self-restraint good, self-restraint good

Those damn Yu-gi-oh cards look so pretty. Even prettier in the original Japanese version, where a (foolish) buyer could convince herself that she was even getting helpful katakana practice by trying to (mis)read the titles.

Down, girl. Down.

("But, Genevieve, there's someone in _England_ who's selling boxes of boosters of the Japanese version at only five pounds or so.")

("It has to be an optical illusion. Now get back to the salt mines before I make you write something BAD.")

("Sigh.")

Besides, I do have other things to save my money for at the moment . . .

---

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

For most people there is a fascinating inconsistency in the position of St. Francis. He expressed in loftier and bolder language than any earthly thinker the conception that laughter is as divine as tears. He called his monks the mountebanks of God. He never forgot to take pleasure in a bird as it flashed past him, or a drop of water as it fell from his finger; he was perhaps the happiest of the sons of men. Yet this man undoubtedly founded his whole polity on the negation of what we think of the most imperious necessities; in his three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience he denied to himself, and those he loved most, property, love, and liberty. Why was it that the most large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk and not a troubadour? We have a suspicion that if these questions were answered we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also.
'Twelve Types.' -- GK Chesterton