Now that's a woman with a drinking problem

Is there a version of Al-Anon for this?

Bruce Metzger, R.I.P.

I can't help imagining that he's immediately locked himself away in Heaven's library, reveling in finally having all the knowledge he pursued on earth.

Did I read this right?

Did the San Francisco Chronicle actually publish this?

Armageddon may be just around the corner.

Making Valentine's memories... all over again

After the last post, my credentials as a romantic are probably shot to heck and gone, but I still got misty at this.

Doomsday is coming next Wednesday

As the dreaded day approaches, ponder this from Hog on Ice.

There are two kinds of men in America. Those who have been sweating all month, trying to come up with something for Valentine's Day which will suffice to sustain their sex supply and avoid a nasty outbreak of bitch-bites. And those who have forgotten the holiday is coming and who will soon wish they were dead.

The worst thing about Valentine's Day is that it destroys all relationships which began in December or January. Men sit quivering in their homes, asking themselves, "Is it too soon for this? Is it too soon for that? Is this expensive enough? Is this too cheap? If I ask her out on Valentine's Day, does that mean I think she's my girlfriend? If I don't, will she vandalize my car?" And they always make the wrong decision, partly because women specialize in declaring male decisions "wrong" after the fact. For tactical reasons.

Screw it. I say "stay home." Tell her you were abducted by aliens and that you'll take her out again as soon as your butt feels better.

Women love vandalizing cars. At least in America they do. Asian women--about 75% of them, according to a recent study I just invented--choose instead to cut the man's penis off. I think that's because Asian men generally don't own cars.

The car thing is infinitely preferable. You'll never see a urologist look at a severed penis and go, "Oh, yeah. That'll buff right out."

Anyway, protect your penis. Make sure you have a nice car you park outside, and it's even better if you have a joint bank account she can clean out without telling you.

My Lovely and Brilliant Wife knows where I park my truck, not that she could do much to make it look worse. And cleaning out my bank account would be kind of pointless, really. So I guess I'd better behave myself.

Steve Martin hasn't lost it

That whole 72-virgins-in-paradise-for-the-suicide-bomber thing may be overrated.

The old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be

Guess whose birthday it is today! Stop on over and razz her about her age!

See? Prayers do work!

Update on Mary Claire: Apparently she's doing better than anybody could have predicted. Thanks many times over to everybody who prayed! My Lovely and Brilliant Wife has a little more information.

Leaving power, or staying power?

Mike Barrett, our resident radical, has an excellent post up about hanging in there. Check it out.

No children, no marriage? Works for me

From here in the upper-left-hand corner of America comes more screwiness. This time it's a ballot initiative filed by homosexual "marriage" proponents:

OLYMPIA (AP) — Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced an initiative that would put a whole new twist on traditional unions between men and women: It would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriages annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance, which was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage. In that 5-4 ruling, the court found that state lawmakers were justified in passing the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to unions between a man and woman.

Under I-957, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriages would be subject to annulment.

All other marriages would be defined as “unrecognized” and people in them would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.

Here's the text of the initiative.

It's meant to make some sort of puerile statement, but I think it might have some merit. People who have children not only have a stake in the future, but are doing their part to ensure its stability. Every so often some prissy non-breeder will sneer at my seven kids, and I'll be forced to point out that, in a few years, they'll be paying for his Social Security. Without children, there's not much point in being here in the first place.

Savor the irony of this money quote:

Gregory Gadow, who filed I-957 last month, said the three-year timeframe was arbitrary.

“We did toy with the idea of (requiring) procreation before marriage,” he said. “We didn’t want to piss off the fundamentalists too much.”

No? Exactly how much did you want to piss them off, Gregory? Enough to take you seriously? Yeah, this'll do it.

If this is shot down, I think I'm going to file another initiative. In order to receive any government benefits whatsoever, the recipient must prove that he or she has not actively avoided procreation. In other words, they must be heterosexual, either married or at least have had serious relationships, and not have practiced contraception during childbearing years. I don't want to discriminate against the genuinely infertile, but as far as I'm concerned, if you're intentionally not doing your part to ensure a future tax base, then any resources you consume are wasted. The non-procreator is, in the long run, nothing more than a parasite. Gregory, for all his high opinion of himself, is just another drain on society. And we, those lowbrow breeders who fill the McDonald's Playland and fuel the Pampers profit margin, are enabling him to feed off us. In exchange for which, instead of appreciation, we're expected to praise his uselessness. We produce, he consumes, and he thinks that proves his superiority.

An Afterthought: My wife thinks I was being kind of heavy-handed when I posted this earlier today, and I really was. I do know a number of people who don't have children but who nevertheless make the world a better place. (Yes, Emily, I'm thinking of you.) I also know people who contracept for a limited time intending to have children when they feel more ready for them. That's their call to make, not mine.

As far as I'm concerned, though, the sort of people who denigrate my family for its size have no business expecting those same children to support them when they get old. Those people are cordially invited to apply to the Terri Schiavo School of Economics.

And as regards the original silly-ass initiative by the gay-marriage crowd, children are an integral part of a marriage. Some marriages are not blessed with them, and that's the way it goes, but a childless marriage is neither the norm nor the ideal. That these people take it for granted that children are a liability only shows their extreme tunnel vision.

For you frequent flyers

Stolen from Father Joe:

The next time you find yourself on a plane, sitting next to someone who cannot resist chattering to you endlessly, I urge you to quietly pull your laptop out of its bag, carefully open the screen (ensuring that the irritating person next to you can see it), and hit this link.

Father, you oughta be ashamed of yourself. Hee, hee!

I feel so... common!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 631 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Actually, that's not bad for having the 16th most common last name in the country.

It looks like it would work...

... once. You'll never get Kitty to do it a second time.

I'd vote for Tex

If I were Australian, that is. And if he really ran. Check out the campaign speech:

G'Day,

I want you to elect me. Why? Because I promise, if elected, I will spend every day of my term making sure the government does absolutely [fornicating] nothing.

I'm gonna stop government spending in almost every area you can imagine. The government will be so starved of revenue it will barely be able to function. You'll have to pay for stuff yourselves instead of expecting other people to do it. Your money is your money. It does not belong to the government, your neighbour, the unemployed or any other part of the "community". Nobody else is going to pay for your damned kids education, your babysitting, your house or your groceries.

It continues here (and the language gets saltier, so beware). Makes this American proud to wear an Aussie hat.

Uterofascists in a parallel universe

When I ran across Feministing.org, I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn't reading Pandagon, or any of a plethora of other uterofascist blogs. The rhetoric at the real sites is such that you simply can't satirize it. The broadest (pardon the pun) parody is close enough to be confused with the reality.

Sidney Sheldon, R.I.P.

I was never a huge fan of him myself, but my Lovely and Brilliant Wife enjoyed some of his books immensely. What amazes me is how much screenwriting he did in the 60s for TV. Christina tells me that he wrote so many episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie" that he took to using pseudonyms to make it look like there was a whole writing team. My hat is off to anybody who writes that much.

