__
                    __ _ / _|_ __ ___
           _____   / _` | |_| '_ ` _ \   _____
          |_____| | (_| |  _| | | | | | |_____|
                   \__,_|_| |_| |_| |_|
                   Another Foggy Moment

 These are the continuing adventures of a typical resident
 of the self-proclaimed center of the Pugetopolis universe -
 Seattle. Most are true stories but some are made of whole-
 cloth. I ain't the Mayor, the Governor or a Big Shot. Just
 another Working Stiff with a Bad Attitude.

    ---------------------------------------------------
    WARNING: This is not a Child-Proof Neighborhood. If 
    you're a kid - scram!, beat it! you little punk before 
    your Old Lady catches you and calls the cops. They'll 
    throw you in the Big House in Walla Walla and won't 
    let you out until you're 89 years old. There. Don't  
    say I didn't warn you.
    -------------------------------------------------

                          - 127 -
 

 Christmas morning. Up bright and early, I troop across the U Dub
 campus. It is a beautifully clear, cold dawn. The Cascades, far
 off to the east, are so sharp and clear you can almost make out
 the irregularity of the tree tops. Funny how Mt. Rainier always
 looks so much smaller without clouds to give it perspective. 

 It is totally quiet and empty. Not another soul in sight. A light
 frost glazes the ground. Not even enough to make it slippery. The
 seagulls gather on top of the Medical Sciences Building as they
 do every morning, squalking and crying to start a new day. No
 squirrels - the cold weather makes them drowsy. They'll sleep in
 until it warms up a little. A light, smokey fog hangs over the
 water of the Ship Canal. No rowers this morning. Ospreys by the 
 score quietly decorate the trees at the eastern entrance to The 
 Cut like small, ominous, black phantoms. They slowly rouse from 
 their slumbers. Individually the occasional one alights and heads 
 west up the Canal for breakfast. They have been awakened by the 
 thousands of cawing, barking, cackling ravens flooding across 
 Union Bay. The ravens are Ma Nature's alarm clock. Shake it and 
 shag it everybody - new day a-coming. Rise and shine.
 
 Back home, I listen to some wild, screeching, banging Chinese 
 music on the short-wave. Yeeha! Those Chinese guys know how to 
 have a Merry Christmas.

                                *

 That Cray J90 SuperComputer is still up on eBay. Going for $30k 
 they got no takers the first time around so they've relisted it. 
 Not a bad price for what used to be a Million Dollar Machine. 
 Set one of those babies up in your Cube with it's many Blinkin 
 Lichten and those cryo cooling tanks hissing away, you'd earn
 the fear and respect of your office peers. You'd also likely 
 have little further need of that messy office microwave too. 
 You could probably fry hot dogs on the array of CPUs if you ease 
 back on the cryo tanks a bit. These guys put it up on something 
 of a lark after they had to make room for a new mainframe. But 
 Sun et al. have been using eBay on an experimental basis to sell 
 their big servers.

                               *

 Tomorrow we get to kiss off this crappy bitch of a year. From
 having that Loser Yellowbelly slip'n in the presidential back
 door with his spooky pal - Veep Heart Attack, to the trashing 
 they did to the economy throwing thousands out of work, to his 
 embarassing run for the Nebraska White House when we came under 
 attack, to General Powell's remarkable ability to turn peace 
 into open warfare, to our useless excuse for a military who 
 didn't lift a finger to help us on 9/11, to our Congressional
 goofs who happily held up the Constitution and Bill of Rights
 while Yellowbelly lit a match to them, 2001 has been the pits. 
 Now Uncle Sammy's left the door open for anybody who wants to 
 take a whack at us while he's off playing with himself in 
 foreign climes. From tail sections falling off of aircraft to
 exploding Addidas, we're on our own.

 How in the hell do we always manage it? Everytime we get things
 going half-way decent, BLAM!, we shoot ourselves in the foot.
 And if that ain't bad enough, we spend another couple decades
 limping around in pain while insisting that it feels just great.
 Often blowing a hole in the other foot just to prove we really 
 mean it. We always gotta do it the hard way.
 
.......................................................................

                   RACISM, SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA
                   I'M SO PROUD OF THE PEOPLE
               OF THE SO-CALLED LAND OF THE "FREE"

             - T-Shirt of 15-Year Old Katie Sierra -
                 that got her suspended from the 
             Sissonville, West Virginia High School

.......................................................................

