I contributed to several of the first-ever Carnivals of the Godless, but then got sidetracked onto a number of other matters, and have been a very minor part of it since.
But now, for the first time, I’m HOSTING the Carnival of the Godless. Whoo-hoo!
No fancy presentation here. Here they are, more than three dozen of them, in the order I received ‘em:
In most dog-related things, I was a fairly indulgent dad. But having my four-leggers roll in dead stuff, or go off into the brush and bring back something rotten, I had a hard time with that.
Tito was especially bad about it.
One summer day we were out along Varmint Creek hiking. I have this thing I sometimes do – I think of it as my super power – I hike and read at the same time. The subconscious Guardian Idiot that resides in all our heads, in my case has terrific peripheral vision, and I’m able to read and navigate along a trail, even rough mountain terrain, at the same time. I never fall down, I never walk into trees, I never even stumble.
I’ll be hosting the June 22 issue of COTG.
If you have any final submissions (there are close to 30 so far), get them to the Blog Carnival ASAP.
On the other hand, if you only want to READ, be sure to come back on June 22, and I promise you a good time. We have some pretty good bits in the mix.
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This story is so funny it’s useless for me to comment on it. I’ll just post a few bits of it.
Vatican bans Dan Brown film ‘Angels & Demons’ from Rome churches
The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is “an offence against God” and “wounds common religious feelings”.
Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had “turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business.”
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The Vatican asked the faithful to boycott the film of The Da Vinci Code, which Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Archbishop of Genoa and now, as Secretary of State, the right-hand man of Pope Benedict XVI, described as a “phantasmagorical cocktail of inventions” and “a pot-pourri of lies”.
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The plot of Angels & Demons is, if anything even more preposterous than The Da Vinci Code, and scholars have been quick to point out the book’s factual errors.
For stories like this, there should be a quieter version of LOL (Laughing Out Loud). I suggest CQAL — Chuckling Quietly At Length.
As I often am. I guess you can’t BE broad-minded and open, which I flatter myself I am, without often finding yourself stretched between this value and that, one conclusion and the other. Because things are complex, yes, but also because you can’t ever be sure you have full information on which to base a rock-solid conclusion.
And so you have to deal in multi-valued awareness, and conclusions that retain — sometimes forever — some measure of tentativeness. That means you can never see heroes as just heroes, you can never see villains as just villains.
I first met him when I lived in a small apartment at the back of a publishing house that did a twice-weekly local newspaper. I worked as an editor and writer in the back-office magazine division, and lived exactly one door away from my work. My commute was all of 10 feet.
The town was called Mammoth Lakes, and it was a summer-winter resort that offered skiing (and way too much snow-shoveling) in the winter, and hiking, camping and fishing in the summer. I can’t say whether it was the altitude, or the innate dryness of the air, but fleas were unable to survive at the 8,000 feet elevation, which made the place a paradise for dogs. Add in the limitless trails due to the fact that the town stood on the edge of the High Sierra mountain wilderness, an uncountable number of crystal-clear, ice-cold streams flowing out of those mountains and into cold, clear trout-filled lakes, and the plentiful wildlife – deer, bears, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks and lightning-fast bunnies – and it would have to be the place every good city dog dreamed of finding as his reward after death.
There are people capable of thinking in dynasties, or Great Works, but I’m sure I’m not one of them. Knowing myself from the inside as I do, I have a hard time imagining that anyone ever actually SET OUT to build a pyramid. Or that China’s Great Wall came about after a single act of decision by some one person.
But maybe it comes with practice. You start out with small projects, say a tabletop pyramid, or a Small Wall across the back of your lot. Once you learn you can complete those, you go on to larger and larger ones. Until eventually you can say “Okay, I’m ready to start a Great Wall,” and feel confident that you can cross all of China eventually. Or you start with tiny model rockets, go on to bigger and bigger ones, until eventually you graduate and say “Okay, now let’s put some human footprints on the moon.”
Yesterday Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, presented 35 Articles of Impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives.
And today I can’t find it on the mainstream media at all, anywhere. ABC, CNN, MSNBC, even the BBC has let readers down.
I have found a very brief story on Reuters, but it makes the point several times that the effort is not expected to go anywhere.
Bob Fertik, President of Democrats.com, said: “Some might question why Congressman Kucinich has done this now. My question is why 434 other Congress Members have not done it before. Despite the uncountable and unspeakable crimes this administration has committed, George Bush and Dick Cheney remain in power and immune from prosecution. Congress must impeach Bush and Cheney now – before they further abuse their power by pardoning [everyone involved] for all of their crimes.”
The Shreveport Times (writer Kristi Richie, June 7, 2008) reports:
Pornography, Harry Potter books burned at monthly meeting
About 30 people gathered for a regional revival Friday night that included a book burning as a statement to reach out to local residents.
Because nothing “reaches out” to people like a good book burning.
“It is allowed for Harry Potter to be taught in our schools, but not the Bible,” International House of Prayer pastor James Crawford said during the Shreveport Regional Unity of Faith Revival.
Manny the Mammoth, talking about Sid the Sloth, Ice Age 2: 
I’m conflicted.