Clichés for Catholics

"You Reap What You Sow", as the saying goes. I'd like to add, "If you don't pull the weeds now, you'll get nasty foxtails later".

The Catholic Church certainly appears to have something sharp and painful lodged in it somewhere. And the pain signals have finally reached its Head - the Pope. And like a foxtail lodged so deeply in the ear of the family dog it can't be reached by normal means, a fix may require drastic action.

Like contemplating revocation of the oath of celibacy, for instance. A sure hit among the younger recruits, this may not digest well for those who've already sat out their youth in faithful obedience. But some think it necessary.

If the Pope were to ask me (hey, it's possible), I'd tell him not to worry about the celibacy thing, leave that revolution to the next Pope. Just pull weeds when you find them. And don't replant them somewhere else.

About that foxtail? I'd say cut it out and show it to the faithful - let them see the damage it caused, and promise to avoid that kind of pain for you and them in the future.

And always, always remember .... "What Goes Around, Comes Around"

Babbleocity 33: Freeze Frame

Dorian Gray reversed, in a way ...

One and Three Quarters Men - On the heels of my grousing about re-runs of TV's top comedy lacking variety, comes the news that Charlie Sheen wants out. Why? It seems he wants to focus on movies, or wants more than his current $900,000 per episode, according to speculation. Alternatively, you have to wonder if Mr. Sheen might want to bow out gracefully before being forced into hiatus due to incarceration, courtesy of the state of Colorado. But my money's on vanity. Instead of 'Two and a Half Men', Chuck Lorre's masterpiece is turning into 'Two Grumpy Old Men and a Teen'. Both Sheen and costar Jon Cryer have aged noticeably over the seasons, and the cute kid has become an awkward teenager. Maybe Charlie would rather quit before the comparisons between now and a few years ago get too embarrassing. Or maybe it is just the money.

Blade Runner on Pandora? - Just yesterday I caught 1982's 'Blade Runner' on the tube. I saw that movie when it was in theaters, and later on VHS and DVD, in both theatrical and director's cut versions. It's one movie I never tire of watching, but it's impact carries a bit of poignancy now it didn't before. Viewing again Harrison Ford's pitch-perfect performance, in Ridley Scott's masterful adaptation of Phillip K. Dick, I couldn't help but think how much we've lost our cinematic way. Will there ever be a better science fiction film? Spielberg came close but not quite with 'Minority Report', and, if 'Avatar' is the new model, then the answer is 'No'. I wonder if Harrison Ford watches Runner from time to time, and dreams of Deckard?

Me, Forever - While musing on what it might be like to grow old while your younger self is playing weekly in reruns (Charlie Sheen), or is fixed in history as a goal you may never again reach (Harrison Ford), a package arrived in the mail for me. It was a DVD of the short film in which I, a silent extra, can be seen for a brief moment. Now I will be able to grow ancient while a younger me lives on in film, mocking.

Move over Charlie and Harry, I know how you feel ...

Delivery

J___ picked at his food, then looked up and grimaced at the gray skies and fog blanketing the hills visible through the restaurant window. Ugly, he thought, quickly adding it was all too fitting a day to die. Funereal was the appropriate word, and described his mood.

No goals reached in this miserable place. Not one. The higher-ups will be on him to come back, but he already knew he would never return. It wouldn't matter to him if the fate of the world depended on it, his answer would be forever 'No'.

Besides, J___ just couldn't understand why installing 'packages' here would stave off the crisis envisioned by HQ. What earthly (or unearthly) effect could they possible have, strong enough to save the day? Too isolated and introverted - a social 'black hole'.

J___ smiled at the irony of that analogy, then shifted attention away from the grim view and back to his food, slightly less grim. If only he had a bottle of 'La Fin Du Monde' to make the food - and the view, more palatable.

All God's (or the Devil's) delivery boys need to eat ...

Call It Till You Stall It

If you happen to be a fan of Fox News, or Hannity, you probably share the view that Democrats 'cheated' in passing Health Care using political 'tricks'. Glenn Beck will likely have diagramed it for you.

It won't matter to you if those 'tricks' have been used by Republicans in the past with no fanfare, because that doesn't matter to those media pundits you admire.

Your pundits have told you, around the clock, and nearly every day since the bill passed, how fraudulent they think it is. If not fraudulent, then at least unconstitutional. Hannity, et al, will point to the dozen or so states whose Republican governors have started lawsuits challenging the bill's constitutionality.

No matter that most legal experts (even Republican ones) say the suits have no real merit, talking it up as a federal power-play against states rights pushes the right-wing buttons on freedom-loving survivalist militias everywhere. Hey-Ho, Hutaree! And if you are an O'Reilly fan, most likely your buttons got a tickling too.

Well, OK, and interesting play there, ladies and gents of the conservative press, and purse-lipped sore losers across the nation (suit-happy governors most definitely included). Let the story play out.

Will calling Health Care a fraud and unconstitutional 100 times an hour, 24/7, make people believe it so? Will touting a legal revolt in a minority of states outweigh the resolute acceptance of the majority? If Fox can make it so, it will.

Call It Till You Stall It ... from the folks who claim to be 'fair and balanced...'

Party Planning

While engaging in the ritual self-flagellation of watching Fox News, a couple of thoughts popped into my head. One was I have serious masochistic tendencies, but I've known that since I was six. The other was new: why is there a Republican Party?