Ricki has it figured out

From the comment box at The Nightfly comes a simple summation of how to get along in the world:

I mean, crap happens. Sometimes you just have to put up with it. But you also have an obligation to try to prevent your life from becoming the crap that happens to someone else.

When I grow up, I want to be like Maureen

On her way to the March for Life, she reports:

I saw a bumper sticker on a woman's car: Keep your rosaries off my ovaries.

So, I prayed a rosary for all of her except her ovaries.

I hope she doesn't mind.

Five pieces of personal trivia

One Who Listens tagged me for the "Five Things You Don't Know About Me" meme, claiming that I don't post anything personal. Honestly, I thought I had put up so much personal stuff my readers would be heartily sick of me by now, but maybe I'm wrong.

1. I've taught five different languages in my time, including a two-month stint as a high-school substitute French teacher when I was 20. I actually went to school to teach Spanish and German, and I've also taught ESL. But the one I loved most was teaching weekend classes in Welsh for Bryn Seion Welsh Church in Beavercreek, Oregon. Most of my students were elderly, and wanted to learn what had been their parents' native language. That was 20 years ago, and almost all of them have gone on to the last great Gymanfa Ganu by now.

2. Most everybody knows I'm a convert to Catholicism, raised Baptist, but most of the time in between the two I was (believe it or not) a Quaker. When I was a teenager, I began to get serious about Christianity, and about the same time, I wandered by accident into a Friends meeting. (I was supposed to be at a different church, but I had the address wrong.) Since it was the Evangelical Friends, it wasn't all that different from the American Baptist church I attended with my folks, but it was just enough that my youthful need to be separate from them was satisfied. I continued to be part of several Friends churches in my adulthood, right up until I moved to Moses Lake, which didn't have one. I wound up going to a Baptist church here instead, which was good while it lasted. By the time I poped, I wasn't attending anywhere, but that's a whole 'nother story.

3. I was privileged to see Papa John Creach play in Portland not long before he died. He was bent almost double with age, could barely move around the stage, but gentlemen hush, that man could fiddle! I've heard (apocryphally) that he was the basis for the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." I have to doubt it some, because Papa John was from Pennsylvania, but I don't care either way. That man could have out-fiddled the devil any day.

4. Since my early 20s, I have been hopelessly infatuated with Lauren Bacall. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife has been very understanding about this.

5. I've never owned a cell phone, a Palm Pilot, or a GPS. I have no intention of ever doing so. Despite the insistence of my kids, all of whom are more tech-comfortable than I am.

Now I'm going to tag My Reverend Auntie, Dani, Pilgrim, and Pastor Paul. Tell us what we don't already know!

Why men shouldn't buy their own underwear

Gleaned from Miss Cellania. It's really not very racy, but it's probably best not to watch at work anyway. Somebody looking over your shoulder could get the wrong idea.

Henry VIII would be proud

Then again, so would Nero.

The Education Secretary said today that there was no case for Catholic adoption agencies to be exempted from new laws banning discrimination on grounds of sexuality.

In an intervention suggesting that Tony Blair has been rebuffed by his own Cabinet colleagues on the issue, Alan Johnson said he was confident no children would suffer if the Roman Catholic Church followed up on a threat to close its 12 adoption agencies around the country.

His comments, on BBC Radio 4, came after The Times reported that the Catholic agencies would be given up to a year to prepare for the introduction of the new laws under a compromise proposed by the gay rights group Stonewall.

I really hope the bishops follow through and close the agencies. It's the same thing I said when Connecticut refused to allow Catholic hospitals not to dispense abortifacients. If they want our services, they must permit our morality. They don't have to follow it, but they have to allow us to. I'm sick of governments (and populaces) demanding our charities while spitting in our face.

Of course, now the uterofascists will bitch about how we're driving the abortion rate up. Not that they think that's a bad thing, but because clearly, we're hypocrites. Because we refuse to be hypocrites. Go figure.

(Side note: at the end of the article, it mentions that the Church of England is rallyng with the Catholics on this. Good for them!)

Tom Cruise is like a Hubbardite Christ?

So say leading Scientologists. I guess there's only one way to find out: crucify him and see what happens.

A/T to It Comes in Pints?

How come we can't have cool feasts like this?

Today is January 22, and you know what that means, right? Time to toss the goat!



In the presumably lovely Spanish village of Manganeses de la Polvorosa, the entire village gathers to celebrate the feast day of St. Vincent Saragossa with food, revelry, lots of wine (naturally), and the centerpiece: taking a live goat to the top of the 50-foot church belfry and tossing it to the ground. (It's caught in a tarp at the bottom, so it's not as messy as it sounds.)

The origins of the part involving the goat are (as the saying goes) shrouded in mystery. One account involves a medieval priest who was known for providing milk to the poor from his own goat. Another has a goat sneaking up to steal the food the priest put out for the birds, then leaping to the ground and surviving to run for the hills. The authorities have tried to put the kibosh on the fiesta since 1992, but still the wine flows, the music plays and the goat plummets. (I don't want to think about how many of the critters, over the course of centuries, have missed the tarp and gone on to be goat paté.)

Being Catholic seems to be a lot more fun in Spain. Why don't we ever toss animals from towers on feast days? It's not fair!

Prayers desperately needed

It's for a five-year-old girl with inoperable cancer. If God doesn't do a miracle, she'll die. A little more information here. Please pray like mad.

And then there was one

"Papa" Denny Doherty, R.I.P.



(Link fixed. Thanks, Ken!)

"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits"

I don't think Lazarus Long was thinking of blogs, though. As promised, poet Steven Hamilton's Verve and Verse is in the sidebar under "Prods." I've been reading him in comment boxes, and he's got talent.

Also, while I'm updating, Mike Barrett's book The Danger Habit has finally been released. I'm waiting until payday to score a couple of copies, but it sure looks good. Check out his column at Pastors.com on radicalism and ministry.

A change in tone

With the West Coast Walk for Life coming up this weekend (Moses Lake's is a week later; don't ask me why), I thought I'd mosey on over and see what the far-left Indy Bay Media had to say about it. Last year it was all about threats and hatred; this year there seems to be actual discussion, and nobody's calling for the march to be stopped by force. At least not as of this writing.

Especially heartening is the number of pro-life liberals who are showing some real courage in speaking out in this forum. I'll be interested to see how long it takes before they start being cursed and threatened by their tolerant, freethinking sistren.

"Art" is such a variable term

The Battle of Helm's Deep portrayed in candy. Silly and brilliant. A tip of the Akubra to Sheila.

Isn't she adorable?

Here's Mona Grace (usually called "Gracie") at her baptism Thanksgiving weekend. I should have put this up long ago.


Pardon me while I wallow in her sheer cuteness.

