Other

I noticed recently the banner ads on blospot.com hosted blogs
have been targeting Catholics with text based links overlaid on a graphic. Though
it was interesting to see an ad for Phenomenology,
there was also and ad for "Problems With Vatican II." I don’t think
that blogspot is targeting this ads at a general audience but it doesn’t look
like they were using cookies or other spyware to determine a viewer proned towards
Catholic blogs. They must be showing the information based on the blog being
viewed. Recently many sites have had the ads disappear at the top but they have
made up for it with some blogs having two banner ads at the top.

On the site art4god are
these pictures for sale by Stephen S. Sawyer.

• Jesus
  in boxing ring
• Jesus
  with tattoo
• Fire
  dancer Jesus

Fistgate IV will be held again on March 15 to teach teenagers
how to play with the sexual organs of other students.

The first Fistgate was in 2000 and caused waves of protests
from parents and others. It was exposed by the Parents Rights Coalition which
taped part of the scandal so that people would finally understand what was happening,
and by MassNews which reported it.

The homosexual community has said that its agenda was badly
damaged by the scandal. It was almost unable to find a location for the event
in 2001, but Tufts University finally did let them use its facilities again.

The sponsor of the event, GLSEN, an acronym for Gay, Lesbian
and Straight Education Network, says that the purpose of Fistgate is to teach
safety and respect. But the event that was taped in 2000 went on for 55 minutes
about explicit forms of homosexual sex, including thrusting your fist into another’s
rectum, before anything was even mentioned about condoms in the last five minutes.
[Full
Article]

For Lent I will continue blogging as a penance for others.
So be prepared for more bad puns during this season, for after all Lent is a
punitential season.

Ash Wednesday must be a Cultural Day of Obligation. Every
Ash Wednesday Mass that I have attended (which has only been since 1998) has
always been full and overflowing with people, unlike real Holy Days of Obligation
like the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. I am not quite sure what brings people
to this Mass at the start of Lent and not to other holy days. Is it the ashes
or more of a Catholic Cultural phenomenon? If it is the sacramental drawing
of the cross on the forehead with ashes then maybe we could have face painting
on All Saints Day to draw more people. The Mass I attended this morning with
my wife had three priests to distribute the ashes. One of them the elder visiting
color blind brother of one of the priest at my Parish, at least I hope he was
color blind since he wore an orange stole.

I am actually looking forward for this season of Lent as
an opportunity for that continuing fine-tuning of the Christian life and too
help me prepare for that glorious celebration of Easter. I know I need to more
deeply prepare and reflect on the death and sacrifice of Christ which lead to
our redemption. I should be totally awestruck by this and not just plodding
through life. The liturgical seasons are one of the greatest gifts of the Church
to us. They help us to continue to grow and to always put forward the life of
Jesus to us. I just hope that at the end of Lent I will have moved closer to
Jesus.

If you use Movable Type and have a pernicious troll leaving comments on your weblog there is now a cool solution. Using this plugin
you can have all of the vowels automatically removed from the comments of any known troll rendering the post unreadable.

(February 26, 1:53 p.m. CST) – In the Hollywood culture
wars, Barbara Nicolosi is an army of one, a former nun turned screenwriter who
constantly urges angry believers to love the artists who so frequently mock
them.

"How many of you have complained – or been enraged
even – in the last month by something you have seen on television or in a movie
theater?" she asked a recent audience in Los Angeles.

Hundreds of hands went up.

Nicolosi gently pounced: "Now, how many of you,
when you saw that something on the screen that offended you, paused and said
a prayer for the filmmakers or producers behind that production?" Two or
three hands were raised – slowly.

This is part of the problem, she said. The entertainment
industry needs diversity. It needs new talent, viewpoints, passion and stories.
But a creative sea change will not occur until churches grasp Hollywood’s importance
in American and global culture and – yes – even begin praying about it.

Most of the time, Nicolosi speaks to flocks of evangelicals
on behalf of a national educational project she leads called Act One: Writing
for Hollywood. But on this day she was facing members of Legatus, a network
of Catholic CEOs and philanthropists.

This allowed Nicolosi to do something she said she had
long wanted to do, but lacked the right forum. Bowing her head, she asked the
Catholics gathered before her to focus on the Hollywood community and then join
her as she said: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed
art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. …"
[Full
Story]

I also highly recommend her blog Church
of the Masses, even with her being a Lord of the Rings Movie heretic. I
enthusiastically support her ideas of Christians being involved in the culture
and the arts by contributing high quality ideas and material. There is too much
smarmy Christian dreck out there that is not high quality and only make us look
like uneducated fools. I think there is too much self inflicted segregation
in the Christian community with Christian music, books, etc. where we are copying
the secular world but with less artistic ability. The word Pharisee means separate
and we have also become Pharisees by separating ourselves from the culture instead
of being the yeast that would make the whole lump rise.

To join in with others in St. Blogs I will post my own list of possible future
saints and favorite saints. These are in no particular order since I don’t really
like subjectively determining a number one and so forth. As you will see my
biases are towards Carmelites and Americans.

