nekosensei

This is the reason why I'm now good and pissed off this afternoon. The Vatican is now trying to say that the reason priests are abusing children is because of homosexuality, not celibacy. And this excerpt really takes the cake:



"VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Wednesday tried to defuse growing anger over remarks by the pope's top aide that the problem behind the pedophile priest scandals is homosexuality and not the church's celibacy requirement.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See's secretary of state, outraged gay advocacy groups, politicians and even the French government with his remarks Monday in Chile.

'Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia,' the Italian cardinal said. 'But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem.'"



Um...no...in fact, most pedophiles are not homosexuals; the majority of them are heterosexuals. And it's a known fact that many pedophiles look for jobs where they can get easy access to children. What's one of those jobs? (ding! ding! ding!) You guessed it! The priesthood!

The Catholic Church not only needs to re-think the whole celibacy requirement, but they also need to consider letting women join the priesthood too. It may not solve the problem entirely, but it would most certainly help. Once you've got more priests who are parents themselves, you'll see a whole lot less of this turning a blind eye to what one's colleagues are doing / moving offending priests from parish to parish where they can re-offend again. But of course, they're never going to open up the priesthood to women and married people. And why is that? The institution is headed by old farts who are unwilling to change. Cardinal Bertone's remarks are proof that that's exactly the case.

Oh...and never mind that priests used to be allowed to marry until, I forget...when was it? The 1000s? The reason why they stipulated that they had to remain celibate? Money, land, and more importantly power. They didn't want the children of priests inheriting their father's assets, thereby removing them from Church hands.

So yeah...blame it on the gays. That's right. What ever happened to a little saying called, "Love thy neighbor?" I guess that doesn't apply if you so happen to be gay. The bigotry of some people who claim to call themselves Christian astounds me.

Sack them. Sack them all.


(wanders off to go break things)

* doomsey called me up this morning to tell me that he scraped the side of the car on the gate while trying to pull out of our driveway. Since it's a pretty deep scratch, it needs to be fixed. It's going to cost us $650 to fix and we're going to be down to just one car for three days.

* The story about the girl whose prom got cancelled because she wanted to wear a tux and bring a female date just gets more and more disturbing. After the school cancelled the prom, the parents organized a prom themselves. Constance Miller got an invitation to the prom, but it turned out to be an alternate prom for seven people, two of which were students with learning disabilities. Meanwhile, the rest of her class attended a party elsewhere. You have *no idea* how infuriated this makes me. So fucking spiteful. Well, I guess that's Mississippi for you. Tea-bagger heaven.

* And...our insurance company's mail order is giving us the run around about filling one of doomsey's prescriptions. They're harassing our doctor by calling her numerous times to ask her for more information. And now they're calling us saying that the prescription can't be filled until they hear back from her. They pulled that shit when I was trying to get one of my prescriptions filled several years ago or so. After talking to my doctor, I called my insurance company back, told them my doctor hold told me they were harassing her, and asked them not so nicely if they were going to fill my prescription or not. After I said that, the problem got fixed promptly.

* Is it me or a people driving like jack-holes lately? I had a kid riding a bike try to Darwin Award himself on the front of my car this evening. I was waiting at a stop sign because I had to turn right and I had seen a kid riding a bike just behind me. I figured that, being a kid, he'd be more likely to blow right through the stop sign and run into my car when I turned right. So, the kid turns right. I turn right. Then, the kid abruptly veers across the street...IN FRONT OF MY CAR...turns around, and then proceeds to go down the street he was originally on. WHAT WAS HE THINKING??? Well, I had him pegged for being the type that would do something dumb, but I obviously underestimated his dumbness.

* Wow did I have a bad dream last night. A group of tea-baggers were holding a demonstration so liberals in support of health care reform decided to hold a counter-demonstration. What the liberals did not know was that some of the tea baggers came armed. A couple of nut jobs pulled out their guns and started shooting at the liberals. Before you knew it, everybody was shooting, and the end result was a blood bath with the liberals getting the worst of it because so few of them were armed. This eventually touched off a coup d'état with a far right wing group taking over the government by force. Once they had control of the country, the first thing they did was repeal the health care reform bill. At that point, I told doomsey to pick a country; we were leaving.

* It's been a gorgeous day today. It went up to 81 degrees! In April! doomsey and I celebrated it by going to the zoo, which was very crowded as a lot of other people had the same idea. It was so packed that we had a hard time even finding a parking spot! I've never seen it that bad! And not enough employees were out directing traffic either. One person told us they were talking about opening up other lots by the children's zoo, but they weren't very helpful about where exactly those lots were. She told us to head closer to the zoo itself, which we did. By sheer chance, we ran into someone else who helped fanagle us a spot on a small patch of grass. She told us that they had so many visitors today that they "had to get creative." Wild! doomsey and I went to Tropic World-- the exhibit where they keep the monkeys-- first and it was packed. Afterwards, I steered us to more of the exhibits that were outside where we would have more room.

