Self described "short fictions and wonders", this book served its purpose well: a pile of quick quirky reads to warp the reality right out of my mind, sending me off to dreamland.
It includes a few repeats from other collections, a few new gems, and just lots of weird stuff. Neil Gaiman never fails to entertain in his own dark way. Nothing spectacular here, but if you like Gaiman it's like mining the dusty depths of his cabinet.
cath·o·lic - [kath-uh-lik, kath-lik] –adjective
1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal.
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.
Increasingly hostile and controversial spam from Catholic and other Christian organizations has been painting Obama as having endorsed "infanticide". Voting records cited and little clips and quotes carefully compiled are combined with horrifying imagery of the worst imaginable abortion situations to create a very disturbing vision.
CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA help clarify that issue and many others with a careful examination of issues and facts and how they relate to Catholic and biblical teachings, for those who vote with a Christian conscience.
Ironically, many of the same people propagating these baby killing messages are the very ones affected by the failed policies and callousness for human life (post-placental) of the so-called "pro-life" party. Look around -the rich have indeed been getting richer, at the expense of the ever expanding poor and eerily diappearing middle class.
Surely it's a noble cause to save the unborn from having their shot at life snipped off. But haven't too many American lives and innocent bystanders (in Iraq) died in this war that continues to put our country in a dangerously deeper into debt? Speaking of debt... seriously, TEN BILLION dollars every month!!! How many freakin zeroes is that? Count 'em: $10,000,000.00.
The total cost of this war is expected to exceed THREE TRILLION dollars. Just imagine what could be accomplished with all that money. If you lack philanthropic expertise or are consumer challenged from too many years of penny pinching, here's some help: a virtual shopping spree with your very own budget of $3,000,000,000!
Maybe you could buy SIX TRILLION condoms and pass them around, virtually eliminating the need for abortion. As for me, I'm buying 6 billion cows from Heifer. That's almost one for every living human being on earth. (Start thinking of a name.)
But that would be socialist or something worse. Better to use that money on a war and line the pockets of mercenaries, defense contractors... and who? Where does it all go?
Catholics are counseled to support the candidate who most closely represents the specific principles of Catholic Social Teaching, even if that candidate takes a certain position in favor of an "intrinsic evil"! (translation: favors legalized abortion) The key is that the OTHER candidate must present a greater risk to the morality Catholics espouse.
CATHOLICS FOR OBAMA examines the seven principles in detail, making a very convincing argument that Mr. Obama's policies most closely mirror the teachings of the church. A quick bit of reading will guide the conscience of anyone who has an awareness of the policies of the current administration (echoed by their candidate in waiting).
Don't be misguided... read and read more. Make an objective, socially and morally responsible decision in the voting booth Tuesday. Vote catholic - catholic in the broadest sense - looking at the BIG picture, with the greater good of all (in our country and our world) in your mind and heart and soul.
With the election less than a month away, everyone's talking about it - Who are you voting for?
Maybe Ralph... I'm undecided.
However, I have definitely decided against McCain. His increasing instability and geezerness frighten me, and his running mate scares me even more. There, said it. I'm totally outed now and I feel so much better.
I usually end up voting independent because I can never find enough common ground with any mainstream candidate. They always seem barely distinguishable, and I don't mean that in a good way.
This campaign has shaped up so surprisingly different, I'm mesmerized! And yet, I've been trying to maintain my stubborn independence with an objective approach.
Over coffee I'll skim the Asbury Park Press, the Drudge headlines, and maybe Google news to take the campaign's pulse each morning.
Later, I'll leave the car radio on the Imus station (which DH switches on the occasional morning he uses my car). That means I get to hear lots of radical right ranting like the Rush guy.
Then, in the evening, I'll watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report from the previous night. Well, you know that covers both the left and right. (Remember - I teach facing the class, so my right can be your left if necessary, much like Steven Colbert, hehe.)
Finally, DH has taken to postponing his cigar and spending an extra half hour or more on the couch playing Presto Change-O Reality. (Which explains why I don't make it over here as often lately!)
What is "Presto Change-O Reality"? Easy game - all you need is a T.V. with pause and switch buttons on the remote. Set one channel to MSNBC and the other one to Fox news. It's great fun, if you've got the stomach for it. Alternate realities are not for sissies.
I'm already disgusted how the 24 hour news cycle has diffused our focus with so much hype and hogwash - less talk, more facts please! Now I'm shocked by the bias in the election coverage. Everyone seems to just find people who support their views and interview them to prove their own point.
Fox is the absolute worst (best?) at this, so bad that the Daily Show did a juxtapostion of Sean Hannity's "interview" of Sarah Palin with an infomercial and you could barely tell the difference! It wasn't an intelligent conversation, it was a well scripted sales pitch. Ironically, the video clip of this parody is no longer available.... hmmm.
I'm not going to go on about Sarah... she's totally not worth the effort. But I really feel bad for McCain. I used to like him, really I did. He seems to have sold his soul for his dream, and now other people are pulling the strings for him.
