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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.

                     THIS AIN'T NO STINK'N BLOG

         ------------------------------------------------
         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.
         -------------------------------------------------

                             - 194 -

 That's about it for the Yoshinos - the green of their summer
 leaves predominates their fading blossoms. It was a great
 show, as usual. It's all iris', tulips and lillies now - just
 in time for Easter. And the salmon pool is aboil with leaping
 babies. 

 Up before the crack of dawn recently, as I sleepily gazed out 
 the window before me I noticed a white critter fatter than a
 cat go scampering across the street. That's one of our Possums.
 We have a few. If you leave your kitchen window open of a hot
 summer's night, chances are fair you might be greeted by Mr.
 Possum, or one of his kin, in the morning. While they seem 
 nasty with their hissing and those tiny sharp teeth, their 
 forte is playing dead. They are humorously good at it. Way 
 better than any dog.

 We've got a few racoons too. Stay clear of them. They genuinely
 are nasty. Even the neighborhood cats and dogs give them wide
 berth. Though I do recall a legendary picture of a Beagle 
 getting humped in somebody's backyard by a racoon. Beagles are
 the Cheap Sluts of the dog world. They'll spread 'em for anybody.

 Weirdest of all though was the Mystery Critter I barely got a
 glance at while walking down in the wetlands below the U Dub
 campus alongside Lake Washington recently. This ain't no shit.
 As I crossed a bridge this thing about the size of a baby
 bear dived into the water! It was damn BIG! All I saw was it's 
 back but that was way too frik'n big to be a beaver let alone 
 a muskrat. I hung around to see if it would re-emerge for a 
 breath but no dice. Must have swam further down. Oi yoi yoi! 
 I honestly can't think of what in the hell it was. It was big
 enough to eat a 2-year old.

 WEEKLY HISTORY LESSON...

 It was 84 years ago last Wednesday in the Cornhuskers Republic 
 of Nebraska that a Sunday School teacher by the name of Meyer 
 was convicted of high-crimes. Nope, they didn't catch him 'en 
 flagrante' with the sheep. Herr Meyer was caught red-handed 
 teaching a collection of Bible stories at a Lutheran parochial 
 school IN GERMAN! It was a crime in Nebraska for ANYbody in 
 ANY school - public or private - to teach ANYthing whatsoever 
 in ANY tongue other than English. They had the Kraut dead to 
 rights. But the U.S. Supreme Court let him off on some lame
 Constitutional technicality having to do with academic freedom. 
 Fortunately, despite the cover-fire from the Supremes, most
 Americans have not availed themselves of their legal licence
 to read foreign tongues. We're as xenophobically unilingual
 now as we were then. At least the odds improved slightly
 that you might not thrown in the Slammer for trying.

 NB - I wonder how the Cornhuskers handled Catholics. That was
      back in the days when Latin ruled the roost. I guess they 
      didn't have enough Hebrews to have to worry about Schuls.
      And what about all those Latin phrases in law school books? 
      We won't even get into how they handled their own state's 
      name which most definitely isn't an English word.

 THE HUNCHBACK OF SCHENECTADY...

 It was one of those make-it-or-break-it moments. As the Ellis Island
 immigration inspector sat at his desk in the late spring of 1889
 processing the day's arriving horde of new American Wannabes, what 
 appears before his eyes? A 20-ish German-Jew, 4-feet tall, his
 body all twisted out of shape, his face puffed up like a big pumpkin
 and to top it all off - he was hunchbacked. Good grief - a circus 
 freak! Worse yet, he didn't seem to have any money on him. Just as
 he was about to slap a big "REJECT" on Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz's
 forehead and send him back where he came from, the guy behind him
 butted in. "Don't reject him! He's rich and a mathematical genius!
 You need people like him." 

