I Can Has Cheezburger?

On second thoughts...forget it.

This tray of slops is featured on Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project, a blog with a substantial readership by a teacher, Mrs. Q., who is eating the same school lunches her students are getting every day throughout 2010 and reporting on them, complete with photos.  Mrs. Q. says some of the items she is served are not bad-tasting (relatively speaking); but almost all of them look unappetizing.  For example:

This is a classic example of what we get when we let the government take over functions that traditionally belonged to mothers and fathers.

One of the hallmarks of real love is doing everything in one's power to give the beloved the best of everything.  This...

...ain't it.

Yet for generations, those who have the greatest stake in the well-being of children -- their parents -- have been persuaded to turn their kids over to the gentle ministrations of that which has the least stake: government.  Government usurps more and more parental functions, and performs them incompetently, on the grounds that parents allegedly aren't doing them at all.  This is government schools' excuse for taking an adversarial stance against parents, which stance is one of the philosophical underpinnings of the university education courses where your kids' teachers are trained.  And the reason parents are adversaries is because they are the single biggest obstacle to the government's ability to mold and shape children as it sees fit. 

Which brings us to the other rotten things kids are getting, of which school lunches are only the tip of the iceberg.  In an age when government schools have brought us sex education at younger and younger ages, political indoctrination, illiteracy, crime on campus, sex abuse perpetrated by teachers, condom distribution, the general breaking down of inhibitions and natural modesty, and a host of other bads, it shouldn't come as a surprise when they can't provide children with meals that at least measure up to the slop standards on your average hog farm.

Yeah, I know: not all public schools are bad; not all public schoolteachers are having sex with their students; my kids go to an excellent school; the school I teach at has high standards; you're being too hard on all the overworked, underpaid faculty and staff trying to eye-drop holy water into hell; etc., etc., etc.  But for all that there are individual teachers out there doing their best, there is a sobering reality, of which lousy lunches are only one sign, that parents need to grasp: 

The government simply does not love your kids.

Nor will it be around to pick up the pieces when your kid comes home with ptomaine poisoning.  So for God's sakes, pack him a lunch every day.

H/T the Crescat via Facebook. 

That They Too May Vandalize

When The Redoubtable Marcus Magnus told me about this ad from Quest magazine, the organ of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  Then when I saw it for myself, I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I still don't believe I'm looking at what I'm looking at.  I bet you can't, either.

TO:            The editor, Quest Magazine
FROM:     Anita Moore, Attorney at Law
RE:            Your Permobile scooter ad

As an attorney practicing full-time in the criminal courts of my great state, I want to thank you for the ad you ran in your latest issue for the Permobile scooter, showing how the scooter opens doors for disabled kids onto the fascinating world of malicious injury to property.  I would have thought that the idea of a scooter company encouraging felonious behavior would have raised an eyebrow or two in the editor’s office, but it is apparent that your publication has evolved beyond such outmoded, puritanical thinking.  Clearly, Quest Magazine is in the business of affirming and fulfilling every MDA sufferer’s dreams, however squalid and unlawful.  I congratulate you on your broad-mindedness.

I am not presently practicing in the juvenile court, so it will be a few years yet before I have the privilege of representing the young gentleman pictured in the ad in question; but it is always helpful to have a sneak preview of my future clientele.  My thanks to Quest Magazine for doing its bit to keep my filing cabinet in a constant state of overflow.

Very truly yours, &c.

Use a Banana, Go to Jail

So now this scene, played out in a school cafeteria:

...is a misdemeanor.  At least it is in Chicago, where good-old-fashioned Chicago political thuggery has evolved into the criminalizing of school disciplinary problems.

On November 5th -- the same day as the terrorist massacre at Fort Hood -- 25 kids at Perspectives Charter School south of Chicago were arrested -- cuffed, transported, booked into detention, charged -- for having a food fight.