                        SONS OF MELCHISEDECH

 Being a Catholic priest is an odd sort of avocation. Up until about
 the 60's it was the dream of many Catholic mothers that one of their 
 sons would become a priest. It was my dream to become one for a while.
 To that end, I spent a couple fascinating years in a seminary. While 
 those years had their rough spots, I generally look back on them
 with considerable fondness. 

 Growing up Catholic during the 50's, priests were practically part 
 of the family furniture. You didn't have to go to them, they often
 came to you. One of my grandmothers had for decades hosted a weekly 
 Wednesday 'Soup Night' around her humble family table, at which her 
 parish priests had a standing invitation. One of the regulars, though
 he wasn't from her parish, was the famous 30's Populist priest Father
 Coughlin whose weekly radio 'sermons' routinely drew millions of 
 listeners nationally. He was the Rush Limbaugh of his day. Branded as 
 everything from a Nazi to an anti-semite, a Fascist to a rabble-rouser, 
 he unabashedly indulged in politics and economics. None of that mamsy-
 pamsy Bishop Sheen fluff for him. The accusations were mostly nonsense 
 of course and his heart was certainly in the right place. His radio 
 sermons still make fascinating reading. Like many people in the days
 of the Great Depression he was trying to sort the lies out from the
 truths and make some kind of sense out of that tragedy. He lived down
 in the trenches with the people who were getting hurt.

 The only priest I really knew as a kid was Fr. Joe. He was the parish
 priest in the little town where our family spent its summers. He was
 the all-time champion of the Super Fast Vacation Mass. He could do
 a Sunday summer mass in 30-minutes flat. Quite an accomplishment under 
 the old Roman Rite. It normally took at least an hour. This made him
 enormously popular amongst the vacation crowd. If he were still around, 
 I'm sure he could do the present day New Rite in 5-minutes. He was a 
 very gregarious guy. Since, in my religious fervor, I was often his only 
 audience at weekday masses and he knew I was thinking about seminary, 
 he kind of took me under his wing and showed me the ropes. Travelling 
 along with him as he made his parish rounds or visited a neighboring 
 priest, was like being on the campaign trail with a country politician. 
 He was slapping backs, kissing babies, cracking jokes, pumping hands 
 and blessing people left and right. He was in his element and having 
 a great time. The rumors of his weekly well-lubricated poker game with 
 the other God Boyz in town, were easily believeable. Whatever he lacked 
 in sophisticated spiritualism he more than made up for in Human Touch.
 Where modern priests feel a compulsion to 'be useful', Fr. Joe found
 plenty of 'usefulness' in just being a good parish priest. And he knew
 how to get the job done.

 The seminary I was in was run by a bunch of German priests for the
 most part. They were a very mixed bunch personality-wise. But none
 of them were sterotypical Germans. Some had been to the finest 
 schools in Europe while others were obviously Country Boys with a
 simple, rustic, down-home way about them. At least once a week, 
 the beer truck pulled up and unloaded their national beverage in 
 mass quanities. Though I never once saw a single one of them with
 a beer-bottle in his hand or even vaguely tipsy. Like all true 
 Germans, they knew how to hold their beer. Like all good priests, 
 they also knew the meaning of the word 'discretion'.

 One of my favorites was Fr. Fritz. He was in charge of the dorms. 
 A bon vivant and something of a bohemian, he was, despite the many 
 obvious restrictions of a priestly wardrobe, also a man of taste. 
 He liked to style and profile. While a black cassock was a mandatory 
 part of the uniform, he favored nice Italian shoes and suave Euro-
 style soft black leather coats. He often absent-mindedly spun his
 waist-cord around as he chatted, occasionally snapping it at sleepy 
 seminarians to wake them up. His sense of humor was a delight - 
 dry, droll, and tastefully irreverent. Ask something serious and he
 was as honest and straight-forward as they come. He didn't play cute
 with people or beat around the bush. Whenever he had to make a run 
 into town, he'd always grab a couple of us to go along. We weren't 
 allowed off the property during the entire school year and he knew 
 it would be a kick. Just to show off a little, he'd put the hammer 
 down and go into Rally Car Mode. He was on a first-name basis with 
 the local Cops. Fr. Fritz was one Kool Dude.