Future Saints

• Jeff Miller – now you might be thinking what arrogance, what overwhelming
  pride. I never expect to be canonized (this blog would really make sure of
  that) and raised to the altar but every person who makes it to heaven is a
  saint. I think that everyone should put themselves on a list of future saints
  since that should be everyone’s preeminent goal. Leon Bloy said "there�s
  only one tragedy, not to be a saint." If I persevere I wouldn’t be surprised
  to spend so long in purgatory that they name a room in honor of me. They could
  tell newer residence to have hope and use me as an example.
• Blessed Titus
  Brandsma
• Venerable
  Louis and Zelie Martin
• Venerable Solanis Casey
• Archbishop Sheen
• Blessed Kateri
  Tekakwitha
• Blessed
  Margaret of Castello
• Venerable John
  Henry Newman
• Venerable Matt Talbot
• Mother Teresa of Calcuta
• Blessed
  Jacinta and Francisco Marto
• Blessed
  Elizabeth of the Trinity
• John
  Cardinal O’Connor – I know there is no official cause yet but one day
  I hope they put forth this awesome example of a Bishop.
• Bishop James Augustine
  Healy – A cause has been started. Someone that could be so ill treated
  from racism and to go forth to become a great Bishop gets my vote. He died
  on the streets of Boston and was reputed to have said something like "Bury
  me here in the sidewalk so that people may continue to walk on me as they
  have in life."

Favorite Saints

• St. Mary
• St. Elijah
• St. Paul
• St. Teresa of Avila & St. John of the Cross
• St. Therese
• St. Francis
• St. Thomas Aquinas
• St. Bernadette
• St. Dominic
• St. Gregory the Great
• St. Athanasius
• St. Justin Martyr
• St. Catherine of Siena
• St. Edith Stein
• St. Benedict
• St. Martin De Pores
• St. Pio
• St. Athanasius – this is my favorite story about him when he was being tried
  for sorcery and for murder and cutting off their right hand to use in magical
  rites. Early in the proceeding, with a truly breath-taking disregard for
  recently established and documented truth, the "hand of Arsernius"
  was brought out for the horrified perusal of the council, along with the original
  tale of murder and sorcery involving him and Athanasius. But Athanasius was
  as resourceful as his opponents. Arsenius, never quite good enough at hiding
  himself, was ferreted out again at Tyre. Athanasius brought him to the council,
  wrapped in a cloak. He asked if those present knew Arsenius. When several
  answered that they did. Athanasius uncovered Arsenius’s face. "Is this
  the right Arsenius? Is this the man I murdered? Is this the man those people
  mutilated after his murder by cutting off his right hand? Then he pulled off
  the cloak, revealing both of Arsenius’s hands perfectly normal. "Let
  no one seek for a third hand," Athanasius concluded, with crushing irony
  "for man has received two hands from the Creator and no more." From
  the Building
  of Christendom Vol II by Warren H. Carroll

Tonga’s king has been given a date in an American court
to sue his one time court jester for $50 million.

The case, likely to offer a sensational look into the
secret goings on of the Tongan royal family, will be in the US District Court,
San Francisco, on December 1, Radio and TV Tonga reported.

Two years ago King Taufa’ahau Tupou appointed Jesse Bogdonoff,
a one-time bank clerk and latterly a leader of a Japanese Buddhist group, as
his court jester.

He also gave him control of the Tonga Trust Fund that
the king had set up in a low interest bearing account in California to hold
the proceeds of the sale of Tongan citizenship and passports to foreigners,
including then exiled Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda.

[Full
Story]

Never give a jester access to a bank account.

For decades, finicky children have been eating peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches with the crust removed. From a legal point of view, however,
the lunchbox staple was invented on a patio in Fargo, N.D., in 1995.

David Geske, who ran a packaged ice business, was entertaining
his friend Len Kretchman, a consultant. For lunch, their kids wanted peanut
butter and jelly with the bread trimmed and folded over. As they were preparing
the meal, Kristen Geske and Emily Kretchman told their husbands: "You guys
should make a sandwich with no crust."

That offhand comment spawned Incredible Uncrustables,
a sandwich the two entrepreneurs mass-produced for Midwestern schools. It also
began a long-running dispute over whether the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
went too far when it gave Geske and Kretchman the first patent on a mundane
household sandwich. [Full
Story]

Things were looking a little too good for Kevin Mitnick. In 2000, he completed a five-year prison term for computer crimes and in January, his probation restrictions were lifted. He has a new book out, The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security and he started up his own company called DefensiveThinking.com to teach corporations and the government how to secure their networks from social engineers.

Over at Zone-H.org, the hackers defacement mirror, a new web site defacement
has been recorded that appears to show that Kevin Mitnick’s own website, www.DefensiveThinking.com
has been hacked. The text of the defacement reads as follows:

welcome back to freedom mr.kevin 😉

BugBear is trying to tell u have forget to secure your box, it was fun and
easy to break into your box ;). Greetings to all the slimshaddy mpany,
50cent,Dr.Dre nah whait a minute this is eminem spech. greeting
to :bugbears,linux-master, Dkd ||, #linux architects
[Full
story][Click
here to view the mirror of the defacement at Zone-H]