michaeldietsch.com
Irreverence
The family-values party
No to same-sex marriage; yes to two girls at once.
Freshmen report
January 28, 1986 — The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after takeoff.
1986 — The year of birth for most of the 18-year-olds among this year’s batch of college freshmen.
Christ powerless over rice, Catholic church says
An eight-year-old celiac sufferer in New Jersey has had her First Communion revoked after the Church learned that the host used in the ceremony was made from rice flour, not wheat flour.
The girl suffers from a disorder that makes gluten consumption potentially fatal. The Church, which offers low-gluten hosts, insists on following church doctrine, which teaches that hosts must be made of wheat, in keeping with Church tradition. Even the low-gluten hosts can be harmful to some celiac sufferers, though, and the Church requires that they either drink wine instead of taking the host or abstain from Communion entirely.
Now, at the risk of sounding flippant, I have to wonder at this. The point of Holy Communion, within the Roman Catholic faith, is that the host and wine are transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus. Why can God transform only wheat-based hosts and not rice-based hosts? Is rice somehow Christ’s Kryptonite, or is this an example of a Church sticking too stridently to tradition?
A Drunkard’s Agenda
Via Boing Boing, this funny list of 40 things any drunkard should do before the old liver fails.
Just plain stupid
From today’s NY Times comes an analysis of the “crisis” in intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The piece examines options the Bush Administration might explore in responding to the problem.
Buried in the piece is this choice quote from an unnamed senior Republican:
“They wove this giant story, based on intelligence assessments that in hindsight — and this is hindsight, remember — were wrong. It’s exposed a huge problem in our intelligence gathering. But who wants to take that on in an election year? Or while you are fighting terrorists?”
Let me get this straight: Who wants to take on problems with intelligence when you’re fighting terrorists?
Jesus.
Rhododendron
I don’t cover politics in this blog, but tonight Diane Sawyer interviewed Howard Dean and Judith Steinberg Dean, and she asked Mrs. Dr. Dean about her 50th birthday. I don’t have the transcript, but I’ll paraphrase.
Diane: “For your 50th birthday, he bought you a rhododendron. That’s not exactly hearts and flowers.”
Excuse me, Diane.
What’s not hearts and flowers?
Also, Judith Steinberg Dean is a woman with a successful medical practice, and Diane quoted the Deans’ critics, saying Judith Dean should put all that on hold to traipse around the country on her husband’s coattails because that’s what wives do. I’m sorry, is this the twenty-first century, or is my watch running fast again?
This is why I pay little attention to television’s coverage of politics. It’s all so fucking vapid, it’s just never worth the time.
Is it a bar?
How to tell if you’re in a bar or a restaurant
A few of my favorites:
“If the waiter challenges your choice of wines, it’s a restaurant. If the waiter challenges you to a fist fight over the Miami-Virginia Tech score, it’s a bar.
If the waiter recommends a dish made famous in Tuscany, it’s a restaurant. If the waiter recommends a dish made famous in Buffalo, it’s a bar.
If the Friday Night Special is advertised as a “pasta toss,” it’s a restaurant. If the Friday Night Special is advertised as a “midget toss,” it’s a bar.”
[via Fark]
Pimpin’
Satan’s Laundromat gets the mad pimpin’, yo.
Visit Old Madison!
Visit Madison, Indiana! We’re xenophobic and too boring to matter to terrorists!
A safe place to visit…When you visit Madison you will discover that we have no tall buildings to fear, no nuclear power plants, airports or anything anyone would want to blow up. When you step into Old-Madison, you step back more than a 100 years in time experiencing a past as much alive today as it was a century ago. Old Madison was a time of adventure, an age of grandeur the great steamboatin era. Most of the folks around here are American Americans and you too are welcome here. We have “great” old homes and buildings to see, antique shops, great food, sleep in one of our old homes and walk on our lighted riverfront. Experience Old-Madison today.
Wonder what they mean by American Americans. Even if this is a joke, it’s a perfect example of why I got the fuck out of Indiana.
Oh, and Madison? 100 means one hundred. The construction a 100, therefore, means “a one hundred.” And that really doesn’t make much sense, so keep your illiterate, furriner-fearing, antebellum culture to your damn selves.
