For the Sake of the Fish

Delta SmeltI love NPR. They always have reports about weird little issues that you would never hear about anywhere else.

I was listening to the radio today and they had a long, straight-faced report about the plight of the delta smelt. They probably didn't care all that much about the issue itself (although it was interesting). Mostly, it seemed they just wanted to see how many times they could say "delta smelt" in a single report and still be taken seriously (I think it must have been about 30).

In the end, though, I was disappointed that they finished up with out any "you smelta, you delta" jokes.

Merry Christmas!

I hope this is what you asked Santa for.

More Fred Thompson

Regardless of whether he would be a good president, he's fun to watch.



And who's the loser to his left that tentatively chimes in "I'm with him" after the point has already been made?

How I Became An Internet Source

I edited a page on Wikipedia for the first time today! I know, I know, I'm 3 years behind the times on that. But I'm now a part of the world's knowledge of Maximilian Kolbe. Sure, if you click the "History" tab above that story, you'll see that IP address 134.48.241.55 only claims to have "[c]leaned up a run-on sentence and informal language in the paragraph about Kolbe's parents"--but that cleaner, more streamlined sentence is now going to make it that much easier for people to learn about St. Kolbe.

I think I've done my duty to society today. No need to finish writing that Kolbe paper.

When Autumn Comes With Leaves Last Breath

Mike Mangione

It's finally starting to feel like fall here in Milwaukee. Up until last week, it was still in the 60's. I couldn't really get into the feel of fall.

When fall comes, I find that my taste in music changes. During the summer, I listen to a lot of upbeat, fun music. Classic rock, Dave Matthews Band, OAR, things like that. But as soon as it starts to feel like fall, I'm just not as interested. Suddenly, I find myself listening to more mellow acoustic music.

And that brings me to a great band that you are missing out on if you're not listening to: Mike Mangione and the Band. Not only is he a great musician backed by a group of great musicians, he's also little known (right now). When he hits it big, you can talk about how you were listening to him way back in the day. "Before he went commercial," I assume you'll add because you music snobs are all like that.

If you live in the Milwaukee area, he's got a show at Linnemans Bar on December 14th.

Just so you know...

cash advance

I write at a high school reading level! Apparently, articles about pirates, boogers and robot marriage are just what the Gunning-Fog index* is looking for.

EDIT: Apparently, my rating changed overnight. When I tried it again I found that I'm only junior high now.

*I think The Gunning Fog would be an excellent superhero.

Public Service Announcement

Be careful how you handle other people's truffles.
"This was an extraordinary act of truffle-squishing. We can only guess at what provoked it," said a Hotel Chocolat spokesman

Source: The Independent

It's that 90% of Computer Scientists Who Make the Other 10% Of Us Look Like Nerds

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketI drove past a firehouse today with a couple of engineer friends and we discussed how unfair life is for engineers and computer scientists like us. For some reason, women go crazy for firemen, but "I'm a computer programmer" is not an effective pickup line. Why is that the case?

Well, I came home and, to my dismay, found out exactly why. An artificial intelligence researcher in the Netherlands just published a thesis entitled "Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners." I'm not making this up. It's about the possibility of humans marrying artificially intelligent robots.

Doesn't this guy realize that he is just setting us back even further? Or do he and his robo-wife not care about the rest of us?

Further Clarification

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

There has been some confusion, so I am here to set the record straight. Pope Awesomus I is entirely distinct from Brad Ausmus. Admittedly, Pope Awesomus I did not go to Dartmouth or play 14 major league seasons. However, Brad Ausmus has an OPS of .666 against left handed pitchers. This is a sure sign that he is not a true leader of the Church. Don't be deceived.

Oh, And By the Way...

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

If you don't believe that any old dork can declare himself Pope, you've clearly never heard of Pope Micheal.

You might want to especially check out this page and this page.

"Roma locuta est. Causa finita est." Thou shalt "Paste text here"!

You Can't Excommunicate Me, I'm Baptized!*

I haven't told too many people this yet, but I'm starting my own Church. I am calling myself Pope Awesomus I, but I still haven't decided on the a name for the Church itself. I'm open to suggestions in the comments.

Riad is my first Cardinal, but if any of you would like to become a Cardinal (or hold a position on one my Congregations) let me know. So far, I'm still holding out for Tommy to be the head of the Congregation for the Promulgation of the Pizza. Any others are open.

Don't worry, I'm not actually planning on permanently leaving the Catholic Church. I'm just holding out to have my new Church recognized as a rite. I will gladly reduce my position to Patriarch Awesomus I once the Pope recognizes us. Until the Liturgy of Awesomus can be completed, we will be using the Liturgy of John Chrysostom (since the church offering it is less than 2 blocks from where I live). But I will not forbid my followers to go to Novus Ordo, Tridentine, Divine Liturgy of St. James, the Divine Liturgy of St. Mark or the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil either. But I will not allow liturgical dancing under any circumstances.




*In case any of you were worried about my eternal soul, don't be. I have recently learned that schismatics are still totally ok. A learned schismatic canon lawyer has informed me that baptism makes you totally immune to all that nasty excommunication stuff that Rome is always all up in our grill about.

200 Proof Excellence

I was just reading my friend Tommy's blog when I realized how good one of his old articles is. A girl wrote a trying-to-be-edgy Viewpoint in the Marquette Tribune about how it's a shame that a Catholic school does not provide students with contraception.

Tommy and I refused to be outdone. If someone out there is lowering the level of discourse, we can always go lower. Don't even try.

What we came up with was this. Booger jokes? Yeah, we went there.

Marquette students have boogers. There, I said it. We all get them. What do we do with them? Some scratch them. Others pick them discreetly with Kleenex. Still others brazenly dive in wrist-deep. I am one of those who dive right in.


