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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.
-------------------------------------------------
- 158 -
Thursday will be the 66th anniversary of the day Marion Zioncheck,
Congressman from Washington's First District, jumped out the window
of the Arctic Building downtown to his death. Landed right in front
of the car his wife was sitting in. He told her he was just dashing
in for something he forgot. An eccentric New-Deal Democrat who once
drove up on the White House lawn in his car and got caught a few
times dancing with his wife in DC water fountains, his antics got
him thrown in a nut-house back East. He escaped to return to Seattle
for re-election. The local papers smeared him openly as a Commie
though there was nothing then, or now, to indicate he was. A little
fed-up with the humorless twits in our Nation's Capital, he wasn't
too sure he really wanted to go back there. While he pondered the
matter, his close personal friend Maggie Magnusson snatched up the
nomination for Marion's seat. Between his DC misadventures, the
Harpees amongst our News Nazis and getting stabbed in the back by
his buddy, he was in a despondent state of mind at the time.
* WHITE SHEET SALE AT INFERIOR COURT...
Boy was that embarassing! Ex-Mayor Pauly heads over to the Dark Side of
Town during the his final historic campaign, for a cheesy photo-op with
his otherwise forgotten Negro constituents and ends up getting knocked
flat on his ass in front of God and everybody. As his Seattle Police
Department bodyguards stare down dumbly at him in mid-munch on their
jelly-filled donuts, Hissoner is moaning and crying on the ground in
agony. Here he was on the verge of making history by becoming the first
sitting Mayor in a century to get turfed in the primaries. People got
no respect for historical figures any more eh.
A Newark, New Jersey mayor got smacked upside the head at a funeral at
about the same time this event occurred. Right in front of the dead
guy and all. He didn't press charges. Pauly, on the other hand, deeply
believes in revenge. He didn't just press charges - he stomped all
over them. No Negroes were going to push HIM around. No siree. Grab
that sassy young Black man with the megaphone, Mr. Omari. And get out
the rope. We gonna have us a little lynch'n party - King County style.
Why can't all Black people be as nice as KingCo Exec "Cadillac" Sims
and ex-Mayor Normy? Pat Robertson would be danged proud to have either
one of them as a sidekick on his 700 Club. He could rub their kinky,
smiling heads every week for good luck. Praise Jesus! And they'd be
pleased as punch if he did.
KingCo Prosecutor Norm is our White Hand of Vengence around here. He
got handed the honors. A failed politician and the only man in King
County to get laughed out of the Supreme Court in that other Washington,
Norm isn't what you would call 'real sharp'. He screws the pooch a lot.
And so he did with the first attempt to String Up the sassy young Mr.
Omari. Somehow a Race Traitor White Man and an Uppity Negro snuck onto
the jury and popped that dangerous Black man loose. Dang! They had the
tree all picked out and Nordies threw in a free rope and clean white
sheets for everybody. Worse, the witnesses already had their promotions
and raises in appreciation for their help. Aside from our News Nazis
trashing the Uppity Negro on the jury, there was little vengence to
be had. It was a dark day at the Rainer Club.
Usually you only get tried on the same charge once. Trying people more
than once is frowned upon in most legal circles in America and many
other places. But not King County. They let Norm take as many whacks
as he likes. He needs all the help he can get.
He got it right the second time around. They fished his Honorable
Inferiority, Judge "Bubba" McBroom out of "Detox" especially for the
job. Bubba's the kind of guy you can count on. Early in his career
he was a flunky in the Pierce County Prosecutor's Office when a
little birdee whispered to the FBI that Bubba's boss was taking
a little rake-off from bailbondsmen in the form of 'campaign
donations' in exchange for 'forgetting' to hit them up for the
moneys owed on Perps who flew the Coop - forfeited bonds. Once the
G-Men arrived for a quiet and unannounced look-see, another birdee
whispered the news to a local TV reporter. Next thing you know it's
all over every TV screen in town. Opps! Bubba's boss was VERY
embarassed. In the end, the allegations turned out to be false
but the damage was done and the mud splattered. In a subsequent
slander suit, Bubba was named as one of the two prime canidates
for birdee. He didn't deny he was; he just couldn't remember. Call
it a Senior Moment. Similar to those that slimey Perps have in
courtrooms. The reporter got it up the caboose but Bubba's done
quite well since then. Where would the world be without ambitious
young men?
