from Paddypower.com: Latest Odds on the Papal Election

Joseph Ratzinger (Germany) 7/2
Jean-Marie Lustiger (France) 4/1
Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (Italy) 9/2
Claudio Hummes (Brazil) 7/1
Dionigi Tettamanzi (Italy) 8/1
Francis Arinze (Nigeria) 8/1
Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Argentina) 12/1
Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz Ossa (Chile) 14/1
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga (Honduras) 14/1
Cardianl Ruini (Italy) 20/1
Keith O Brien (Scotland) 20/1
Cardinal Angelo Scola (Venice) 25/1
Giovanni Battista Re (Italy) 25/1
Jose Da Cruz Policarpo (Portugal) 25/1
Angelo Sodano (Italy) 33/1
Count Christoph von Schoenborn (Austria) 33/1
Giacomo Biffi (Italy) 33/1
Godfried Daneels (Belgium) 33/1
Ivan Dias (India) 33/1
Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino (Cuba) 33/1

via Jesus' General: The Latest in a Continuing Series of Lapses in Good Taste from the Fascist Likudniks at Little Green Footballs



Please, can someone explain to me how it's something to proud of, this being a 'minion' of a little pencil dicked lizard that screws footballs?

And while you're at it, also explain to me how on God's Green Earth that pride leads to you becoming a feverently racist jackbooted parody of a supporter of Israel, complete with the fascist Iron Cross, to the delight of proud Nazis everywhere?

Finally how do you justify slavishly following political idols who delight in producing on their subject peoples a re-enactment of the horrors visited on their own people by those self-same Nazis, actions that appear oh so very coldly calculated and deliberate?

Just asking, you understand. Kinda curious.

Poem Of the Day

A Poem for the End of the Century by Czeslaw Milosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.

What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.

Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.

Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?

To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
'Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you.'

'And I,' answered the pious one,
'Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you.'

To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?

Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.

Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.

New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001


National Poetry Month

from Michael Berube Online: Was I ever wrong

In the opening pages of Life As We Know It, I wrote that most of my time with Jamie – that is, when I’m actually with him, doing stuff – is lived pretty much moment by moment. And I wrote this specific passage just under ten years ago:

Occasionally it will occur to Janet or to me that Jamie will always be “disabled,” that his adult and adolescent years will undoubtedly be more difficult emotionally--for him and for us--than his early childhood, that we will never not worry about his future, his quality of life, whether we’re doing enough for him. But usually these moments occur in the relative comfort of abstraction, when Janet and I are lying in bed at night and wondering what will become of us all. When I’m with Jamie, by contrast, I’m almost always fully occupied by taking care of his present needs rather than by worrying about his future. When he asks to hear the Beatles because he loves their cover of Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally,” I just play the song, sing along, and watch him dance with delight; I do not concern myself with extraneous questions such as whether he’ll ever distinguish early Beatles from late Beatles, Paul’s songs from John’s, originals from covers. These questions are now central to Nick’s enjoyment of the Beatles, but that’s Nick for you. Jamie is entirely sui generis, and as long as I’m with him I can’t think of him as anything but Jamie.

The clear implication here – and you don’t have to be a literature Ph.D. to see it – is that Jamie will never have the intellectual capacity to understand the Beatles’ oeuvre, or even to understand that some songs preceded others, were written by different band members, and so forth.

Well, this is long, long overdue, but I owe Jamie one enormous apology: I couldn’t have been more wrong. Over the past ten years Jamie has become so fascinated with the Beatles that he’s memorized almost the entire songbook. He still has trouble identifying late Harrisonian ephemera like “The Inner Light,” “Old Brown Shoe,” and “Only a Northern Song” (all of which suck, anyway), and he’s not crazy about Abbey Road (with good reason). But in every other respect, his knowledge of Beatles music verges on the preternatural. (more)

Oh what a wonder he shows us! So warm, loving, and beautiful. The joy, the sadness, the worry, and most of all the sweet pride he has in his son.

Stories like this make me question the wisdom of my well reasoned, ethical decision, made oh those many years ago, to forego having children. What a world I am missing! Thank you, Dr Berube, so very much for sharing your part of it.

