I try in this blog to give information that goes beyond the headlines, and as best I can I list people who are running for President in 2008. If you get most of your information from the mainstream media you might think there are only 3 Democrats (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama) and 4 Republicans (Rudy Guliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Fred Thompson) running but there are actually more. A few months ago I spent the afternoon with Google looking for other candidates and came up with several, none of whom I’d heard of. A few days ago I got an email from Jason Bootie, son of John Bootie, one of the independent candidates. I’m not sure how he found this blog but he wrote to thank me for including his father in my list. Now who says people aren’t grateful anymore.

Of course, the only problem is that I looked closer at Mr. Bootie’s web page and found that he and I disagree on nearly every issue. I’m a little surprised that Jason didn’t read my page and ask me to remove the link to his father. I’m hoping after the election I can publish how many votes each candidate received.

By the way, if there is someone running for President that I’ve missed, please let me know.

Tonight I went with my father-in-law Al to a Padres game. When Nancy and I became season ticket holders we signed up for a promotion the Padres call their “Frequent Friars.” We swipe a card at each game and earn points that can be redeemed for stuff. Most of it is junk but the card is free and we go to the games anyway. Tonight I swiped my card and got a free baseball cap (to add to my extensive collection). I also got a coupon for a “Free Classic Ghirardelli Chocolate Bar” at the Ice Cream Shop on 5th Ave, with a purchase of $10 or more. The best part? It’s 7/18/2007 and the coupon expires on 7/15/2007. So if anyone has a time machine I could borrow…

This is a little macabre, but maybe I’ve become a little hardened after working with hospice. The Associated Press this morning is reporting on a story from Verviers, Belgium. It seems that Didier Charron was hosting a dinner party. He is known for his temper and a few weeks earlier his wife had asked for a divorce. After dinner was over one of the guests went downstairs to put the leftovers in the freezer and found the body of his wife and stepson there. For me this raises a few questions:

What exactly did he serve for dinner? I hope it wasn’t meatloaf.
Why did he let someone else help with the cleanup?
Didn’t anyone notice that the rest of his family wasn’t there?
And finally, what exactly is the proper thing to do when you find two bodies in somoene else’s freezer?

At this point I think Mr. Charron needs to plead guilty and throw himself on the mercy of the court. The next owner of the house should also get a new freezer.

I’m a big fan of the comic strip Dilbert and I read it as a part of my morning newspaper routine. Today’s strip was priceless and just slightly off color:

Tell the truth, haven’t we all felt like this from time to time?

In July 2005 I wrote about the Christian Exodus Movement. They are people who believe the United States has turned away from God and are planning an enclave for themselves. Almost three years ago they chose South Carolina as the place to go; the founder (Cory Burnell) was still living in California but planned to move to South Carolina in 2006 or 2007. He is now announcing that he has found a job and will move his family there next month. There are already about a dozen families who have moved and he expects another two dozen by 2008. As the Burnells plan to move out of California, I have only one question: Can I help you pack?

I put this under the “chuckling” category but I have to admit I’m roaring with laughter. There was a story in the May 18th edition of our local newspaper the San Diego Union Tribune. It seems that if you have your male dog neutered, his testicles are removed. Until now your dog would spend the rest of his life living with the recognition that the whole world could tell. Now we hear from Robert Dominguez of MCT News Service that your dog can have “testicular implants” (called “neuticles”) and nobody will be the wiser. The manufacturer claims this is will help your dog’s self esteem. They can be made from several materials and come is sizes from petite to XXL.

You know, I try to stay cynical enough to keep up but stories like this remind me that I’ve got work to do.

If you’ve been trying to sign onto this page in the last week it’s very possible that you’ve gotten an error message. The person who administers this page had a catastrophic hard disk crash and essentially had to build this page back up from scratch. I saw him last night at church and he looked fairly sleep deprived. Having said this, as I write this the page again isn’t loading correctly.

The one thing we haven’t been able to retrieve is the comments people have left. My apologies, but the function should be operating now so feel free to leave comments and feedback.

This is probably only amusing to us Catholic who remember the Baltimore Catechism but the Vatican has updated its teaching on limbo. The Church used to teach that a person had to be baptized to go to Heaven. This led to the obvious question of what happens to babies who die before they are baptized; clearly they did nothing wrong and nobody wanted to think they spent the rest of eternity in Hell alongside people who missed mass or used birth control. Out of this concern came the belief among some (though never an official teaching of the Church) that these babies went to a place called limbo. It wasn’t Heaven (and in Dante’s Inferno it was the outermost circle of Hell) but it was a place of contentment.

This was never much consolation to new parents, who didn’t have enough to worry about already, and many rushed to the church to baptize their children. Now the Vatican has caught up to many of us in believing that God isn’t interested in most of our rules and that these babies were created by the same all loving God as the rest of us. On April 20th the International Theological Commission found that “there are good reasons to hope that babies who die without being baptized go to heaven.” About time.

If you want a good laugh check out the blog of Sr. Martha Mary.