Trolling for kitty

Okay, so … shake off the cobwebs, confess to a couple of slow weeks, and get on with it. I mean, you know how it goes, right? It’s an election year, politics are tiring, and I can only make so many jokes about Budweiser.

Really, you should have seen my attempt to make a joke about red and blue states. Maybe you will. If, that is, I ever finish the post.

Yeah. Talk about things getting out of hand.

And speaking of things out of hand, there comes this gem via News.com:

Saudi Arabia’s religious police have banned selling cats and dogs or exercising them in public in the Saudi capital, because of men using them as a means of making passes at women.

Othman al-Othman, head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice in Riyadh, known as the Muttawa, told the Saudi edition of al-Hayat the commission had started enforcing an old religious edict ….

…. The reason behind reinforcing the edict now was a rising fashion among some men using pets in public “to make passes on women and disturb families”, he said.

Mr Othman said the commission had instructed its offices in the capital to tell pet shops “to stop selling cats and dogs”.

One of the great challenges of diversity is the question of whether it should be self-nullifying. In other words, what respect do we owe an asshole who won’t be happy until everyone else is an asshole, too?

Good Christian people

What is the difference between superstition and religion? Is it a quantitative difference? A systematic notion? If you compile a certain number of superstitions under one label, can you call it a religion?

Often the difference is a fundamental matter as old as human association; whatever one person believes, he or she would call a religion. What their neighbor believes, though, if it does not match up, is merely superstition. The underlying theme is one of knowledge and ignorance. If you have the “right” faith, it is knowledge. If you have the “wrong” faith, it is merely superstition, the stuff of ignorant people.

Which brings us to a BBC News report from the town of Reeves, Louisiana:

Christian residents of Reeves have been complaining since the early 1960s about being given the prefix, 666 – known in the Bible as the “number of the beast”.

For the next three months, households will be able to change the first three digits of their phone numbers to 749.

Mayor Scott Walker said CenturyTel’s decision was “divine intervention”.

However, he admitted it helped that Louisiana’s two senators had also lobbied for the change with the phone company and the state Public Service Commission.

“It’s been a black eye for our town, a stigma,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s anything bad on us, just an image,” he added. “We’re good Christian people.”

I agree with Mayor Walker: the fact of the 666 prefix code certainly should not reflect poorly on the town or its residents. Unfortunately, the superstition speaks volumes. These are, after all, “good Christian people” who, apparently, are afraid of their telephones.

And I used to think the Seinfeld episode was stupid ….

They … will … believe … anything!

You know, I once actually heard a Catholic priest debunk a sighting of the Virgin Mary by pointing to a lamp. An unlikely combination of factors apparently caused the light reflected off the lamp to cast a distorted image on the wall that looked much like the Virgin.

And, yes, that was a long time ago. Probably about the time devout pilgrims were gathering to see the Virgin in the iridescence on the back of a road sign near Yakima.

Then there was the time that some of the Medjugorje witnesses came to speak at my Jesuit high school; the one thing I can remember from that day is that they were quite sincere. They really believe what they’re telling people.

And that’s well and fine. I still remember that one priest who tried to stay rational.

But this?

Nick Pisa reports for the Daily Mail:

The image, said by believers to show the Holy Father with his right hand raised in blessing, was spotted during a ceremony in Poland to mark the second anniversary of his death ….

…. Gregorz Lukasik, the Polish man who took the photographs, said: “It was only afterwards when I got home and looked at the pictures that I realised I had something.

“I showed them to my brother and sister and they, like me, were convinced the flames had formed the image of Pope John Paul II.

“I was so happy with the picture that I showed it to our local bishop who said that Pope John Paul had made many pilgrimages during his life and he was still making them in death.”

You know, I think when I was a kid, there was an episode of That’s Incredible! or Real People that featured a picture of a house burning down; the family took comfort, though, when one of the children spotted Jesus Christ standing in the doorway. It was sort of the same kind of thing you see here.

And at least this is cooler than the road sign outside Yakima.