I am not a fan of crime and disorder.  But as someone who works full-time in the criminal justice system, I'd like to address some points to the "zero-tolerance" crowd, which is merely a finger on the claw of liberalism, and is not an affliction only in Chicago:

-- The root cause of disorder in society is Godlessness.  The undermining of Church and family, the creeping secularization, political correctness, and tolerance and even encouragement of deviancy in our civil institutions -- which, as liberals, you put there -- has led to our failure to govern our passions.  In fact, political correctness and the mindless drive for "diversity" have led many to believe that they have a positive right to refuse to govern their passions.  We should not wonder at the results.

-- You ignore the costs, usually paid by others, of abandoning the principle of subsidiarity.  Student disciplinary problems are best handled by the schools -- or even better still, in families, which you have worked hard to destroy.  But by involving the police powers of the state, you set all kinds of costly mechanisms in motion: the police; the prosecutors; the public defenders (jailable offenses, however minor, trigger a right to court-appointed counsel); the courts; and the courts' whole constellation of "rehabilitative" machinery, including probation officers and counselors and proprietors of drug and alcohol schools.  In short, you use a Howitzer to kill a flea.

-- But the cost of all this heavy equipment lies not only in the amount of money it takes to run it, but -- what is more important -- in the amount of resources that cannot now be devoted to things that really matter.  The police and prosecutor manpower and time devoted to junior high food fights now cannot be devoted to the pursuit of real criminals.  The courts are jammed with petty affairs that squeeze out the adjudication of major matters.  And -- my personal gripe -- public defenders are forced to waste inordinate amounts of time on relative trifles, to the detriment of clients with really serious and complicated problems.    

As bad as federal government corruption is, we cannot afford to go on ignoring the same corruption at the county, city and state levels.  The criminalizing of life's every nitpick is a local-level power grab every bit as cynical and tyrannical as any perpetrated by the feds.  And our failure to govern ourselves gives the power-grabbers their excuse for wiping out our freedom.   

The Successors of JonBenet Ramsey

Can we just call this what it is: the sexual exploitation of children. Served up by the children's parents and brought to you by your local cable company.

Toddlers and Tiaras on the "Learning" Channel is just another sleazy and embarrassing article in the brown-paper-wrapped magazine that is American television. It covers the stupid and pointless drama of people who put their kids through toddler beauty contests in pursuit of fame and fortune. The show's website features, among other things, pictures of kids before and after their sexing-up. Some of these kids look pretty unhappy. No doubt their parents maintain that they are happy, and that they are doing exactly what they want to be doing; but how is a little child to resist the juggernaut of a parent's ambitions?

Can anyone doubt that all-out war is being waged on the innocence of children? This goes way beyond a little girl playing dress-up with her mother's shoes and jewelry and makeup. This is about making sex objects out of little kids. Parents, doesn't it occur to you that you are feeding the appetites of predators? Do you honestly think you can protect your child while breaking down her inhibitions and subjecting her to this kind of exposure? Do you really like the idea of some dirtbag playing with himself while he leers at a picture of your tarted-up child?

People who want to dress something up should go out and get a Barbie doll and leave their children alone. And the rest of us should quit tuning in to crap like Toddlers and Tiaras.

H/T Carolina Cannonball.

Un...be...LIEVEable

This must be the latest generation of Catholic teens, weary of being condescended to with lousy liturgy and rotten music, reacting to -- so help me -- "Alleluia 'Ch-Ch'." This bit of musical malarkey is the work of OCP stalwart Paul Inwood, who has also favored us with compositions such as "Today Is Born Our Savior," an unfortunate local favorite here as a responsorial psalm for Christmas, and -- again, so help me -- "Finger-Snap Alleluia".

I still say the continued prevalence of this kind of junk is all about not having a clue what it is that really happens at Mass. At Mass, we really are on Calvary. If the music's got a good beat, and you can, like, dance to it, does it belong at Mass?

For that matter, does it belong at Mass if it just plain sucks?

Hat tip (I guess; bringing this one to my attention is debatable) goes to the Curt Jester.

A Visit from St. Nicholas

Herewith a little Christmas Eve fun: a Thomas Nast illustration of Santa Claus (1881)...

...and "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Clement Clark Moore (1823).