 Fr. Ernst was just the opposite in many way. He was a small, ancient
 German Country Boy of very simple if not basic tastes. He was sort
 of retired. While he didn't seem to have a specific duties, he often
 helped out wherever people needed help. Quiet as a church mouse, he 
 always had a serenely bemused smile on his face. His silence was 
 due, in part, to the fact that he didn't know a lot of English nor, 
 at his age, was he inclined to learn any. He spoke very slowly and 
 with an impossibly thick German accent. It discouraged prolonged
 conversations. But mostly his was the silence of a man who was at 
 peace with himself and really had little desire for conversation. 
 He didn't exactly chat it up much with his fellow countrymen either
 though he was held in very high esteem. He seemed permanently plugged 
 into a conversation of a different sort and operating on a different
 level of reality from the rest of us. I think he was the most genuinely 
 spiritual man I've ever known. It wasn't his words, obviously, it was 
 the way he carried himself and the way he conducted his affairs. He 
 preferred solitude, spending a lot of time working out in the farm 
 fields or walking a pretty, heavily-treed ravine nearby that had a 
 small creek running through it. He would often be found there reading
 his breviary or lost in thought/prayer. It was one of his favorite 
 places. Mine too.

 His counter-point was an equally ancient little Australian priest who
 had retired to the seminary. He never shut up. All day long it was
 yap, yap, yap. His favorite story was about the time he'd publically
 debated the great English Catholic Bad-Boy author Graham Greene. He,
 of course, claimed he reduced Mr. Greene to a babbling fool. No one
 believed it for a second. Not after hearing it for the 100th time, 
 nor the 200th time, nor even the 300th time. It did move me to read
 Mr. Greene to see what the commotion was all about and he's been a
 fav ever since.

 When the Catholic University passed through on their annual tour, 
 usually with a Shakespearean play, the troupe included women. Aside 
 from the old German nuns who did the cooking and stayed out-of-sight 
 otherwise, the CU gals were the only real women we ever saw in the 
 course of a year. It was a kick for everyone having them around. 
 They'd spend hours backstage playing requests on the piano and we'd 
 show them around the joint. I never saw any sort of hanky-panky. 
 Everyone respected one another's choices too much for that. And it
 was a good chance for those of us who hadn't taken any vows yet to
 test our vulnerability to the temptations of the flesh. Not that
 'the flesh' appeared even slightly tempted by any of us.

 For a long time during the late 60's I drifted away from regular
 Sunday Mass. The emergence of Cum-By-Ya Guitar Masses really did
 me in. After the dignity and tradition of the old Roman Rite, the
 new stuff offered little inspiration. I do recall one parish priest 
 who had the unfortunate name of Fr. Hoar. But I began to run into 
 priests outside of church as well. Many, especially the younger 
 priests, had begun to take a more active social role in the community.

 Fr. Art, a young mixed-blood Native priest, was politically active 
 in a regional effort to organize the treaty and mixed-blood Natives 
 in his area. He was well-read and deeply fascinated by the many 
 innovative ideas, both secular and religous, of that time. He had 
 Tielhard de Chardin and Ivan Illich's books on his shelf (both 
 ex-priests who had made a secular name for themselves) along with 
 xerox copies of confidential government studies he'd weaseled out 
 of numerous civil servents. I first heard about Buckminster Fuller 
 from him. He was building a large model geodesic dome out of tooth
 picks in his living rooom when I visited him one day. "What the 
 heck is that Fadder!?", I asked. Oi! I got a two-hour lecture on
 dymaxion synergetic vector-equilibrium isotropic-vector-matrix
 geodesics. Fortunately the coffee pot was on and one of the ladies
 in his parish had just dropped off a pile of brownies. "Let 'er
 rip Fadder!", I sez. But Art didn't remain a priest. There had been 
 rumors of him tumbling in the hay with the local Babes. One fine day, 
 he got caught 'en flagrante' while on a picnic. He did the honorable 
 thing: resigned the priesthood and got married. When I ran into him 
 years later he was still happily married with a couple rug rats on 
 his hands. And still very much a Catholic.