Thought for today

Actually, the wonderful Miss Cellania posted this as her thought for yesterday, but I'm a little slow. Theologically awful, but it appeals to my sense of gallows humor:

Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce? – Chuck Palahniuk

There are so many jokes waiting to be made here...

... I don't even know where to begin.

AMERICAN FORK — Police are looking for three pregnant teens who they believe fled a residential group home after attacking the home's director Tuesday, and then stealing her car and credit cards.
"Three of the girls, two 15-year-olds and one 16-year-old, hit the director over the head with a frying pan and then they took some electrical cords and tied her up and put a sock in her mouth and taped her mouth," said American Fork Police Sgt. Shaun Greening.
The home, which provides a place to stay for struggling pregnant teens, had four teenage residents at the time of the incident. The teens accused of attacking the home's director also tied up a 17-year-old girl.

A reply to SNAP

David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, was brave enough the other day to comment on this post about an accused priest from Yakima hounded out of his assignment as an associate pastor in Missouri. I think Mr. Clohessy's points and my response deserve a post of their own. (He was responding to commenter MP, who's a member of the Missouri parish that Fr. Mitchell was run out of.) Their words will be in italics and labeled with initials, to try to keep it from getting too confusing.

MP: I still think that you are innocent until proven guilty.

DC: of course. no one disputes this. no one is arguing Mitchell should be locked up.

If I see a man and a woman struggling in the alleyway behind my house, and he's got a knife, and she's screaming, I'm not gonna invite the guy into my house. He's 'innocent until proven guilty.' But I'm not going to be irresponsible and disregard the safety of my kids by letting him inside. That's simple common sense.

It sounds very well to say, "well of course he's innocent until proven guilty," but a look at SNAP's website contradicts this in practice. One of the first assertions it makes is that "most allegations of abuse are true," which leads directly to the assumption that most accused are guilty. There may be some truth in this, when it's children involved, although anybody who lived through the Wenatchee witchhunts knows even that isn't infallible. But we're talking about adults in most cases, and usually adults who stand to make money. But of course, nobody would lie for money, would they?

MP: Let me get this straight: somebody said he had "pictures" on his computer.
DC: Read the Yakima paper. No one is disputing that they're photos (not sketches, drawings, art), they're boys (not teens, not young adults), they're nude (not partially clothed), that Mitchell is responsible for them (A Catholic handpicked by his bishop to head the Yakima review board publicly admits this), that Mitchell had access to his computer AFTER the photos were discovered but before the police investigation began (thus, he had the chance to destroy evidence), and finally, that he installed on his computer some program that makes it much harder for police to track which website had been visited. (All of these facts have been in newspaper accounts.)

Okay, let's take this one step at a time. They are indeed photos. The age of the boys wasn't specified. They were naked, but not pornographic according to the FBI's standards. Fr. Mitchell seems to have admitted to the person who found the pictures that he was the one who downloaded them, but that person wasn't Russ Mazzola (the "handpicked" review board leader). It was a computer to which Fr. Mitchell had access, but he wasn't the only one who used it, apparently.

As for the computer side, there are several problems with your insinuations. First, there's no way short of burning a hard drive to ashes to completely prevent reconstruction of data, and the FBI has the tools to retrieve anything. That's their job, and they're equipped for it. Second, if Fr. Mitchell eliminated evidence, wouldn't it make sense to eliminate all of the pictures? Unless he's a lawyer or a cop, he's not likely to know what the dividing line is for pornographic material, so getting rid of the pictures would have been a smart thing to do. Third, privacy programs are commonly used for internet security. To infer guilt from that is no different from the old Puritan belief that if people pulled their shades at night they must be up to something sinful.

MP: The FBI came out and confiscated the computer and came back saying: "there is nothing bad or pornographic on that computer."

DC: First, the FBI makes no such determination. Those judgments are made by prosecutors. And many prosecutors are competitive (so they tend to 'pass' on cases that aren't clear 'slam dunks' with overwhelming evidence). Many are elected (and therefore cautious about taking cases that might be politically risky for them, like ones involving priests). Many are overworked and underfunded (so they gravitate toward easy, simple cases with clear victims, unlike child porn cases, where the victims may never be known).

I don't know how things stand in Missouri, Mr. Clohessy, but Washington is the most unchurched state in the country. There's not only no political risk in prosecuting a priest, but Zirkle's career could well be made if he managed to convict one. Even though eastern Washington (where Yakima is) is rather more religious than the more populous west side, it's mostly Protestants and Mormons, many of whom buy into the stereotype of priest-as-pervert. No, I think Ron Zirkle would have prosecuted if he had a case.

DC: The bottom line is that many wrongdoers are never caught, many are never prosecuted, and many who ARE prosecuted get off on technicalities, insufficient evidence, etc. Should this be our standard for the priesthood: you get to wear the collar and be around kids as long as you've never been convicted of a sex crime? That seems to be a particularly risky standard.

Well, Bp. Sevilla had Fr. Mitchell thoroughly checked out. Our bishop isn't a Mahoney or a Law; if he thought there was a danger, he wouldn't have given a recommendation to Abp. Burke. It appears that Fr. Mitchell was being supervised in any case. My guess is that he did something stupid, saw that the consequences were serious, and is unlikely ever to do it again. Nobody was harmed, and I very much doubt that Bp. Sevilla would have returned him to ministry if anybody were likely to be.

You mention the bottom line, but I don't think that's where it is. The bottom line, for SNAP, appears to be ensuring that as many priests as possible are branded as permanently as possible. Let me ask you this: Has any priest, ever, been exonerated in the eyes of your organization after being accused? Has SNAP ever said, "This man has been cleared of any wrongdoing and is no danger to children"? If so, I've never seen it, and I'd love an example. Your recommendations for how people should respond to an accusation encourage them to speak out if they think their priest is guilty and shut up if they think he's innocent. That in itself indicates how your group feels about the potential innocence of priests.

DC: Anything's possible. but do you really value the privacy of one educated, powerful adult over the safety of innocent kids? why take the risk?

Mr. Clohessy, my own pastor is on indefinite leave while a charge against him is cleared. (And it will be, if he lives out the year.) I believe there is no risk whatsoever in trusting my children to him, and I have done so when he was in active ministry. There's not that much risk for parents who are careful in deciding whom to trust. As for an educated, powerful adult, well, the priesthood is a hard, thankless, lonely job, and my hat is off to any man who takes it on, especially knowing that vultures like SNAP are out there watching for a chance to pin something on him. He's more vulnerable to you than children are to him.

An organization like SNAP could serve a godly purpose, I think, if it were as interested in protecting the innocent as hounding the (possibly) guilty. As it is, I think it's more a weapon against the Church at large than a support network for victims.

Get a rope!

Let the lynching begin.

The Rev. Darell Mitchell was in Yakima, Wash., in 2003 when he was accused of having nude pictures of boys on his computer. No charges were ever filed.

The Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, has in recent weeks - and as recently as Thursday - protested his reassignment to two St. Louis-area parishes. SNAP leaders said it was wrong of the archdiocese and Archbishop Raymond Burke not to tell parishioners of Mitchell's "questionable past," especially since he was serving at a parish that includes an elementary school.

"Children here are safer now, but Archbishop Burke should have removed him, never allowed him here and still owes Catholics an explanation for his secrecy and recklessness," said David Clohessy, SNAP's national director.

Mitchell told The Associated Press last month he was falsely accused. A message left for him Thursday was not returned.

The St. Louis archdiocese said in a statement that Mitchell's background had been evaluated before he began serving in Missouri, and Burke found him suited for ministry in a parish.

The statement said Yakima's bishop signed a certificate saying there was nothing in Mitchell's background that raised questions about his fitness for ministry. Archdiocese communications director Anne Steffens said the archdiocese had no comment beyond the statement.

Let me get this staight. Fr. Mitchell was accused. He was investigated. He was cleared. No charges were filed. So, naturally, he must be guilty?

Archbishop Burke doesn't owe Clohessy anything but a crozier upside the head.

Update: For readers like commenter Mary Pat, here's a lot of the reason this makes me so mad. I've found out more about my pastor's railroading, and it sickens me even more than it did back in April. Are these bozos at SNAP so desperate for bogeymen that they'll go to this kind of lengths to run men out of an already depleted priesthood?

A line I wish I'd thought of

I like Richard Gere. He’s kind of the Rain Man of Hollywood: His intentions are sweet and he’s good at specific things like acting, but when he talks politics it’s like watching “the special kid” eat mud: You know you should stop him for his own good, but you don’t because it’s kinda funny.

Go here to see why. Sure enough, it's a cringe. A/T to Relapsed Catholic.

He may have blown a .31...

... but at least he wasn't disgruntled.

Ye shall know the truth

... and the truth shall make thee snort thy coffee out thy nose.

Check out the rest of the site, but pinch yourself occasionally to make sure you're still anchored to reality.

A headline worthy of Dawn Eden

On a story about the consecration of a church made of ice: "Freezing your Mass Off".

One more suffering artist

The art teacher whose off-time hobby consisted of painting with his butt has been... er... canned.

Want a hoot? The web page with his story is overloaded since the story broke, but here's a Waybacked version of how he got started.

The Mister Rogers you never knew

Sick and wrong. But I can't help laughing like a hyena in a dentist's chair anyway. (Language alert!)

Today's Spam Zen

I thought it was time to ponder another Spam Zen, since I haven't done one since October. For those who didn't see the last one, the idea is to take a random line from your spam and see what insights you can squeeze out of it. I tried to make this one lighthearted, but the line that I had to work with lent itselt to more serious reflection:

When the spider ruminates, the nearest lover beams with joy.

Remember how a spider treats her lovers? What she's ruminating on is almost certainly the last lover. It's the one not eaten that is beaming, simply because he's not being noshed on. There but for the grace of a full spider tummy goes he. This one represents one of the aspects of the human condition of which we should be most ashamed, yet it's almost universal: the relief of the person passed over by tragedy.

How often have we seen a tornado or a fire on the news and thought with a frisson, "That could have been me?" The thought we usually suppress after that is, "Thank God it wasn't." The same applies to any other misfortune: When we hear, for instance, that there will be layoffs at work, our first thought is to hope it happens to someone else. It would be great if bad things never happened, but if they do, it shouldn't be us that they happen to.

Partly, we think we really don't deserve the misfortune. I can't count the times I've kicked the bumper of my truck as it sat immobile by the side of the road and shouted, "It's not fair!" (If you'd ever seen my truck, you'd know why that's a common occurrence.) But is it really unfair? My truck breaks down because it needs some sort of maintenance. It doesn't get the upkeep it needs because I don't know how to do more than the most basic limp-it-back-home mechanical work, and I can't afford to have it professionally done. I can't afford it because I have a job that (although I like working where I do) doesn't pay very well, which I took because I really needed one at the time, which need in turn was driven by my single parenthood, which was a result of my early marriage and its failure, both of which I participated in. My choices of nearly twenty years ago have resulted now in my standing next to an obstinately non-functional truck muttering colorful violations of the second commandment.

Then, too, there's the question of sin. Even if I can't draw a line of cause-and-effect from some choice of mine and my current misfortune, I certainly have done enough other things wrong in my life to deserve whatever is happening to me and more. In fact, I've done enough wrong to merit Hell, and only the grace of God keeps me from the flames.

That grace is the ultimate example of the spam zen above. We may be passed over, like the Israelites in Egypt, but that reprieve comes at a price. A price for someone else to pay. As much as we may want to take personal responsibility for ourselves and not beam at another's suffering, the fact remains that there is no way we can be saved from the ultimate devouring expect by another taking it in our place. Jesus gave Himself to be the spider's meal, which is why we are not. We cannot have it both ways: avoid being eaten and be self-sufficient. So as much as it may gravel our pride to do it, the only response we can give to our escape from the spider is to beam with joy that it was Someone else. He wouldn't have it any other way.

Okay, I'm going to make it a meme again, and see if anybody takes it up. Specifically, I'm tagging Dani B, just so she can keep in practice until the next actual paid project I can send her. It doesn't have to be serious; be a smart-elbow if you like (it's more fun anyway). And of course, anybody else who is willing to take up the challenge is invited to as well. Let me know in the comments if you do, so I can link it.

Baghdad Jim opens his mouth again

This makes my jaw drop, even coming from Congressman McDirtbag:

After their November trip, McDermott and LaMagna developed a plan they say reflects what Iraqis want. It would undo major pieces of the Bush strategy.

They want U.S. troops out of the cities and sent to close the borders with Iran and Syria. They want the Iraqi constitution rewritten and the former Baath party government, which the U.S. dismantled, brought back to run things. [Emphasis mine]

To protect the country, they say, the old Iraqi army must be reconstituted and rearmed.

More than 3,000 soldiers gave their lives, and McDipwad wants to throw them out with the trash. Is it so hard to see why I hope someday to see Eastern Washington separate from the coast, to get away from the sort of losers who would vote for someone like that? I'm ashamed to be even tangentially represented by him.

I'm afraid I may be one of the apes

But then, at least I know I don't understand it. Philosophy has always seemed to me to be just theology with the names blacked out. But my Lovely and Brilliant Wife has a lot wiser things to say on the subject.

"Will it make a bang or a wallop?"

I can so picture my oldest daughter doing this when she was that age. A/T to It Comes in Pint?.

And this little piggy...

... went Wii Wii Wii, all the way to the land of impaired eyesight. Whenever cool, whizbang technology appears, this sort of thing seems to follow.

A/T to A Welsh View.

But... it's just different, that's all!

An update on James Kopp, who was captured in France after almost three years on the run for offing an abortionist.

James Kopp already is serving a 25-year-to-life state sentence after being convicted of second-degree murder. Federal prosecutors contend that the shooting also violated the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.

