Mango Porcupine Coda
Brother Carlo was quite frustrated. He was handling a tablet running an ancient video game software that froze… quite often. He was on the outskirts of the abbey...
Brother Carlo was quite frustrated. He was handling a tablet running an ancient video game software that froze… quite often. He was on the outskirts of the abbey at the nearly finished stone wall of a sheep pen.
Abbot Michael had given him a penance for quarreling (“ad nauseum” the abbot had said, ad nauseum!) with his fellow monk Brother Pier. They were quarreling about whether video games were better suited to training the mind or for relaxing the mind. They had been arguing for months (months!) about this. Not at lunch, or dinner, where silence was observed, but the entirety of their recreation time.
The other monks played sports of some kind but Brother Pier preferred to play a quick video game, laid out on the stone wall, console in hand. He would play anything made by St. Thomas Irenio, or others from the twenty second century’s monastic video game revival period. Brother Carlo preferred to discuss (or bicker, as Abbot Michael had called it, bicker!) about video games and their purpose. He could not help it, he knew Brother Pier was refusing to concede some very important points.
Really the last straw was when Brother Pier pulled out the other St. Thomas, St. Thomas Aquinas, and quoted from the Summa about recreation. St. Thomas Aquinas would have no concept of video games as a tool or an entertainment. There was nothing equivalent in the thirteenth century, not even close- and Brother Carlo told him so, in so many words. It would have been many words if Abbot Michael hadn’t been hobbling nearby and put an end to it.
“My son, Carlo, you have been bickering ad nauseum about this for months! And worst of all… making no progress! Brother Pier just wants to be left in peace.”
Bickering! Ad nauseum! What’s the absolute worst of this whole situation is that… Abbot Michael agrees with me! Brother Carlo ruminated.