New Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Photo And Interview

Available at Empire Online. Indy's got a bazooka.

According to the article, the movie is edited, and John Williams is about to go all sorcerer's apprentice on the mutha.

R.I.P. John Edwards, 12/28/2006-1/30/30/2007

AGAINST YOU I WILL FLING MYSELF,
UNVANQUISHED AND UNYIELDING, O DEATH!

Upon The Feast Of St. John Bosco

Galavanting for God, juggling for Jesus, prestidigitizing for the Paraclete.

R.I.P. Rudy Giuliani, 2/6/2007-1-30-2008

EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY SOMETIME

I Fear The Anglicans, Even When They Bear Gifts... Wait, What's That In The Bag?

American Papist has in-depth coverage of the Archbishop of York's meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. During the meeting, the Archbishop offered the Holy Father the most powerful aid to ecumenism outside of the Holy Spirit: beer. Details here.

When The Roll Is Called Up Blogger

Just added a new blog to the roll: B-Movie Catechism. It's not for everyone, mind you; just those of you who love zombies and the Pope.

A bonnet removal to the brothers at Creative Minority Reportfor the heads up on this one. And when I say brothers, I mean actual brothers, not like the way black people use it, which is more meaningful, I think.

Let The Bodies Split The Door

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati has made national headlines by forbidding Catholic schools in Cincinnati from seeing "Bodies: The Exhibition" at the Cincinnati Museum Center:

"The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified... is unseemly and inappropriate."

What's so bad about displaying 'unclaimed' bodies obtained from a known gross human rights abusing country that has a history of arresting people for no reason and sending them to gulags, never to be heard from by their families again? 'Unclaimed,' indeed. Also 'unclaimed' is the money the Chinese medical facilities made selling these dead people, which I'm sure, if any 'claimants' inquire about, will be returned to the family so that they can pay for a dignified memorial...

I find it very interesting that there are several of these types of exhibits out there, and all of their bodies come from You Know Where.

The Space Shuttle Challenger, 22 Years Later

And I watched the whole thing happen live in Mrs. Anson's 1st grade class.

Two Job Openings

Gordon Hinckley, head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has passed on to whatever state the afterlife holds for Mormons as of 7pm yesterday. He was 97. He was considered the architect of the LDS massive public relations turnaround of the late 1980's, where he used commercials of middle school band members with braces to help people realize that Mormons have dental problems and musical urges just like everyone else.



Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Greek Orthodox Church, has died from complications due to liver cancer at the age of 69. He oversaw 15 million Greek Orthodox, 10 million of whom lived in Greece. He and John Paul II helped put Greek Orthodox/Roman Catholic relations on one of the better sets of feet that it's enjoyed since 1054. He wore awesome necklaces.

Upon The Feast Of St. Thomas Aquinas

That's quite an armload there, big fella.

In honor of his feast, here's a translation of the Dumb Ox's greatest hymn, Tantum Ergo Sacramentum:

Down in adoration falling,
Lo! The Sacred Host we hail.
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,
Newer rites of Grace prevail:
Faith for all defects supplying,
Where the feeble senses fail.

To The Everlasting Father
And The Son Who reigns on high,
With The Spirit blessed proceeding
Forth, from Each eternally,
Be salvation, honor, blessing,
Might and endless majesty. Amen.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

With the holy season of Lent coming soon, we've decided to take a simpler approach to decorating our internet home. For easier readability, we've chosen more adult color combinations, as a digital gesture symbolizing our coming-of-age. Also, we've made it easier to visit posts from regular segments, so if you're hankering for a good old fashioned dose of "Etymology 101" or some good snippets of Dr. Ian Malcolm upbraiding the genetic community, you're less clicks away from doing so. Hopefully it makes for a more enjoyable experience for you here during your brief simulated "stay" at the Apoloblogology digital storefront.

A Pre-Constantinian Obsession With A Lowercase Letter?