Kopp, 52, also is charged with using a firearm during a killing, which carries a maximum sentence of life without parole. The clinic-access count carries a maximum life sentence.

Under his current state conviction, Kopp will be eligible for release when he is in his 70s.

I know a pro-lifer isn't supposed to say so, but I truthfully don't see any moral difference between what Kopp did once and what Slepian did for a living. Except that Slepian wasn't a defenseless, unarmed baby trapped in an enclosed space, and Kopp wasn't being paid for it.

The only honest thing for the federal government to charge Kopp with would have been practicing medicine without a license. I'd like to see open season declared on abortionists. If they're going to kill with government sanction, they should be subject to the same jeopardy. Fair is fair.

No need to curtsy

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: His Excellency Joel the Defenestrated of Burton-le-Coggles Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

"Roman Catholics today are that denomination who hate their bishops"

Wise words about contraception, orthodoxy and authority, from the priest who solemnized our marriage. Fr. Sam is an Old Catholic bishop, which means he's not actually in communion with Rome, but he still has a lot more respect for our leaders than a lot of their own flock do.

Operators are standing by

Given Bawbra's legendarily thin skin, I'd love to have seen her face when she saw this. Personally, I think he makes the crossover a lot better than she does.

Catholic Carnival 100

It's up over at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering. Just like everybody else does in January, the first carnival of the year includes some best-ofs, where we can submit our favorite post of 2006.

The one I sent in is from last March, called Found Out a Man Ain't Just Being Macho. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the response I got to this one, getting linked at places I'd never heard of and even at some topical page at Netscape. It still brings in more Google searches than anything else (except maybe the ones from the foot fetish people).

So I'm going to milk it one more time at the Carnival. Go check out the other posts; there's a veritable treasure trove. I especially identified with (and laughed my hiney off at) this account of Christmas with toddlers.

My wife... I think I'll keep her

It's fitting that this story should appear just after my Lovely and Brilliant Wife and I celebrated our fourth anniversary. So from now on, I'm going to stop hogging the housework. It's all yours, honey. Keep 'em healthy!

See how much I love you?

Preach it, Mike!

Some great insights on sin at Adventure Faith. Pastor Mike's absolutely spot-on; it's always a battle to treat sin as sin, rather than just a mistake or a lapse of judgment.

[R]eligion will not help me. Humanism will not help me. Rationalization will not help me. Going numb with drugs and alcohol will not help me. Listening to someone's story of faith will not help me.

The only thing that will help me is this: to fall on my face, daily if possible, and invite the presence and power of Christ to heal me and fight with me. To lean on the Word of God and trust it to carry me through the next battle. To grow up and fight.

Finally, I need to recognize that the more I rationalize away my sin the less I need Christ.

I have a pet peeve with my pastor (whom I love and respect, BTW): In the Mass, when you get to the Kyrie, the priest's usual line is something like "Let us call to mind our sins." My pastor always says, "Let us call to mind the ways in which Our Lord invites us to love, honor and serve Him, and how we are answering that call." I can jolly well tall you how we are answering that call, Father. We're answering it badly. Sometimes very badly, sometime not as badly as other times, but I can assure you that anybody who says, "Well, I guess I've answered all right this week" is brimming over with the well-known bovine byproduct.

We shouldn't be asking "how are we doing?" as though "Great!" were a possible answer. The focus should be on "What do I need to ask forgiveness for, and what should I try to avoid next time?" We don't say "Lord, have mercy" over our successes. Most of us think about our positive points quite enough as it is. Let us call to mind our sins.

You love me! You really love me!

I made the list of the year's best entries in the Friday [Fornicate]-Off Thread at It Comes in Pints! My entry was probably the cleanest, from back in October:

Madonna. Madonna can [FORNICATE] OFF. With big, splintery nails.

You don't just tootle down to the used-child lot and pick one out like it's a 1998 Nissan. You remind me of those people who buy baby chicks for their kids at Easter, knowing the poor thing won't live to see May, but it's just SOOO CUUUTE!

Next time you crucify yourself in concert, do some other child a favor and stay on that damn cross!

Steel yourself to the language and go check out the rest of it. It's really cathartic.

Swingin' in the New Year

It's looking like sometime between now and when that big ball falls in Times Square, Saddam Hussein will dance the Tyburn jig.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving chap. May God show him more mercy than I think He will, and certainly more than Saddam ever showed.

Update: Looks like it will be 7:00 tonight (Pacific time, that is). Sooner than I expected. And it will be on YouTube by 7:02, I'm betting.

Another Update:

Al-Nueimi said U.S. authorities were maintaining physical custody of Saddam to prevent him from being humiliated before his execution. He said the Americans also want to prevent the mutilation of his corpse, as has happened to other deposed Iraqi leaders.

"The Americans want him to be hanged respectfully," al-Nueimi said.

Good. Political reasons aside, this is how Americans handle executions. We are not barbarians.

Just as an aside...

...to the person who came in on this search, her name is Nicolette Scorcese. I don't know if she's any relation to Martin or not. But boy, howdy, could she sell absolutely anything to any man whose eyeballs hadn't been physically removed!

Now you know who she is, if you ever come back this way. Merry Christmas.

Shakin' it for Santa

I don't know what to add to this that won't leave me sleeping on the couch. Except that I wonder what kid wound up with the stuffed dog, and what he'd think if he knew where it had been. On, Vixen!

This just in

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has filed criminal charges against überabortionist George Tiller. No further details yet on the newswire, but be assure I'll be keeping it updated.

Go get 'em, Phill! Nail his loathesome, murderous hiney to the wall! The spirit of Simon Wiesenthal be with you!

Update: Not much information out yet, but here's a preliminary story. Sure enough, it's for covering up for child molesters. It'll be an uphill climb, since apparently abortion clinics are the only "health care providers" who aren't subject to legal oversight.

A shame it has to be a lame-duck effort, but it may have the effect of shining some light on one of the abortion industry's dirty little secrets.

Monks gone wild

They'll know we are Christians by our crowbars.

Turkmenbashi, we hardly knew ye

In my case, that's literally true. I'd never heard of the man until yesterday, when I ran across this amazing account of a foray into Turkmenistan, and then lo and behold, when I pulled up the news wire this morning at the office, there was his obituary. No two ways about it; this guy was fascinating. I don't think he was as loony as he's made out to be, though. He may have had a staggering sense of self-importance, but he managed to keep Turkmenistan from descending into the sort of bloodbaths and power vacuums that other countries went through after the USSR fell apart. No mean feat, that.

Nevertheless, he was an unusually colorful guy (which is sort of like saying that Stalin was unusually forceful). Check out his legacy of weirdness here.

A more serious story here.

