Let me open with a political note from Baltimore's own H.L. Mencken:
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
Today's Carroll County newspaper is once again filled with campaign statements and accusations. Hard to find any real news. However, there is a great piece on identity theft, some of the information of which I will be passing on to my "crime" session next month at Carroll Lutheran Village.
The main piece of advice from all people interested in your financial protection is:
Check out your Credit Reports! There are 3 credit agencies (I used to work for one of them) and you are entitled to a free report from each one every year. It would be good to stagger your requests so that you get to look at a different report periodically.. perhaps in January, May, and September.
As you know, I love the Funny Times, a newspaper consisting of cartoons, sayings, and funny pieces. I don't think they will mind my mentioning a few things in their latest issue:
Jon Winokur collects funny sayings by so-called curmudgeons:
The most notorious curmudgeon is of course, the above-mentioned H.L. Mencken. Here is something he said about religion, according to Jon:
"A church is a place where clergymen who have never been to heaven preach about it to people who will never get there."
How true! And the clergymen themselves will probably never get there either. Some of the clergymen I have been involved with over the years were just playing a game with people, as you could tell by searching through my blogs for examples. I'll just recap on one of them... a certain well-respected married Baptist preacher who sat in a rocking chair while leering obscenely at my Aunt Mary. He liked her so much that he hired her to call religious questions into his radio show anonymously (questions that he wrote himself.)
The author, Ambrose Bierce, also had something to say about religion. Here are a couple of quotes that Jon found in Mr. Bierce's famous dictionary:
"Pray, n. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single practitioner confessedly unworthy."
An example of such a prayer: (I was told, while in Virginia Beach, that this really happened.)
A hurricane was coming up the coast and it was predicted that it would hit Virginia Beach. A famous preacher got lots of people together to humbly pray that the hurricane would change its course and not hit Virginia Beach. They prayed long and hard.. and lo and behold, the hurricane miraculously did change its course and missed the city completely... However, the change caused it to instead hit another city in Virginia, with lots of damage and loss of life.
"Faith, n: Belief without evidence in what is told to one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
I attended Boston University, which is a very liberal college in Massachusetts, but which graduates bucket-loads of Doctors of Divinity each year (including Dr. Martin Luther King). How can such a liberal school entice religious folks to study there?
Well, I believe their teaching philosophy is to give Freshmen information that forces them to question their mamas' religions and become rabid atheists or agnostics. Then, as Sophomores and higher, they can learn to look more critically at the whole religious experience and choose the path they want to follow throughout their lives, or stay unaffiliated with any "faith." In other words, let's clear the plate and no longer take for absolute truth the pablum that may have been fed to us when we were kids.
I could be wrong.
Mr. Winokur has lots of other curmudgeonly written sayings that he would love to share with us if we subscribe to the Funny Times.
The newspaper also publishes the Harper's Index of facts, so you can get the flavor of Harper's Magazine without paying for the magazine, although I do recommend subscribing to this very enlightening publication. Following is one of Harper's interesting facts. I will rephrase it for those not used to the Harper's Index turn of phrase:
"The number of pubic-hair grooming injuries in the U.S. increased 5 times between 2002 and 2010."
Well, with that startling statistic, I will end today's blog entry and depart to our back deck, to sit in the sun and try to deflect that big bumble bee that terrorizes me every day. Yesterday, I bought a gigantic fly swatter and I'll try to "knock him for a loop." What does that mean?.. especially for a very fat bee? As I've mentioned many times before, I do not want to kill or hurt him in any way.. I just wish he'd go the hell away!
Bye
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