Throw in a safe bunch of drunks from the local hillbilly bars and
drooling Space Cadet retirees from the rest homes, and Bob's Your
Uncle. Just to reassure the local Black Folks this wasn't the lynch'n
it appeared to be, Norm told them Omari would only get 3-9 months max.
He in fact got 21-months. Whatever. They bought it. Sometimes its
like stealing candy from a baby. Norm was ready to roll.
So what if there was nothing at all in the way of objective evidence.
No TV-cam crew's tape; no home video; no nut'n. So what if he didn't
do it and someone else admitted she's the one who actually smacked
ex-Mayor Pauly upside the head. So what if all the witnesses were
Paycheck Patriots. So what if the case already got thrown out of court
once. Stuff like that's just meaningless details in Inferior Court.
Think of it as a legal Alice in Wonderland.
Twenty-one months from now after Mr.Omari picks himself up a good
case of TB for staying in the filthy pig-pen known as King County
Jail, he'll be a better man for it - a Black Man who knows his Place.
Or, as seems far more likely, he'll have a real fire in his belly.
And now that Pauly's got his pound of flesh, hopefully he'll shuffle
off to some other city. He gives off a bad odor. And take his stupid
Pollock Police Chief with him - the Beavis and Butthead of Hooterville
politics.
* HONEY BEE...
Up until this week I had only seen one single honey bee all summer.
For years I used to keep an 'observation hive' in one of my windows.
It's a single frame glassed-in one side so you can watch the little
critters dancing and jiving around. It's way better than watching TV.
I asked Hank the Crank, the world's most dangerous gardener, where
all the bees disappeared to. As usual he gave me one of his classic
"Whatta you a dumbass?" disgusted looks and said there were lots of
them around. I guess I just been looking in the wrong places. I did
read somewhere that their numbers have been severely diminished by
some sort of bacteria rot.
While hoofing it through the herb garden at U Dub one evening this
week I saw a whole bunch of them on the spiny balls of a Globe
Thisle. They were 6-banded Italians as mellowed out as a bunch of
Goombahs relaxing in a summer backyard with a jug of homemade wine.
You could practically pick the pollen off their legs without a fight.
I'll bet the university has a few hives hid somewhere in the bushes.
* SIOUX VISION QUEST...
How strange it is. I'm grazing through memepool and there's mention
of a couple young guys who went homeless for a couple weeks. Memepool
made it out like they were noble Sioux savages on a vision-quest. They
were neither Sioux nor on a vision quest. They were just curious about
homelessness and took the most direct route to discovery - they became
homeless in Seattle. They invited various Media scum to share in their
new-found knowledge. And they put a diary up on the Internet. It's
still there and worth reading:
www.homelessweek.com
First off, they learned that if you do something like this, everybody
will hate your guts. We're trying to forget about the homeless, dammit.
WE DON'T WANT REMINDERS. It's embarassing and upsetting. They got dumped
on from every direction for their lack of a reasonable excuse for doing
this. Apparently many people think you need a licence to go homeless
even temporarily. BoomTown Cafe on Capital Hill, whom they gave generous
and gushing appreciation to in their homeless diary, even whimped out
and demanded to have their name removed from the diary. Who would have
ever thought they would go Politically Correct!? What next? A BoomTown/
Starbucks joint venture?
KING-5 TV covered them apparently. I threw my TV away 10 years ago so
I wouldn't know. The Seattle P-I sent over a sniveling journalistic
Dickhead who only impressed them by his stupidity and utter mediocrity.
Having plenty of toilet-paper, I have little need for the P-I so I
wouldn't have known about that either. The Stranger was the only local
interest that seemed to do a half-assed decent job of coverage.
The aftermath is being covered by one of the temporarily-homeless guys
on: droppingbombsonyourmome.com
* THE DAO OF THE UNIVERSE...
E. Sanders up at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory in Victoria,
B.C. bagged a supernova this past week on their venerable old Plaskett
1.82-m reflector - Supernova 2002eg in UGC 11486. It's not really all
that big a deal. A few of them get discovered every week. But it was
nice to see a local interest in on the action. The DAO's name is a
good indication of its age. They haven't called anything 'dominion'
up there in a very long time.