Helsinki Complaints Choir

My best-friend-from-childhood comes from a Finnish family, as does about half of Klickitat County where I grew up (Motto: "Baaaa!"), so I'm not as surprised as Mark Shea that they have a sense of humor. Anybody who's taken a real Finnish sauna (a hundred-plus degrees of steam followed by total immersion in a snowbank) knows that as oppressive as the heat might be, you come out as thoroughly clean as you've ever been in your life. This video is just about that cathartic. I don't think I'll bellyache for a while after seeing this. Fun!

Danny Bonaduce has class...

And this sunglassed dickhead doesn't. I had to wait until I got home to watch this, but I'm glad I did. I don't care if you're for or against the Iraqi occupation, what this pissant did was inexcusable. You don't just ooze up to someone in mid-meal as though just because he was famous 30 years ago he's somehow obliged to talk with you. As far as I'm concerned, Mr. Bonaduce would have been well within his rights to give the guy a microphone enema; he showed great courtesy in merely speaking to loser-boy as though he MATTERED A RAT'S PATOOT.



A/T to It Comes in Pints?.

Cartoons at half mast

Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Scooby Doo... all died today.

Going through the motions

Note: Once again I'm recycling an article I wrote a few years ago for a Christian (mostly Protestant-oriented) magazine I used to put together for The Greatest Newspaper in the Northwest™. Since it deals with ordinary time, I probably should have waited until Christmas was over and posted it then, but a blogfriend seems to be going through a rough patch, and I thought this might be the right time to bring it up. (You know who you are, brother.)

I dread the time between Christmas and Lent. The holidays are over. The carols have been replaced by the whines of children. The snow that was charming two months ago now leaves me snarling at my shovel. And my spiritual life reminds me of the feeling you get driving at three in the morning with nothing on the radio and seventeen cups of gas station coffee dissolving the lining of your stomach. On the church calendar, it’s called “Ordinary Time.” I can see why. And as soon as I say this, I feel a little guilty. A Christian isn’t supposed to feel this way.

Remember the songs we used to sing in Sunday School?

“If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!”

“I have the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart!”

“Jesus wants me for a sunbeam!”

It starts early, this conditioning to feel happy. And it continues into adulthood. As mature Christians, we know intellectually that there will be spiritual ups and downs. Still, how often are we exhorted to be “on fire for God?” Not to “go through the motions?” And the oft-quoted “If you don’t feel close to God, guess who moved?”

Bah. Nobody moved. I’m still here, and He’s still here, and how I feel at any given time has nothing to do with it. I’ll “go through the motions” as long as it takes, thank you. Every Christian has times like that. The important thing is to have motions to go through.

For a Catholic, it’s easy. You go to Mass, sing the songs, read the responses, and receive the Eucharist. The routine is mostly the same. As the Mass goes along, I find myself adding my mental commentary:

Priest: “The Lord be with you.”
Congregation: “And also with you.” (I could do this in my sleep. In fact, I think I might be.)
Priest: “Lift up your hearts.”
Congregation: “We lift them up to the Lord.” (Does drop-kicking it in the general direction of the altar count?)
Priest: “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”
Congregation: “It is right to give Him thanks and praise.” (The guy in front of me seems to be hygienically challenged. Hey, buddy, praise with your arms down, willya?)

And so it goes. If you’re not Catholic (or some other liturgical denomination), then it gets a little trickier. It’s kind of expected that you will have a “worship experience” at church, and you have to find a balance that will allow you to worship without feeling like a hypocrite. People tend to notice if you show up, glower at your hymnal for an hour or so, and go home without saying a word to anybody. Not the best witness, perhaps, but what can you do?

Well, you can pray. A lot. And remember that God hears you even when you mutter. You don’t have to be exuberant or interesting, just pray. Again, this is where having a set routine helps. My wife is a Secular Carmelite, so she prays the Divine Office regularly. (Translation for Protestant readers: the Secular Carmelites are sort of like a religious order, but without vows of celibacy and poverty. The Divine Office is a traditional series of prayers, mostly from the Psalms, that takes about 15 or 20 minutes twice a day.) I don’t have the self-discipline for that, but I can set myself a series of prayers and stick to it like gum to a theater seat. One “Our Father”, one “Glory Be”, repeat as needed. It’s not fancy, but it gets me through.

And for now, getting through is the name of the game. In a month or so, it’ll be Ash Wednesday, and the zeal will return. (Who but a Catholic gets fired up over penitence and self-denial? Praise the Lord and pass the hair shirt!) Meanwhile, I keep remembering the words of Bob Dylan:

“And when finally the bottom fell out
I became withdrawn,
The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin’ on...”

...and on, and on and on. Our Father, Glory Be, Yadda yadda. World without end, amen. It’s a good thing the Lord knows how I feel even when I don’t feel it.

Circumcision reduces risk of AIDS...

... by almost half. No mention of how much the risk can be reduced by simply not buggering other men.

Lying godbag defames self-sacrificing hero

But... but... things like that don't really happen! Women who have abortions are happy! Happy, I tell you! And Dr. Tiller is a great man, who gives his profits to charity! Yeah, that's it! Secretly! And it wasn't a baby! It wasn't! SHUT UP!

Stop it! Stop saying those things! La la la la la...

If things had gone terribly, terribly wrong

This alternate-history obituary of St. Jack is really disturbing. I don't think it's all that plausible, but the convergences are fun to ponder, in a Lovecraftian sort of way.

Christmas reality check

As fast as the decorations come out, somebody starts going on about how "Christmas is just a glossed-over pagan celebration, blah blah blah." Next time you hear that twaddle begin, shut it off by directing them to someone who knows what he's talking about.

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

Thanks to Catholic Überblogger Mark Shea for reminding me about this. He's got some really good comments on the subject here.

Stuff you can't make up

A high school art teacher suspended for making a YouTube video demonstrating how to paint with your butt.

Where do you even begin to make fun of something like this?

Peter Boyle, R.I.P.

It's hard to say what my favorite performance of his was, especially since I was never a fan of "Everybody Loves Raymond." Didn't hate it or anything, just never got into it.

I first saw Boyle in Yellowbeard, which (despite almost universal gagging) remains one of my favorite parodies of all time. I remember him as a police commander trying everything he could find to relieve stress in Red Heat; he made an otherwise forgettable movie as least a little enjoyable. And everybody loved him in Young Frankenstein.

I think my favorite role of his, though, was as the father (Ox Callahan) in the sappy romantic comedy While You Were Sleeping. Some of the quotes still crack me up:

Man at Church: Will you please pipe down?
Ox Callahan: Hey, be nice pal-ly, we're in Church!
Man at Church: You're disrupting the Mass!
Ox Callahan: Who made you the Pope?

And one I throw around sometimes for no particular reason:

All I know is, she was pretty high and mighty for someone named after breakfast meat!

Incidentally, looking at his trivia, I notice that before he was an actor, he was a Christian Brothers monk. How cool is that?

Rest in peace, pal. Make God laugh.

Vandal steals baby Jesus from manger...

... and replaces Him with a beer can. Classy.


