This will be very funny for a very few

Happy Birthday Jeffrey Tucker of the CMAA!



Originally posted here.

How to help uninsured children

This is great! Our clinic is way across town, too far to drive since we moved.


Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children�s Healthcare

"Sin" is breaking whose law again?

Keith Pavlischek at First Things:

From the Westminster Shorter Catechism:
Q. 14. What is sin? A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

From the Baltimore Catechism:
Q. 278. What is actual sin? A. Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God.

From Senator Obama:
Q. Do you believe in sin? OBAMA: Yes. Q. What is sin? OBAMA: Being out of alignment with my values.

Not that there is anything to the chatter about Senator Obama’s “Messiah complex,” mind you.

Report on Mpls Closing of Dunkin Donuts FROM THE FUTURE!

HA! I love puns. Pun rule #1: Never apologize, never explain.

From Lileks:

Perhaps you've read rapturous stories about the return of Dunkin' Donuts to the Twin Cities. Wow! Donuts? And coffee? Where do we queue?

It's good news -- but on the other hand, our time-travel news-retrieval system has produced this dispatch from the future:

(Mpls) Aug. 10, 2013: The last Dunkin' Donuts closed today, quietly closing out an era that began with great fanfare in 2008 when the company returned to the Twin Cities market after five years.

"We see an opportunity," a company spokesman had said, citing the departure of Starbucks and Krispy Kreme, which "not only left a hole in the area's donut options but had sprinkled the area with empty stores. I'd give you some dry business reasons, but your eyes would glaze over," he said, adding "you understand those are donut puns, right? Because you're not smiling."

Watch this video for warm fuzzies

Then go to Matt's site. It's amusing.


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Dick Dawkins rap: He's smarter than you he's got a science degree!

Hilarious! This one goes out to all y'all brights out there.

Apparently it took Richard Dawkins three days to understand that he was being dissed. You must watch. As the YouTube info says, "OH MY DOG, it is funny.":

The evolution of sacred music

Nathaniel Peters at First Things Blog shares a funny french comedy called Kamelott. "It’s a comedy show set in Arthurian times with colloquial modern language, and its episodes are all under five minutes in length." Here's a funny one about medieval music. WARNING: A few bad words in the subtitles.

Rainbow Sashers confused in more ways than one

Courtesy of Uncle Di, I learned that the gay activist Rainbow Sash Movement is calling for "all Catholics of good will to take the Papal visit as an opportunity to shower the Pope mobile with ashes instead of confetti." Their press release could use a good editor:

Ashes are an ancient and appropriate greeting for a sinner who has caused the Church so much division and pain.

I am aware of the biblical habit of repenting in sackcloth and ashes. However, a sinner usually puts these upon himself. Have I missed some tradition of calling a sinner to repentance by throwing ashes in his face? "REPENT!" POOOF!

as sign of repentance his Holiness should be washing the feet of the
victims of clerical sexual abuse

Are we to understand that Our Divine Lord washed the feet of His apostles as a sign of His own repentance? Perhaps he's referring to the sinful woman who washed the feet of Jesus in tears. That makes a little more sense.

Ecumenicalism/Intra faith Dialogue - Freedom of conscience must be respected inside and outside church as it applies to the plurality of beliefs, religious or not. The recent Vatican Islam Forum that has been developed cannot continue without including the issue of human rights violations of women & gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transgender people within Islamic countries.

"Ecumenism" perhaps is more common? This is dialogue between Christians working toward greater unity, but they don't seem to mention this dialogue. "Intra faith" seems to refer to dissent within the Catholic Church. "Interfaith", which is dialogue between members of different religions, isn't mentioned. The context of a Vatican Islam Forum would suggests that "interfaith" would have been more apt.

The US Church is a basically a Eurocentric Church it is time for the United Council of Catholic Bishops to recognize this, and address it. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago as the President of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops should address the Pope’s Eurocentric selection of Cardinals and Bishops to the hierarchy

I've never heard of the United Council of Catholic Bishops. Might they mean the College of Bishops? Or did they just mean the USCCB both times?

We will not enter any Church’s but we will bring ashes to reign down on the Popes motorcade, and call on individuals to blow whistles at any public papal events such as outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Ground Zero, St. Joseph’s Seminary, and Yankee Stadium as a sign of our disgust over the way the clergy abuse scandal has been handled under his leadership

As least they aren't entering any Church's. If your outside, be sure to bring an unbrella in case of reign.

Will you have pouty faces too? Give me a break. Talk about children throwing a hissy-fit...

Tweeeeet!

Ruling courtesy of the liturgical referee.

---

See Fr. Z for what's going on here.

Don't steal the Pope's story!