 Since the Papacy of John Paul II, the priesthood has pretty
 much gone in the toilet. Pervert priests have become a regular 
 item in the news as time after time the Vatican has failed to
 provide leadership and refused to assume any responsibility.
 Perverts pop up in many secular occupations as well, but they
 don't get protected the way priests get protected by the Church. 
 Too often the Church has attempted to slime its way out by 
 blaming the young victims of the exploitation. A response that 
 has made a mockery out of all it stands for and seriously
 called its integrity into public question. People have been 
 given good reason not to trust the Church's good-will any 
 longer.

 After a massive exodus of priests from the priesthood in the 70's
 there is now a severe shortage. Many seminaries have closed (the
 one I went to is gone) and many of those that remain are nearly 
 empty as Catholic boys take a pass on the priesthood. The shortage 
 is most severe in North America and Europe, but hardly less so 
 elsewhere. And the majority of those who remain are aged and will 
 be retiring soon. With our priests running AIDS rates three times 
 the national average, it's credible that many of those who remain 
 are Gay. Yet another situation the Vatican refuses to face squarely 
 and deal with. Only the severe poverty and limited career possiblities 
 of the Third World sustain the priesthood there. It's one of the few 
 avenues open to poor boys to escape that poverty and get an education. 
 This, we're all assured, is solely the result of our Materialistic 
 Times. Roma, of course, takes no responsibility for its neglect or 
 much of anything else. As long as apologies don't cost anything, 
 they're game.

 It's unlikely there will be any significant change in the situation
 as long as John Paul II remains Pope. What a shame. The priesthood
 used to be an honorable, respected thing. It enjoyed legendary Good
 Will from the many health and education facilities priests and nuns
 created and staffed in the early days of this nation, for the many
 new Americans who got left out. He's all but destroyed that. Quite 
 a legacy to leave behind.
 
.......................................................................

"The richer a man is the more he wants money. It's when you make
 money, lots of it, that you first begin to really want it."

                 - Louis Ferdinand Celine -

.......................................................................

                   'OL YELLER GOES TO WAR

 Osama bin Laden is a curious sort of fellow. He is, as you may
 recall, our Chief Booger Man of the Moment. Last year it was
 Saddam Hussein. In years past it's been Fidel Castro, Chairman
 Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Colonel Khadaffi and Ayatollah Kholmeni of 
 Iran. We always keep one around for good luck and to help pump 
 up Department of Defense budgets. They also come in handy for 
 Presidents intent on diverting attention from their Bimbos, 
 poll-slipage and other picadillos. Mysteriously if not 
 suspiciously, they always seem to survive our best efforts 
 to do them in. 

 Two things distinguish Mr. bin Laden: he's stink'n rich and he's
 a Super Muslim. He claims he is so intensely Islamic that he
 finds our infidel presence in his region to be offensive and he
 has therefore dedicated his life to driving us away. To restore
 the region's moral purity, so to speak. To this end it is thought
 that he has been bankrolling a Holy War around the world to punish 
 us - blowing up a warship in the the Arabian Gulf, embassies in 
 Africa and the World Trade Centers in New York City. He calls
 America "The Great Satan". You can't get much more demonic than
 that eh. But there are a lot of people who hate our guts and
 it's quite probable a few free-lancers share Osama's action.

 That's all well and fine but there are a few things about him 
 that I find puzzling. Take his wealth just for instance. Where
 did he get it? Well, his daddy ran a construction company in 
 his native Saudi Arabia. There's always been a lot of money in 
 construction and few things embody a country's status in the
 way that its architecture does. Take two cities of approximately
 the same population: say, Vancouver (BC) and Seattle (WA). Compare
 their skylines and you can instantly see there is a helluva lot
 more Dough in Seattle than there is in Vancouver. No contest.

 You remember Saudi Arabia. It's that place where women have to
 wear burqas on their heads and veils over their faces. Where 
 people get their hands chopped off for thievery. Where others 
 get beheaded or publically stoned to death for Captial Crimes
 like marital infidelity. Sort of like the Taliban in Afghanistan, 
 only worse. I wonder when we're going to liberate the Saudis?
 You won't find them on President Yellowbelly's bombing list.