Poem Of the Day

POETRY by Pablo Neruda

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

National Poetry Month

The Poem of the Day

The Art of Poetry by Jorge Luis Borges

To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

Selected Poems

National Poetry Month

From The Daily DeLay

from SPIEGEL ONLINE: Crisis in the Catholic Church: The Pope's Contradictions

By Hans Kung

Outwardly Pope John Paul II, who has been actively involved in battling war and suppression, is a beacon of hope for those who long for freedom. Internally, however, his anti-reformist tenure has plunged the Roman Catholic church into an epochal credibility crisis.
Don't be fooled by the crowds: Millions have left the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II's leadership.
The Catholic church is in dire straits. The pope is deathly ill and deserves every bit of sympathy he can get. But the church must live on, and in light of the selection of a new pope, it will need a diagnosis, an unadorned insider analysis. The therapy will be discussed later.

Many marvel at the staying power of this highly fragile, partially paralyzed head of the Roman Catholic church, a man who, despite all medications, is barely able to speak. He is treated with a sort of reverence that would never be extended to an American president or a German chancellor in a similar state. Others feel put off by a man they see as an obstinate office bearer who, instead of accepting the Christian path to his own eternity, is using all means at his disposal to hold on to power in a largely undemocratic system. (More)

from Science via Pharyngula: Twilight of the Enlightenment?

Donald Kennedy
Editor-in-Chief

For much of their existence over the past two centuries, Europe and the United States have been societies of questioners: nations in which skepticism has been accepted and even welcomed, and where the culture has been characterized by confidence in science and in rational methods of thought. We owe this tradition in part to the birth of the Scottish Enlightenment of the early 18th century, when the practice of executing religious heretics ended, to be gradually replaced by a developing conviction that substituted faith in experiment for reliance on inherited dogma.

That new tradition, prominently represented by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, supplied important roots for the growth of modernity, and it has served U.S. society well, as it has Europe's. The results of serious, careful experimentation and analysis became a standard for the entry of a discovery or theory into the common culture of citizens and the policies of their governments. Thus, scientific determinations of the age of Earth and the theories of gravity, biological evolution, and the conservation of matter and energy became meaningful scientific anchors of our common understanding. (more)

Poem of the Day

Pater Noster by Jacques Prevert

Our Father who art in heaven
Stay there
And we'll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty
With its mysteries of New York
And its mysteries of Paris
At least as good as that of the Trinity
With its little canal at Ourcq
Its great wall of China
Its river at Morlaix
Its candy canes
With its Pacific Ocean
And its two basins in the Tuileries
With its good children and bad people
With all the wonders of the world
Which are here
Simply on the earth
Offered to everyone
Strewn about
Wondering at the wonder of themselves
And daring not avow it
As a naked pretty girl dares not show herself
With the world's outrageous misfortunes
Which are legion
With legionaries
With torturers
With the masters of this world
The masters with their priests their traitors and their troops
With the seasons
With the years
With the pretty girls and with the old bastards
With the straw of misery rotting in the stee
of cannons


Paroles

National Poetry Month

via churchgirl from The New York Times: The Man Date

The delicate posturing began with the phone call.

The proposal was that two buddies back in New York City for a holiday break in December meet to visit the Museum of Modern Art after its major renovation.

'He explicitly said, 'I know this is kind of weird, but we should probably go,' ' said Matthew Speiser, 25, recalling his conversation with John Putman, 28, a former classmate from Williams College.

The weirdness was apparent once they reached the museum, where they semi-avoided each other as they made their way through the galleries and eschewed any public displays of connoisseurship. 'We definitely went out of our way to look at things separately,' recalled Mr. Speiser, who has had art-history classes in his time. (More) reg required

Oh by Aunt Hypotenuses's Strawberry-Petunia Pancakes. What is with these people? Guys, it's more than ok to have dinner with your friends. Go to the movies together. Travel the world in groups and pairs. Hug and comfort one and other when needed. He's your FRIEND. It's damned fair and right to act like it. The rest of the crap doesn't matter two farts. Who gives a good goddam about what those jackasses think anyway?

I've been having dinner, going to concerts, museums and the movies, taking trips with male friends ever since I was taken up into the hills to the secret cave of initiation way back in the day 50 mumble years ago.