The ever insightful and consistently clever Mike Aquilina zings the post-enlightenment tendency to accuse Christianity of being something invented by the emperor Constantine, especially in light of the findings of some recent archaeological digs:

All this, of course, runs counter to what I learned in school, and probably to what most people learn in school today. It has, for generations, been commonplace to say that there were no crosses before Constantine. The standard current textbook in Christian archeology states flatly that there was “no place in the third century for a crucified Christ, or a symbol of divine death.”

If cruciform figures appeared in digs, they were dismissed as random scratches, mere geometric ornamentation, or later “contaminations” in early strata. The argument followed a circular logic:

1. We know there were no crosses before 300 because we’ve never found any.

2. When we seem to find crosses, we know they’re late or not really crosses, because of course there WERE no crosses before 300.

3. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I've encountered similar opposition among the goose-stepping legions of the historical-critical regime in regards to prophecy and dating biblical texts. Their logic might run:

1. Everybody knows that nobody but Orwell and Huxley can foretell events.

2. Anyone who pre-dates the Age of Reason who appears to have foretold an event (particularly in a religious text) had to have recorded that foretelling after the fact of its occurence in a retroactive futuregazing poetic style.

3. If we do find a text that could be construed as predating an event that it foretells, we have to assume that it was not talking about the event that came after it that fits that description, but an event that came before it that might share a characteristic or two with the event that happened after the writing was written, because history repeats itself in very specific ways.

Ah, the wisdom of the age.

Upon The Feast Of Sts. Timothy And Titus

Breaking in the bishoprics.

Things That Make John Wycliffe Look Harmless, Part VIII: The Crystal Cathedral Power For Life Bible

From the description:

Special features include:
Power Poles, Power Pages, Power People, Power Quotes, Power Lines, Power Prayers, and Power Tools.

a very large part of me hopes that one of the 'Power Poles' has the last name of Wojtyła. My guess is not.

RIP Dennis Kucinich, 12/12/2006-1/25/2008

CAST A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH
HORSEMEN, PASS BY!

Upon The Feast Of The Conversion Of St. Paul

The stoner who saw the light.

R.I.P. Fred Thompson, 9/6/2007-1/22/2008

A FRIEND TO HONESTY AND A FOE TO CRIME

List Of Awesome: Stephen Colbert Is Quicker Than You

...and can get away with saying things that you could never say. For instance, The WORD provides this ephemeral moment of glee:

On Monday’s show, Stephen was talking to the governor of South Carolina about the confederate flag that flies outside the statehouse and whether it represents slavery.

The governor said, “It’s like the crucifix. It doesn’t have Jesus on it, but for alot of folks….” and Stephen jumped in with, “Mine does.” And the governor said, “It does?!!” Stephen laughed and said, “I’m a Catholic. Biggest difference. Except for the pope. And that Protestants are heretics.”

It doesn't matter if you agree with Stephen Colbert. You are required to laugh.

Mitt Romney Finally Becomes Entertaining

Or extraordinary bold. Or maybe naive. Let us know whether you're moved to laughter or tears.

Doff o' the cap to Creative Minority Report.

Upon The Feast Of St. Francis De Sales

“Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.”

Patron saint of Cincinnati, ora pro nobis!

The "Big Brain" Visits The "Big Heads"

Aspiring interplanetary traveller Steven Hawking decided to keep his latest vacation terrestrial, visiting Easter Island, which is pretty much the only Chilean imperialist venture ever. Said Hawking's Chilean host for the visit, Dr. Claudio Bunster,

"Stephen has always been fearless, both intellectually and physically."

Fearless is right. I would hate to get up close to those statues, because, man, they're an unsolved mystery. Who wants to have a one-on-one with a stone guardian of an uninhabited isle? You're on your own, Hawking.

Upon The Feast Of St. Vincent Of Saragossa

Branded for bearing Bible bits before the Bible was a book.

