Just for fun

Random quotes to make your Thursday better:

"Glitter is neutral; it goes with everything."
 -- Brad Bottig, The Middle

“Sex without love is an empty experience, but as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best…”
-- Unknown blogger mentioned on Bosguy

 I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple

A Zen master once said to me, "Do the opposite of whatever I tell you."
So I didn't. 

Opportunity knocks.
Karma hunts you down.

Chaos Theory is a new theory invented by scientists panicked by the thought that the public were beginning to understand the old ones.
-- Mike Barfield

100 brains missing in Texas -- Only 100?

University of Texas officials are trying to find about 100 brains preserved in formaldehyde that may include the gray matter of Charles Whitman, who went on a shooting spree from a tower at the school and killed 16 people. 

The brains, mostly those of patients of a state mental hospital, were stored at the school’s Animal Resources Center in Austin, said Timothy Schallert, a professor of neuroscience and psychology. Officials have recently discovered that about half the collection of 200 brains can’t be located, said Schallert. 

“That’s a lot of brains to store,” said Schallert, 65, who has taught at the university since 1979. “Nobody seems to know where the brains are.”

[Damien's note: All we know is that no brains are to be found in the governor's mansion, the state legislature nor the congressional delegations.]

The disappearance was first reported in a book yesterday titled “Malformed: Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital” by Adam Voorhes and Alex Hannaford. Most were acquired for use for teaching and research, said Schallert. The patients had a variety of disorders including Alzheimer’s disease. 

Schallert confirmed that Whitman’s may be among the missing organs. The former Marine was killed by police after his 1966 massacre. 

The university said in a statement today that it’s investigating the missing brains, which came into its collection about 30 years ago.

“We understand the potential scientific value of all our holdings and take our roles as stewards of them very seriously,” the university said in the statement from spokesman Gary Susswein. “We are committed to treating the brain specimens with respect and are disheartened to learn that some may be unaccounted for.” 

Source: BloombergBusinessWeek

Because you're worth it

From Neiman Marcus (who else?) for Christmas 2014:

Bespoke Fragrance from The House of Creed (Including a Fragrance Consultation and Trip to Paris)

 Image via Neiman Marcus

Price: $475,000

Description Highlights:

• “Everything from your clothing to the decor in your home suits you perfectly. Isn't it time you had a signature scent that does the same?"
• “You'll meet with sixth-generation Master Perfumer Olivier Creed to create (like kings, queens, and other prestigious clientele before you) the ultimate custom scent."
•  "While in The City of Light, you and a guest will dine with Olivier, enjoy five-star accommodations, white-glove car service, private tours, and other experiences befitting the royally amazing you."

Damien's note: According to the USDA, in 2013 it cost a family of four in the United States about $289 to eat well for a week. For the amount of this Neiman Marcus gift, you could feed 1,643 such families for one week. Or one such family for over thirty years. A frugal family of four was said to be able to eat for $146 a week. In that case, you could feed 3,253 families for a week, or one family for  62 years. But you might then never get to meet M. Greed. I mean, M. Creed.

Umm ... God's lovin' it?

Would you be more inclined to go to church if services came with a Big Mac and a side of fries? That's the idea behind McMass, a group whose goal is to put a McDonald's franchise in a church. [Click on the name for their video.]

The group, led by Paul Di Lucca, a creative director at the church branding agency Lux Dei design, has launched a page on the IndieGoGo crowdfunding site. He's looking to raise $1 million to build the first McDonald's church. 

The $1 million will go toward purchasing a franchise and construction. The group is currently looking for a church to partner with.  

"It's time for churches to engage with entrepreneurship," writes the group. "By combining a church and a McDonald's we can create a self-sustaining, community-engaged, popular church, and an unparalleled McDonald's restaurant."

Your reward for helping to bring McDonald's to a church near you? Depending on how much you donate, you could score anything from an "amen" to stickers and shirts with the hashtag #Feast4Jesus, to your name on a donor wall at the first McMass church. 

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Damien's note: I am more intrigued by the assertion in the video that three million people in the US leave the church annually. Or that 10,000 churches closed in the States in 2013. I would want to see where those stats came from and what they mean. For example, how many of the 3,000,000 who left one church simply joined another denomination? How many of those closed churches were storefront operations or had congregations of twenty or thirty people?

