Thanksgiving Weekend: Prayers and Random Musings

Prayers of Thanksgiving: For my family: for my wife's ever-closer walk with God; for my brilliant, talented, fiesty daughters; for all that we have been given: may we use it for good and God's work; for the gifts I have been given: that I may not bury them like the guy given one Talent; for Uncle Don: that his suffering has ended; for friends and neighbors: all the grace thay have shown us; for my local church: that we will continue to follow where the Spirit leads; for the whole Visible Body: that we will continue to enjoy revivial and a renewed sense of commitment; for all this and more: thanks be to God.

Prayers General: for my Life Guard "prayer victim:" that he may continue to grow an upright young man and may get his stated wish; for our nation: that we may continue to show compassion with common sense to all those who are suffering, especially from this year's disasters; for our leaders: that they may continue to be (or come to be) guided my Your wisdom; for all of our Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, Coastguardsmen, and others in harm's way as we fight World War IV: may they be safe, continue to do good, and not hear the mewlings of mendacious, hateful cowards back home; for the mendacious, hateful cowards back home: may they see God's light; for our other enemies around the world: may they either turn from their paths and be healed, or be swiftly sent to meet the Truth face-to-face. I ask all these things in Jesus' name.

Speaking of our nation's leaders: it has now been 33 months since they sent Coalition forces into Iraq without clearly articulating the end state or strategy to the American people:


(Day by Day)

In other important news: The world's ugliest dog, Sam, has died at 14. Whoa:


How could they tell he was dead? His owner is a lady of surpassing compassion; I would not be able to sleep with such a thing under my roof. Sam looks like something out of Lovecraft (minus the tentacles on his face, of course). Needless to say, Sam had his own blog. RIP, bro. You deserve the rest.

A neighbor and friend of mine is similarly compassionate: she has "Sarah," a blind, mostly-deaf, stumbling, quivering, 73,000-year-old poodle-like thing. She adopted it from the local pound: "who else whould love such a creature?" I call her "Roomba," and delight in watching her: she lists blindly about until she walks into a wall and then turns and forges ahead until she runs into another wall, and so on. She seems quite content to continue this until someone stops her or it's time for bed. When anybody touches her, she startles so abruptly you'd think she'd popped an aneurism. I consider Sarah a microcosm of the human condition.

In news from the Glibtick community, my local "newspaper" carries this notice:

Shortly before his divestment, Rev. Alex
administers the Sacrament to Michael Jackson

Disgraced Priest Dies

Alex Sherlock, forced to resign as an active Catholic priest in the wake of sexual abuse claims against him, was a Biblical scholar and a superb fundraiser, said those who remember him fondly.

...The Rev. Charles Troncale, pastor of Church of the Holy Spirit in Montgomery and one of Sherlock's fellow seminary students four decades ago, remembered his friend as a man who excelled in the Scriptures.

Yeah, he used to rake in the cash for the local "Big Brothers" chapter. Guess in his studies of Scripture, he missed the part about not buggering little boys; that, or he took the injunction to "love the little children" a bit too literally. Perhaps in his search of the Bible, he was following W.C. Fields' advice.

Nonetheless, I'm glad folks in this town had positive things to say about him in death: "Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?"

May God have mercy on his soul.

In other religious news, the Left's Holy and Sacred Mother of Perpetual Sorrows, Cindy Sheehan, was back in Crawford Texas to celebrate the unveiling of her very own battle monument:

Crawford, Texas (November 25, 2005) – Dozens of supporters and members of national and regional media were on hand today for the dedication of the new Crawford Peace House garden and memorial to Cindy’s stand, and the troops killed in Iraq.

Dozens! Mother Sheehan held a book signing, too. As usual, there were more media than supporters attending:



Meanwhile, Canuckistan* faces a threat even more dire than Cindy Sheehan; even more terrifying than the influx of unassimilable muslims that gives the country its name. The threat: US-provoked extraterrestrial invasion and, yes, (dare I speak its name?) intergalactic war!


Yes, the Canuckistanis have discovered our secret Moonbase (code name: Moon Unit Zappa) as well as our evil Yanqui imperialist plot to shoot at ET, the Children of the Sun, and the Architects of Nazca. The aliens themselves come in peace, naturally, but the cowboy war-mongering Americans will shoot at them out of unreasoning fear and loathing, thus starting the "intergalatic war:"

OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 -- A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with “ETs.”

On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

(bow to LGF)

Let's think about this a moment. All of our physics tells us that light speed is the absolute maximum speed in the universe. Light travels at about 186,000 statute miles per second, or about 5,865,696,000,000 miles in a year (a "light year"). Our own Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across. We reside in an arm of our barred-spiral galaxy. The nearest galaxy (if we don't count the newly-found objects colliding with our own galaxy and the Magellanic clouds) is Andromeda (M31), some 2.5 million light years away.

Now, if a species can traverse these distances to visit us, there's very little chance that George Dubya Chimpler and his NASCAR-luvin' knuckle-draggin' cowhand yahoos can do very much to prevent it, is there? They're either gonna be so far beyond us in technology that even the very-enlightened Canadians will seem like insects to them, or they're gonna be real tired and cranky from having driven for so long and will likely be spoiling for a fight anyway. Either way, I don't think even the Canuckistani's tinfoil hats are going to save them if Dubya Franco-Macaque starts his war.

He's watching you, George

Monk

Update 29 Nov 05: here, by the way, is a picture of "Sarah," now officially the world's ugliest dog (courtesy of RightWingConspirator):

* A nation in North America, once known as "Canada."