I mean, I know why we USED to have a Republican Party, by why do we STILL have one? The party my father knew as the GOP he wouldn't recognize today. He'd equate the current Republican Party to the John Birch Society, or something similarly fringe and irrelevant.

And if my father took a look at the current Democratic Party, he'd see in its sub-groups the core of what he would call Republicans. People who believe in modest-sized government, fiscal responsibility, and change only when absolutely needed. Whether you call them Blue Dog Democrats, or not, these representatives seem to fill the niche handled mostly by the Republicans until the George W. Bush Administration.

I am clearly not a political expert, so I can't put my finger exactly on when the Grand Old Party changed to something darker, meaner, and more intolerant, but if pressed I'd guess it was in the months immediately after 9/11. The Republican Party learned how to play to fear. They learned all it took to win was to frighten Americans with tales of dire consequences. In the face of those tactics, Democrats - or even old-school Republicans, who preferred to legislate based on reason and compromise, were helpless.

Leveraging fear worked wonderfully for Republicans, until the middle of the second term for George W. Bush. By then, every scrap of adrenaline had been squeezed out of us citizens. Our 'fear button' had been pressed so hard and so often, it began to have little effect. We yawned and said, "Yeah, Right ..."

And then came Health Care. At virtually every point along the way, the Republicans opted out of meaningful engagement and chose the path of fear. Nurturing the idea that President Obama was a closet socialist - or worse, and that Health Care was Step One in the grand plan for abolition of our freedoms. The same group that defended George Bush's secret, unauthorized, wiretaps of private citizens; the GOP that rubber-stamped his "If the President orders it, it's not illegal" policy, claimed that an attempt to widen Health Care for more Americans was a step towards dictatorship.

It was another play on fear, the only plank left in the bare Republican political platform.

And it leaves them irrelevant. The Democrats are a broad party, politically speaking. Groups within the Dems fought hard for conservative approaches to Health Care. Democrats fought with other Democrats to remove the public option, for example. Who needs Republicans, when you have perfectly sound conservatives among the Dems?

So here's my thought: Split the Democrats by moving the Blue Dogs, Pro-Lifers, and other conservatives into a new GOP. That would leave liberals and middle-of-the roaders in the Democratic Party. Then reconstitute the current Republican Party as a smaller third party extremist group under a different name. (Or hire them all as official Fox News consultants - they are anyway.)

And thus, restore balance to the universe ...

Two and a Half Men, Times Ten (or so)

I like Chuck Lorre's sitcom 'Two and a Half Men'. I am not afraid to admit it. I've become accustomed to its charms, you might say.

And I've become used to getting a daily dose of the show. Where I live it plays in back-to-back reruns beginning at 7 pm every weekday.

The only chink in this paradise of lightweight wit is this: that local channel shows the same ten (or so) episodes over and over. In fact in might be less than ten - the relentless reruns are beginning to extinguish my ability to distinguish discrete plots, with one Charlie/Alan verbal exchange seeming much like another. Good thing they still make me laugh.

But here's what puzzles: the show's been on the air since 2003. Surely there must be more than ten (or so) episodes to rotate in syndication. Or have the owners (Mr. Lorre?) of the rights restricted the number of shows they'll allow on air? Perhaps in order to spur sales of season DVDs?

If so that's too bad. The new episodes of Two and a Half Men are OK, but are starting to suffer a bit. The characters are starting to stray from type, and with those slight but significant shifts some of the jabs and zings are beginning to fall flat.

Maybe Chuck Lorre and his staff are spending too much time on their other show, 'Big Bang Theory', which seems funnier every week, and don't have any 'juice' left over for 'Men'. Or perhaps Charlie Sheen has too many personal distractions, or Jon Cryer might be too comfortable with his new career stability. Whatever the reason, the new shows don't make up for the lack of fresher looks at gems from the back catalog.

Please Mr. Lorre, free more old shows from the dustbin and let us, your loyal (but testy) fans, out of the temporal vortex that is Two and a Half Men syndication.

Mars, Please, and Step On It!

One of the biggest obstacles to sending people to Mars is the time it takes to get there - and back. I don't know about you, but I balk at the idea of spending up to three years in space confined to a ship less roomy than a VW minibus.

But a former shuttle astronaut and current physicist, Franklin Chang-Diaz, has thought up a way to get there faster. At least his Texas-based 'Ad Astra Rocket Company', has. They've come up with a rocket called a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (or VSIMR, gotta have acronyms).

Their design uses electricity to convert a fuel like hydrogen into a very, very, hot plasma which is then ejected out nozzles, using a magnetic field to direct the flow.

Apparently this rocket can accelerate a Mars-bound vessel up to 35 miles per second (roughly 126,000 mile per hour). This speed allows a ship to reach the red planet in as little as 39 days, even given that half the time in route is needed to turn the ship around and use the engines to decelerate for Mars orbit.

A bit more than a month scrunched up in a tin condo with other humans - and with no way to get away - will still test your manners, but is less likely to lead to deep space homicide.

Cool idea, but let's not get carried away (ahem). Chang-Diaz will be testing his engine for real in 2013, but just a low-power version. Only time (and space?) will tell whether his vision will translate into the intrasystem version of a bullet train.