GLASS ORGAN - BACH'S TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D-MINOR

More lovely sounds from the Glass Duo, thanks to Paul (A.).

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY FROM RICK SANTORUM

If you can take one part out, if it's not for the purpose of procreation, that's not one of the reasons you diminish this very special bond between men and women. So why can't you take other parts of it out? It becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure.

Rick's on a roll! The statement is from an interview, which is posted on YouTube. The conversation is nearly 45 minutes long. Watch if you care to. I didn't.

How would you like such thoughts thrust upon you for four years?

Read more from Charles Pierce at The Politics Blog at Esquire.

UPDATE: I watched approximately 20 minutes of the video, (It was difficult!) and Rick did, indeed, say the words above.

PONDERISMS - PART 1

1. I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

2. There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.

3. Life is sexually transmitted.

4. Healthy is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

5. The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.

6. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

7. Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?

8. Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

9· All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

10. In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

My brother-in-law sent me twenty ponderisms, but I know some of you have short attention spans, so I divided them to post in two parts.

THE FACE OF OCCUPY NEW HAMPSHIRE

Occupy New Hampshire

Every now and then, as Kathy Thorndike stood on the curb near the park where the Occupy The New Hampshire Primary encampment is located, and as she waved her signs demanding that big money be excised from our politics, a car would drive by and someone would blow their horn and a sleek young voice would tell her to get a job.

As it happens, Kathy Thorndike has a job. She's a health-care administrator overseeing a geriatric care unit near her home in the lakes region around Laconia. As it happens, her husband has a job, too. He's a contractor who built his business after starting out as a laborer and then becoming a carpenter. As it happens, her parents had jobs, too. Her father was a podiatrist, her mother a nurse. As it happens, her children have jobs, too. Two of them are nurses. One of them is a contractor. As it happens, one of her daughters is underwater on her mortgage. Another one of her children has to work overtime at two jobs in order to provide for Kathy's grandchildren. The notion that Occupy is made up of unemployable layabouts is one of the things that makes Kathy Thorndike as angry as an otherwise mild person can get. The other is what she calls the "propaganda" that Occupy has no coherent message. Her message, she says, is the facts of her own life.

"People are really struggling in the middle class," she said here on Saturday afternoon, as a man in a long red robe carrying a sign saying "Fight American Imperialism" rang a cowbell not two feet down the sidewalk. "I was raised in the middle class. I raised my children in the middle class. My children are not middle class. They're all professionals — they're nurses and carpenters — but they're not able to be middle class anymore.

"I got to stay home with my children, and we were middle class, and my husband was a laborer, for goodness sake."

What an amazing change in a generation. Nurses and carpenters are no longer assured of a place in the middle class. I'm reminded of my friend who was laid off his job in computer technology at age 62 and has not found a job three years later. He and his wife may yet lose their home. Companies are not falling over each other to hire folks in their late 50s and early 60s, even highly-skilled people with excellent references and experience. Many of the 'layabouts' are just such people as my friend.

Read more by Charles Pierce at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

I HAVEN'T DONE IT EITHER :-(

Click on the cartoon for the larger view.

From ASBO Jesus.

STORY OF THE DAY - HOSPITALITY SMILE

not sure whether to smile too much
because someone might put them on the
hospitality committee

From StoryPeople.

LOUISIANA MAN - FOR THE SAINTS

Dave Edmunds is a Welshman, but he does a damned good job with Doug Kershaw's 'Louisiana Man'.

H/T to Adrastos at First Draft.

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN: SAINTS - 45 TO LIONS - 28

The Saints did it again! Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints? Who dat?

Update from Susan Russell on Facebook:

So the Saints beat the Lions. Is that payback for that Coliseum unpleasantness back in the day?

Good one, Susan!

A COUNTRY TALE

A clergyman was walking down a country lane one warm summer day and encountered a young farmer struggling to load hay back onto a cart after it had fallen off.

"You look hot, my son," said the parson. "Why don't you rest a moment, and then I'll give you a hand."

"No, thanks," said the young man, continuing to work away. "My father wouldn't like it."

"Don't be silly," the minister said. "Everyone is entitled to a break. Come have a drink of water."

Again the young man protested that his father would be upset. Losing his patience, the clergyman said, "Your father must be a real slave driver. Tell me where I can find him and I'll give him a piece of my mind!"

"Well," replied the young farmer, "right now he's under this load of hay."


Regards,

Paul (A.)

This one really ticked my funnybone. I'm guessing Paul (A.) didn't sign off with his usual, 'Cheers', because he knew the joke would cheer me.

CARDINAL FRANCIS GEORGE APOLOGIZES (SORT OF)

From the Chicago Tribune:

Chicago's Cardinal Francis George apologized Friday for remarks aired on Christmas Day comparing the gay pride parade to the Ku Klux Klan.

"I am truly sorry for the hurt my remarks have caused," George said in an interview with the Tribune. "Particularly because we all have friends or family members who are gay and lesbian. This has evidently wounded a good number of people. I have family members myself who are gay and lesbian, so it's part of our lives. So I'm sorry for the hurt."

But is the cardinal sorry for his words?

"When I was talking, I was speaking out of fear that I have for the church's liberty and I was reaching for an analogy which was very inappropriate, for which I'm sorry," George said. "I didn't realize the impact of what I was saying. ... Sometimes fear is a bad motivation."

Come now, Cardinal George, fear for the liberty of your church? Visit the Middle East, where, in certain countries, Christians are being killed for the faith, and perhaps you'll gain a bit of perspective about the threat to your church in the US.

George said he didn't expect the public uproar over the comments.

Well, now he knows.

Photo from Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Oops, I forgot. H/T to Ann Fontaine at The Lead.