* I took a lot of pictures today. I'm going to have to post some once I get a chance to go through them.

* My zoo membership is expiring at the end of this month, and I'm planning on renewing it when it does. I spent about fifteen dollars extra in order to get the version that lets me take a guest with; usually, I drag doomsey with me. This year, we've used it enough that we've more than recouped the money we spent on it.

* ( Cut for disgusting )

* Another amusing April Fool's joke from Think Geek. And hey! Here's a second product I want to see made: the LOST alarm clock. God I love Think Geek! (Via hellziggy)

* If You Voted for Obama, Seek Urologic Care Elsewhere’ -- There are no words. I've gotten into political debates with my doctor before-- she's close friends with my husband's family-- and I know that we don't see eye to eye on politics. I'm a liberal Democrat while she is more of a Libertarian, and she *definitely* doesn't support the health care reform bill. On the other hand, she's a smart lady and an incredible doctor so I continue to see her. I could never in a million years see her pulling something like this though. (Via doomsey)

* And we're off again. doomsey and I are going to Rock Band Night at a friend's house tonight. We're leaving a little bit late because we're going to get dinner on the way there. I think they normally serve pizza at this shindig, but doomsey can't eat it because it's Passover. We're probably going to get Mexican instead.

* People who like both Doctor Who and cats might enjoy this picture on Deviant Art. (Blame ferenpanther)

* The high school that suspended prom because a lesbian couple wanted to attend also suspended a transgender student earlier in the year. (Link swiped from rm)

* I've liked Amanda's Palmer's work and I was willing to give her a little bit of slack after the whole Evelyn Evelyn kerfluffle, but I have to say that I'm more than a little disappointed in her after reading about her latest comments. (Link swiped from rm)

* Just got back from a three-mile walk. I am beat!

* Did some more studying for German. I am so confused. When do you use auf, zur, in, im and ins? Our teacher never went over it. To go a party is auf eine Party gehen, to go to work is zur Arbeit gehen, and to go to the mountains is in die Berge gehen. *scratches head* Uh...no comprendo???

* Went to dinner at the in-laws' house last night. almeda managed to get them hooked on ancestry.com. I'm tempted to get a fourteen day trial, but I'd have to sit down with my parents first and get information about when my grandparents and great-grandparents were born and such. I'm not sure I want to buy membership though. It's too fricking expensive. A minimum of twelve bucks a month? I'll pass.

* This Clip Is Proof That Birds Are Secretly Composers -- That is really neat! (Swiped from bottledgoose)

* This video, called "Epilepsy Dancing," is based on temporal lobe epilepsy in which suffers have a kind of daydream during the episode. I think it's visually stunning. Unfortunately, you have to have a YouTube account to see it; some idiots flagged it because it has OMG BOOBIES! (Link swiped from willowing)

* Someone on my friend's list is in the middle of a study abroad program in Spain and for one of her Spanish classes, she had to watch a movie based on the novel, La familia de Pascual Duarte by Camilo José Cela. In the movie, the protagonist snaps, killing a dog and horse during his break with reality. And it's not a special effect either. The director had the actor shoot a dog and stab a horse to death on screen. Let me repeat that. They killed a dog and a horse to make this movie. Now, I'm okay with people going hunting to feed themselves and their family, as long as they're using that animal's life to sustain their own, but I don't at all approve of killing animals merely to make an artistic statement. If I had been in this person's place, I would have told the professor that there was no way I could watch the movie without getting upset and, therefore, I wouldn't be coming to class that day. This is one of the rare cases where I would have taken a hit on my grade. I'm just too much of an animal lover to watch something like that. Which brings me to a poll...

[Poll #1542764]

* Raked up some of the snow mold...thatch...whatever you want to call it. And now I've got a nasty blister on one of my hands from all that raking.

* And it looks like my crocuses that I thought were M.I.A this year have finally re-appeared. Going to have to get pictures of them before the flowers fade.

* I wanted to work on turning over my garden this week, but that might get put off so I can start studying for my German midterm.

* Wow...the right-wing in this country has gone completely and utterly bat-shit insane: Sarah Palin posts about not retreating but reloading on her Facebook page and Democratic congressmen who voted for the bill are receiving more threats. I know many of us liberals were ticked off when George W. Bush was president, but were we ever this bad? *shakes head* After this, there is no way in hell you can convince me to vote a Republican for office. If I don't like the Democratic candidate, I'd rather vote Green. (Links swiped from ginmar and gehayi)

* And look what we have here. One of the douchebags who is advocating stone throwing. (Link snagged from ambitious_wench)

* California voters to decide in November whether to legalize pot -- I wonder what the chances are of this actually passing... (Many thanks to ladyfox7oaks for originally posting this)

* In Stephenville, college play featuring gay Jesus stirring emotions -- More douchebaggery. At least one of the actors in this play was disowned by his family after refusing to quit the production. So sad. (Link swiped from tx_cronopio)

* Okay...now I'm honked off by all the crap that's going down in the news. Time to call it quits and go to bed.