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

More of the Devil's Vain and Empty Works

What you get when you let the Supreme Court referee the contents of public Christmas displays: an atheist manifesto posted next to a Nativity scene at the state capitol building in Olympia, Washington.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the sponsor of this farcical display. The Foundation has lavished large quantities of money -- which, no doubt, could otherwise have gone to feed the poor -- on a "jaunty 'Reason's Greetings' billboard" in Olympia, as well as an engraved plaque to be erected near the capitol Nativity scene. The plaque reads:

At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

"Our sign is a reminder of the real reason for the season, the Winter Solstice," says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, adding fatuously, "The Christians really stole 'Christmas,' but we nonbelievers are willing to share it with them!"

The Foundation claims that its objective is to bring "some freethinking cheer" to Olympia. However, there is in fact nothing more depressing than the idea that there is no Heaven, and that this screwed-up world is all there is -- unless it's the eternal prognosis for people who refuse to believe there is a Hell.

Atheists find it irritating when people pray for them, even though they profess to believe that prayer is pointless. So: irritate an atheist today!

Practicing What They Preach

30-year-old husband Claudaniel Fabien and his new bride, 28-year-old Melody LaLuz teach abstinence at the public schools in Chicago. Proving that it is not unrealistic to expect kids to wait until marriage to horse around, the couple were never alone together in the same house before they were married on Saturday; and their first kiss -- ever -- was at the altar.

Call me naive, but this story brings to mind certain things I just don't get about marriage and sex and continence in today's society:

-- Where did we ever get the idea that it's "unrealistic" to expect kids to wait until they're married before having sex? There was a time -- still within living memory -- when waiting was generally expected, at least in respectable society. And many people throughout human history have waited until marriage -- probably most, at least during periods where this was a societal norm. In fact, for the last two thousand years, priests and monks and nuns have been proving that it is possible to live quite happily without sex for life.

-- When more people have ruined their lives and the lives of others through too much sex with too many people than through the lack of sex, where did we ever get the idea that continence was "aberrant" behavior?

-- On the KTVB website where I found this story, it comes under the heading of "Strange News." Why does a story about a couple waiting until their wedding to kiss for the first time qualify as News of the Weird? I don't understand this, any more than I understood what was so funny about a 40-year-old virgin when the movie of the same name came out.

Good for the Fabiens. They are far more likely to have a lasting, happy marriage than those who think waiting to kiss until you're married is weird.

George M. Docherty, R.I.P.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In a shocking breach of the sacred Berlin Wall of Separation Between Church and State, school children have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with the words "under God" for more than half a century.

It was the Knights of Columbus of New York City who first adopted the practice of adding the words "under God" to their recitation of pledge in 1951, citing to the Gettysburg Address, in which Abraham Lincoln spoke of this nation, under God, having a new birth of freedom. The following year, the Supreme Council of the Knights took up the banner and launched a campaign to lobby Congress to universalize the change.

Rev. George M. Docherty, a Presbyterian minister and recent Scots immigrant to the United States, also liked the idea of adding the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. It was the custom at that time for Presidents to attend New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., the same church Abraham Lincoln himself attended, on "Lincoln Sunday," the Sunday nearest Lincoln's birthday. Knowing that he would have President Eisenhower's ear on Lincoln Sunday, and that President Eisenhower had recently become a Presbyterian, Rev. Docherty preached a sermon on the subject of adding the words "under God" to the Pledge on February 7, 1954. On February 8th, President Eisenhower got his friends in Congress to introduce a bill to make the desired change. The bill was signed into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.

Rev. Docherty passed away at his home in Alexandria, Pennsylvania on Thanksgiving Day. He was 97. Requiescat in pace.

Fearing God Rather than Man

Beppino Englaro may have won the legal "right" to make his daughter Eluana the next Terri Schiavo, but he'll have to go through the Misericordine nuns of Lecco in Italy to do it. The nuns run the hospice where Eluana, now 37, has lived for the last fourteen years in a "persistent vegetative state" -- although she opens her eyes and breathes on her own -- and they are refusing to remove her feeding and hydration tubes.