 The inspector was kind of intrigued by the 'rich' angle despite 
 the lack of empirical evidence and let Herr Steinmetz into America 
 despite his other obvious 'short-comings'. He was a Jew afterall. 
 Even if he didn't have any money, one of his relatives certainly 
 must. Fortunately there were no computer databases to check in 
 those days or the inspector might have reconsidered. Karl was a 
 dyed-in-the-wool Pinko - a hard-core atheistic Socialist. You 
 wouldn't have caught him dead at Friday night Shabat services. 
 In fact, he was chased into Swiss exile by Kaiser Wilhelm after 
 he wrote a rather unflattering editorial about Willy in the local 
 newspaper. Kind of lost in the traffic back then was the simple
 fact that Karl really was a mathematical genius. One who was
 about to do Big Things for both America and Science.

 At the first opportunity, he changed his name to Charles Proteus
 Steinmetz. Proteus being the Greek god famous for morphing himself
 into every imaginable shape. Charlie had a weird but very healthy
 sense of humor. As a professor at Union College he was notorious 
 for his pranks. He was even worse than his students. Stuff like 
 running around at night switching the signs on all the offices.
 Later at General Electric he formed his own little club "The Society 
 For The Adjustment of Salaries". Meetings were composed of playing 
 poker with his buddies while smoking big cigars and consuming
 moderate amounts of whiskey. Club members were encouraged to steer 
 clear of  three pet alligators, two crows, his racoon and 
 that cranky gila monster. He loved companionship - human or 
 otherwise.

 That and electrical engineering. He's generally acknowledged as
 the guy who put AC electricity on the map. Building on the 
 groundwork laid by the eccentric Yugoslavian, Nicola Tesla, he
 gave scientists and engineers the mathematical tools to design
 and analyze AC (alternating current) circuits. He was the first
 to rigorously explain their behavior in mathematical terms.
 Amongst other things, he invented the complex-number 'phasor 
 math' that permitted engineers to completely bypass differential 
 calculus and analyze AC circuits nearly as simply as DC circuits. 
 Without his contributions, American technology and engineering 
 would never likely have developed as quickly and to the extent 
 it did nor would it likely have led the world. Thank heavens
 the guy behind him in the Ellis Island line-up butted in or we
 would have lost a Big Fish.

 While a serious socialist, he didn't allow his ideology to 
 interfere with his relations with GE or any of the other big
 corporations he consulted for from time to time. He was also
 very civic minded, serving on the local Board of Education 
 and advising the city's Socialist mayor. He even ran for 
 Governor of New York on the Socialist ticket once, and lost.

 In his time his face was as familiar to the American public as
 that of Einstein and Babe Ruth. Al was one of his buddies, an
 occasional house guest and possibly a secret member of the
 SFtAoS. Now Charlie's all but forgotten. Such is fame. Fearing
 he'd pass along the hunchback and dwarfism he had inherited
 from his own father, he never married. I'll bet he fooled 
 around a lot though. How could all those prim and proper ladies 
 of Schenectady pass up a chance to take a tumble with a sexy, 
 funny humpbacked genius dwarf? I'll bet they were lined up half 
 way around the block for the chance.

 Last Wednesday would have been his 138th birthday.

 GOOGLE'S NEW STALKER-AID SERVICE...

 Try a little experiment. Pump your home phone number into Google's
 search-engine (google.com) and see what comes out ie. 206-547-3902. 
 Surprise! Not only your name and address, but a map with instructions 
 on how to get to your house. A stalker's dream come true. 

 If you want to have it removed just click on the little phone
 booth and follow the instructions. They'll remove it within 48
 hours. A couple weeks later somebody from Homeland Security will
 knock on your door asking what you've got to hide. Just kidding
 about that last part.

 SARS SCHMARS...

 Every year HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people die from influenza. 
 When the occasional pandemic hits, MILLIONS of people die from some
 form of the flu. So exactly why does SARS with its puny 100 deaths
 so far rate even mentioning? There's nothing extraordinary about
 the victims - they are the usual elderly, very young and the sick.
 People whose bodies are weakened and therefore they are vulnerable
 to a whole spectrum of illnesses healthy people are able to
 fight off. Healthy people are in danger of little more than a
 few days of discomfort from SARS.

