isn't over. Not by a long shot.

Fish on or off,

LSP

Obsession

It's official, I'm obsessed with catching these ferocious fighters.

See you on the other side.

LSP

#FreeTommy

UK activist, Tommy Robinson, has been jailed for 13 months for Breach of the Peace, after reporting outside of a Leeds court on the trial of a Muslim rape gang. In the hours following his arrest, Robinson was tried, sentenced and taken to Hull jail.

The judge who sentenced him also issued a gag order on the press, forbidding news media to report on the case. Since when was it illegal to report on a crime? For that matter, what's wrong with reporting on Muslim rape gangs? 

So much for free speech in Great Britain.

Here's Zero, Sputnik and the Daily Mail with a mixture of opinion.

#FreeTommy

LSP 

Memorial Day 2018

On Memorial Day, we pause in solemn gratitude to pay tribute to the brave patriots who laid down their lives defending peace and freedom while in military service to our great Nation. We set aside this day to honor their sacrifice and to remind all Americans of the tremendous price of our precious liberty. President Trump

May those who gave their lives rest in peace and rise in glory.

God bless,

LSP

The Holy Trinity

Listen up, heathen, it's Trinity Sunday and time to reflect on the inner life of God, revealed as three persons in one divine nature. Three persons fully God yet not three Gods but one God.

Tricky, isn't it, and I'm reminded of a conversation I had with an old monk, back in the mists of time. "Tell me, Father (he was a priest religious), how do we understand the Trinity?" I was hoping for wisdom from this elder, you see, and he replied, "Well, it's like a shamrock!"

The problem, of course, is that the Trinity isn't much like a shamrock or three pieces of one awesome pizza; each leaf or slice is fully the thing itself. How?

Perhaps Aquinas helps, following Aristotle through the lens of St. John. God, from all eternity thinks, He generates or begets an idea of Himself, a perfect concept of who He is, which is everything that He is, including existence and self-consciousness. 

This thought is expressly uttered as His Word, identical in being with the Father but distinct in relationship to Him. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God, says St. John. Here's Aquinas:

Whenever anyone understands because of his very act of understanding, something comes forth within him, which is the concept of the known thing proceeding from his awareness of it. It is this concept which an utterance signifies; we call it 'the word in the heart' signified by the spoken word. (1a.27.1)

So the Father and the Son, or Word, are one in being but persons by virtue of their relationship one to the other. And the Father looks at the Son and loves Him because He is everything that is lovable. So too does the Son love the Father. Both pour out their being, perfectly, to each other in love.

Such love, being all that the Father and the Son are, must itself be a person, the Holy Spirit. Again, identical in being with the other persons of the Trinity but distinct in terms of relationship; the Spirit proceeds. And He pours Himself back to the Father and the Son in love.

Step back from this for a moment and see that the Father, the Son and the Spirit are a community or communion of persons in love. As Augustine teaches, Lover, Beloved and Loving. God, per St. John and in no other religion, is love.

How very beautiful, LSP, you say with that faint curl of the lip as you sip the next fizzing glass of Clicquot. Not so fast, boulevardier, consider the reverse. As opposed to God is love, think of the reality behind the universe as simply its material, stars, planets, electrons, atoms, particles, gasses, forces and on. 

This, we're told, liberates us from oppressive Christianity. Really? Being in the hand of vast, implacable, natural force is freeing?

Go ahead and think that, but since when did gravity write your family a condolence letter when you fell off the pier fishing for Gar? Since when did an electron apologize for making you feel bad and then try to do something about it?

That way lies despair and the Trinity frees us from this. In the Triune God we  see love at the foundation of all that is, and therein lies fulfillment, meaning and purpose, the telos or end of our soul's desire.

May we grow into the glory,

LSP

The Mighty Power Of Gar

It was a typical day in LSPland, searing heat, a couple of rods and a near empty pier below Lake Whitney dam; I like that, no pressure. And there were lots of fish, Black Drum, shoals of Carp, one or two Bass, the odd predatory Perch and squadrons of Gar.

Don't waste time, get down to business and cast off. That meant one rod rigged with Shad and a sinker, a catfish rig, with a view to getting at the large bottom feeders. Off it spun into the depths. Rod #2 was opportunistic, weighted with two split shots and baited with a worm, for casting.

#2 struck first. Tug, pull, strike. Up came a respectable Drum, full of fight, good result. Then things slowed down, with the occasional Drum and not much else.

I was on the point of calling it a day, 5 Drum and 2 Perch down, when rod #1 started to play out. A Gar was on, you could see it, with a silvery Shad stuck between its teeth. At this point you're tempted to pull up hard for quick hookset. Error. The Gar will drop your hook like a poster of Seth Rich at a DNC convention.

No, don't do that. Instead, let the Gar go with the bait, open your bale, lighten the drag, do not give the suspicious, wary Gar any reason to drop the bait and your hook; let him run. He'll do that and stop, let him run again and then, after about five minutes or so of letting the line and the fish out, tighten up and set the hook.

BOOM. The Gar will thrash, dive, run and leap, heading downstream like a furious torpedo. Play him out, you've got a fight on your hands, and bring him in.

That happened twice today and it made Bass fishing, which is awesome, seem tame. For sure, it demands patience, lots of it, but when you connect with these formidable fish it's a whole different ball game. Big fun, I tell you.

Some people eat Gar, I don't. My two leviathans went back to fight again another day.

Fish on,

LSP

Pier Pressure

The pier was deserted, no pressure. And yes, this is Texas, not Aberystwyth.

Right away the fish were biting, small catfish and perch. Pretty much every cast a catch.

I lost count as the sun set over the glassy waters of the lake.

Two older gentlemen turned up and I gave them a small perch for bait. They were going after catfish.

And pulled out a MONSTER.

Good work, team.

Fish on,

LSP