The shiny dome atop Observatory Hill a few miles north of downtown is
pretty easy to pick out when approaching Vic by those fast-ferries or
by air. What was the distant fringe of Victoria in 1918 is now very
much surrounded by the city. While the observatory's building and the
independant central concrete pier the telescope is mounted on were all
built locally, the dome was especially made for DAO in 1916 in Cleveland,
Ohio. Making rotating dome roofs remains a specialty to this day. Not
just anyone can do it. I've worked under a couple that were made by
people who thought they knew how. Oi! Kids screamed in terror and
adults ran for cover whenever the damn things moved. It sounded like
the End of the World.
The old Plaskett that imaged the new supernova was the largest telescope
of its type in the entire world when DAO opened in 1918. It's big 83-inch
primary mirror blank was made in France and shipped out literally only
a couple days before WW-I began. A test mirror blank that was to follow
on its heels, didn't make it out. It disappeared in the War causing a few
significant but surmountable problems later. The big glass blanks were
then ground and polished by a company in Pittsburg.
As you may imagine, it was a very time consuming and tedious process
to precisely grind a chunk of glass that big back then - polish, test,
polish, test, polish, test, etc. Mistakes were made and it ended up
taking three attempts before they got it right. They ground a lot of
glass off those blanks (primary + 2 secondaries). But unlike the goofs
who made the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror, back then the job wasn't
considered done until it was done right. When the three mirrors were
finished, the system they formed had an accuracy of one arc-second.
Excellent. They shipped them to Victoria by rail in 1918.
It took two weeks to haul the dome and its associated stuff up that
hill. It took another two days to carefully haul the mirrors up there.
They had to tip the big one on its edge and roll it in the door. Bet
they were sweating bullets eh. One little slip up and four years of
irreplaceable work goes down the toilet. That old primary was replaced
in 1974. Big pieces of glass tend to expand/contract a lot with changes
in temperature and deform over time. The tube and mounting is about
all that's left of the original system. Everything else has been
upgraded.
"First Light" was on May 6th 1918 when they shot the spectrum of a
star. The world's biggest telescope had opened for business in little
Victoria. She isn't the biggest any more and the Canada-France-Hawaii
facility in the crowd atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii is Canada's primary
facility now. But she's still a going concern and looks pretty dang
K00L sitting up there. Like something out of an old sci-fi flick.
They have tours of course.
Dominion Astrophysical Observatory - Victoria
* ABBOTSFORD AIR SHOW...
If you think those flying Squids in their screaming machines are neato,
give the Real Thing a try. The Abbotsford (BC) Airshow is this coming
weekend. Sort of wedged between Vancouver and the border. This year's
events include:
Canadian Forces "Snowbirds"
USAF "Thunderbirds"
CF-18 "Hornet" Demo
A-10 "Thunderbolt" Demo
F-15 "Eagle" Demo
F-117 "Nighthawk" Demo
B-2 "Spirit" Demo
Heritage Flight (F-15/A-10/P-51)
Warbird Fly-By (Mustang/Corsair/Sea Fury/Harvard)
Ground Battle Simulation by Canadian Forces
Daredevils Gene Soucy & Teresa Stokes
Bud Granley in his Yak-55
etc.
They'll have over 30 aircraft on static display that you can get up close
to. They range from modern fighter aircraft like the F-14, F-15, F-16
and CF-18s to big bruisers like the KC-135 Stratotanker, C-17 Globemaster
CC-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter to patrol aircraft like P-5 Orions
and CP-140 Auroras. Plus a few eggbeaters too. They think a lot bigger
up there than Hooterville does. They're better at it and they've been at
it longer.
As much as I think the military sucks and as low an opinion as I have of
the retards who pass for pilots these days, I just can't resist a hot
machine. And they don't come much hotter than these MoFos. Some year
maybe the Blue Angels will work up the balls to go nose to nose with the
T-Birds up on the borderline. Winner gets to take the Snow Birds out on
a date. I'd pay to see a showdown like that.
Abbotsford International Airshow
........................................................................
"There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns -
that is to say, there are things that we now know that we don't know
but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know
we don't know."
Donny Rumsfeld
U.S. SecDef
groping for The Big Picture
........................................................................
'OL YELLER'S TWAT
(aka The War Against Terrorism)
Just for the sake of perversity, assume Al Qaida really is out to nail
our ass. Assume that Osama is truely leading a Holy Jihad against the
Great Satan America. I know it's a stretch, but bear with me.