 I think people actually WANT to be scared. The News Nazis don't
 even have to try convincing them. All they have to do is give 
 them something to hang their fear and trembling on then give 'em 
 a little push in the right direction. It sells ad space baby. It's
 good for business. So they pump it up. And our Lab Geeks in the
 Science Department always have an ear out for an opportunity to 
 prime the ol tax-dollar pump for a few billion more in bogus 
 research. Maybe they can add a War on SARS to their 25-year old
 War on AIDS and 35-year old War on Cancer, both of which were
 major revenue enhancers even if they've got bugger all to show
 in the way of a cure for either.

 Is this stupid or what? Come on people! Get a frik'n life!

 QUESTIONS FOR DAVE...

 Now that KIRO's Dave Ross is back from the war, there are a few
 questions I'd love to ask him:

 1. Did you wank yourself off in the briefing room each day listening
    to the situation reports? If so, did you use a sock or did the
    Department of Defense provide towels?  Did you guys try a group
    unison wank at any point in the proceedings?

 2. Is it true what they say about the child prostitution rackets 
    run out of the hotels there for visiting Americans? Are the 
    Russian hookers really as cheap and cute as everybody says 
    they are? Did you get free BJs with the room service?

 3. Dude, isn't there an operation you can get for that anal 
    obstruction? It's making you talk funny.

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

 "The only time a man looks foolish is when he doesn't ask questions."

                  - Charles Proteus Steinmetz -
..........................................................................

                    WIRELESS AIR-GUNNER REILLY

 This week would have been the birthday of Volney T. Reilly. Since he
 died a few years ago he wasn't around to celebrate the occasion. But
 his many friends celebrated it none the less. 

 You didn't know him. On the face of it he was just a pretty ordinary
 guy. A big Mick with one of those old-fashioned cocky Irish grins,
 long after the rest of his memory has faded, that mischevious grin 
 will linger like that of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. 
 With his lovely wife Elsie they made quite a pair. The two gentlest,
 kindest and most generous people I've ever known. 

 Appearances can be deceiving. There was nothing 'ordinary' about Vol. 
 As a young man during the times of WW-II, he signed up with the Royal 
 Canadian Air Force and was promptly shipped over to England to crew 
 a Royal Air Force Lancaster bomber. He was a WAG - Wireless Air Gunner. 
 That meant he had to sit in that very cold little bubble on the tail
 of his Lancaster far from everybody else. There was an intercom in
 between him and the cockpit but once he took his position he didn't
 see the rest of the crew again until they returned home. And with
 the mission load of bombs filling up the center, he couldn't freely
 travel back and forth. If his aircraft took any hits, as it often did, 
 the intercom was usually the first thing to go and he was on his own 
 back there. The only hint he'd have that it was time to bail-out would 
 be the sight of his crew whizzing past as their parachutes opened.

 He was expected to do two jobs: shoot-down any Messerschmidts that rode 
 up their butt and handle all the aircraft's morse-code radio traffic. 
 He had a little code key strapped to his leg for that purpose. I can't 
 imagine how he managed to keep from getting frostbite when he had to 
 whip his gloves off to send code. It would have been strong incentive 
 to keep it short and sweet. Aside from being made of little more than 
 cheap plywood, those Lancasters were unheated. It got pretty dang cold 
 at the altitudes at which they flew. And that cannon in the tail was 
 so loud he was close to deaf after using it. He compared it to running 
 a jackhammer in the bathroom. Obviously he couldn't hear radio messages 
 very well in that condition. But he found a way. He got the job done.

 At the end of the war, Vol was the only surviving member of the three
 Lancaster crews he had been part of. Irishmen don't come much luckier
 than him. While it was merely cold as they transited to their target
 at high-altitude, once they got there they had to descend to do their
 bombing. Descend through ground Ack-Ack bursts and fighter aircraft as 
 search lights swept the sky. It must have been pretty terrifying. Or,
 for a 20-year old kid, about as exciting as things can get. He made 
 an easily visible target in his bubble and had his hands full blasting 
 away best he could. He never said if he hit anybody. No bragging about 
 kills. No brave War Stories. Nada. Of course he shot down some Germans.
 That's what he was back there for. 

