Pointless venting

I've removed the post. It wasn't supposed to be broadcast to all fans of JM, but was addressed to the very few people who read this blog on a regular basis who don't have anything to do with the fandom.

If you missed it, just talk to some other people in the fandom. You'll likely find one who read it and they'll explain what it was about. It was not about JM, so you're not missing any tidbit of information about him.

Ecology and gays

Pope likens “saving” gays to saving the rainforest Mon Dec 22, 8:46 am ET

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict said on Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behavior was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

“(The Church) should also protect man from the destruction of himself. A sort of ecology of man is needed,” the pontiff said in a holiday address to the Curia, the Vatican’s central administration.

“The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less.”

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality “a deviation, an irregularity, a wound.”

The pope said humanity needed to “listen to the language of creation” to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as “a destruction of God’s work.”

He also defended the Church’s right to “speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected.”

Dream knitting to music

A couple of nights ago I had a dream where I was knitting and listening to Vivaldi's Lute Concerto in D Major, specifically the Largo. I just love that piece of music. In my dream, the music was a pattern for knitted lace. Somehow the notes were instructions on when to do a knit stitch, when to do a purl, when to increase and decrease. The lace was incredibly beautiful.

This is a video of John Williams playing the whole concerto. The Largo goes from about 3:40 to 7:50 in the video. Can't you just imagine how beautiful a corresponding piece of lace would be?

Monday Movie Meme

This is from Nettl. You have to list movie favorites alphabetically choosing movie titles that start with A,B,C...and so forth. I found it was as hard to narrow down some to only one film for a letter as it was to find movies for all of them. (I really cheated on X.)

(The) Apartment
Beauty and the Beast (1947)
Casablanca
Donnie Darko
Edward Scissorhands
(La) Femme Nikita
(The) Great Escape
Harvey
Inherit the Wind
Jaws
Kolya
L. A. Confidential
(The) Maltese Falcon
North By Northwest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
(The) Purple Rose of Cairo
(The) Queen
Rebecca
Sunset Boulevard
To Kill a Mockingbird
Unforgiven
Vertigo
We're No Angels (1955, with Humphrey Bogart)
(Malcom) X (I know it's cheating, but I couldn't find another movie I'd seen that started with X)
Young Frankenstein
Zardoz

Worldwide Children's Memorial

Once again, The Compassionate Friends have organized a worldwide candlelighting in memory of children who have died from any cause at any age. This year it's on Sunday the 14th of December. Candles are lit at 7 pm local time, creating a wave of light around the world.

It doesn't look like they got Congress to declare a special day this year, but I suppose it's understandable, given everything that's going on. While it's nice to have the day officially recognized, the important thing is that people remember.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The five-day forcast:

Some nifty internet stuff

In the past couple of days I've found some new things on the 'net.

First, there is this really cool game. It's pretty and clever and not easy. It has the potential of being very addictive.

The other thing is a useful and somewhat snarky way of passing on information to someone who hasn't bothered to look things up for themselves. Use the URL
www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=
and add the search terms. So, if someone wondered if there were any sites that dealt with Mozart, you could give them the link

http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=mozart

If you have multiple words in your search, connect them with a +

http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=mozart+vienna

I think this is really cool!