The Misericordines want to go on caring for Eluana, and are committed to doing so, thereby removing even the lousy excuse that her treatment is too costly. Said the nuns:

...once again, we maintain our availability, today and into the future, to continue to serve Eluana. If there are those who consider her dead, let Eluana remain with us who feel she is alive. We don’t ask anything but the silence and the liberty to love and to devote ourselves to those who are weak, poor and little in return.

Beppino Englaro might move his daughter to another hospital for purposes of having her done away with; but the Misericordines could petition for guardianship, says Msgr. Ignacio Barriero, a former lawyer and head of the Rome office of Human Life International. "It's more than reasonable that someone who wants to keep the person alive should be appointed the guardian, rather than the person who’s ready to kill her," says Msgr. Barriero. "You don't have to have a doctorate in theology to say that; it's just common sense."

Meanwhile, the Misericordines will go on lavishing on Eluana the care that her father has fought so vehemently to deprive her of.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

And Speaking of Halloween...

Model, actress, singer and kookburger fashion afficionado Grace Jones paid Sarah Palin an extraordinary compliment the other day when she heaped disdain on the vice-presidential candidate in an interview with a German entertainment magazine.

"I can't stand Sarah Palin," declared Dennis Rodman's female counterpart. "I bet a woman like that has no sense of humour." Jones, who betrayed no signs of alarm at the prospect of hard-core government regulation of the free market and private property rights that have operated to her considerable benefit over the years, fears the phantom governmental restrictions on libertinism for which she views Palin as an icon.

And Jones doesn't want anybody raining on her parade. "I believe a woman can present herself as a sex object if she has fun doing it," said the sexagenarian, who has apparently even run afoul of feminists for her sexual stunts. We would sure hate to see the day when it's no longer safe for a woman old enough to be a grandmother to appear naked in a cage.

So Sarah, you're obviously on the right track. Keep up the good work!

Trivial Pursuit

The French National Archive has released footage of an interview of John McCain when he was a prisoner of war by French reporter François Chalais in 1967. During the course of the interview, under the tender auspices of Jane Fonda's pals, the Viet Cong, a bedridden McCain describes how he was shot down, chokes back tears when talking about his family, and sends an emotional message to his wife.

In the midst of all of which, behold the thing that makes the deepest impression on Sky News:

The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.

You may have a hard time believing what you're seeing, so here it is again:

The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.

No, it still doesn't seem right. Can it really be? Did cigarettes detract from the heroism of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944? Yet here it is again -- it's inescapable.

The video portrays the Republican as a hero but the message may be tarnished as he is filmed smoking a cigarette.

Apparently, though -- if the Democrat Party is any indication -- this guy's message remains intact, even with the cigarette holder sticking jauntily out of his kisser:

Banned Books Week: A Celebration of Freedom?

Today the American Library Association begins its 26th annual celebration of Banned Books Week, an event designed to keep before our eyes the specters of Fahrenheit 451 and Nazis and other totalitarian thugs setting fire to mountains of forbidden books, reminding us to be ever on the lookout for the forces of darkness and tyranny that set out to stifle human thought by regulating what we read.

That, at any rate, is the stated purpose of Banned Books Week. But is that really all there is to it? A review of the ALA's Banned Books Week materials on the Internet (apparently under renovation, with many non-operative links) raises a few questions.

1. Is the mere regulation of library materials, without more, contrary to liberty, where citizens remain free to purchase the materials libraries may not carry? Most libraries are public entities, staffed by government employees and funded by the taxpayers. Must taxpayers support with their dollars access to materials that violate the ideals they cherish? Must they acquiesce in the respectability that library access confers on that which is by nature not respectable? Are not the patrons of scurrilous materials free to purchase them at privately-owned bookstores and newsstands, or even off the Internet?