Matt Taibbi asserts that the puppeteer is bad guy Karl Rove. What's worse, is Matt's conclusion as to what it all means:
The reason Rove continues to survive is the same reason that Johnnie Cochran was called a genius for keeping a double-murderer on the golf course — because this generation of Americans has become so steeped in greed and social Darwinism that it can no longer distinguish between cheating and achieving, between enterprise and crime, and can't bring itself to criticize winners any more than it knows how to be nice to losers. He survives because an increasing number of Americans secretly agree with Rove's vision of rules, laws and "the truth" as quaint, faintly embarrassing rituals that only a sucker would let hold him back.
First witness, AIG.
When we are being preached to about our moral void in Rolling Stone magazine, well, I think it's seriously time for a change. And I believe that the change has to come from someone with a calm, commanding demeanor, a keen, inquiring intellect and a proven passion for truth and justice.
So, you might say, as Michelle put it, "I'm an Obama Mama."
I'm not actually done yet... almost, very close... factoids and anecdotes still swirling around in my head... and in light of the current financial fiasco our government is involved in, well, it's all very depressing to the point of nausea.
(How many billions of dollars are we donating to the Sweet Wall Street Charity?)
Anyway, good book. He's a funny guy in that smart-aleck-needs-a-slapdown way. So smart and brave and passionately analytical. Maybe the passion clouds the analysis a bit, but he's young, give him time to mellow and he's golden.
Read at your own risk. Do you really want to know the truth? Or, worse, Matt's interpretation of the facts as he discovers them? It might make you want to jump into public service (government) to try to change things if it didn't present them as already too hopelessly broken beyond repair.
Here we go again. Every election season good ole Roe v. Wade rises from the ashes for public approval or stoning. Candidates' fingers stab the air, declaring their position: "I'm pro-life!" or "I'm pro-choice!"
Why does it seem that a pro-life political stance usually includes pro-death penalty and pro-war?
And why does pro-choice seem to ignore that the choice to abort is often made of convenience and not by moral compasss?
What life is sacred to whom? Welfare babies or whale babies. When do those lives become sacred and worthy to protect?
Exactly when "life" begins may be more a matter of faith than debate, but at the very least it can be defined by the reverse of when we say it "ends".
We say it ends when the heart stops beating. No more blood circulating through the body or to the brain. Organs stop functioning. It's not pleasant, but it's very definitive.
Does the soul reside in the blood? Maybe, but that's just too meta-physical to really answer, although WikiAnswer offers plenty of food for thought. But, meanwhile, back to the concrete... uh, blood that is..
So when does that blood first start pumping through the body? Just about the time a woman realizes "Oh shit! My period's over a week late!" That little 4 week old heart is a thumpin! (click on "the time" for animation and color, really!)
.
(...and why do all our internal organs look like clips from old horror flicks? does life imitate art or does art imitate life?)
So if life begins 4 weeks after conception, and All Life Is Sacred, then we should all go out and vote however we must in order to protect all the tiny unborn babies, right? Embrace the pro-life platform and all it includes...
To hell with the already born babies in third world countries who are starving to death or hiding in the shadows of political wars. Never mind the lives lost in those wars: the innocent bystanders and righteous soldiers fighting for questionable causes.
Damn the lives of those who have taken other lives. Damn their twisted minds and unforgivable souls. They deserve to be judged by the human scum that they are, they deserve death.
Speaking of scum - never mind improving the "quality of life" for those less fortunate, unless the charity is convenient and tax-deductible. They should pull themselves up by their own damn bootstraps. Adversity breeds opportunity. (Well, it definitely "breeds", that's for sure.)
Never mind the lives of animals, who were put on this earth for food and sport. Shoot more wolves & bears from airplanes so we have more moose to kill on our hunting trips! Burgers just don't taste the same unless they had antlers!
Never mind the life of the earth - rainforests and the global warming myth, pbbb.
What we need is an army of them unborn babies, who we can brainwash from birth, who will owe us their very lives. Lives they will gladly sacrifice for us. In the wars that keep our companies strong. It's the economy!
WAIT A MINUTE! BACK UP!!! You're not PRO-LIFE!
Life is precious... all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly, the poor, the godless. All of it. Your God made it all.
You are not "Pro-Life" anymore than the other side is "Pro-Choice". It's about abortion or no abortion, so just SAY it. Pro-Lifers make hard choices all the time - have sex, or don't. Keep the baby or put it up for adoption. And Pro-Choicers seem to be real bleeding-heart, tree-hugging life lovers.
Then there's the rare species... PRO LIFE, BLEEDING HEART, TREE HUGGING, PEOPLE HUGGING, BIRD-FEEDING, DOG KISSING, GRANNY LOVING, CLOUD GAZING, LUST-for-LIFERS. No party panders to those crazies.
But like Iggy says... it's not just love... "thats like hypnotizing chickens." It's a Lust for Life. It's about passion. (Ironically, the subject of that movie took his own life.)
That's what's missing in these elections, someone for life-respecting, passionate crazy people... a LUST-FOR-LIFE candidate.
