Experiments

I'm working now from an internet connection that comes from one of those newfangled "stick" things. Got it the other day and am still trying to figure out the best way to use it.

Does anyone else use those things?

Is the signal notoriously bad and unreliable? Or is it just me?

I've noticed that my apartment is something of a dead zone for my mobile and that I can't use the phone at all if I'm sitting on the sofa. Standing by the kitchen sink it's better, but still tends to cut in and out.

Now I'm using the internet stick that, I think, works on the same general principle. It works great sometimes, and others it does a variety of weird things.

When it is apparently running the internet, it will open a window that says something like "Connecting to Tim" (Tim is the local server). Then a few seconds later another window will pop up and say, "Error 680, no dial tone". If you click "redial" it just goes away for a few seconds and then comes back with the same error message. If you click "cancel" it just does the same thing. While the error window is up, you can't use anything else, and it keeps coming up again and again every few seconds. There doesn't seem to be any way to turn it off.

All the while it is messing about with all that, the websites I want to open simply won't go. Other times it is as good as using an ethernet cable high speed connection. But there seems to be no way to control the quality of the signal, like right now, it is so low the Blogger window is telling me "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail. Retrying..." In a few seconds the signal will pop back up. It sometimes helps to shut off the connection and start again.

It is quite frustrating.

I am wondering if I should just take it back to the Tim store in Civitavecchia and tell them it doesn't work well enough for me and can I have something that connects to the landline.

Does anyone else use these things? Any idea how to get it to work better?

What?! Where? Lemme get my gun...

Was just enjoying this little exchange.

"Satanists are working in the Vatican"

A friend sent me this article the other day.

It is an interview with the indominable Fr. Amorth by Il Foglio. He says, in a nutshell, "There are satanists in the Vatican Curia".

Satanists in the Vatican? "Yes, even in the Vatican there are members of satanic cults."

Who is involved? These simple priests or laity? "There are priests, monsignors and even cardinals."

Forgive me, Father Gabriel, but how do you know? "I know from people that I have been able to report because they had no way of knowing directly. And it's 'confession' several times by the devil himself under obedience in the exorcisms.

Is the Pope informed? "Of course he was informed!"

Of course, my response to my friend was exactly what you're thinking: "Well, duh!"

"Flash! Ocean discovered to be very large and filled with water!"



But wait!

Not every one is yawning and switching over to see the Onion's latest funny video about orangutans or Sarah Palin.

Apparently some are shocked. Some are even "beyond shocked", (and apparently, not just for laughs).

Others, however, are outraged. Some are saying what a horrible thing it is to dare to malign the wonderful "edifying and virtuous" collection of prelates we have in the glorious post-JPII Catholic Church. In fact, some have said that saying such a thing is uncharitable, scandal-mongering ...

...divisive.

Fr. Jose Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Spanish priest and theologian who specializes in demonology and is now studying for his doctorate of theology in Rome, responded to Fr. Amorth's assertions on March 1.

After reading reports of Fr. Amorth's accusations pointing a finger at members of the clergy, including cardinals [Oh no! not the great and glorious college of cardinals! Why, it can't be!], Fr. Fortea declared that it is a "duty of justice" to speak out in their defense.

Noting that some prelates "are more spiritual and others more earthly, some more virtuous and others more human," he wrote on his blog, "from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of Satanic sects is an unacceptable distance."

I'm sure it is. Quite unacceptable.

Apparently, the current crop of cardinals is the most virtuous the Catholic Church has ever seen.

"Our College of Cardinals, if we compare it with past centuries is the most edifying and virtuous that history has ever known. One would have to go back to the epoch of the Roman Empire to find a body of electors so distanced from all earthly pretension as the current one is."

Well. We've been told.

It all made me think of an amusing game.

A quiz, actually, "How to tell if you're a Trad-Catholic or a Neo-Con Catholic".

A little while ago, someone poked Mark Shea's anti-Trad button and he went all wiggy, as he does, flailing and spitting and doing his usual apoplectic head-spinning Shea thing. It was all very amusing.

What seemed to set him off this time was the assertion by the Trads that he is a "neo-con".

"Wot?!Wot?!Wot?! I don't even know what that means!

I'M JUST A CATHOLIC, dammit, and anyone making such unnecessary distinctions is just plain...

...divisive..."

So, I've been trying to think of ways to help him out.


Quiz: "How to tell if you're a Trad-Catholic or a Neo-Con Catholic"

How do you respond to the following assertion?

"There are satanists in the Vatican curia"

1) "That's an outrageous accusation! The Catholic Church is the last bastion of righteousness in the world. There is nothing whatever going wrong in the Vatican, and all the problems in the Church stem from inexplicably bad individual bishops that are connected in no way to the Curia.

...and our Pope, John Paul the Great, is the very mouthpiece of God on earth..."

...



"Oooo, wait, I meant the new guy."



2) "Well, Duh. Where have you been?"

Getcher Bloggie Brollies out...

there's been a Binky-burst.

And he linked to me. Twice!

At least someone out there still loves me...

Yes, it's true

Canadians are actually all hockey nuts.

Stereotypes are usually really just truths.

I've never had to give Winnie a pill yet,

But if it is anything like what we go through when I have to clip her claws...



H/T to the Carolina Canonball

Khyra Ishaq

Khyra Ishaq, who weighed just 2st 9lb (16.8kg), was said by a paramedic to be like a concentration camp victim when she was finally rescued from her home. She later died of an infection that was complicated by her condition.

I was just reading up on the prosecution's case against her mother.

He also said that just because Khyra had died of an infection it did not mean that there had not been a murder. "The fact she ultimately died of an infection is really neither here nor there. The cause of her death was the physical state that she was in. In a nutshell, their (position) is exactly the same as anyone who kept a prisoner and set out to starve them to the point where their life is at risk.

It’s just as much murder . . . as if they had shot, stabbed, beaten or strangled Khyra to death. It is our case that they were acting in effect jointly to do that which was done,” he said

I believe Angela Gordon was convicted last Friday of manslaughter.

Too bad the little girl wasn't already in a coma. Everyone would be hailing her mother as a tragic, tormented hero for compassionately saving her daughter from a life unworthy of life.

Or am I being overly cynical?

The good old game...

and Stompin' Tom.

Canada!

(BTW: "Bobby scores!" is a reference to the great Bobby Orr, for those of us old enough to remember the time before Gretzky.)

But still my all time favourite spectator sport...

politics.

Nigel Farage, no big charisma guy himself, has a go at the new Lord High Exalted President of the Presidency of the Imperial European High United Unification, Herman van Rompuy.

Gobs o' fun.

(thanks for the heads-up Greg...and come home soon)

More Canadian moments

He shoots! ... HE SCORES!!!

Well, I don't know what all the fuss is about...

Canada wins Gold in Hockey,

Isn't that kind of like commenting on the direction the sun is rising?



I close my eyes, and I am lying on the living room floor of my grandparents' house in front of the tv after dinner, with my chin on the heel of my hands, feet kicking back and forth while my grandfather brings the after-dinner tea tray in, cups rattling. Or I am "skating" around on the hardwood floor in sock feet, shooting an imaginary puck between the goal posts of the sofa legs.

From our on-the-spot Vancouver correspondent:

"We won, the whole neighborhood is going nuts, kids are screaming and running in the halls, fireworks are going off, the cats look confused.

...Cars are honking on Main Street, kids are running up and down the street with horns and cymbals and someone is playing Oh, Canada on a piano upstairs...Just back from downtown.

The clean up bill is going to be insane."