 Twice his bombers limped back to English airfields badly shot up. 
 Everyone had to re-enter English airspace through the same narrow
 secret corridor. Anything that came in outside of the corridor was 
 assumed to be an enemy aircraft and was shot down without warning. 
 It didn't matter if it appeared to be a crippled bomber whose pilot 
 was no longer able to control his aircraft, as it often was. In the 
 past, the Germans had used captured English bombers to sneak in that 
 way. The Limies couldn't afford to take any chances - down it went. 

 On two occasions, Vol's bombers managed to negotiate the corridor 
 but had to crash-land on the runway. They promptly burst into flame. 
 But Vol and his tail-section bubble broke off and rolled harmlessly 
 off into the grass. He got banged up and bruised a bit while the 
 rest of his crew ended up burnt weenies. Once was luck; twice was a 
 frik'n miracle. They started calling him "Cannonball".

 The third aircraft simply disintegrated on impact. Again, his little 
 bubble broke off but this time shot into the air, landing heavily in 
 the grass. He got banged up pretty bad that time. The rest of the crew 
 were dead. He had more than the quota for missions so they sent him 
 home. 

 I think he said he flew 42 missions during the war. The quota was
 far less than that initially but they kept bumping it up. He helped
 blow the shit out of the Ruhr Valley many times and hit Berlin a
 couple times as well. But the one that scared him the most was Paris.
 They hit German positions in the suburbs and were petrified of
 wiping out some famous landmark or another, or worse, a residential
 area. You could still hear the old worry in his voice. If he had
 anything to do with Dresden, he didn't say.
 
 I think what most amazed me about him initially is that, like many
 of that generation, he really didn't think any of the above was
 anything special. There was a war on. He was a young guy looking
 for adventure. Hitler was a jerk. It was pretty much a no-brainer. 
 He didn't even mention his adventures until I asked him about a 
 little framed 'shrine' Elsie had hanging on their living room wall 
 holding a couple of his medals and patches. He was kind of embarassed
 to even be asked. I really had to pump him. He considered medals and 
 that sort of thing as kind of silly and childish. He valued his old
 comrades and the memories far higher and they were personal.

 Returning to Canada, he ran into a hot little number from Winnepeg,
 Elsie. He became career RCAF - later unified into a single entity: 
 Canadian Forces. He swam a fair ways up the career stream into a
 command position. He loved his years in the military but with the 
 unification of services many of the traditions each branch had built 
 up went out the door. And he wasn't too excited about the lower-grade 
 officers that resulted from the Bilingualism push that promoted many 
 Francophones ahead of their time. He decided to retire.

 That's when I ran into him. He was selling real estate to keep in
 circulation and help pay the bills. We hopped in my car to check 
 out a property up there. As usual, I had my little 2-meter ham radio
 transceiver on. Suddenly it burst out with a station-id in morse
 code - the traditional way it's done on repeaters. It was the first
 time he'd heard any morse code since his Lancaster days. It brought
 a smile to his face and he became very curious about my little
 radio.

 To cut a long story short, he got ham radio fever in a big way.
 It brought back many fond memories for him, but more important 
 than that, the public-service end of it gave real focus to his
 life. He was the kind of guy who had always preferred to give 
 more than he received. You need a ride somewhere? Vol would give
 you one, no questions asked. You needed some help with anything,
 all you had to do was ask. He genuinely liked helping people out
 and staunchly refused any compensation. If it made you happy, 
 it made him happy. Simple as that. In the nearly 25 years I knew
 him, I can't remember ever seeing him pissed off about anything.
 It was impossible to rattle him or get him mad. No matter how
 crazy things got, he'd just crack that cocky Irish grin of his, 
 shrug his shoulders and say, "Oh well." I've never run into 
 anybody like that before or since. 