When did this become an issue? And why didn't I get the memo? Is this more of that Robert Bly stuff? Who the hell has the damn talking stick now?

From Our Dear Leader, an explanation of his Social Security plan:

'Because the - all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases ... there's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those - changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be - or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate - the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases ... there is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those - if that growth is affected ... it will help on the red.'
--February 4th speech in Tampa, Florida

As my Seneca forebearers might say, "What-Ta-Hey?"

from Poetic Leanings: You have the right ... to shut the fuck up!

If you are anti-choice with regards to abortion, fine, don't have one. Leave others alone to make their own choices. You are not saving a life. A fetus is not a person until it can viably exist as a child. (1)

If you do not believe in birth control, buy a candy bar at CVS instead of a condom. Let the rest of us decide to purchase a box of Trojans or to get a birth control prescription filled.

If you do not believe in harvesting stem cells from fetuses for research purposes, sit and explain to someone who has lost a family member to a disease that stem cells might someday cure how it is unacceptable to use something that would get thrown in the trash otherwise.

If you find a movie, tv show or book offensive, don't watch or read the material in question.

If you want to be a Christian to what ever level of belief you feel is appropriate, do so. Go to church, avoid certain activities and behaviors, subscribe to a particular way of life. Do not force anyone else to be like you.

If you do not believe gays should marry and you are a man, do not marry another man. If you do not believe gays should marry and you are a woman, do not marry another woman. If you are Rick Santorum, don't marry your pet. Leave everyone else alone to marry whoever they damn well please.

If you do not support the right to die or euthanasia, leave yourself plugged in as long as you wish. Let the rest of us die with dignity when all hope is lost.

If you feel the need to impose your beliefs on me, or anyone else ... shut the fuck up!

(1) The author does not believe in late term abortions as it is said author's position that in the last trimester, we have a child, not a fetus.

'Nuff Said.

from Daily Kos: Bending over to win elections

Here's what I wish Democrats would have the courage to do:

Instead of falling into the Republican-laid trap of feeling like we have to talk about our faith (see Dean's recent comments), we, instead, argue, forcefully, that one's faith is one of the most private and sacred of personal choices and should be defended as such.

To me, all this talk of religion, faith and values is just more of the rightward corporate drift that started under the guidance of the DLC.

Face it, we will never 'out-religious' the religious conservatives just as we could never be as good a 'friend' to big business as the Republicans.

Both are losing arguments that continue to dilute any core positions we may hold.

As was witnessed in the past general election, people voted for Bush even though they thought his war and domestic polcies were failures (by a thin majority). He never wavered, even on the dumb shit he promotes.

We're constantly wavering in a feeble attempt to peel off voters... but people don't like the wavering.

It's a recipe for failure. (More)

AMEN!!! YA BUNCHA WIMPS AND COWARDS, STAND FOR SOMETHING, DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Political Haiku Monday

Huffing his Black Flag
The Bug Bomber seeks Nirvana,
Hammered now. Bliss.

via dadahead from Hardball: Another Glimpse of the True Face of Compassionate Conservatism



Wingnut Extraordinaire Michelle Malkin in one of her quieter moments.

from Whiskey Bar: Technical Difficulties

(Scene: One of President Bush's Social Security "town hall" meetings. We zoom in on a nondescript trailer parked just outside the arena where the president is speaking. Passing through the ceiling, we find ourselves in a room filled with electronic gear, plus two somewhat geeky looking technicians -- Bill and Ted -- sitting in front of a large control panel. Over their heads, we can see (and hear) Bush on a TV monitor. On stage with him are a group of amazingly lifelike, human-sized animatronic puppets. They smile and nod their heads as he speaks.)

TED: (reading slowly and distinctly into a microphone) And so, as Aristotle once reminded the Peloponnesians, we must be wise in our choices, firm in our commitment to democracy -- and steadfast in our determination to bestow the blessings of personalized investment accounts on ourselves and our posterity . . .

(Ted pauses, and after a few seconds delay, we hear President Bush repeat exactly same words.)

TED: (reading) Furthermore, as Winston Churchill once said . . . Jesus Christ!

BUSH: . . . as Winston Churchill once said Jesus Christ! (He stops, puzzled, and listens for the voice in his ear.)