 But Osama and his daddy didn't make their money in construction
 by building architectural marvels. Osama's daddy was the prime 
 contractor for our Quarter TRILLION Buck military command and 
 control center in Saudi Arabia built in the 80's. It's a massive, 
 sophisticated, nuclear-hardened complex that, while not exactly 
 a secret, is not a major bragging point of ours either. It doesn't 
 get talked about much. And the bin Laden family's role hardly 
 gets mentioned at all except in whispers.

 Now don't you find that strange? Here's a guy who says he hates 
 our guts to the max and claims he wants to run us into the sea. 
 So what's he doing?  Helping us make ourselves to-home in his 
 homeland! Huh!? Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

 "Hey!", you say, "He was just a kid back then. He didn't have no
 say in what his Old Man did. And he didn't Get Religion yet."
 Nah. He was VERY active in his daddy's business and a full-blown
 Muslim Holy Roller at the time. Take Afghanistan just fer instance.

 Osama wasn't loafing on the sidelines of his daddy's business
 in Afghanistan during the Soviet War years. When the family 
 picked up a multi-Billion Buck contract from our CIA to build 
 a number of underground bunker and warehouse complexes under 
 the mountains, each tied together by an intricate system of 
 tunnels, Osama was the family's Front Man. He handled the 
 paperwork. He did the negotiating. The checks were made out 
 in his name. I'm sure he was only doing it out of his love 
 for Islam and to help out the humble folks of Afghanistan. 
 He wouldn't do something like that for so crass a motive as 
 money. Perish the thought.
 [BTW - these are the very same 'caves' he's supposedly hiding
 out in. And you thought they were talking about natural caves.
 Pshaw! He's a rich guy. He ain't crawling around in no dirty 
 hole and sleeping on bat shit. You crazy man!]

 So while our Paycheck Patriots are bombing the piss out of 
 Afghanistan, they are likely working from the blueprints Osama
 left in the CIA library. Though it is possible his systems had
 a few 'undocumented' bunkers, tunnels, etc. CIA building
 inspectors aren't known for their dedication to detail. They
 invented the phrase 'close enough for government work'.

 I think it's just possible that Osama is much more of a Rich
 Guy than he is a Super Muslim. In fact, I tend to think the
 Muslim-thing is just a front. An easy way to get cheap labor -
 always a major priority amongst Rich Guys. And a sure-fire way 
 to get politicians in impoverished Islamic countries, religious
 or otherwise, to suck-up to him. I think he likes Uncle Sammy 
 just fine. He's been lots of help to him in the past and has 
 made a ton of money off him. Our tax money of course. They're 
 real buddies. Friends enough that Sammy sent a CIA guy to visit 
 him this past summer while he was in the hospital (and on our 
 Most Wanted List) to wish him well. Good enough that when the 
 Sudanese Minister of Defence offered to hand him over to us when 
 he was named an unindicted co-conspirator and an international 
 warrant issued for his arrest following the original attempt 
 on the WTC, Uncle Sammy declined the Sudanese gentleman's offer. 
 Which probably explains why we haven't been able to find him and 
 likely never will. 

 Osama and President Yellowbelly are both Rich Boys. Not only
 that: they've done business together in the recent past. Like
 all Rich Boys, from Teddy Kennedy to Ted Turner, they share
 this common culture in which they are above all laws and 
 believe Little People were specifically put on this earth by
 God/Allah to serve their every need and satisfy their every
 desire. We're all dopes far as they're concerned. Rubes, 
 Jaspers and Jethros just waiting to have our pockets picked.
 They solemnly believe in their inherent superiority over the 
 rest of us. Many of them imagine it to be genetic. They are 
 the world's self-annointed 'royalty'.

 In a sense, we seem to have slipped back to pre-WW-I days. But 
 instead of royalty goof'n with the Little People and sacrificing 
 them in vast quantities for their amusement and entertainment, we 
 have the Super Rich doing it to us. We have become the favorite 
 toys of Rich Boys. They can goof with us just as the royal twits 
 used to - playing with our lives. We'll end up like the soldiers 
 marching off to the battle-fronts in WW-I who used to mockingly 
 bleat like sheep heading off to the slaughter. Nothing personal. 
 They just wanna have a little fun.

......................................................................