 Though not a highly educated man, he was one of those guys who 
 had the confidence and 1 to educate himself about the 
 technical things he wanted to know about. He was a natural-born 
 Hacker and, of course, a born teacher. He not only liked tearing
 things apart to figure out they worked, he wanted to tell everyone
 what he discovered. At a time when demonstrated-ability was
 considered more important than a degree or diploma, he was able
 to get a job as an electrical-service tech for many years on
 the side. He became one of the most popular teachers at his
 Ham club's licence classes. As with any of the service stuff
 he did, he took it very seriously and executed it professionally.
 No close-enough-for-government-work crapola from him baby.

 When his son emailed me the news of his death, I headed up to 
 Vancouver for the funeral. It still doesn't seem like it really
 was him in that coffin. No cocky grin while jiggling the keys
 in his pocket. He dodged the Grim Reaper so many times in the
 past, I half expected he'd live forever. But of course none of
 us do.

 He was a real first-class Mensch. 

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

                      'OL YELLER'S TWAT
               (aka The War Against Terrorism)

 I guess we return to normal programming now. The local papers 
 have run out of ink for those giant headlines they've been
 cranking out for the past week.

 The World Biggest Asshole finally made his grand entrance into 
 Baghdad. It took the Germans only one week to blitz Poland - a 
 nation with a modern military for the times - totally wiping 
 out that military and putting the entire country under their 
 brutal occupational thumb. It took our dumbass hillbillies 
 nearly a month to bob and weave their way around a vastly 
 inferior military that had no air-force or navy and whose tanks 
 were relics by comparison, leaving Saddam not only with a nearly 
 intact military but still in control of much of the country 
 including most of Baghdad. The Germans had real soldiers. All 
 we got are frik'n sub-normals from the shallow end of the gene 
 pool. 

 Not that much of anyone around here really cared. While you do
 see many "No Iraq War" signs in windows, you never see pro-war
 bumperstickers or signs and certainly no pro-war rallys. Even
 the TV in the lounge at the Student Union, normally chattering
 away like a demented parakeet, was black and cold on "VS Day" -
 Victory Over Saddam. Nobody was interested. Wars are boring. 
 They're like football games - the same stupid thing over and 
 over again. Entertainment for retards and hillbillies. Besides, 
 people out of work really don't give much of a hoot about what's 
 happening thousands of miles away. They just want to find a 
 goddam job so their life can get back to normal.

 There were no weapons of mass-destruction. No missles full of
 anthrax aimed at Israel. No suitcase nukes in Washington DC.
 No terrorist attacks on America. No 'red line' around Baghdad. 
 Nothing. Like everything else that comes out of President
 Yellowbelly's drug-addled brain, it was all bullshit. We 
 didn't have a single, solitary good excuse for all those people
 we killed. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

 And thus ends Phase I - the conventional warfare part of our
 half-assed conquest of Iraq. The easy part.

 The world wasn't impressed by our performance. In fact nobody,
 aside from the Limies and Pollocks, wants to be seen in public 
 with us. From Japan to Italy the people of the world are
 overwhelmingly against our thuggery. We haven't been this 
 isolated in over a century. Aside from everyone ignoring our 
 demand that they shut down their Iraqi embassies and making loud 
 noises about the UN taking over post-invasion Iraq, a number of 
 Euro nations have begun talking about initiating War Crimes 
 proceedings against us in the World Court. They've got lots of 
 legitimate grounds to go on: intentional targetting of civilians, 
 intentional targetting of non-combattants (journalists), etc. 
 etc. Much of it well-documented with names, witnesses and video
 evidence.

 If they need any help rounding up our military thugs no doubt there 
 are plenty of Americans who would be more than happy to help out. 
 If there's a price on their heads, better stand back or you'll get
 crushed by the stampede of Bounty Hunters. With the Canuk border 
 close by, a suspect from Whidbey Island/Bremerton/Everett/Ft.Lewis 
 could be snatched, bundled and on his way to the World Court in 
 The Hague inside an hour. If our War Criminals imagine they're 
 safe here they better think again. What could be more patriotically
 American than bringing a criminal or murderer to justice? Most
 especially if there's a reward in it.

