Author: SDG

Don’t Despair After Business Hours

On Prince Edward Island, Canada, it is only advisable to despair between 9 A.M. and 5 P.M., Monday thru Friday. After business hours and on weekends, you’re going to be on your own:

"A Canadian province will shut its 24-hour suicide hotline and replace it with one that operates only during business hours.

"Prince Edward Island, a small province on Canada’s East Coast, says it is too expensive to operate the hotline around the clock. Starting June 1, it will be open only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

"The plan drew protest from mental health groups across the country on Wednesday.

"’How many times, when you get upset or worried or concerned about things, is it in the middle of the day? It’s usually at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning when you wake up,’ said Joan Wright, executive director of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention based in Edmonton, Alberta."

GET THE STORY.

You would think the numbers-crunchers on Prince Edward Island could have cut some other non-critical service enough to use that money to keep the suicide hotline open 24/7. But, then, common sense doesn’t appear to have played a factor in this decision.

Olly Olly Oxen Free!

Remember in hide and seek when the seeker calls "Olly Olly Oxen Free" and all the hiders get to come back?

I thought that the tales of Japanese soldiers holed up in remote Pacific islands long after World War II was over were the stuff of legend. Apparently not.

"Sixty years after the guns of World War II went silent, reports that two Japanese Imperial Army soldiers had been found in the mountains of the southern Philippines sent Japan’s diplomats on a frantic mission Friday to try to contact them.

"The two men, in their 80s, reportedly have lived on the restive southern island of Mindanao since they were separated from their division, staying on for fear they would face court-martial if they returned to Japan."

GET THE STORY.

Death Of A Superfan

Where will all the superfans go now that the Star Wars phenomenon is no more?

"Now that any die-hard Star Wars fan worth his lightsaber has seen Episode III: Revenge of the Sith at least once, what’s a Jedi to do?

"The end of the Star Wars movies leaves a gaping hole in the galaxy of geekdom. And it begs the larger question: Is the era of the superfan over?

"No longer is there any variation of Star Trek on TV. The Grateful Dead essentially passed with Jerry Garcia, and even Phish is done now. The seminal pop-cult experience may be a thing of the past."

GET THE STORY.

In the spirit of optimism for the fate of the superfan, I propose that we figure out what will happen to the Superfan Geeks now. Remember the old proverb "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away"? Fill in the following blank for the Superfan in the combox:

Old Superfans never die, they….

More Rad-Trad Than Thou

Did you know that not all pre-Vatican-II popes were created equal in the eyes of disaffected post-Vatican-II radically-traditionalist Catholics? Apparently, not all of the pre-Vatican-II popes made the grade as Sufficiently Loyal To The Post-Vatican-II Rad-Trad Vision Of The Church.

Case in point: When the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger took the name Benedict XVI many Catholics were touched by his explanation that the choice was made, in part, to honor the largely-forgotten twentieth-century Pope Benedict XV. Not all, though. There was at least one person, herself a radically traditionalist Catholic, who saw dark designs in the new Pope’s choice of name:

"Benedict XV came into his Papacy as Europe was entering World War I. In his first Encyclical, Ad Beatissimi issued November 1, 1914, the Pope, who refused to take sides in the Great War, made a dramatic call for peace between the warring factions of Europe. He also made it clear that inside the Church he was calling for a stop to the war against the modernists.

"Even while he referred to the ‘admirable fruits’ of [the] previous pontificate [that of St. Pius X], he called for concord among the members of the Church, that is, the modernists and the ultramontanes — the traditional Catholics who had been strengthened by Pius X. This ‘peace’ orchestrated by Benedict XV is what gave the modernists the opportunity to emerge from their dark, semi-occult caverns back into the light of day with a comfortable position in the Church."

"Dark, semi-occult caverns"? This rhetoric is so over-the-top that it practically fisks itself. To continue, let’s look at what this cheery individual sees in store in a Ratzinger pontificate given the current Pope’s choice of the name Benedict:

"I believe Benedict XVI intends to oblige traditionalist Catholics to ‘reconcile’ with Vatican II and the New Mass, to finish with our resistance and incorporate us in the Conciliar Church. It would be a maneuver similar to that of Benedict XV 100 years ago, when he struck his blow at the Sodalitium Pianum and the anti-modernist reaction. It is my opinion that we should be prepared for this kind of progressivist maneuver."

A pope who hopes to reconcile disaffected Catholics with the Church they claim as their own? Imagine that!

"What should be the position of Catholics at this important juncture? To be aware of the maneuver that is probably being prepared. To continue our resistance against the errors of Vatican II and its consequences. To offer an intransigence [sic] opposition to any proposition that implies acceptance of error. To display an invariable determination to remain always within the bosom of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and remain faithful to her perennial teachings. To maintain a firm belief in the promise of Our Lady that she will intervene and restore Holy Mother Church to shine again with her purest doctrine and lead the world to build the Reign of the Immaculate Heart of Mary."