Mike Huckabee In The Words Of Stephen Baldwin

Stephen Baldwin has followed the example of Chuck Norris and endorsed Republican Mike Huckabee for president. Upon hearing this, a thousand hardcore Christian skaters who weren't going to show up at the voting booths anyway finally exhaled. When asked about why he was throwing his hat in Huckabee's ring, Baldwin said that Huckabee's platform was especially relevant to today's cultural malaise because:

"a big part of what's wrong with the country is morals and values and things like that."

I have a theory. That theory is that Mike Huckabee isn't actually running for president. I have no idea what he's actually doing, but I think that on some level, it's pure genius. If you can get Stephen Baldwin, Chuck Norris, and John Hagee to think you're awesome, you've accomplished something far more hilarious than the presidency. I really hope Huckabee sticks this race out, because he remains for me an evergreen source of comedic brilliance.

CNN Gets What's Been Coming To Them

In an article published yesterday on CNN.com titled "Race or Gender?", CNN made the classic big-city media ivory tower mistake of looking at all the people on the ground and putting them in little mental boxes to ship to the doorsteps of various presidential candidates. The premise of the article was that black women were in a really tough position in the primaries, because they would be stuck between choosing between their race or their gender (a problem, I'm sure, that would be easily solved if Condoleeza Rice were running). One snappy reader captures in special candor the correct response black women should have to such an insulting gaffe on the part of CNN:

"Duh, I'm a black woman and here I am at the voting booth. Duh, since I'm illiterate I'll pull down the lever for someone. Hm... Well, he black so I may vote for him... oh wait she a woman I may vote for her... What Ise gon' do? Oh lordy!"

Perhaps this will be a wake up call to Democrats, who have abused the black and female vote the way Republicans have abused the Christian one. Wait a second, what are you supposed to do if you're black, female, and Christian?

G.K. Chesterton On The Presidential Primaries

From the American Chesterton Society via Fr. Rob Jack:

"Even a political democracy would . . . be a little more practical if people prepared for the general Election as they did for the Eucharistic Congress, with prayer and penance rather than publicity and lies."

Some things never change. One of those is the perennial applicability of the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton.

Upon The Feast Of St. Agnes

"All-powerful and ever-living God, You choose the weak in this world to confound the powerful. When we celebrate the memory of Saint Agnes, may we like her remain constant in our faith. Amen."

I Will Not Soon Tire Of This

Because I love Phil Collins. And candy. And gorillas.

Upon The Feast Of St. Antony Of The Desert

"He gave himself up to the ascetic life, not far from his own home. He did manual work because he had heard the words: "If anyone will not work, do not let him eat." He spent some of his earnings on bread and the rest he gave to the poor."

from the Life of Antony by St. Athanasius

And I Thought I Was Cool For Dancing To Prince

You have to watch the whole thing. Tip of the hat to Fr. Rob Jack.

Quote Of The Day

"In many ways, the typical Evangelical Protestant and conservative Catholic exhibits the virtue of tolerance in a much grander sense than the liberal religionist who thinks that no religions are true. For it is only when you believe that you are right and others wrong that the virtues of graciousness and respect become real, manly, virtues. The liberal religionist is like a man without genitals bragging of his chastity."

-Francis Beckwith

Boba Fett Confirmed For Star Wars TV Series

This, according to ign.com. This means the upcoming series will either be very awesome, or very lame. We cross our fingers, and hope the whole thing will be dealt with by George Lucas' minions rather than George Lucas himself.

What To Do With Lots Of Candy And Restless Tolkienite Tendencies

Someone made a gingerbread version of the Battle of Pellenor Fields, complete with a white tree of Gondor made out of yogurt-covered pretzels and a dead licorice-rope Nazgul. Pretty amazing.

Last year, he did the same thing with Helm's Deep. Who needs employment?

Tip of the hat to Mark Shea.