Thrilling, compelling stuff. If you don't believe this could possibly get published in a serious journalistic publication, you're right.


Edit: It appears that the Tribune site doesn't have the entirety of the Cura Vaginalis article. You can find the full text and a good commentary on the whole event here.

The Tribune is Catching On

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Ahoy!

A happy Talk Like a Pirate day to you all, yeh scurvy-ridden deck swabbers!

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

I'm Just Here to Remind You I'm Not Dead

Sorry, no new material from me today. But if you'd like a good laugh, you can check out Dr. McAdams' new conspiracy theory, in which I am inexplicably named despite having no official position within Catholic Outreach.

Or, if you're looking for something that's intentionally humorous, you could do worse than checking out Tommy's latest post on what will hopefully become a continuously updated series.

All right, I'm out. Enjoy the next indefinite period of time until I get back to blogging again!

Relating To That Last Post...

Scary, huh?

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Recently Found on Facebook

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Can you guess which of these pictures shows the lead singer of Pearl Jam?

I'm Pretty Proud of This

I took a political test today. My placement didn't mean much when it looked like this:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

But then I clicked on the button to show how you relate to famous people:

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

I kinda like that.

Also, what on earth is Adam Sandler's political affiliation? And who's the buggy eyed guy on the top in the middle?

Theology of the Pizza

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Hopefully this will inspire Tommy to give me his full Theology of the Pizza dissertation. We'll see how it goes.

For a better view, click here

Francis Moehn 1916-2007

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at PhotobucketMy grandfather passed away in December, just short of his 91st birthday. I should have posted about him then because he was an incredible man. I'll have to make it up now.

As a child, he caught polio and was forced into quarantine for six weeks. The only person he was allowed to be in the same room with was the nun who took care of him. He survived, but his knees were never strong again. It was largely because of these leg problems that he was rejected from the Army after he was drafted for World War II. Oddly, if it weren't for polio, my mom, seven aunts and uncles and twenty-some cousins and I might not be here today.

As an young man, he took on a job that should naturally be left to German-Irish Catholics: he opened a bar. He and his wife worked together at the bar. They also single-handedly (double-handedly, really) built the house that they lived in for nearly 60 years. They settled there to raise eight children born over the course of twenty five years.

When the bar business went bad, he became a mail man. He worked at the post office for nearly thirty years until his retirement. In retirement he attended daily Mass and worked on his baby, a 1910-era Ford Model T.

This is how I remember my grandfather Francis Moehn. Although I will have fun with his collection of stuff in the next post, he meant a lot more than that. More than stuff, I'll still have those memories of Eggo waffles and Uno games and scrambled fairy tales (to this day, I really don't know whether he was joking or confused about those).

I Like Him

This guy doesn't take crap from anybody.

A Presidential Candidate I Can Support

Fred Thompson

I also unearthed secret evidence of a plot to make him even more awesome.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Why yes, it is finals week. Why do you ask?

My Pet Peeve of the Day

Today's post is brought to you by the letters A, B, C and D and the numbers 0 through 2007.

Maybe I'm alone on this, but I can't stand it when people mark dates by the eras of CE and BCE. Common Era and Before Common Era? What's so common about the last 2007 years? Why should the 4.6 billion years that the earth existed before then not be considered common?

There is no good reason for it.

We, the People of the Jury, Have Reached a Verdict

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingMcDonald's on the corner of 25th and Wisconsin, you have been convicted of five counts of not giving a crap.

Count 1: For having an employee leaning against the counter doing nothing while 3 people waited in line at the one open register.

Count 2: For barking "Hold on!" with annoyance to a customer trying to order through the drive-through.*

Count 3: For looking generally displeased that customers are interrupting your day by trying to order food.

Count 4: For giving me a dollar-bill in change for a charge of $4.01, rather than counting out the change.**

Count 5: For allowing the employee leaning against the counter to cut in front of customers in line and announce "I'm ordering now."

Counts 1-4 are misdemeanors which carry a penalty of 10-20 hours of customer service for each count. Count 5 is a felony count of reckless disregard for human decency. It carries a penalty of one hour of me muttering under my breath to be consecutively followed by an angry blog posting.

Bailiff, take them away.


*Note: One charge of spelling "drive-through" as "drive-thru" has been dropped because responsibility for that ultimately rests on the corporation of McDonalds as a whole.

**Note: Normally this offense would be let off with a warning, but the defendants lack of giving a crap in other areas has led to this charge being prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Dubious Honors

I discovered while perusing Google Analytics that I am the top Google hit for the phrase "this can't be wrong when it feels so right" (without the quote marks). I'm also the top hit for the phrase "poor decision." Those are both pretty accurate descriptions for my blog, I think.

On the weirder side, I got a hit from the phrase "vanna white toothbrush." I don't know why anyone would want to search those terms, but if you do you'll find me.

I love Google Analytics.

My First Public Service in the New Year!

Happy New Year everybody!

I have a confession to make. When I celebrated the new year, my friends and I just yelled out the tune to Auld Lang Syne without singing any words. Because, honestly, we don't know any of them. So for all you curious folk, here they are:

Traditional Auld Lang Syne (According to Robert Burns)
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes
And pou'd the gowans fine.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
Sin' auld lang syne.

We twa hae sported i' the burn,
From morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roared
Sin' auld lang syne.

And ther's a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie's a hand o' thine;
We'll tak' a right good willie-waught,
For auld lang syne.
Source

As you can see, it was written as a result of Irishmen drinking too much on New Year's Eve and trying to speak understandable English (which in itself is a difficult enough task for many Irish). But I have to say, whenever I pou the gowans fine, I also feel the urge to drink heavily and write a song about it. So I can't really blame them.