Fr. Neuhaus reflects about his friendship with John Cardinal O'Connor, who shares a birthday with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

One ordinarily does not repeat in public what the pope says in private conversation, but I asked and John Paul gave me permission to tell this one. When during the O’Connor years I had occasion to meet with the pope, he would always ask, “How is Cardinal O’Connor?” And I would always say that Cardinal O’Connor is flourishing and is an inestimable gift to the Church. One time I went on to say, “You know what Cardinal O’Connor said the other day, Holy Father?” “No,” he answered. “What did Cardinal O’Connor say?” “Cardinal O’Connor said that he gets up every morning and prays that he will go to bed that night without having discouraged any impulse of the Holy Spirit. Now isn’t that a beautiful thing for a bishop to say?” A pause of several seconds. “Yes,” said the pope, “that is a beautiful thing for a bishop to say. I told him that.”

Ha!

Have I glimpsed my family's future?

Sally Thomas at the First Things blog contrasts the Lego affectations of her sons and daughters.

Now, presumably in the new Lego dispensation girls can play with whatever they want, though I haven’t met many girls who find Star Wars riveting enough to want to put together the Ultimate Collector’s Milennium Falcon (5,195 pieces). As I look at the picture of this item, here at my desk at home, the telepathic effect is such that my ten-year-old son, at choir practice right now, feels his heart rate go up inexplicably; while the teenager, sitting beside him, merely experiences a brief frisson of apathy and then swats him with her Voice for Life workbook and hisses, “Would you please not breathe so loudly?” Such is the telepathic effect of their behavior, that I can read it from a mile away.

Even my four-year-old, who likes to play Star Wars because she thinks Leia is pretty, and who also likes putting Legos together because that’s what there is to do around here, gives the Lego catalogs only a passing glance before her brothers seize them up in fevered hands and paw them to pieces. All those machines, she clearly thinks. And not a rabbit or a fairy or a pair of ruby slippers among them. Of course, she’s just this minute stomped with great purpose on some kind of Star Wars ship—it had a lot of clone troopers on it, that’s all I know—which her five-year-old brother undoubtedly left for a reason on the floor in the doorway to this room. This leads me to think that Lego has missed its mark with the ponies and the Sunshine House. What they really need is a line of Terminator Princesses who fight everybody.

From the lips of a saint(?)

Me: Tomorrow is Sunday, so we get to go to Church! And I think you can go to Sunday school again.

Peter: I like Sunday school now. I always get hungry, and they give me food there!

The Grinches of U-ville

Katherine Kersten writes:

For most Minnesotans, December is a festive month of merrymaking and good cheer. But at the University of Minnesota it’s the most dangerous time of the year.

A Dec. 5 article on the University’s website, “Reevaluating seasonal office parties,” sets forth the perils. Its authors, Dee Anne Bonebright of the U’s Office of Human Resources and Julie Sweitzer of the Office of System Academic Administration, exhort U employees to be on their guard.

The memo makes clear that the limits most of us have learned to put on our Christmas spirit in recent years — you know, catching yourself before you hum “Joy to the World” in public — are no longer enough at the U of M.

In 2007, the enlightened Grinches keeping watch over U-ville (with apologies to Dr. Seuss) are trying to keep the spirit of Christmas from coming at all.

December office parties of any kind are now suspect at our state’s flagship institution of higher education.

The problem, explain Bonebright and Sweitzer in their memo, is that “celebrations held in December tend to make people think of Christmas, whatever the theme.” And who knows where that could lead?

GASP! More...

Happy Halloween!

The Ten Commandments of Driving

(Courtesy of The Curt Jester)
Cardinal Renato Martino's Pontifical Council for Migrants issued a “Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road,” aka The Ten Commandments of Driving. Today the newly created Pontifical Council for Transportation jointly with Car-itas has issued a new document Driving the Gospels Home.

The following are some of the highlights of the new document.

• If you are carjacked one mile, go with him two.
• If yor are hit, turn the other signal.
• Do not let your air bag become puffed up like the Pharisees
• Let not the sun go down on you road rage
• Carry your cross daily, or at least have one hanging from your rear view mirror.
• When you enter a freeway that is backed up, go and move to the lowest place and not try to merge into the front. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
• Do not talk about your Honda so that it can be said of you "That he did not say it of his own Accord."
• Hydroplaning is not the same thing as walking on water, avoid it.
• Before Jesus peformed the miracle at Cana, he appointed a designated driver.
• Do not say "Are we there yet", but rather "It is good to be here."

We can look forward to new documents in the future from the Pontifical Council for Transportation. Another document called "Sacrificial suffering and airline food" is rumored to be in the works.

This just in: USPS a bunch of dorks!

Star Wars stamp set announced by post office

This explains the R2-D2 mailboxes you may have seen.

I always knew the USPS was a bunch of dorks. :)

Fred Thompson for president?

"He steered a fake aircraft carrier right into a fake conflict in The Hunt for Red October"

Well, I guess he's also a lawyer and former US Senator from Tennessee.

"Or Kiefer Sutherland. The guy has saved the country, like, six years in a row!"