W.H. Auden On The End Of The Christmas Season

"Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension at the thought
Of Lent and Good Friday which cannot, after all, now
Be very far off. But, for the time being, here we all are,
Back in the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid's geometry
And Newton's mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.
It seems to have shrunk during the holidays. The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
And craving the sensation but ignoring the cause,
We look round for something, no matter what, to inhibit
Our self-reflection, and the obvious thing for that purpose
Would be some great suffering. So, once we have met the Son,
We are tempted ever after to pray to the Father;
"Lead us into temptation and evil for our sake."
They will come, all right, don't worry; probably in a form
That we do not expect, and certainly with a force
More dreadful than we can imagine. In the meantime
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. The happy morning is over,
The night of agony still to come; the time is noon:
When the Spirit must practice his scales of rejoicing
Without even a hostile audience, and the Soul endure
A silence that is neither for nor against her faith
That God's Will will be done, That, in spite of her prayers,
God will cheat no one, not even the world of its triumph."

-- W. H. Auden

There's No Such Thing As An Evangelical?

The often self-aggrandizing waterworks of Sojourners' Jim Wallis tend to grate on my every last nerve. However, a recently written article of his speaks quite well to the foolishness of the media's construction of this mysterious thing called "Evangelicalism:"

You might conclude that the media still just doesn't understand much about religion and the enormous changes taking place among evangelicals in particular...(w)ill the media celebrities ever really listen to the American people or just tell us how we are going to vote?

I remember a conversation during the past year wherein we came to the conclusion that there was no such thing as Evangelicalism except in the eyes of social scientists. The blatant misuse of the term by anti-religious (and sometimes even Catholic) pundits only serves to continue to falsely unify a group that becomes more decentralized by the minute.

Merry Christmas From Stephen Colbert

Yes, liturgically speaking, it's still Christmas. Tip of the hat to The WORD: A Colbert Blog for Catholic It-Getters.

Fr. James Martin Versus The View

In yet another bigoted and ill-informed cackle session, The View's Joy Behar said the following things about members of a religion who probably won't blow them up:

"I have a theory that you can't find any saints any more because of psycho-tropic medication. I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn't have any thorazine to calm them down. [laughter] Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can't find a saint any more."

In much more charitable fashion than I myself could probably ever summon, Fr. James Martin, S.J., from America Magazine goes line by line through the ignorance with Aquinas-style reasoned rebuttals. I commend his charity and his clarity, but I would warn him using the words of a wise former roommate: arguing with these kinds of people is like wrestling with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig likes it.

This Day In History

On January 12, 1967, seventy-three year old psychology professor James Bedford became the first person to have himself cryogenically frozen in the hopes of being reanimated once reanimating technology became available. In the cryonics community, January 12 is celebrated as "Bedford Day" in remembrance of the event. I'm not sure what goes on at a Bedford Day celebration, or how professors of cryogenics like to have a good time. I'm assuming it involves a lot of dropping of chunks of dry ice from the tops of buildings and tapping on Dr. Bedford's container to drunkenly ask what the weather's like in there.

Although Alcor, the company that froze Dr. Bedford, claims that he's in pretty good condition, they have a less reputable track record in other cases: Ted Williams' family accused them of drilling too many holes in his head prior to freezing him, and they have that big black eye from back in 1994, when one of their "clients" was poisoned just before her head was removed for storage.

In All Things, Charity

An Iraqi Archbishop of the Melkite Catholic Church will have the following to communicate to President George W. Bush during his visit to the West Bank today:

"I think that if he knew how may people have been killed because of his policies (here, in Iraq and in Afghanistan) he would be very sad," the archbishop (Elias Chacour) said, adding that he "would not hurt his feelings."

"That would not be polite to do," he added.

Here we have a model for the proper response to our multiple cultural and military evils committed over the past several years. Thank God for the charity displayed by Archbishop Chacour, even as we Americans tend to exhibit not-unsolicited-criticism of American foreign policy. Saint Maron, pray for them.