Okay. Your suicide teams have successfully accomplished what no one
in their right mind would have thought possible - they totally demolished
both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City merely by hitting
each with a little jet airplane. Something like 50,000 people whose only
crime was that they showed up for work on time, get buried in the rubble.
A year ago the mere notion would have sent engineers, architects and
everyone else into spasms of disbelief. An impossible, preposterous and
utterly insane notion if ever there was one. Even if the damn aircraft
were loaded with bombs...both towers!?...totally leveled and demolished!?
Nah! No way Jose! This year they're falling all over each other trying
to come up with some sort of semi-rational explanation for why it
actually did occur. And that Pentagon hit that featured a large passenger
jet roaring through the middle of D.C. a couple feet off the ground
going completely un-noticed and unrecorded looks weirder every day. Even
in New York City they'd notice something like that.
Holy Jihad - First Blood.
With an enormous success like that under your belt, a person would tend
to naturally assume they are on some sort of unbelieveable, if not
miraculous, roll. How do you top that? What do you do next?
Before Osama could even think of rashly launching into another attack,
President Yellowbelly and his crew of Chicken Hawks handed him his
strategy on a platter: don't do anything - leave the job to trained
professionals. Sitting there in his Jihad Cave watching CNN, Osama
witnessed a most extraordinary series of events. America began to
commit hari-kari. One attack is all it takes. You don't have to do
anything else to us, we'll finish the job ourselves. And we'll do
it for free.
First off, Yeller shut down our entire airspace for weeks. A move
that cost billions and billons in lost revenues which the taxpayer
would have to make up for of course. There was no attack Osama could
have launched that would have been even vaguely as effective or as
expensive. Yet, he didn't even have to lift a finger or spend a dime.
Second, Yeller announced a Jihad of his own against Afghanistan.
Huh? None of the attackers were from Afghanistan. Osama isn't from
Afghanistan. Nobody's from Afghanistan. A poverty-ridden dump most
of whose population was verging on starvation as it was, it was no
threat to anyone on earth aside from itself. Again even more billions
and billions and billons down the toilet. Sucked right out of an
already shaky Social Security fund terminally crippling it. High
Tech Billion Dollar Stealth fighter aircraft were launched in wave
after wave to blow up - what? - empty mountainous goat pastures
and the caves we paid Osama Billions of Bucks to build. Lacking
anything like an air-force or navy, and with an army that was armed
with nothing but hand-guns, there wasn't anything for our military
to blow up.
Afterwards, the head of the Taliban, Mullah Umar, is still there,
still fighting and still a going concern. Osama is still alive and
doing well. Reports of his death from the Juice Heads at the Dept.
of Defense being little more than wishful-thinking. Again, if you're
Osama, how in the hell you gonna top that? It would take years and
years of concerted effort to inflict that kind of economic damage
on America and here we did it all on our own. He didn't even have
to lift a finger or spend a dime. And now, since he's officially
dead, he don't even have to hide any more. Off the hook. Free as a
little birdee.
Third, with considerable help from the U.S. Congress, the very legal
lifeblood of our Great Nation - the Constitution & Bill of Rights -
were shackled and rendered impotent. Thousands of American citizens
were rounded up and hauled off to concentration camps without charge
or reason. Short of blowing up the Capital Rotunda while Congress was
in session, it's hard to imagine a more powerful symbolic blow against
this country. Yet it was accomplished without Osama lifting a finger
or spending a dime. We did it all ourselves.
Fourth, swaggering arrogantly and mindless around the World Stage to
prove how macho we are, America is now amongst the most despised of
nations. Everybody cried with us on 9/11. Today - they hate our guts.
We're unsafe overseas. We're unsafe at home. Hell, we can't even stand
ourselves any more. What on earth could Osama have done to accomplish
anything even vaguely as effective as that? Not a damn thing. And he
didn't have to lift a finger or spend a dime to pull it off. Wow!
Now for the Grande Finale...Iraq.
Saddam's not a threat to anyone. We've had him in a straight-jacket
for years. We know that. The U.N. knows that. EVERYBODY knows that.
There is no compelling reason to whack him. There's plenty far, far
worse than him around. No shortage of canidates. All thorough
despisers of democracy and all with hands just a-drip'n with other
people's blood. But none of them have got the kind of oil Saddam has.