2. What is the nature of the "censorship" the American Library Association dreads and fears? The ALA's website includes a set of guidelines for librarians who face "challenges" to library materials. "Challenges" -- which the ALA apparently finds undesirable -- include the following (taken directly from the ALA' s website):

• Expression of Concern. An inquiry that has judgmental overtones.
• Oral Complaint. An oral challenge to the presence and/or appropriateness of the material in question.
• Written Complaint. A formal, written complaint filed with the institution (library, school, etc.), challenging the presence and/or appropriateness of specific material.
• Public Attack. A publicly disseminated statement challenging the value of the material, presented to the media and/or others outside the institutional organization in order to gain public support for further action.
• Censorship. A change in the access status of material, based on the content of the work and made by a governing authority or its representatives. Such changes include exclusion, restriction, removal, or age/grade level changes.

As the ALA clearly concedes above, "censorship" necessarily entails government action against a work based on its content. But the ALA also lumps in with censorship citizen complaints of various types. Do citizen complaints against library smut threaten the survival of the First Amendment? What about the First Amendment rights of those who do not want their tax dollars underwriting sexually explicit, anti-Christian or violent material?

3. In surveying the ALA's list of "Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000," it is clear that some of these books are accepted as literary classics (by the way: has anybody seriously questioned whether The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are, at this late date and after numerous film and television adaptations, really on the "censorship" hit list?). But many of them are aimed at children or "young adults" (i.e., children). Now parents have not only the right but the duty to regulate their children's reading. Are they not entitled to be alarmed when public institutions undermine their parental efforts by providing their children with easy access, behind their backs, to literature that is forbidden to them at home? Are concerned parents in fact the primary source of the "challenges" the ALA finds so ominous? Is the ALA being intellectually honest in holding that freedom includes the "freedom" of little kids to look at inappropriate materials against the wishes of their parents?

In its alleged quest to secure the blessings of liberty, the American Library Association ignores and indeed opposes the most obvious safeguard on liberty: the cultivation of virtue. In a letter to a cousin, John Adams wrote:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies.

In a letter to his wife, Adams wrote:

The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people will have unbounded power, and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great.

Virtue is tough to cultivate while you're busy shoveling dirt into your heart. As long as freedom means nothing more than the removal of obstacles to societal corruption, the genuine article will remain in peril. So maybe it's about time the American Library Association quit worrying about parental objections to Heather Has Two Mommies, and started exercising its hitherto unused freedom to read more of the Founding Fathers. (And while they're at it, maybe that most scurrilous of reading materials, the New Testament.)

Stick to What You Know

A cardinal rule of authorship: stick to what you know. It is next to impossible for a writer to be persuasive, moving or even interesting without following this rule.

This bodes ill for playwright Buddy Sheffield, whose bawdy musical Idaho! opened off Broadway on Thursday. Asked whether he has ever been to Idaho, Sheffield says: "I haven't, but I know it's beautiful."

Questioned about the cornfields and the repeated references to Idaho as "the prairie," and the heavy Southern drawls, and the pig-hugging farmers (not to mention the high prevalence of table-cloth-pattern dresses, battered cowboy hats, farmers posing for pictures with potatoes and rifle-toting grannies), Sheffield says he knows he does not accurately portray the Gem State -- but that's all good, because his play just portrays New Yorkers' stereotypes of Idaho.

Sheffield hopes he will be able to capitalize on the crass ignorance he assumes is an outstanding trait of New Yorkers and take his purported spoof of the great Broadway musicals to the Big Time. Straining all credibility, he declares: "I hope the musical runs for five years on Broadway and everybody in Idaho gets to come and see it and feel proud about it."

Yuh-huh.

It's ONLY a MOVIE

Question: What do you get when you put together The Da Vinci Code, a deranged former medical student and a knife? Answer: a priest fighting for his life, and one of his parishioners in serious condition.

25-year-old Marco Luzi went to Santa Marcella Catholic Church in Rome, asked to see the priest, Father Canio Canistri, age 68, and then stabbed the priest in the neck and stomach with a knife he had hidden in a cloth. Antonio Farrace, a 78-year-old retired policeman, came to Fr. Canistri's aid and is in the hospital in serious condition. Luzi wounded two more people while fleeing from the scene, and was then captured by police.

