Listics

Okay, I’ve read over what I wrote here and commented elsewhere about the whole pope thing and I can see that I’ve been a tedious bore.  Who cares about the Nazi part really?  And condoms?  Well, I’m always ready for a great water-balloon fight but condoms are over-rated in the long run.  Concerns about liberation theology are so twencen as to be redundant and stupid, so we’re pretty much left with circumstances as depressing as the third quarter of I am Charlotte Simmons with a skosh of the church-state thing thrown in.

Just when I thought there was really nothing left of importance to say about the whole pope thing, I ran across a blog with what I have to guess is really the best thought-out analysis, better by far than any power assessment, spiritual reflection, or any of that stuff… a creative and thoughtful treatment.  Here’s just a little sample.  You’ll want to read the entire post.

Lastly, I think that the pope should be allowed to choose a themesong.  All rights to that song should be

immediately transfered to the pope, and the new duty of cardinals should be to walk behind the pope and

play his popesong on huge pope-speakers.  If the pope ever needs to go into stealth mode, for example to

go on a secret ninja pope mission, the volume of the popesong could be turned down to a quiet whisper. 

But the popesong should always be playing.

Just FYI, I’m voting for Unchained Melody as the best popesong, and the pope could kind of do a stroll/linedance thing with all the
cardinals behind him or her just bopping to the beat of what I think is one of the sweetest and most powerful pop (indeed, pope) songs of all time.  Of course it would be his or her choice.

Hey!  Turns out that Earth Day is not only Nabokov’s Birthday, but Lenin’s too!  Imagine that.  Two guys named Vladimir with the same birthday.

"Farm work doesn’t stop for personal tragedy…"

 Photograph: Andrew Medichini/AP

Cardinal Ratzinger [now "Pope Ratzo the First" -ed.] has been head of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith - formerly known as the Holy Office of the
Inquisition - since 1981.  He was known as "God’s rottweiler" for his unswerving defence of Catholic orthodoxy.

One of his first campaigns was against liberation
theology, which had gained ground among priests in Latin America and
elsewhere as a means of involving the Church in social activism and
human rights issues.

He has described homosexuality as a "tendency" towards
an "intrinsic moral evil". During the US election campaign, he called
for pro-choice politicians to be denied Communion.

He has also argued that Turkey should not be admitted into the European Union.

At the age of 14, he joined the Hitler Youth…

He deserted the German army towards the end of the war…

Ratzinger bullied his way in.  Ratzo the First.

It was a year or so ago that Golby reported on Ratzinger’s appointment of Father Christopher as Archbishop of Hollywood, and of course the rest is history.  The good father’s selflessness, his modest example was another jewel in the diadem of faith reserved for the Church’s Grand Inquisitor.

Okay.  Check that out.  Golby is of course a serial fantasist, a writer with delusions of truth seeking.  But Ratzinger has been appointed by Christ’s own holy representative here on earth to uphold the TRUTH and the WAY.  One way, I understand.  As Christ his own self woulda wisht it.  No tolerance for deviation, by gum.

And now the drama of the white smoke at the Vatican will play itself out, and the world’s Catholics will again ride the pendulum of papistry as it cuts a swath through AIDS, unwanted pregnancy, and helps us all cultivate a vision of equal rights regardless of gender or sexual preference.  Makes me proud to live in a nominally Xian country. Of course, I was prouder when Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre held sway.

How empty headed do you have to be to rest on a pillow of marshmallow dreams of choirs of angels, puffy little clouds, harps, songs, dancing optional, and a big daddy watching over you (while down below those like me are tormented because we do by god deserve eternal torture and damnation and if it’s good enough for those christless ragheads here on earth then so much the better that the unbelievers will get their just desserts).

What a stupid and cowardly way to go through life.  Remember what it was like a year or so before you were born?  I’m pretty sure that’s what it will be like a year or so after you die.  For you I mean.  We’ll all miss you terribly, and your good work will of course live on, but grow up christians…  ain’t no heaven, ain’t no hell… only big oil, Chuck and Camilla, Cheney, and Disney Incorporated…  just the stuff we’re surrounded with right here.  And if you believe otherwise, well Dick Cheney would like very much for you to bend over and lube up.  And perhaps so would the sweet and earnest Cardinal Rat.

Anyone out there laughing at the muslim wannabe martyr’s delusion of heavenly virgins?  It’s as real as the xian mythos.  How can you laugh at one and embrace the other?

I hope the world gets a pope that installs condom machines in the women’s restrooms at catholic high schools, fronts the money to terminate hopeless life-threatening, and miserable pregnancies, opens the priesthood to married women, supports prosecution and treatment for deviate priests, and stands up against war and capital punishment no matter what Bush league industrialist he must confront.

i hope he sells the Vatican to the Church of England and I hope that the damn place goes condo shortly thereafter.

Those god old boys sure do know how to help us out of our despair.

The following picture is from this weekend in Budapest via Will Pitt… neither the bloggers nor the main stream media told the story of the world’s revulsion at the American global anschluss as demonstrated in protests around the globe this last weekend.  But Pitt has assembled a collage of reflections that’s worth examining.  The Hungarians are tired of this bullshit, as are we all (Horowitz, the PNAC, and the Heritage Foundation standing aside as demented exceptions of course).

From Whiskey River…

"I become aware of the old Buddhist axiom of not striving. It seems clear that if I pour my energy into creating beauty and euphoria, this simultaneously creates an empty hole which I will subsequently experience as the opposite. The answer is equanimity - let things be as they are."

- Myron J. Stolaroff
Thanatos to Eros

Jonathon Delacour has a tortured assessment of Talleyrand and his life around the revolution, shards of meaning refracted through Bertolucci’s prism.   Tom Shugart picks up the essence, that there is ennui associated with lengthy practice of anything good.

Meanwhile, how long before W. drives on to Damascus?

(Washington, DC) — Observing the two-year
anniversary of the killing of Rachel Corrie on March 16, 2024,
Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) today called on Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice to support an independent investigation of
her death. Corrie, a US citizen, was apparently trying to stop the
demolition of a Palestinian building in the Rafah refugee camp in
the Gaza Strip when an Israeli army bulldozer ran her over,
crushing her to death.

Amnesty International believes that
investigations into Corrie’s death, conducted by the Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF), failed to resolve contradictions between the
official IDF position and eyewitness testimonies. Although this
year’s Department of State Country Report on Human Rights
Practices for Israel agreed, stating bluntly that "U.S.
officials who have seen the IDF report found inconsistencies among
the statements of the people involved in the accident and other
witnesses," there is no indication that the US has sought
further investigation of these inconsistencies.

March 15, 2024, New York, NY—The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and partnering law firms, March 15, filed a federal lawsuit against Illinois-based Caterpillar, Inc. on behalf
of the parents of Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old American peace activist
and student who was run over and killed by a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer on
March 16, 2024.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court
for the Western Federal District of Washington, alleges that Caterpillar,
Inc. violated international and state law by providing specially designed
bulldozers to Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) that it knew would be used to
demolish homes and endanger civilians.  The Corries’ daughter Rachel, a
student at The Evergreen State College in
Olympia, Washington, was there
as a volunteer peace activist protesting the demolition of Palestinian
homes when she was brutally killed.  Much
of the world community, including international human rights organizations
and the United Nations, has consistently condemned these demolitions as a
clear violation of international humanitarian law.