At any rate, the inevitable tasteless jokes are already out there:

Priest: The body of Christ.
Altar server: Do you want fries with that?

Do you want the Adam's McRib? How about an Eve's Baked Apple Pie?

What comes with the Angel Chipotle BBQ Bacon sandwich? An order of wings?

Job openings for wayward clergy

Pope Francis ordered an investigation in October of the Italian Riviera diocese of Bishop Mario Oliveri, 70, who is known for giving “second chances” to wayward priests from across the country. Reports had surfaced that, among Mario’s priests was one openly publishing nude selfies on Facebook, another caught publicly flirting with the wife of a port captain, another dismissed from a cruise ship for molesting passengers, and another revealed to have a full-body “tribal” tattoo that he had exhibited while posing with the tattoo artist in the local newspaper. The diocesean charity’s manager estimated that about half of the bishop’s 175 priests were delinquents. 

Source:Daily Telegraph (London), 10-25-2014

Damien's note: When I was in seminary myself, something I never mention, it was well-known that there were dioceses in these United States that would accept seminarians who had been thrown out of other dioceses. Often this only meant that the seminarian who had been dismissed by one diocese was having trouble keeping up his grades in graduate theology. But men who had issues with addictive behaviors could also find a welcome in places where the bishop was desperate and willing to send problem clergy off to serve in small towns or rural areas. You do the math.

Leave the leaves alone

London’s Daily Telegraph reported in November that a gardener hired by the House of Commons had spent a day pulling color-changing leaves from trees on the Westminster Palace grounds--because it would be more cost-effective than to rake them up after they fell. The gardener (whose name sounds right out of a James Bond adventure--“Annabel Honeybun”) said she had 145 trees to service. 

A local environmentalist lamented denying autumn visitors “one of the few pleasures at this time of year.” 

Miss Honeybun told The Daily Telegraph: “I am not picking leaves off the trees, I am cutting them individually down to the second bud so they keep their shape. I am doing some mini-pollarding but they do look nice after they have done. I wouldn’t pick leaves off. These are lime trees are so old and they have not been ‘pleached’ for years, so we have to keep their shape. We do it once a year. We are basically keeping them in the shape you see every summer. They have got quite shallow roots." 

Source:  [Daily Telegraph, 11-14-2014]

World AIDS Day

Today, December 1, is World AIDS Day. Whether by chance or intention, my Dictionary.com word-for-the-day is nosophopia.


Nosophobia is a specific phobia, an irrational fear of contracting a disease, from Greek νόσος nosos for "disease" (as the 1913 Webster's Dictionary put it, "morbid dread of a disease"). Primary fears of this kind are fear of contracting pulmonary tuberculosis, venereal diseases, cancer, and heart diseases.

Please note that the diseases feared are real, serious, potentially deadly. The problem is the irrational nature of the phobia, not the prudent measures taken to avoid disease.

At certain periods, we seem to contract a social nosophobia -- most recently with regard to Ebola. In the early days, nay, years of AIDS, this was the case.  

A friend who was a nurse at Boston City Hospital  in 1984 told of coming to work one day to discover all the nurses wearing masks and rubber gloves and all but HazMat suits when they went into a room that housed a young man who had been admitted the day before because of an automobile accident. When my friend asked what had happened, he was told that some of the man's visitors seemed to be gay, and so the staff assumed the victim must be gay, and they then assumed that if he was gay, he had HIV and they had to take precautions. 

Medical personnel are much at risk, of course, and prudence is to be commended. But the train of logic in this case did seem to be running the risk of derailment by excessive fear.

In 1985, I learned that a friend had contracted the virus. He died about 18 months after being diagnosed. He was the first person I knew personally to die of that sad plague. I must say that his experience was most queer at the time -- he was surrounded by loving friends, family and religious community, one that cared for him tenderly and kept him at home until he died. Almost everyone else he knew who had fallen ill had been rejected, often literally tossed out of home by family. His dying and the love that surrounded him are still a lesson to me of how to treat people.

For Kenneth and all who have gone before us, peace. For those living with the virus today, peace. For those working to find a definitive solution to the problem, peace. 

And for all those who live in fear, whether of disease or anything else, peace.