In addition to having a psychiatric history, Luzi was apparently obsessed with apocalyptic notions, fed by The Da Vinci Code. In the apartment he shared with his mother, police found apocalyptic notes, material on the Antichrist, the phone number to L'Osservatore Romano, and a large reproduction of Da Vinci's The Last Supper, with a note pointing to one of the Apostles, saying, "This is the hand in which a knife is hidden." He told police he was Antichrist, that he heard voices telling him to attack Fr. Canistri, and that he had watched The Da Vinci Code the night before the attack.

Naturally -- to the extent they pay any attention to this incident -- we can expect the it's-only-a-movie crowd to weigh in against the idea that The Da Vinci Code, for all its anti-Catholicism, had anything to do with inciting this murderous attack on a Catholic priest. A movie is only a movie, after all; it's only make-believe; movies don't affect people's behavior; and this guy was already a nutjob to begin with.

That movies don't affect people's behavior must be why book publishers didn't bother to redouble their efforts to hawk Dan Brown's novel when the movie came out; that must be why merchandisers figured the movie would not make people want to part with their money to buy shirts, games, and other Da Vinci Code junk; that must be why cable outlets didn't bother to cash in on the Da Vinci Code craze by airing "debunk Christianity" programming; in fact, that must be why advertising isn't a multi-squillion-dollar industry.

And of course, it has nothing to do with why Fr. Canistri is fighting for his life at this moment. God come to his assistance -- and ours.

Bummer, Man: The Fuzz Cracks Down

Pursuant to ancient tradition, the Name of God has been declared off-limits in the Catholic liturgy. And so now Rome has officially consigned to the ash-heap of history all the hippy-dip, '60s- and '70s-style Yahweh tunes, including, but not limited to, the following:

-- Dan Schutte, "Yahweh the Faithful One": Yahweh's love will last forever/His faithfulness till the end of time/Yahweh is a loving yawn -- whoops, I mean, God.
-- Weston Priory, "Yahweh [is the God of my salvation": Verse 2: Be with us, Lord, as we break through with each other/to find the truth and beauty of each friend. Huh????

-- Dan Schutte (again), "Sing a New Song": Yahweh's people dance for joy/Wreathed all in baggy crepe/Fat women leap in leotards/We all just sit and gape...

-- Michael Joncas, "Let the King of Glory Come": Who is the King of glory?/Yahweh, holy and strong!/Who is the Lord of Majesty?/Yahweh, mighty and strong! Shish-boom-bah!
-- Dan Schutte (yet again), "Yahweeeeeeeeehhh, I Knoooowww You are Neeeeaaaaarrrrrr": 'Nuff said.

Now if only we could acquire a similar respect for God's Word, and quit cramming Bible texts -- especially the Psalms -- into ill-fitting, inferior and just plain crappy musical arrangements.

Another One for the TMI Files: Uses for Afterbirth

Matthew McConaughey, goofball actor and father out of wedlock of a newborn son, has big plans for -- the placenta.
McConaughey, who cannot be troubled to marry Camila Alves, the mother of his child, has neveretheless gone to great pains to preserve the afterbirth so that, pursuant to purported ancient custom, he can plant it in an orchard.
"It's going to be in the orchards and it's going to bear some wonderful fruit," claims McConaughey in a CNN interview. "When I was in Australia, they had a placenta tree that was on the river ... and all the placentas of all that tribe, all that clan, whatever aboriginal tribe that was, all the placentas went under that one tree and it was this huge behemoth of just health and strength. This tree was just growing taller and stronger above the rest of Mother Nature around it. It was gorgeous."
Yes, trees do tend to grow taller and stronger than all the rest of Mother Nature around them; that's part of what makes them "trees." After having apparently claimed that the "ritual" of placenta-planting is found in "several cultures," world-renowned anthropologist McConaughey can cite to only one such alleged culture, whose name escapes him. For a second, reading the above transcription, I thought he was saying he believed that trees actually grow from placentas. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if the natives managed to sell him on that idea, and keep him going on it for at least a while.
The AP story records McConaughey's comment that, for the foregoing reasons, the birth of his son will one day bring joy to others. If the kid's afterbirth is what's needed to bring joy to the world, that's not exactly a ringing endorsement for the kid himself.