 I think people expected something definite to come out of this
 invasion. I certainly did. Like Saddam getting killed and/or 
 surrendering; Iraqis revolting and/or joining our invasion; the 
 anti-Saddam Sunni rebels in the south combining forces with 
 us; the foreign embassies to close. SOMETHING! That's how it 
 always happens in the movies and on TV. Instead: anti-climax - 
 none of it happened. The whole thing just kind of petered out 
 in a confusing mess of Media Spin and military-sanctioned looting. 
 Go to the Iraqi embassy in Canada - still open. The one in Paris - 
 still open. The one in Germany - still open. Etc. All with the 
 same smiling portrait of Saddam that's been of the wall for
 decades. In our little bubble of bullshit, we're the only ones
 in the world who don't seem to realize our invasion was a flop.

 The phony "Victory" headlines, sound-bites and vid-shots were
 the best our News Nazis could come up with. A classic American
 phony Spin-o-rama production right down to paying some Iraqis
 to haul down that statue of Saddam. So what? When you're The 
 World's Biggest Asshole, bullshit becomes a valuable commodity. 
 It's all that stands between you and the realization of what 
 a bag of shit you really are. That unavoidable realization will 
 come soon enough. And when it does, it'll be a major Bummer.

 As our News Nazis pack up their cameras, porno-mags and mics
 to return home, Phase II is about to begin - unconventional 
 warfare. Our indecisive/inconclusive 'victory' just created 
 our very own Chechnya.

 They've already started a Dead Pool for the new US Military
 Governor of Iraq. How long will it take before he goes
 *KABLOOIE*? A few days, a few weeks, a few months? Lay
 your bets.

 It'd be cool if Saddam snuck into Washington, DC and got
 a job with the White House maintenance crew, like that Mexican
 wetback with the phony passport did recently.  Then quietly 
 one fine day, snuck up behind Yellowbelly and slit his throat. 
 Whoa! Talk about being embarassing! I'll bet the stock market
 would shoot up 200 points on news like that. Saddam could pass 
 for Mexican. He might be sitting in some seedy DC hotel right
 now putting his plan together as he sharpens his razor. 

 I can't think of two guys who so thoroughly deserve one another 
 as Yeller and Saddam. While one looks like a weasel and the 
 other a big monkey, under the skin they're indistinguishable -
 soul brothers. Both imposed themselves on their populations,
 both run torture camps, both employ secret police, both steal
 resources off any smaller fish they can bully around and both
 play a phony religious card whenever they think it might give
 them an edge. Saddam did his trip on his own; Yellowbelly had
 it all handed to him.

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

                    -  MONDO VATICANO -

 As the children of Baghdad are ripped to shreds by American cluster
 bombs, the Vicar of Christ hides far away in his 1000-room palace 
 with his hundreds of servants, scores of chaplains and well-stocked 
 larder. Hides amidst luxury, wealth and plenty while the children 
 die. The sheer obscenity of his disinterest and moral cowardice 
 negates any pretence of moral authority he may claim. He's old and 
 sick. Soon he will come face to face with his God and be required 
 to account for this moment. He deserves as little compassion as 
 he's given. May his putrid soul rot in Hell.

                               +

 The lawsuits are starting to fly fast and thick. Last week it was
 the bishop of San Bernadino (CA) suing the Archbishop of Boston
 (MA) for lying about one of his Pervert Priests he tried to hide
 in California. This week its the Conventional Franciscans suing
 Cardinal Roger "The Dodger" Mahony in LA over who has to pay for
 a Franciscan pervert priest who was on loan to L.A. when be began
 diddling altar boys. What next? Somebody going to sue Jesus for
 failing to bring world peace? It could happen you know. In the
 meantime, the Faithful who have been harping about how most of
 sexual-abuse victims lawsuits were frivolous and little more than
 attempts to financially skin the Church, have been strangely
 quiet lately.

                               +

 It was a big week for nuns in trouble. 