(Back in the trailer, we hear a loud electronic buzzing sound. Sparks shoot from one of the consoles in front of Ted. He slaps at it with his script while Bill dives for a fire extinguisher. Meanwhile, Bush remains frozen at the podium, waiting for his next line. Prompted by his silence, the animatronic puppets all applaud politely.)

BILL: (squirting foam on the panel) Cut the damned switch! Cut it!

BUSH: Putt the damned bitch! Putt it! (He pauses, even more confused) Um, just a little golf humor for ya there. (he tries to ad lib) You know, with the, uh, kinda returns y'all are gonna get on them private . . . uh, public . . . personal spending . . . personal investment accounts, why you'll be hittin' the golf courses before you turn 60! (the puppets applaud politely)

(Back in the trailer, we hear more buzzing noises, then suddenly an FM radio station kicks in on the monitor speaker.)

BUSH: (listening to the voice in his ear) This, is, uh . . . Bubba the Luv Sponge comin' at ya with MORE of ya favorite tunes. Now I want all of you hot hunnies out there to jest sliiide right down next to your radio and let the Bubbster give ya a little tongue action . . .

(Bush stops, completely bewildered. The puppets on stage applaud politely, but in the background we hear confused murmuring from the audience.) (More)

SNORK! This is one of the funniest bits I've ever read on the Interthingie. I laughed so hard I nearly had an asthma attack. I can think of no higher praise!

Poem of the Day

NOTES FROM A NONEXISTENT HIMALAYAN EXPEDITION
Wislawa Szymborska

So these are the Himalayas.
Mountains racing to the moon.
The moment of their start recorded
on the startling, ripped canvas of the sky.
Holes punched in a desert of clouds.
Thrust into nothing.
Echo- a white mute.
Quiet.

Yeti, down there we've got Wednesday,
bread and alphabets.
Two times two is four.
Roses are red there,
and violets are blue.

Yeti, crime is not all
we're up to down there.
Not every sentence there
means death.

We've inherited hope-
the gift of forgetting.
You'll see how we give
birth among the ruins.

Yeti, we've got Shakespeare there.
Yeti, we play solitaire
and violin. At nightfall,
we turn lights on, Yeti.

Up here it's neither moon nor earth.
Tears freeze.
Oh Yeti, semi-moonman,
turn back think again!

I called this to the Yeti
inside four walls of avalanche,
stomping my feet for warmth
on the everlasting
snow.



Poems New and Collected

National Poetry Month

from SNL via Hugo Zoom: Pull The Plug:

First shown during SNL's second season, February 26, 1977

An absurdist take on the Karen Ann Quinlan case from that period. You won't see today's SNL trying something like this... esp given that Michael O'Donoghue had a hand in writing the below bit. O'D's style of humor wouldn't make it on today's SNL. Hell, O'D himself would be banned from the building.


Doctor: Steve Martin
Mrs. Dionosopolis: Jane Curtin
Mr. Dionosopolis: Bill Murray
Buddy: John Belushi


[Open on interior, hospital room; Doctor stands with Parents in front of Buddy's bed, as Buddy lies in a coma]

Doctor: I'm sorry, Mr. & Mrs. Dionosopolis, but your son can't get any closer to death than he is right now.

Mrs. Dionosopolis: Tomorrow's his birthday.

Mr. Dionosopolis: Doctor, isn't there a chance that Buddy could come out of this coma?

Doctor: Well, let me put it this way - if you want to get Buddy something for his birthday, I would suggest moss for his north side.

[Mrs. Dionosopolis cries in agony]

Doctor: Hey! I'm just trying to lighten things up a little bit!

Mr. Dionosopolis: [comforting his wife] Thank you, Doctor! It's a good joke! It is. I'm sure that Buddy would have laughed.

Doctor: Well, I think you should know that the machine that keeps Buddy alive is costing you $500 a day.

[awkward pause]

Mr. Dionosopolis: I think you'd better pull the plug, Doctor.

Mrs. Dionosopolis: [outraged] Buddy!!!

Mr. Dionosopolis: Now, you heard what the man said. Buddy has no motor reflexes, his mind is gone. Do you think he's having fun? Look at that! [pointing to Buddy]

Doctor: Now, listen, uh.. according to law, I cannot deliberately pull the plug.