Where He Strutted and Fretted His Hour upon the Stage

At any rate, since he was still a rookie, he might have fretted his hour upon the stage at "The Theatre," whose remains have been discovered in Shoreditch, east London.

In the early days of his career, Shakespeare belonged to an acting troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which began performing at The Theatre in about 1594. Shakespeare himself performed there, and his early plays are believed to have premiered there.

In 1599, as a result of a landlord-tenant dispute, the owners of The Theatre took it apart overnight, and smuggled the timberes across the Thames. They used the contraband construction material to build the famous Globe Theater, which burned down in 1613, was rebuilt the following year, and finally closed in 1642.

Meanwhile, the old Theatre passed into oblivion -- almost. No one was quite sure where The Theatre stood until the Tower Theater Company started construction on a new playhouse. On August 6th, the remains of The Theatre's polygonal foundations turned up on the construction site.

The plan is to preserve the ruins on-site. Says Jeff Kelly, chairman of the Tower Theatre Company: "The discovery that we shall be building a 21st century playhouse where Shakespeare played and where some of Shakespeare's plays must first have been performed is a huge inspiration."

Diamonds? Nah, I'll Take Rhinestones Instead!

The latest in Japan: fake Christian weddings. You have to see the video to believe it.

Which video raises some questions:
1. Can these "weddings" be valid even in the eyes of the state, since they are apparently not being presided over by accredited ministers of any stripe?
2. Re the "evangelical pastor" who rationalizes profiteering off this craze by claiming that it is "spreading the Gospel": was Jesus only kidding when He said He was the way, the TRUTH and the life? Didn't He warn His disciples that without Him, we can do nothing? That He is the vine, and we are the branches, and the only way for us to bear fruit is to remain in Him?
3. Do not the people of Japan have reverence for their ancestors? If so, is there a sense in which their use of fake Christian trappings is not an insult to those of their forebears who persevered in their faithfulness to the substance of Christianity -- even through persecutions that left them without a single priest for two centuries?
4. If those who are offered a choice between diamonds of the first water and rhinestones go for the rhinestones, is there a sense in which they are not nuts?

H/T Major Paul, OPL via The Redoubtable One.

Broads at Work

"Men at work" signs. "Men Working Ahead" signs. Signs with pictures of guys wielding shovels. Like a noisome fungus, they sprouted up all over the city of Atlanta, blocking the warm sun of "gender equality," choking off the dying gasps of feminine self-esteem.

Unable to bear the agony for one more second, Cynthia Good decided that enough was enough. Striking a decisive blow on behalf of oppressed women everywhere, the women's magazine editor daringly vandalized one of the abominable signs, spray-painting the letters "WO" in front of the word "MEN." When police came to her office in response to a complaint about the vandalism, she took up the banner of women's equality in earnest.
"Good fired off letters complaining about the signs to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and Gov. Sonny Perdue," reports ajc.com. In the face of this estrogen-fueled temper tantrum, the Atlanta Public Works Commissioner (a man) caved. To reward Cynthia Good for her act of vandalism, the city will modify or replace "Men at Work" signs at a cost of $22.00 to $144.00 apiece, and force contractors to do the same. And Atlanta is only the beginning. Declares Good: "We're calling on the rest of the nation to follow suit and make a statement that we will not accept these subtle forms of discrimination."
Thank God the citizens of Atlanta no longer have to look at signs telling them that only men are working. All over the world, the female sex is subjected to a vast array of horrors and degradations, from female infanticide (including sex-selective abortion) to genital mutilation; from burqas to polygamy; from sexual slavery to stonings. But at least the deadly peril of "Men at Work" signs has been removed.
And as an extra added bonus, Cynthia Good just happened to escape having to answer for malicious injury to property. How convenient.