 Home Girl, Sr. Jackie Hudson of Bremerton (WA) and her two Dominican
 cohorts who got arrested back in October were found guilty this
 week. They broke into a missle-silo installation in Colorado and 
 banged on the nuke-proof silo cover with hammers while praying for 
 peace. They also painted crosses on the silo covers with their own 
 blood. Minor misdemenor offenses at best. But Uncle Sammy says that's 
 interfering with national defense and defacing government property. 
 He must have been pretty drunk to say something that stupid. Whatever. 
 The judge and U.S. attorneys are now in line for big promotions as 
 a reward for their general lack of perspective. The scum always
 rises to the top of the judicial soup. Sentencing will be July 25th.
 They could get 30 years for their peaceful protest.

 The cops didn't have it quite so easy in Albano Sant'Alessandro,
 Italy. Four nuns in a Citroen missed a stop sign and plowed into 
 a Geezer driving a Mercedes. Nobody got hurt, but instead of 
 stopping and waiting for the Heat to arrive, the Good Sisters 
 put the pedal to the metal and beat it outta there on the double. 
 Now their on the lam and the cops are keeping an eye out for them.
 I'd check the cupboard at the convent where they keep the Sacramental 
 wine. Unless I miss my guess, I'll bet they're a couple bottles 
 short. Don't make Mother Superior get out the breathalizer girls.

                              +

 Amazingly there is a bishop in charge of military chaplains. Well,
 technically he's a bishop. As an officer in the U.S. military, he
 is first and foremost beholding to the U.S. military. The Vatican
 may be paying his wages but his heart belongs to the Pentagon. If
 it were any other way, he wouldn't be allowed anywheres near a
 military base. 

 In exchange for this loyalty, the military has made it virtually 
 impossible to convict a military chaplain of anything. They are 
 very well protected. Fer instance...Pervert Priests. Are there any 
 in the military? Of course there are. But as long as they don't  
 diddle their fellow officers they're covered. Guys like Fr. Bob 
 formerly of the Navy Hospital in Bremerton (WA) who got caught 
 twice Banging on young sailors who came to him for spiritual
 advice. His officer-status safely got him out of both raps. The
 court-martial judge and the jury members were all officers too. 
 The sailors didn't have a chance. Classic military "justice".
 Where did he end up? Only the Bishop of Chaplains knows and he
 ain't talking. He's likes playing hide-and-seek too.

 The Nazis had Catholic chaplains of course. The were officially called 
 Katholischer Kriegspfarrer and were officers in the German military. 
 While priests/ministers/preachers of all denominations were drafted
 into the German military during WW-II, only those willing to swear
 their alliegence to the Nazi Reich were made Kriegspfarrer. If the
 Vatican had any objection to this arrangement, it kept them to itself.
 It made no effort to disassociate itself from these 'priests'. It's 
 very likely that the unit that interrogated and tortured St. Edith 
 Stein to death had a Katholischer Kriegspfarrer attached to it. Not 
 likely he'd give Last Rites to a sworn enemy of the Reich even if 
 she was a saint.

               Katholischer Kriegspfarrer

 The Vatican is touchy enough about its failure to take a moral stand
 against the Nazis during WW-II. Don't ask them about any the men
 pictured above. If it knows anything about them, it's forgotten it
 by now and destroyed any evidence to the contrary. If the they spent 
 half as much effort dealing with their problems as they do running 
 away from them they probably wouldn't be in the mess they presently 
 are in. They aren't nearly as good at lying as they imagine they are.
 
 A Catholic chaplain in the US military recently kicked off a lawsuit
 after he was ordered by the Pentagon not to participate in the Bishops 
 little postcards for peace campaign. He's been joined by chaplains 
 from Hebrew, Islamic and Protestant denominations as they struggle 
 to make a little moral space for themselves in the military. Not all
 of them are mindless idiots like the Marine chaplain who brushed off
 Consciencious Objector Mr. Funk with his nonsense about a sword
 wielding Jesus.
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 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: https://www.angelfire.com/nb/afm
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