GET THE STORY.

You know, in some ways, radical traditionalism — as opposed to a legitimate Catholic traditionalism that merely prefers traditional expressions of the faith but does not reject Vatican II and the contemporary Church — annoys me more than progressivism. Perhaps it is because the progressivists are usually honest enough to admit that they wish to change the doctrines and disciplines of the Church. They are easier to deal with because their agenda is clear. Radical traditionalists, on the other hand, present their discontinuity with Church history and their rejection of the authority of the Church’s leaders as a supposedly Truly Catholic Response to concerns about the admitted difficulties in some human sectors of the modern Church. Anyone who rejects their understanding of the Church and its teachings is not as Catholic as they.

And that "anyone" apparently includes even a pre-Vatican-II pope.

Cleaning Up Carthage

The city of Carthage, in modern-day Tunisia, has a bit of an image problem that some historians would like to attribute to ancient Roman propaganda: The ancient city of Carthage was accused of infanticide and at least one archaeologist is trying to prove the tradition to be bunk:

"An expert on ancient Carthage — a city obliterated by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago — Mr. [Mhamed Hassine] Fantar is campaigning to clear his forefathers of a nasty stigma: a reputation for infanticide.

"’We didn’t do it,’ says the 69-year-old archaeologist, rejecting accusations that the ancient citizens of this North African land sacrificed babies to appease their gods."

On the other side of the academic divide over the issue, another archaeologist says the revisionist version of Carthage’s history is a "whitewash":

"Lawrence Stager, a Harvard University archaeology professor and expert on the subject, calls the revisionism a whitewash. He’s now editing a book that will include the results of long forensic analysis of charred bones he helped dig up in Carthage in the 1970s. This, says Mr. Stager, will prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Fantar and his followers are wrong. Still, he isn’t expecting to win them over. ‘No one really relishes having ancestors who committed such heinous acts,’ he says."

GET THE STORY.

Note to archaeologists two thousand years from now who may be arguing over whether Western societies of the twenty-first century committed infanticide to appease their "gods":

It’s true. We really did do it.

JIMMY ADDS: Carthago delenda est!

From Stomach-Flu, Deliver Us, O Lord

Catholic writer Danielle Bean composed a mother’s version of St. Francis of Assisi’s Prayer for Peace during the eye of a storm of childhood stomach-flu:

A MOTHER’S PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS
(STOMACH FLU VERSION)

Lord,
Make me an instrument of Your healing love;
Where there is vomit let me bring Lysol;
Where there are boogers, Kleenex;
Where there is fever, Tylenol;
Where there is boredom, library books;
Where there are chills, warm blankets;
And where there is whininess, Scooby Doo.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be well-rested as to provide clean sheets,
To be appreciated as to disinfect the house,
To be showered as to give warm baths,
For it is in scrubbing out the bathroom that we are cleansed,
It is in sharing laps that we find comfort,
And it is after resting that we will return
To a normal life.

(Nod to the Curt Jester for the link.)

Killing To Be Beautiful

It used to be said that a particularly attractive person had a face "to die for." Well, now we might say that such a person has a face "to kill for."

"Aborted foetuses [sic; i.e., fetuses] from girls and young women are being exported from Ukraine for use in illegal beauty treatments costing thousands of pounds, The Observer can reveal. The foetuses are cryogenically frozen and sold to clinics offering ‘youth injections,’ claiming to rejuvenate skin and cure a raft of diseases.

"It is thought that women in the former Soviet republic are being paid £100 a time to persuade them to have abortions and allow their foetuses to be used in treatments. Most of the foetuses are sold in Russia for up to £5,000 each. Some are paid extra to have abortions late in their pregnancy."

As usual, the true horror of the story is obscured by the term foetus. (And, of course, the term becomes even more obscure for non-British, English-speaking readers more accustomed to the spelling fetus.) It comes from the Latin for "offspring," but has become a euphemism to obscure the humanity of the unborn child. Go through the story mentally replacing child and children for foetus and foetuses to get a gauge of the international outrage the story might have inspired had the less-euphemistic terms been used.

That said, one unnamed Ukrainian journalist had a particularly incisive comment on the case:

"Ukrainians, accustomed to tales of illegal privatisations [sic] and government corruption, are not surprised. ‘They used to say we were selling Ukraine,’ said one reporter. ‘Now we are selling Ukrainians; moreover, in parts.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Some Have Hats for the link, and a special nod to SHH’s commenter Sr. Lorraine for this observation on the story: "It reminds me of what Jesus said in the Gospel, about people who look beautiful on the outside but inside are like dead men’s tombs.")