	        WHEN I SAW THE DEAD AND DYING
                     AFGHAN CHILDREN ON TV
               I FELT A NEWLY RECOVERED SENSE
                    OF NATIONAL SECURITY.
                     God Bless America

          - T-Shirt of 15-Year Old Katie Sierra -
             that got her suspended again from
           Sissonville, West Virgina High School
......................................................................

                        MONDO VATICANO

 Wow! Listening to Future-Super-Saint JP-2 wheez his way through
 Christmas Mass was bizarre. He perfectly embodies the Church he 
 has created: grand, rich, elaborate vestments clothing - a corpse. 
 He sounded eeriely half-dead. What a massive ego he must have to 
 so thoroughly embarass the Church with this pathetic show. He 
 should have retired a couple years ago to allow it a strong, 
 capable and healthy leader. Instead, we get this decrepit,
 brain-dead old fart who's little more than a Curia puppet. 
 Fortunately, Catholic traditions, unlike Popes, are ageless. 
 Their integrity is beyond political expediency and the pride 
 of little men with exaggerated self-worth. Roma or no Roma, 
 they endure. To imagine even five more years of JP-2's nonsense 
 is beyond the pale. He better steer clear of whoever's fluffing 
 up the pillows these days.

			+	+	+ 

 The U.S. Bishops Conference is taking heavy flack for its phony
 "Just War" stance. They've obviously been bought out by President
 Yellowbelly and sold off what few religous principles they had
 left in exchange for a shot at some free tax-money. Integrity is 
 not exactly one of their strong points. They dragged butt on the
 Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and just about every other
 social issue in the past couple centuries. Why should this be any
 different? At least they're get'n a little Dough in exchange for 
 their souls.

                    	+	+	+

 You a couple bucks short until payday? Give Monsignor Gradilone
 in Brooklyn a call. He'll help you out. Well, actually he would 
 have helped you out. Unfortunately the Queens D.A. office is 
 putting the squeeze on him at the moment and his Loot is tied up.
 The bishop in Brooklyn sent him off on a 'vacation' to a special
 Canadian retreat center for wayward priests to kind of get him 
 outta the way while the DA sorts things out. It seems they got 
 upset about him playing fast and loose with the parish treasury.
 Like the hundreds of thousands of Bucks he 'lent' Frank Vivona, 
 the ex-con who did 'odd jobs' around the parish. Hopefully not 
 any involving brass-knuckles or Black Jacks. Or the the tens of
 thousands he gave to a couple druggies who claimed their kid 
 needed nappies. Turns out they farmed the kid out to Social 
 Services ages ago and just needed to get High. But Fadder 
 Gradilone ain't the kind of guy to ask embarassing questions. 
 The DA is. He's looking for the Good Fadder's secret bank accounts 
 to see if he might have squirreled away a little something for 
 a Rainy Day.  The rake-off was possibly in the millions. The 
 'loans' only account for a little of it. I'd make a run for it 
 if I were the good Monsignor. His bishop already snuck him out 
 of the country. It'd be easy as pie. Vatican City would protect 
 him. Say...you don't think the bishop...nah...couldn't be.

			+	+	+

 A sacrament is, by definition, the revelation of a mystery.
 Communion reveals the mystery of Christ's body and blood;
 Confession, God's mercy; Baptism, God's redemption; etc.
 Science also involves the revelation of mysteries. And in 
 the best science, one mystery gives way to yet others as we
 inch ever closer to the Greatest Mystery. While scientists
 often imagine themselves to pursue their revelation by human
 reason, it often is merely an illusion. Many physicists know 
 how to use the equations of Quantum Physics but very, very 
 few have any significant insight into WHY they work. Their 
 complexity is overwhelming. Those who use them only know that 
 they work and little else. So in that sense, science itself 
 is a sacrament too. One that reveals the mystery and wonder 
 of the Creation, usually through the medium of mathematics. 
 Odd that the Church has never recognized it as such.

--------------------------------------------------
 The above is copyright material. You want to use it,
 ask. You want to make money off it, gimme some first.
 I'll let you know if it's enough. You want to steal it,
 I'll sic my lawyer Yoshi 'The Proctologist' Rasmussen
 on you baby. He'll teriyaki your sorry butt and turn
 it into Lutefisk.
~--------------------------------------------------
 MAIL:    tofoggymoment@yahoo.com
 ARCHIVE: http://www.geocities.com/tofoggymoment
--------------------------------------------------