This time we won't be heading up an international effort. Aside from
our Limmy Lap Dog Blair, nobody wants anything to do with it. Germany
and France got too many troubles enough of their own right now to get
mixed up in Yellowbelly's stupid idea. Egypt, Jordan, the Saudis all
are taking a rain-check. Even Kuwait, the beneficiary of Desert Storm,
say leave them out of it. This time the American tax-payer, already on
the ropes from the ever deeping recession, will be picking up the entire
tab. Really this thing is far too complicated and frought with ominous
danger for a Monkey Boy like Yeller to be messing with. A screw-up
artist like him ain't even vaguely bright enough to handle this action.
But he smells oil and the stuff has the same effect on him that Crack
used to have back in his Frat House days. It gives him delusions of
grandeur and and exaggerated fantasies of sexual prowess. Makes him
think he's got the biggest Dick in town.
Osama's got to be sitting there in his Jihad Cave tonight chuckling
to himself. This Jihad business is a helluva lot easier and cheaper
than anybody imagined. And America is an even more of Dumb Blonde
than he or any of his pals would have believed. The way things are
going at the moment, we should completely self-destruct inside another
year or two. Mission accomplished. Sayonara Great Satan.
.............................................................................
i thank you God for most this amazing
day: for the leeping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is inifinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
e.e. cummings
.............................................................................
- MONDO VATICANO -
The drooling old Pollock's Death March 2002 Tour of the Americas has
been a real bust. In Toronto, less than half-an-hour flight time from
something like 60 million US/Canadian Catholics, he failed to draw
anything close to a single Mega crowd as he routinely does in Europe.
He did much, much better on previous trips. His popularity is way down
now. The crowds in Canada most especially were very disappointing. World
Youth Day in Toronto, his reason for coming, actually lost money after
failing to come up with enough paid attendees.
South America was a real concern. The Church is severely bleeding from
the Proty Evangelicals who are successfully cutting ever deeper and
deeper into her numbers there. Despite often hysterical efforts to pump
up the crowd numbers, they were disappointingly ordinary both in Guatemala
and Mexico. In Mexico City - the largest city in the world - virtually
all of whose population of many millions are at least nominally Catholic,
he still failed to attract a Mega crowd. Less than 10,000 bothered to
greet him when he arrived. That's real bad news. He left a trail of
highly forgetable new saints in his wake. In fact, as has always been
the case with this Pope all along, no one can remember a single thing
he said. He's all smoke and mirrors.
Juan Diego in Mexico may come back to haunt the Church. Guadeloupe's
followers unquestionably venerate her above even Christ. She is well on
her way to becoming a religious institution in her own right much as
Voodoun in Haiti, another Catholic cult, did long ago. Canonizing the
imaginary and non-existent Juan Diego was a desperate act of catch-up.
Guadeloupe's followers aren't the kind of people to start theological
arguments with Cardinal "Ratso" Ratzinger. They haven't got a theology.
And since Roma needs them far more than they need Roma, it's unlikely
Ratso would be foolish enough to try to enforce Roman orthodoxy on
them. They're calling the shots, not him. All he can do is pray they
stay within the Church. A futile hope.
Nobody won the Papal Death Pool this time around. Most of the time he
looked like somebody forgot to change his Depends. He even needed some
bruiser to hold him up by the shoulders so he could pretend to stand.
He'll be pushing up daisies soon. Question is: will there be a Church
left by the time he finally does croak?
+ +
I'm having a helluva time trying to find an honest Catholic blog site.
All the conservative, ultra-orthodox have resorted to the classic
Catholic school tradition: they formed a clique of their own. They've
clumped themselves into a group called St. Blogspot and they won't let
anyone else in. Worse, lacking anything original to say, they feed off
of one anther to puff up their meager listings. The chatter endless
amongst themselves damning Gary Willis and Voice of the Faithful while
excommunicating vast hordes of their fellow Catholics who have failed
to embrace to their wacky interpretation of church matters. Yawn! They
are most definitely a small minority of Catholics.
The majority are silent. Silent and very angry at the moment. From coast
to coast, well-heeled Catholics with a lot of Dough to throw around are
leading new diocesan campaigns to economically force an open-books policy
upon their bishops. You won't find even a hint of this on St. Blogspot as
they float off into their own little pretend universe. Talk about
clueless and irrelevant Airheads eh.