Random Person on Twitter: "the end of freedom for Americans. Communist and socialist takeover of America. Good job America."
Me: "So...do you think libraries are socialist? Same system...they're run by the government."
Random person: "yes."
Me: "That explains a lot."

* Yesterday it was almost 65 degrees and I was able to have the windows open for part of the day. Today, it's 33 degrees and we're expecting between one and three inches of snow. Gotta love Spring in Chicago...

* Oh yeah...headed up to Milwaukee so I can set up a character for a LARP I will be participating in. Fortunately, I'm carpooling with someone else so I won't have to do a fuck-ton of driving.

* Podcasts Podcasts Podcasts. I'm currently listening to NPR's "This American Life" as well as "Buffy Between the Lines" and "Angel Between the Lines" when it's available. Now, I'm looking for more. Anybody know of any free podcasts that you think I'd enjoy listening to?

* Back from driving up to Milwaukee. During the drive there and back, it was snowing south of the Illinois-Wisconsin border, but it wasn't snowing north of the border at all. Weird.

* Please please please let this be true. (Link swiped from doomsey)

...I forgot to hit post on this entry.

* Wow...this newspaper title is very unfortunate. Whoever wrote that one clearly didn't think it through.

* Cool...you can watch a hummingbird nest on webcam. As I type this, it looks like one of the little guys is trying to break out of his shell. I suspect there will be at least one chick by the time the sun rises tomorrow.

* By the way, does anyone so happen to know the url for this alleged webcam pointed at the bald eagle pair? I keep hearing about it...

* This is begging to be made into a macro. "Er...hey guys! How're you doing?"

* If life can thrive at intense temperatures near underwater thermal vents, I don't see why it can't also be found 600 feet below Antarctic ice. (Link swiped from ladyfox7oaks).

* So the people hosting the LARP are unable to hold the character development session at their usual place in Illinois. Now they're talking about doing it in Milwaukee or Madison on Saturday. This is very inconvenient as I'm hosting a Saint Patrick's Day dinner on Sunday for family. I suppose that, if push came to shove, I could make it if they held it in Milwaukee (and even that's going to be a bit much), but Madison is much too far for me to drive there and back in one day AND host a dinner the next day. If they hold it in Madison and I can't make it, I might ask one of my friends, who lives in the area, for help. I hope that's going to be okay with whoever is running the LARP.

* Man arrested at a Wal-mart for punching kids in the back of the head when their parents weren't looking -- That's awful! :(

* Exhausted....must....sleep...

* One of my ankles has been pissed off for the past few days, and I have no idea what I did to it. I'm going to try taking some ibuprofen and see if the pain goes away on its own. If it doesn't, I'll probably call my doctor sometime next week and see what she recommends. It sucks because I was hoping to go for a couple of walks this week (provided it's not raining) and listen to my audiobook. Now I'm thinking that maybe that isn't such a good idea. I don't want to risk making it worse.

* Ex-Toyota lawyer says documents prove company hid damaging information -- Why am I not surprised?

* And in related news, there was yet another incidence of a Prius accelerating uncontrollably this week. As a Prius owner, I have to say that this is starting to make me a little nervous. I wasn't too worried about it because I've always been told that if a car starts accelerating uncontrollably, that you should put the car in neutral and hit the brakes. Okay...that's not too hard, right? But now I'm hearing rumors that putting it in neutral doesn't always work because the Prius's neutral isn't "a true neutral." Yeesh. Don't get me wrong, I love my Prius and I think it's a fun car to drive, but now I'm starting to think that the designers were pretty stupid for not putting a big red button in the car that tells the car to shut down completely if the computer goes all wonky.

* Mississippi school sued for canceling prom over lesbian student -- Yes...sue their asses!

* Animal Suicide Sheds Light on Human Behavior -- This link showed up in my Twitter feed. Very timely. Also, if you haven't read naamah_darling's post about depression and suicide yet, do it now.

* Brooklyn Dem Felix Ortiz Wants to Ban Use of Salt in New York Restaurants -- Umm....okay. *boggles* (Via tx_cronopio)

* Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests' -- Fucking figures. And now I'm idly wondering whether a pope can be excommunicated.... (Link swiped from hakeber)

* This had better been a joke. I read this article and was speechless...absolutely speechless. I have a better suggestion. How about we take all the tea baggers, neo-conservatives, and bigots and just deport them already.... (Link swiped from genet ) [Just found out that it was a hoax. NOT FUNNY!]

* Just got a letter in the mail saying that we're going to get a letter from the Census Bureau. Well...okay then. I guess that's where my tax money is going, huh.

* Ooops. Never did post this last night before going to bed. Going to do it now.