H/T to Protein Wisdom.

I can talk gooder'n anybody!

Given that I work for a newspaper, 98 percent shouldn't be good enough. But I don't have time to go back and see what I missed.

Your Language Arts Grade: 98%

 

Way to go! You know not to trust the MS Grammar Check and you know "no" from "know." Now, go forth and spread the good word (or at least, the proper use of apostrophes).

Are You Gooder at Grammar?
Make a Quiz

I'd be curious to see how Dani does, since I occasionally hire her to freelance. I'd like to think she can, like, write a correct sentence, y'know? I'll bet she beats me. H/T to Patrick.

For my Reverend Auntie

She was very active in Mensa for a long time, ever since she discovered it through administering my Mensa test when I was a kid. In fact, I remember her telling me that she had been letched after by the Good Doctor himself at a Mensa gathering. (I didn't envy her that, although I would have liked to have met him.)

Here's a few lines I hope he didn't use:

The Top 5 MENSA Pick-Up Lines

5> "If I were to mention to you that you have a bellus corpus, would you take umbrage?"

4> "I bet your brain stem reaches almost down to your gluteus maximus."

3> "Ooohh, your IQ is 145? I like 'em dumb and strong!"

2> "By visually measuring the wrinkles in the front of your pants, calculating your body mass based on your height and weight, and dividing that number by your waist size -- I conclude that you have absolutely nothing in your pocket and are, in fact, glad to see me."

and the Number 1 MENSA Pick-Up Line...
1> "Baby, I'll have you barking like a canis familiaris."

Our Catholic governor...

... leaps eagerly at the chance to please her NARAL masters. This wasn't even a political necessity; it was just a gesture to show how committed she is to betraying her faith for the sake of the abortion industry.

I take some solace in the knowledge that she actually lost the election. But not much.

Counseling by phone

While I was cleaning out some stuff, I found this from a back issue of the Wittenburg Door, back when it used to be funny. I thought I'd post it just for the heck of it.

Hello.

You have reached Enormous Christian Center's automated spiritual counseling and referral line. If you were trying to call Domino's Pizza, please press (1) now.

If you have a loved one in the hospital, please press (2) now.

If you have done something you feel ashamed of and you wish to anguish over it without any real resolve to change, press (3) now.

If you wish to complain about another member of the church who does not meet your expectations, press (4) now. If you wish to complain about the pastor, press (5) now.

If you would like marriage counseling, press (5) now.

You already used 5.

No, I didn't.

You most certainly did. Complaints about the pastor were 5.

Well, pardon me. I suppose you never make mistakes.

I can count, if that's what you mean.

Oh, really? Then how do you explain last month's checking statement?

I was still in a stupor from your tuna casserole.

(BEEP)

If you would like to speak directly to God, think very hard about the number (7) now.

If there was no answer at that extension and you are now experiencing a crisis of faith, please press (8) now.

(BEEP)

You have selected menu item number 8, a crisis of faith. This automated service offers various arguments for the existence of God.

To hear a defense of creationism by the biology professor from a nearby Bible college, press (1) now.

To hear about God's message in the awesome beauty of nature, press(2) now.

For a celebrity's personal testimony, press (3) now.

For a pretty lame attempt to deal with the problem of evil in 45 seconds, press (4) now.

To return to the main menu, press (5) now.

(BEEP)

For general counseling, please press (9) now.

(BEEP)

You have selected menu item number 9, general counseling. Please begin describing your life situation. Press the pound key when you are ready for a response.

(#)

Uh-huh.

(#)

Uh-huh.

(#)

I see.

(#)

And how did you feel about that?

(#)

I see. Well, perhaps you should pray about it.

(BEEP)

For church softball league results, please press (1) now. Softball league results are $2.95 for the first minute, 95 cents for each additional minute.

Have a nice day.

I kind of saw this coming

The more seriously the MSM begins to take Mitt Romney's chances for the White House, the more Gee-Whiz-Those-Mormons-Sure-Are-Kooks stories like this one we'll be seeing. The media didn't care about Mormons when it was just fresh-faced kids at the door, but with Romney considering a presidential bid, it's time to start establishing the meme in people's heads that the LDS are really just Branch Davidians in weird underwear.

B-I-N-G-O

... and Pervo was his name-O!

This is the lamest excuse for despicable behavior I've heard in a long time.

Like an old dog gone astray...

... I'm just old and in the way.

Update: Sorry about that, Paul. It's an MP3 audio, so you might have to actually download it if you want to hear it. I can spare you the bootleg recording quality and link to the lyrics instead.

I didn't mean to be obscure. It's my birthday, and I'm wallowing in my encroaching obsolescence. :)

Praying hard

Pastor Paul reports that Larry Brice, an associate pastor here in Moses Lake, has been diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer, and it doesn't look good. We've already seen that prayer can beat cancer, so let's get going again.

Rosaries ready, aim... pray!

Gobble, gobble!

Which is exactly what I intend to do today, being as it's the one day out of the year that I can convince myself that gluttony isn't really a sin. We're heading over to my sister's for dinner today, but I couldn't resist posting the funniest Thanksgiving moment in TV history. (Thanks to Miss Cellania for finding it!)

Sometimes "anger management" just means knowing where to aim

I mean, both of these guys strike me as responding fairly reasonably under the circumstances, although the former might want to address some obvious underlying problems in his marriage. But in the latter case, it seems to me if more people did that, there would be a lot more public decorum in the world.

A tip of the Akubra to Jim Romanesko for both links.

Update: That doesn't apply to this bozo, but at least he was on his way to the right place.

This is embarrassing

Embarrassing, that is, because it shouldn't be this easy. I'd like to think that all of my teenagers could have passed this long before graduation.

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

 

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

As a side note, I actually don't have my high school diploma. I graduated all right, by the skin of my teeth, but my diploma was withheld pending payment of a library fine. Now I've had a lot of books overdue in my time, and if I'd had this one out I would have paid the fine, but I can say for a certainty that I never checked out The Scarlet Letter during my junior year. Nevertheless, the librarian (in true school librarian fashion) was unyielding, and wouldn't take my word for it. She's 71 now and presumably retired (I haven't seen her in twenty years), so I guess we're at an impasse. But dagnabbit, I deserve the diploma anyway, and now I have the score to prove it.

Oh. My. Word.

I literally couldn't stop gaping at this. How on earth do you set something like this up? At least dominoes have a flat side. But coins!!

I could think of more practical uses for 10,000 quid, but none more elegant. H/T to the delightful Miss C.

Phooey!

All right, pooches, you win. This time. But there's still next year.

Now get off the couch and for heaven's sake stop licking yourself there!

An Apple Cup Prayer

Reposted from November 2005:

My friends, this being the Apple Cup weekend, let us all join in prayer for our mighty Cougar warriors, that they might by their God-given superiority prevail over their perfidious foes. Let us also pray for the conversion of the pagan Huskies, that just as God will change their mourning into dancing, so may He change their purple and (fool's)-gold into holy crimson and grey. And finally, let us pray for the poor benighted heathen who are misled into rooting for the foul curs, that they might see the error of their ways and become true Wazooites in heart, if not in alumni affiliation.