I just don't get it. This is an historic moment. If it didn't serve
God's mysterious Will in some way, it would not be happening. This is
no time to close your eyes and pretend it isn't happening. This is
a time to open them and learn and wonder.
Nobody wants to admit the obvious: our clergy are almost all Gay now.
The Pink Peril has conquered the Church. Queers are the only guys who
want to be priests nowadays. How else to explain that virtually all the
sexual abuse episodes have involved homosexual acts? Do we assume that
when you put a Roman Collar on a Gay guy that he goes crazy and starts
committing perverted acts against children? Secular Gays don't go crazy
like that. Or do we assume the much more likely possibility that since
almost all of our priests and bishops are Gay that most all the abusers
are, ergo, also Gay? There aren't many heterosexual abuses simply because
there aren't many Straight-oriented priests and bishops left.
In any given population (teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) the fraction
of people who are unable to control their sexual urges, is quite small.
It is a very consistent percentage. So it is for our priests as well.
While the number of priests defrocked for sexual abuse has been high
lately, it's a tiny fraction of all priests. And it's only because the
bishops did little or nothing to deal with the problem until this year.
You could probably work up a reasonably educated statistical guess at
the actual number of present Gay priests just from the percentage of
'bad apples'. But don't wait for Fr. Greeley to grab that ring. He's
too busy Gay Bashing to bother. Maybe it's a cover for his campy/vampy
Harlequinesque steamy novels eh. They seem very Gay to me!
The bishops are usually excused by their institutional loyalty. My
guess is many of them also felt an emotional bond with a fellow Gay
in trouble. Three Gay bishops have been uncovered and turfed so far.
Betraying their poor priestly schmucks to the Homophobic local Curia
butt-kissers was just too cruel to bear. So they hid them as best
they could. A strategy the Vatican rather cluelessly, accomodated
in their usual Scilian manner. The Gay bishops ain't gonna talk
about it if they did feel that way. The Vatican's Curia Paisanos
would reward that sort of honesty with a quick boot out the door
soon as the bishop admitted to being Queer.
The problem is at the top of the pyrimid - the Old Farts from back
in the Macho days of a Straight priesthood. Especially those old
Goomba peasants in Roma. They hold all the most powerful positions
now and it is they who are directing the present obscene campaign
of Gay Bashing. Obviously they are not promoting bishops because of
their spiritual excellance nor even their administrative abilities.
The level of mediocrity and incompetence in both areas is painfully
obvious. They are getting promoted, at least in part, because they
are willing to put the screws to their Queers. The Macho Boyz are
trying to hang onto to their dwindling power and keep a lid on the
Pink Peril. Nonetheless, a few Twinkies have snuck in there anyways.
They're hard to spot in a crowd made up of guys wearing black
dresses eh.
We're still a decade or so away from the Gay-oriented priests and
bishops sneaking that far up the ladder in numbers. But there's
strong evidence of a small but influencial Gay caucus in the Curia
right now. Like that Curia Queen who defied JP-2's Zero Tolerance
policy by insisting that Australian bishop had to take back his
Queer priest after the guy managed to slime his way out of child
molestation charges. The Church has likely always been a haven for
Gays in a hostile world. It's an easy and respectable life. There's
zero expectation for a priest to date or get married or have kids.
And as we have learned this year, your average bishop would sooner
die than admit to an embarassment, error or a mistake. The perfect
set-up. They got all the bases covered. Any Vatican fantasies about
getting rid of them are pure smoke. Ain't gonna happen. They're Queer.
They're here. Get used to it.
I've got no problem with Gay priests. They are no more intrisically
perverse than any heterosexually oriented priest. I don't doubt for
a second that Gay priests are every bit as good for their vow of
celibacy as Straight priests are. And their spiritual integrity is
every bit as solid. It is spiritual integrity that makes a good priest
'good', not sexual orientation or skin color or ethnic background. There
is no reliable test for sexual orientation anyways. Heaven only knows
what the Apostolic Visitation group making the rounds of the seminaries
are going by. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. And there are
few things in this world as ambiguous as human sexuality to begin with.
Guys in prisons and the military are notorious for shuffling back and
forth between homo- and heterosexuality to match their circumstances.
