Maybe I'm Too Sensitive

I'd appreciate it if some non-Catholic folks would read Larry Doyle's column, "The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum", from the Huffington Post.  It is, in theory, supposed to be satire.  I don't see the funny.  Maybe that's because of the timing.  And maybe it's because I found out real quick that someone who converts to the Catholic faith better be ready for nastiness - it will come from all sides, including other conservative Christians.  And stuff like this smacks more of nastiness than humor:

Unlike Christians, Santorum and his fellow Roman Catholics participate in a barbaric ritual dating back two millennia, a "mass" in which a black-robed cleric casts a spell over some bread and wine, transfiguring it into the actual living flesh and blood of their Christ. Followers then line up to eat the Jesus meat and drink his holy blood in a cannibalistic reverie not often seen outside Cinemax.

I'm pretty sure that, satire or not, this would not have been published by HuffPo had it been about Islam.  And maybe that's also a part of why it's so tiresome - the double standard.

The full article is here.  Let me know what you think.

Blogger Beef

Does Blogger always randomly take away your backgrounds/wallpaper?  I was quite happy with what I had and then a couple days ago it just wasn't there.  Grumble.

Spring Clean-up Begins

Last October brought us a surprise 6 inches of wet snow.  It was quite pretty:

Unfortunately, the leaves were still on, so it pulled a lot of trees and limbs down, leaving some of us without power for several days.

So now with the occasional day of nice temps I'm attacking some of the downed stuff on my property.  I have a chain saw, but the last time it was used was the winter before Dad died in 1998 - it was his and it came to live at my house and I've never had it looked at to see if it's still functional.  I use axe, bow saw, sawzall, and loppers instead, and I really don't mind because the exercise is good for me.  The only serious problem is when I get to something that's really too thick for the sawzall - I tend to bend and break blades that way.

Slowly but surely, downed limbs are becoming piles of limbs and logs.

And since I plan to put in a wood stove, those piles of logs are becoming next winter's fuel.

Next step will be to borrow the neighbor's chipper so that the debris coming off these branches can become mulch. 

Epic Snark!

I thought Krauthammer had lost his flippin' mind for a minute when I first heard this!

I wish I could pull off sarcasm that well.

Grrrrr

Every U.S. soldier out of Afghanistan NOW!  And Mr. Karzai can try to hold onto his power without us.  First terrorist attack that comes out of that country we rain hell down on them.  Then we leave them with that hell instead of trying to help them out.  Enough is enough. 

Sigh

Another run to the vet's last night, another $100.  Granted, that's way less than the last 2 trips.  But on the way I noticed an occasional faint whiff of burning rubber. Another couple hundred $$ today for replacement of worn out belts on the suv.  Between cat and vehicle I could have bought a Glock and ammo over the last month.

Perry's ailment is a weird one.  The vet says she sees it fairly often - as the days begin to lengthen some young male cats develop bladder problems.  It acts like an infection but isn't - pain, constant pressure to pee, blood in the pee.  All that can be done is treat the symptoms - iv fluids to keep the urine from forming crystals, injections of strong pain killers to help with the bladder spasms, and now we are trying a prescription food for urinary tract problems.  In the meantime he paces and meows and dribbles pee on everything.  Blu has reacted to the stress of the situation by barfing all over everything.  And although I carefully mixed the new food with the old so that the change wouldn't upset tummies, they like the new food so well that they picked it out of the bowl and left the other.  End result being stomach upset and Blackberry is now also barfing all over the house.

I woke up this morning with a growling belly and a hungry headache courtesy of yesterday's Ash Wednesday fast.  Before I could get out of bed, Perry jumped up, slid under the covers, then crawled up in my arms.  He stretched his paws out and gently patted my face.  Then, after a couple nose licks, he nuzzled my cheek, and with his silky soft head nestled against my face, he fell fast asleep.  I was starving.  I had a headache.  And it was so lovely that I laid there with him for a half hour, unwilling to disturb his nap.

It's as bad as having kids.

This Isn't a Good Idea

So once upon a time - about 30,000 years ago - a squirrel buried seeds in what would become Siberia.   Scientists have been able to use tissue from plants found in that squirrel burrow to resurrect a viable plant, Sylene stenophylla.

Pretty.  Also still extant in the Russian tundra, so in this case it's not the rebirth of an extinct species.  But folks are all excited - this could be the path to bringing back Ice Age creatures like the wooly mammoth and mastodon.

They shouldn't.  Yes, it would have major, major WOW! factor.  But this isn't their world anymore.  Extinction is perfectly normal.  It always amazes me that the same folks who tout a nature-focused religion completely ignore some of the rules that are imbedded in nature.  Extinction is nature's way of saying that a creature doesn't fit in anymore.  That's true whether it's T. Rex or the dodo - they couldn't survive in the world that developed around them.  And any creature that has gone extinct that is brought back will immediately be non-native species.

We've had lots of experience with non-native species:

Rabbits were introduced to Australia as food in the 19th century - they are enormously destructive, creating "the grey blanket" over Australia with their numbers.

Kudzu, the "vine that ate the south", was introduced as an ornamental and for erosion control - now it suffocates the forests of the American South and has been found in Canada.

Nutria were brought into the country as fur animals - they are a major destruction force in American wetlands.

Brown tree snakes were accidentally introduced into Guam in the early 1950s - they have now wiped out at least 12 endemic bird species and are hitching rides into other islands.

The water hyacinth, an ornamental plant from South America, has choked waterways all over the globe, killing fish and other plants, and causing native peoples to starve to death because they can't get through the waterways that act as their roads to food.

I'd love to see a mastodon, a saber-toothed cat, a giant sloth.  But this isn't their world anymore, and no matter how well meaning the actions that would bring them back into it, that action would eventually have repercussions.  We've had enough examples of those sorts of repercussions that we should know better by now.