Catnip for Heretics and Recovering Catholics: "The Island in the Tiber" by Edward A. Quigley

An engrossing suspense story set in a richly and authentically drawn modern-day Rome. It combines colorful characters, wit, and page-turning suspense with intriguing possibilities for the future of the Catholic church. Winding through the plot is a wealth of insider-information about the church's power structure, making the book both thought-provoking and fun to read: BEWARE: if you are a devout Catholic, this book will piss you off. If you are a "recovering Catholic" or just want a Church that recognizes that which has been kept in the closet, you will find a deeply thought-out road-map for what could be termed, "Vatican 3" by an author who has spent decades in Rome, grew up in the seminary, and has been an inspirational English teacher (the one you remember) for scores of students besides this one writing these words :) Congrats, Mr. Quigley, on a great novel, beautifully structured around the Holy Days culminating in Easter, and expertly written (NOTE: The author suffered a stroke, almost 15 years to this day, and had to re-learn how to write, starting with the alphabet, and "See Jack Run," and his daily persistence and passion has enabled him to write a work of this high caliber: for that alone, he should be regarded as an American hero and role-model... and a living refutation of all the talented but lazy "writers" who talk the walk, but don't sit down and pound out the word each day and every day). I salute you, Ed Quigley, and I know I'm not the only one. 4 stars, with a 5th star added for degree of difficulty.. In summary: A page-turning Vatican murder mystery "recovering Catholics" will love - shockingly timely. Homophobes, beware!

Quitting Facebook

Fascinomic

It's not a word, but it should be.

Medical Humor

Our first app... look for it to be coming to a late night talk show near you.

Earth in 250 Million Years

From Astronomy Picture of the Day comes this look into the future of Pangeia that closely resembles its past...

About 250 million years from now, the plates are again projected to reposition themselves so that a single landmass dominates.

The above simulation from the PALEAOMAP Project shows this giant landmass: Pangea Ultima.

At that time, the
>Atlantic Ocean will be just a distant memory, and whatever beings inhabit Earth will be able to walk from North America to Africa.

PoMo Heels

Ah my achin' feet.

Mustard Faced Dancing Guy

In which an internet video successfully walks the tightrope between stupid and funny and makes it across to the other side.

Free Earl

Check out this video: NBC My Name is Earl / Music Video



Add to My Profile | More Videos

I'm touched to the very bottom of my colon.

Souter Cried Repeatedly After Bush v. Gore

Unfortunately, he didn't resign too, as he threatened to do while blubbering like the momma's boy he turned out to be:

According to Jeffrey Toobin’s new book on the Supreme Court, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the
wake of Bush v. Gore, so distraught was he over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed George W. Bush as president.

In “The Nine,” which goes on sale Sept. 18, Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind them, “David Souter alone was shattered,” at times weeping when he thought of the case. “For many months, it was not at all clear whether he would remain as a justice,” Toobin continues. “That the Court met in a city he loathed made the decision even harder. At the urging of a handful of close friends, he decided to stay on, but his attitude toward the Court was never the same.”

Getting Free Food from Burger King

On hacking the Burger King couponery:

Miss Teen South Carolina Calls 911

I personally believe that such miscommunication could never occur in The Iraq if South Africa had never invaded it.

Mythbusters: The Case of the Bull in a China Shop

That's Not a Screensaver. THIS is a screensaver.

Click image to enlarge, and then save as a screensaver. Just a suggestion.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Portishead

Press the play button at the link to hear TSE himself reading his poem over a sample of Portishead's hypnotic ambient riff.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, 'Do I dare?' and, 'Do I dare?
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair --
[They will say: 'How his hair is growing thin!]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin --
[They will say: 'But how his arms and legs are thin!]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'-- 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: 'That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.'

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
'That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.'

Lasse Gjertson Does it Again

You remember Lasse. He did these two brilliant vids, with no prior knowledge of how to play either intrument prior to shooting.... thus forever codifiying the expression, "We'll fix it in post."

Piano and Drums

The Real State of the Union Address

Pure moonbattery, but hilariously great editing.

Touchy, Touchy, Touchy: BBC Changes Plot "To Avoid Offending Muslims"

The BBC has dropped plans to show a fictional terror attack in an episode of Casualty to avoid offending Muslims.

The first show of the hospital drama's new series was to have featured a storyline about an explosion caused by Islamic extremists.

The stars of Casualty won't be dealing with an explosion caused by Islamic extremists in case it offends Muslims

Now the bomb will be set off by animal rights campaigners instead.

A BBC spokesman said: "With any storyline there are lots of ideas that get put forward but don't make the series."

Usually when they do this, the terrorist becomes a neo-Nazi and/or a rich, white, male, Christian from the South. The big switcheroo this time is that the villain becomes an animal rights activist. This is not going over well, and we know this because the grievance mechanism is firmly in place.

Just out of curiousity, I decided to google the phrase, "to avoid offending [insert religion here], and see who the touchiest religion was, and who the least touchy religion was. I would brag that the home team won the latter title, though to do so would cease to make me a member of that hometeam. Ah, paradox.

Results 1 - 10 of about 18,700 for +"to avoid offending Muslims". (0.17 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 200 for +"to avoid offending Christians". (0.11 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 56 for +"to avoid offending Catholics". (0.39 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 52 for +"to avoid offending atheists". (0.36 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 29 for +"to avoid offending Hindus". (0.32 seconds)
Results 1 - 1 of 1 for +"to avoid offending Buddhists". (0.53 seconds)
Your search - +"to avoid offending Taoists" - did not match any documents.

UPDATE: I know, I know, I somehow left someone off the list. I don't know how, but I did. I guess I got so excited by the Taoist return that I lost my sense of greater purpose. Here ya go, cruisin' in at very distant number #3...

Results 1 - 10 of about 133 for +"to avoid offending Jews". (0.36 seconds)

The Cadaver Calculator

$3900.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth. From Mingle2 - Free Online Dating

Mingle² - Dating Site

An Essay by Phillip K. Dick

How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later

...My first story had to do with a dog who imagined that the garbagemen who came every Friday morning were stealing valuable food which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every day, members of the family carried out paper sacks of nice ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, shut the lid tightly — and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the can.

Finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in the house, as well as stealing their food. Of course, the dog is wrong about this. We all know that garbagemen do not eat people. But the dog's extrapolation was in a sense logical — given the facts at his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe, it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown of communication... and there is the real illness.

I once wrote a story about a man who was injured and taken to a hospital. When they began surgery on him, they discovered that he was an android, not a human, but that he did not know it. They had to break the news to him. Almost at once, Mr. Garson Poole discovered that his reality consisted of punched tape passing from reel to reel in his chest. Fascinated, he began to fill in some of the punched holes and add new ones. Immediately, his world changed. A flock of ducks flew through the room when he punched one new hole in the tape. Finally he cut the tape entirely, whereupon the world disappeared. However, it also disappeared for the other characters in the story... which makes no sense, if you think about it. Unless the other characters were figments of his punched- tape fantasy. Which I guess is what they were.

It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.

Great stuff from the master. Read the whole thing.

Laurel and Hardy Go Digital

This represents the sole time I haven't resented having my browser resized. Also features a different angle (and more, uh, capable performance) of the ol' Man Getting Stuck Inside Giant Balloon trick.

Saving the Best for Last

Like it or not, reality programming is here to stay, because you never know when you're going to get something like this.