The Top Seven Christian Bashing Stories Of 2007

Christian News Wire has posted the top seven Christian bashing stories of the past ten months. To our credit, we at least covered one seventh of the news items highlighted by CNW. Whatever else our own jaded views might cause us to say about ourselves, at least we don't usually blow people up for being mean to us.

Theraider.net Joins Myspace

Our foremost source for all things Indy now has succumbed to the myspace revolution. Feel free to visit them as frequently as I do, so as to glean the most up-to-the-minute information about the single most important film of all our collective lifetimes. Throw me the idol, and I'll throw you the whip!

The Freaking Christmas Spirit (Warning! Explicit Content!)

Sometimes, the truth hurts. Other times, it helps.

Etymology 101: A Free Public Service From The Friendly Folks At Apoloblogology

Ostracism

My first guess was that this word would share some root with the ostrich, who ostracises himself by that familiar head-in-the-ground technique. Turns out I'm a bad guesser.

Turns out that "ostracism" comes from ostrakon, the Greek word for tile. The Greeks had this habit of getting together and writing on tiles the names of men deemed dangerous to the the state, and then kicking those men out of society. And while my ostrich guess was a bit off, it does turn out that the self-secluding oyster draws his name from the same root syllables.

Official Re-Endorsement: "Average Joe" Schriner For President

This post goes out to all those in the "lesser of two evils" camp, who think that it's better to vote for a pro-abort Republican than a pro-abort Democrat, or for a an anti-war Republican rather than an anti-war Democrat. The bottom line is, why vote for an evil at all? That being said, we hereby re-endorse our seminal horse for the 2008 United States presidency, the non-party bound Joe Schriner. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is a re-publishing of our interview with the only candidate for which we can vote and still get a good night's sleep:

ME: Most candidates seem to come at politics from a reactionary standpoint, while you seem to want to kill problems such as terrorism and health care at their roots. What do you consider to be the advantages of such an approach?

JOE: If you don't pull a weed out by its roots, it keeps growing back. And it's the same with societal problems. I told the Athens (OH) News that if youth grow up in dead-end poverty situations in LA, Chicago, New York... they are more apt to join: a gang. If youth grow up in dead end poverty situations in Baghdad, Kabul, Calcutta... they are more apt to join: a terrorist cell. So, ultimately, alleviating a good deal of terrorism at its roots means a redistribution of wealth to end poverty worldwide.

ME: You ran in 2000 and 2004, but didn’t make it into the White House. Having lost the electoral college the past two presidential votes, what motivates you to continue to run for the 2008 presidency?

JOE: Running for president is an excellent way to get a message out. Various parts of our message have appeared in some 1,700 newspapers, 175 regional network news shows, a good deal of radio, college talks, church talks... We are planting seeds and changing mind sets about social justice, environmental stewardship, healthy families. On health care, for instance, we talk about a hospital we researched in Grand Junction, Colorado, called the Marillac Clinic. It is staffed by volunteer doctors, volunteer nurses and volunteer community members who do paper work and janitorial work. It serves all those who don't have health care insurance in Grand Junction. If someone hears me talk about this on a radio show and volunteers at a local clinic (or starts a non-profit clinic like Marillac), we get a policy enacted long before we ever get to D.C. Also on the more existential side, you mention we "lost" the last two presidential elections. Question: If a candidate has the best platform for where the nation needs to go, but isn't elected: Did he/she lose, or did the country lose?

ME: Your van logged nearly 40,000 miles during the 2004 campaign, and will probably log that many or more miles campaigning for 2008. Are there any plans for a new mode of transportation on the drawing board, or do you intend to ride the current one until it passes on to vehicular glory?