Ditto for women. While we've turned sexuality from a taboo into a
titillating form of entertainment, we still don't talk about it with
any more honesty and frankness than we used to. Ignorance is still
the prevailing norm.
I would guess the conversion from a Straight-oriented priesthood to
a Gay one occurred in the late 60's. That's been the common 'starting
window' for many of the pervert priests. With many thousands of priests
bugging out - many to get married - and the flood of vocations during
the 50's and 60's suddenly reduced to a trickle, both dioceses and
religious orders were in dire straits. They were forced to drop the
traditional paranoia about Gay canidates for the priesthood and adopt
a "Won't ask, don't tell" policy. I think they did this deliberately.
They didn't want to, but it was literally a matter of survival. Much
to their embarassment, they discovered they needed Gays. The numbers
were far smaller. The priest shortage remained. But they avoided total
meltdown. Given a turn-around, I'm sure they intended all along to
turf their Tootsies at the first opportunity. Just their way of
showing their appreciation.
This Gayification of the priesthood and episcopalate would also
explain the obvious effeminization of our liturgy in recent years.
Set ceremonial has given way to elaborate 'stage shows' complete
with banner wavers, dancing girls and colorful sets. Set ritual has
given way to off-the-cuff extemporaneousness priestly entertaining.
The sonorous tones of Latin, evoking Roman Legions and mighty Caesars,
has given way to delicate and dainty, prim and proper ecclesiastical
English. Nothing personifies it more than a balding, effete old
deacon in a frilly, lacy, white surplice chanting merrily in falsetto.
He looks Gay and sounds Gay. Us hitch'n and sniff'n He-Men need a
liturgy a bit more in tune with our style: straight up, no chaser.
There should be room for both but I ain't holding my breath.
+ +
I was Googling around the Matrix this week when I stumbled across my
old order whose seminary I went to. It was a very small order. I tried
finding them once with little success. They're just hanging on by their
fingernails. Actually what I stumbled across was two names: a vaguely
familiar one and a very familiar one.
The vaguely familiar name was a fellow seminarian. He was a tall,
lanky, hook-nosed hillbilly from the South. He was a couple years
ahead of me, and despite the small size of the place, that put him
in a different set of classes. I didn't know him well but I remembered
his face. He was a nice guy. One of that class of southerners who are
born with a gentlemanly, noble demenor and disposition. He had to dodge
over to the Maryknolls for a while, but he made it - got ordained.
Apparently one of the very few who did. I didn't see any other familiar
names. After a missionary stint in New Guinea, he's now in the Dakotas
working with the Siouix. They'll like his nose. The county the Pineridge
Reservation is in, has an annual average income about equal with the
city of Calcutta in India where Mother Theresa started out. The worst
poverty hole in the whole country. That such an obscenity exists here
is one of America's deepest, dirtiest secrets.
The very familiar name was my old German and Latin instructor - Fr. Hank.
He died recently. Back then he looked a lot like a young Tommy Lee Jones.
Except he always had a smile on his face and he had a lot of facial acne
scars. He seemed to be perpetually, continuously amused by the world. He
wasn't a great teacher or anything but he was a nice, simple guy ready
to laugh at the drop of a pin. Pretty decent ballplayer too on the
priests in-house team that played some of the other seminaries nearby.
I ran into Fr. Hank only a couple years after he got ordained. He must
have been in his late 20's. He was a heavy smoker. Didn't make it much
beyond 60.
The seminary is long gone. The county somehow got it as an administrative
building in the early 70's. I dropped by there a couple years after the
county took it over. They were holding county council meetings in the
chapel. Beautifully and very ornately painted art-deco style with much
gold-leaf, they didn't have the heart to paint over the religious
symbolism. The rest of the property was pretty much intact just as
it had been a couple decades earlier. Except the ravine where ancient
Fr. Ernst whispered to his God. That was all overgrown and uncared for.
I stood in the doorway we all stood in back then as the Cuban Missle
Crisis unfolded. Classes were cancelled since they weren't sure if
there would even be a world left by that afternoon. Since we were
already 'home', we just hung around listening to a nearby radio, more
or less convinced that Armageedon was on our doorstep. We were allowed
a rare call home to say our goodbyes. It was the only time our Rector
allowed such a thing. He thought we were all Goners too.
----------------------------------------------------
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.
~--------------------------------------------------
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