Category: Odds & Ends

I’m off to Las Vegas for a conference, so I may go to Mass Sunday
at this striking-looking church (once a shrine, now the cathedral); or maybe this shrine.
Since I’m interested in Latin Masses, I checked for one, but it doesn’t appear there’s a licit T-Mass in the diocese. There used to be a 1970 Latin Mass at this shrine, when it was a chapel of Discalced Carmelite nuns, but alas for the city, the Carmelites moved to Lincoln, NE. The chapel itself looks rather nice, but I’ll have to see the sculpture out front in person to get a real sense of it: I assume it’s a recent addition, since the place became a Vietnamese shrine-parish.

Let me now sing of my friend,
my friend’s song concerning his vineyard.
I cleared myself a vineyard, on a fertile slope o’ ground;
Built a wine-press and a tower, and the choicest vines I put down;
But I went to look at harvest-time, (don’t cha know) only wild grapes I found.
So neighbors, judge between me and this vineyard of mine:
Could I have worked it any better? Why don’t it give me good wine?
I went to look for sweet grapes, but only wild grapes on the vine.
I’m gonna tear down all the fences, let the cattle trample through;
Let the sheep and goats graze on it: yes, that’s what I’m gonna do;
Tell the clouds to hold the rain back, not a single drop of dew.
So hear: the house of Is-rael is the vineyard of the Lord;
and he gave the vine of Judah all the care He could afford (which is everything, don’t cha know)
But the bloodshed and injustice means His word has been ignored.
(Oh, yeah.)

It has been revealed: Cindy Sheehan, mother of war hero Casey Sheehan, is the fraternal twin of the Prince of Wales, His Royal Highness Charles Windsor Castle. Either that, or they are siblings, at the very least. Below is the proof (with links to the original sources, lest you think I photoshopped anything):

(source)

(source)
Previous entry about Sheehan here.

From a signature on Slashdot:
“There’s no point in questioning authority if you aren’t going to listen to the answers.”

Everything gets turned into an entertainment, a media presentation, a show; even the sacred, even the dead.
Funerals used to be religious events in which one would pray for the repose of the deceased and the good of the bereaved; then it became fashionable to turn them into “memorial services” of a celebratory quality in which family and friends tell stories and jokes, and sing or listen to inspirational songs. That is, to turn them into shows presented for a human audience, rather than acts of worship offered to the divine, who deigns to grant us an audience. Is the TV tombstone part of this trend?
I’m wondering what will happen when the tech hobbyists start figuring out how to “hack” these devices and replace Aunt Becky’s Kinkadian five-minute video with a clip from MTV. Already I know what video should appear on Bill Gates’ screen.