Mr. Dionosopolis: I see.

Doctor: Buuuut. . . if the plug were to, uh.. 'accidentally'.. be pulled from the wall, I don't think anyone's gonna make a federal case out of it. I think you know what I'm talking about, huh? [winks]

Mr. Dionosopolis: Mmm-hmm. Well, I think we should probably just put him out of his misery..

Mrs. Dionosopolis: [outraged] Honey!!

Mr. Dionosopolis: [calmly] Cathy, I never told you this, but about a year ago, Buddy came to me, and he said, 'Dad, if I'm ever in a bad accident at work, and I'm hit in the head with a sledgehammer and lapse into a coma and have to kept alive by a machine, I want to die with dignity. So, please pull the plug.'

Mrs. Dionosopolis: Wellll . . . if that's the way that Buddy wants it, then . . . pull the plug.

Doctor: Accidentally.

Mr. Dionosopolis: Accidentally.

Mrs. Dionosopolis: Accidentally.

Doctor: [begins his act] Okay! Well, hey, I've got to, uh, run up to surgery. I'm, uh, kinda late right now, so I'll probably be taking off! See you later -- they're calling me! [pretends to trip over the plug as he makes his exit, getting tangled in the cord] Oh, no! My leg is tangled in the cord! It . . . it could cut off the circulation! Help me!

Mr. Dionosopolis: [playing along] Okay, here, here . . . let me get your foot out . . .

Doctor: Yeah! Maybe you could just pull on it!

[both men struggle with the cord, yanking on it, putting their feet on the wall for leverage, but the plug will not come out of the electrical outlet]

[suddenly, Buddy opens his eyes and sits straight up in bed]

Buddy: Hi Mom! Hi Dad! I'm not in a coma anymore!

Mrs. Dionosopolis: Thank God!

Mr. Dionosopolis: [embarrassed] Buddy..? Buddy..?

Buddy: [sees the men tangled in the cord] Ohhhhh . . . what are you doing? Were you pulling the plug on me!

Mr. Dionosopolis: Buddy, the doctor told us you were a vegetable.

Doctor: I, for one, am baffled!

Buddy: But pulling the plug!

Mrs. Dionosopolis: Buddy, we were just doing what you told your father about 'dying with dignity.' You know? If you ever got hit in the head with a sledgehammer and had to be kept alive by machines? You remember!

Buddy: I never said anything like that, Mom.

Mr. Dionosopolis: Oh, yeahhh . . . you remember, don't you? It was that one day, remember? You weren't acting yourself, you were real strange. I thought, 'Gee, that's not like Buddy, wants to die like that.' But I figured, what the heck, okay! You said it, though! You said it. You just forgot!

Buddy: [laughing] I probably forgot about it!

Mr. Dionosopolis: Well, Buddy, do you feel good enough to go home?

Buddy: [excited, bouncing out of bed] Yeah, that would be just great!

Mrs. Dionosopolis: All right. I'll fix you a nice big lunch!

Mr. Dionosopolis: And we'll go hunting first thing next week, okay? [turns to Doctor, now with scorn on his face] Thanks a lot, Doctor! Thanks for almost killing little Buddy!

[family exits hospital room]

Doctor: [to camera] Well, excuuuuuuuuuuuuuse ME!!

No comment.

from Slate: The Mall Goes Undercover

It now looks like a city street.
By Andrew Blum


Santana Row in San Jose, Calif.

Like insecure teenagers, malls keep changing their style. They are ripping away their roofs and drywalled corridors; adding open-air plazas, sidewalks, and street-side parking; and rechristening themselves "lifestyle centers." This new look may remind you of something: a vibrant urban street. Yet, while these new malls may appear to be public space, they're not public at all, at least if you want to do anything but shop. They represent a bait-and-switch routine on the part of developers, one that exchanges the public realm for the commercial one. They're also enormously successful, by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country. (more)

The developers just get nastier and nastier. Now they're stealing the very look and ambiance of the thing they most want to destroy, the old style town center. Public space being absorbed by private control. We at Webster's Bookstore would not have been able to campaign as hard for Kerry or other liberal issues if we were in such a place. And every time speech is muffled, all causes, left, right and center suffer.