JOE: Our platform calls for extreme conservation of resources on all levels. This includes meticulously taking care of one's vehicle in the midst of our "throw-away" mentality (during an interview with a professor who works with the Alternative Vehicles Department at Bowling Green State University, I learned it often takes more fossil fuel to manufacture a vehicle than the same vehicle will burn during its lifetime.) One of our campaign vehicles is 35 years old, the other is 33 years old. Not only will we keep them up and running for the duration [of the campaign]; they will, someday, be in the "Average Joe" Presidential Library.

ME: You come from a Scrabble family, much like myself. Currently, the running score after just over one year of marriage has myself with 31 wins and my wife with 10. Do you keep a running Scrabble tally within your own family, and if so, who is the familial champion?

JOE: I hav nevr beat my wif at skrable.

To quote the venerable knight who confronts Indiana Jones during the grail selection process, when it comes to political candidates, we all must "choose, but choose wisely." In our own martyr-preferential opinion, we once again "choose" Joe Schriner.

Would you rather be less wrong, or not wrong at all? You must vote to complain, and you can't complain if you empower a potentially evil regime. Therefore, vote for Joe, and save yourself a sleepless night or two.

Stephen Baldwin In The Words Of Donald Trump

"I thought he was a flake and he's not a flake."

A Face Like The Face Of Robert Tilton Without The Horns, Part VIII

Prominent Scientists Have Obviously Not Been Reading Brave New World, 1984, Or The Giver

In the hysterical irrational approach we've come to expect from the wacky end of the environmental movement comes this suggestion from an editorial in The Oregonian on how to avert global crisis:

"Just as vaccinations are mandatory for the world's most dreaded diseases, we must now have mandatory worldwide birth control until humans, in excessive numbers, are no longer a threat to our planet's health. An analogy: When parasites infest an animal until it dies they simply find another host. Like blind fools, we're doing the same thing to our planet with overpopulation, which, like a biblical plague, is consuming and contaminating all of our life-support systems at an alarming rate.

Sounds like someone's reading from the Chinese manual on population regulation.

The rich nations are engorged, the poor nations are starving. The problem is not now, nor has ever been, nor will be very soon, a lack of resources. The problem continues to be wanton waste and excessive consumption by the wealthy at the expense of the impoverished and the producing classes. Fix that one, and then we'll draw straws to see who has to undergo forced sterilization. My guess is it won't be the rich.

Didn't I Eat You Already?

According to the Washington Post, the FDA is millimeters away from approving the widespread sale of cloned meat and milk. Asked whether the FDA had properly evaluated the ethical implications of cloning food for consumption, the FDA's chief of veterinary medicine offered us this reassurance:

"In any case, Sundlof said, the FDA has no authority to make decisions based on ethics concerns. Nor is it inclined to call for labeling of products from clones, as some have demanded. For one thing, clonal meat or milk would be impossible to authenticate, since there is no way to distinguish them from conventional products."

Ah yes, the capable hands of the mass producers. Time to start back up my vegetable garden.

Upon The Feast Of Epiphany

Myrrhy Christmas!

Stephen Hawking Approached For Celebrity Big Brother

You can't make this stuff up. Also approached for the new season, which starts in January, was Britney Spears' ex-husband and baby daddy Kevin Federline. Sounds like the sort of conversation where I'd like to be a fly on the wall. Lucky for me, thanks to waivers and a host of camera angles, I just might get to be.

Upon The Feast Of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Riches to rags to religious order.

The Voice Of Chesterton

Tip of the hat to Carl Olson over at the Ignatius Insight blog for digging up this gem.

Stephen Hawking To Decieve An Audience Of Millions

Falsely admired Earthling betrayer Stephen Hawking will be hosting a new series of shows this summer, explaining his perfectly bosh reasons as to why the universe is the way it is, and why we should all hop into a spaceship and move to another part of it. The series is called "Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe," and, given the pretentiousness of the title, will probably establish him as a God figure for the Philip Pullmanites who currently have no one to fill that sucking void in their own paradigms.

Upon The Feast Of The Holy Name Of Jesus

Kudos to Will Cubbedge for making reparations for my continual failings in this area.