Those who will not so pray, let them be anathema, as they are no better than Seattle coasties themselves, and perhaps (gasp!) not even Washingtonians and so not salvable even by the grace of a merciful Crimson-and-Grey-wearing God.

Amen, and go Cougs!

Gives a whole new meaning to "going stag"

Okay, maybe it's not a crime, but it sure is yucky. Next time you complain that we have too many laws in this country, bear in mind that there wasn't one in place specific enough for this sicko to break.

Update: I hadn't realized the link required registration. Go to Bugmenot.com for a login.

An animated parable

I don't see this the way Mark Shea does, as a "lesson for postmoderns" in the inexorability of natural laws. Rather, it reminds me of the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price. I don't think the bird is in denial here, I think he just wants something so badly he's willing to take the consequences to have it just once. Which is how we ought to desire God, and (I, at least) so seldom do.

Caption contest

All right, it's not my caption contest; it's one going on over at Ship of Fools. But there are some wonderful ones:

The lucky Calvinist knew the simplicity of mating by predestination...

Now, THAT is what I call 'irresistable.'

No, honey, I didn't say I was Elect, I said I was ... oh, whatever.

Oh baby, you bring out the total depravity in me like nobody ever has before.... Can you feel it too?

Get in touch with your inner smart-elbow and see if you can come up with some more. If you really are a Calvinist (are you still reading, Pilgrim?), give yourself double points for being able to laugh at yourself.

Pastors on crack

That's the only explanation I can find for some of these church signs. Is it really necessary to hawk Jesus like he was a used Honda?

Rosie got something right

At least, Pastor Mike finds some unintentional truth in Rosie O'Donnell's blather about fearing "Radical Christianity":

If radical Christianity took root in this country it threatens our way of life and the underpinnings of this great nation....

Let's look at the potential damage a bit closer:
Radically following the person and teachings of Jesus would erode materialism and obliterate a financial system that is derived from leveraging debt over and over again.
Radical Christianity would cause millions of jobs to be lost as prisons became nearly vacant, court rooms had no backlog, hospitals didn't have many sick, and peace officers across the country are laid off because crime rates drop to a ridiculous level.
Marraige counselors would be broke as repentance and humility and honesty took root in families across this great nation...

Go read the whole thing. Then let's go live it, and show Rosie and her ilk what there is to be afraid of.

Yep. That's about what happened.

H/T to Pastor Jeff.

Here's a thought to take with you into the weekend

Pervert seduces 12-year-old girl, then lives undetected in her bedroom for three months.



Apparently the vermin had hollowed out a space under the girl's bed and hid out under there.

Sleep well, parents!

More visual aids

This kind of puts the whole embryonic stem cell thing into perspective, I think:

Hat tip to Pr. Paul McCain.

I guess that's a silver lining

Emily managed to find something good in the election results:

The good news about Democrats taking the House is that we won't have to endure months and months of lawyering over election fraud and imagined disenfranchisement. Because when Republicans win, it's only by acts of thuggery and abuse. When Democrats win, it's because The People™ have spoken.

What she said.

The day after

Reagan announced in 1981 that it was "morning in America." Well, it's morning again, but this time with a hangover that will last for years. Our country is now run by people who believe that it's not only permissible but actually preferable to slaughter the unborn, the elderly and the infirm; who would abandon the Iraqis to a theocratic power vacuum and gloat at the deaths of soldiers; and who would demand that religions that hold to traditional marriage abandon their beliefs or pay the price. We are at the mercy of a party for whom mercy is at best a joke and at worst an abomination.

God help us, because the electoral process has not.

Today's the day!

Remember: If you don't vote, you can't bitch.

Worth a thousand words of apologetics

Found on Crossed the Tiber, along with a plethora of other good stuff.

"The ketchup bottle you rolled in on?"

Warning: Extreme language alert!

Over at It Comes in Pints?, there's a weekly tradition called the "Friday [Fornincate]-Off Thread," where you can get in touch with your inner mouth-foamer and release all your anger at anybody you choose. Now, I'm moderately skilled at the use of profanity, but the folks that post there are out-and-out masters of the art. In particular, Val Prieto of Babalu Blog launched into John Kerry this week in such blistering terms that I just had to reproduce it here verbatim. (My very humble apologies to anybody who has a problem with the language. I usually keep it clean, but editing this would destroy the whole effect.)

To that Senator from Massachusetts - no, not the drunk fat rat bastard, the other skinny YOU RANG? LURCH looking one - that exemplifies the definition of arrogance and hubris and condescension and who saw fit to denigrate men and women in the Armed Forces that have more honesty, courage, integrity and dignity in a pinky nail clipping than you have in your whole entire wrinkled sorry excuse for a body: FUCK THE FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING WHY THE LONG FACE? MONSTER LOOKING, MONEY MARRYING, VIETCONG ASS KISSING WHILE MEN WERE STILL DYING IN VIETNAM, FALSE CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY GIVING, FORM 180 SERVICE RECORD HIDING SNIVELLING PURPLE HEART FOR A MOSQUITO BITE RECIEVING COMMIE ASS KISSING POLITICAL OPPORUNIST DOESNT EVEN HAVE THE BALLS TO STAND BY WHAT HE BELIEVES OR SAYS MOMTHERFUCKING FUCK OF FUCKING FUCKHEAD FUCK MOTHERFUCKER. No, seriously, FUCK YOU JOHN FORBES FUCKING KERRY AND THE FUCKING KETCHUP BOTTLE YOU ROLLED IN ON.

Whew! How cathartic is that? Extra points if you can read that whole thing without coming up for air.

The contrast

This just about sums up the level of discourse between right and left:

Liberal gesture to Bush
Conservative gesture to Kerry

And yet liberals honestly believe we're their intellectual inferiors.

First snow...

... just started coming down a few minutes ago.

This is part of why I like living in central Washington. Although it's been years since Moses Lake had a really snowy winter, there's still a charm about the first flurry of the season. It's not sticking yet, and I'll be surprised if it does this time, but it's still fun to watch through the window. Preferably with a fire and a hot cup of something.

Update: Rats! It's morphed into plain ol' freezing rain. Ah, well, for one bright shining moment...

Feeling my age

It just occurred to me, listening to the reporters in this newsroom (average age about 24), that I still think of "chill" as strictly a transitive verb. Which makes me a geezer.

Sigh.

Blogroll addition

I'd like to welcome to the blogroll Dani, of Life in 3D, who's a homeschooling stay-at-home mom, an old friend and a helluva writer with some really good things to say. You'll find her link under "Prods" in the sidebar. Mosey on over and say "hi." (Maybe this will make her blog more frequently.) :)