Auctioning Off The Popemobile

No, not the car of the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger that you heard so much about after the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Apparently, the only car Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, ever owned is in litigation because a father and son are fighting over who it rightfully belongs to:

“The powder blue, four-door 1975 Ford Escort is expected to go for as much as $5 million but Jerome Rich says his son Jim has no right to sell it.

“Jim Rich obtained the keys to the car from the pontiff himself a decade ago after purchasing it through an Indiana auction house for $102,000, said lawyer Wade Joyner, who represents Jerome Rich.

“Jim Rich put the car on display under glass at his suburban Chicago restaurant but the establishment closed a year ago. He has said he now wants to auction the car on June 5 at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas to pay off debts owed his father.”

GET THE STORY.

Idea! Get a welder to split the car in half and then give it to the person who is willing to let the other have it.

Fun While Dieting

Now, I am not a medical authority, so I cannot recommend any particular diet plan, but in the last few months I have been trying to lose some weight.  My sister passed on to me a tip for watching one’s calories while eating out that has caused no end of laughter whenever we’ve used it.  And it works too!

Scenario:  You’ve ordered a standard meal — and restaurants tend to portion such meals to an adult male — and find that you’ve eaten enough to satisfy you.  You could ask the waiter to box it up for you to take home, but by the time you flag him down and he brings you a box you have finished eating the meal through picking at it.  Even if you manage to hold off and take home the leftovers, they are more likely to become your midnight snack rather than tomorrow’s lunch.  What do you do?

One solution:  Ruin the food. 

Yes, that’s right.  Make the food unpalatable.  After all, if you leave it on the plate the restaurant will throw it out anyway.  The staff won’t box it up and send it to the starving kids in China or even to the local food pantry.  It goes in the trash.  So, you might as well have fun with the food before it is disposed of.

For example, after seeing Revenge of the Sith Saturday night with my sister, we went to Denny’s for dessert.  We each ordered a chocolate sundae, not realizing that the portions were going to be huge.  (We could easily have shared one if we had known beforehand the size of the portions.)  So, when I ate all I knew I should eat, I picked up the pepper shaker, unscrewed the lid, and dumped some pepper into the remains of my sundae.  My sister did likewise to hers with sugar packets and table litter.  Voila!  The sundaes were no longer appetizing and we had a ball while depriving ourselves.

It’s especially fun when the wait staff notices what you have done.  One waiter actually missed a step when eyeing another dessert to which I’d added a liberal amount of salt.  When asked to explain — which has happened once or twice — the wait staff I’ve encountered have loved the idea and have said they’d be trying it too.

One caveat:  Not everyone will be impressed by your brilliance in happily destroying your leftovers.  I’ve had friends plead with me not to do it in their presence because they are either grossed-out or want my leftovers for themselves.  As long as they are willing to lay claim to the food and thus remove the temptation from me, I am more than happy to accommodate their more delicate sensibilities.

Feel free to share your own diet tricks in the combox.

All About Books

I haven’t yet been tagged in the book meme going around St. Blog’s Parish, but the questions about books interested me, an inveterate reader, so I figured I’d leap into the fray untagged.

  • Total books owned:  Likely in the thousands.  Every few years, I tend to collect enough to open a used bookstore in my house.  I purge them by donating to libraries or used bookstores, and then the vicious cycle starts again.  My name is Michelle and I’m a bookaholic.
  • Last book purchased: We Have a Pope!, an upcoming biography of Pope Benedict XVI by Matthew Bunson.  I bought it through Catholic Answers and am eagerly anticipating receiving a copy when the shipment arrives.  <Commercial>If you want to purchase a copy, too, GO HERE.</commercial>
  • Last book read:  Benedict XVI by John L. Allen Jr.  Although some of Allen’s later books, such as Conclave and All the Pope’s Men, are very good, I understand now why Allen himself thinks this book (originally written when the Pope was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) is not one of his best.  It is not so much a biography of the Holy Father but uses him as a pretext to discuss Allen’s own liberal views.  Allen said recently that he wished he had been able to write new material to preface the U.S. edition of the book, but did not have the opportunity.  Apparently, though, the U.K. publisher did allow for a new preface.
  • Five books that mean a lot to me:  The Bible (natch), God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts by Gregory K. Popcak (very helpful), Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating (first Catholic book I read), Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer (favorite romance novel), Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (favorite book growing up).
  • Tagging:  Since I wasn’t tagged myself, I won’t tag another blogger; but feel free to answer one or more of the questions in the comments box.  Consider yourself tagged, if you like. 🙂

(Nod to Selkie for inspiration to do the St. Blog’s Book Meme.)