One Step Forward, Two Steps...well, definitely not forward

No, we have not abandoned you (singular), our focus has shifted to becoming a PODCAST. To round off the summer, I'm embarking on some thangs that reflect on the past two months (you know, the months with no posts).

As always, it seems we start with religion.

Over the course of this summer, Pope Benedict XVI's popeship has come to the attention of many. As is the case with any 21st Century religious all-knower, he has a difficult job of bridging conviction on modernity. (Just look at the Dalai Lama and scientific communism, or the Ayatollahs and the bringing back of 'sexy' or Tom Cruise and prescriptive psychiatric meds). While Scientology fights back at modernity by nominally embracing 'science', Catholicism has no hopes of such a trendy name change. Cathology? Sciencolism? Nope.

So how did the Church choose to address modernity? In anticipation of the 100th year of the production of Ford's Model T, the Vatican said: 'Hey, these cars are really catchin' on - Benny! We should say something about these horseless chariots!' Benny, never one to turn down some good advice sanctioned the release of the Ten Commandments of the Road. Unfortunately for former-Moses Charleton Heston thou shalt carry a colt-45 was not one of them. Finally the epidemic of bad Catholic driving is over. We know, for certain, that unspeakable acts in the backseat are indeed unspeakable and not to use the auto-car as an expression of vanity. Says the owner of the Pope-mobile.

So, that covers one step forward. Deal with modernity by jumping right into. Next come the ten commandments of blogging (thou shalt not covet thy neighblogger's traffic or other widgets), YouTube (thou shalt not infringe on Viacom's copyright), etc. The next is a retreat back into the familiar: exempli gratia the Return of the Latin Mass. This doesn't seem like too big a deal. Where there is a big enough group of people who understand the Latin Mass, Benny says it may be celebrated. This will not be affecting me, personally. Apparently though, a line about the Jews got everyone all up in a tizzy. The line offers a prayer on behalf of Jews, to Jesus so that he may accept them into the Kingdom, despite them not accepting Him as the Personal Lord and Saviour. This may sound offensive, but it isn't if you consider...

Benny announced that the Catholic Church is the One True Church. That's right, not only is Jesus the Only Way to Salvation (if you're following He is both the beginning, the end and the way to get from beginning to end) -- the Catholic Church is the only way to get Jesus-props. OK.This actually pissed everyone of any Christian denomination off. Insofar as they cared what the Pope of Rome had to say about whether or not their Church was "wounded" or the decrease of attendance was due to George Stephanopolous' white-white smile on Sunday morning talk. Which was not very much. If they stopped listening in the 16th Century, some Car-mandments certainly won't get their attention in 21st.

So there you go, one step forward and two steps in the dark.

Hell hath no fury like a dolphin scorned

A new month, a new tainted food scare.

What chemical or organic poison is currently out to tempt the palate? Whale meat, saturated with "alarming" levels of mercury, intended for... wait for it... Japanese schoolchildren.

Now that the panic of "Oh my God, I ate whale meat just last week!" has subsided, as this has not affected the perfect bubble that is North America, read on (and keep eating that delicious blowhole sandwich).

The Globe reports through Reuters that an assemblyman in Taiji discovered the tainted meat, where "two samples of short-finned pilot whale had mercury levels 10 to 16 times more than advised by the Health Ministry" and further samples had "10-12 times more methyl mercury than advised levels."

Contrary to what some may think, the interesting bit in this story is not that the meat was intended to be served without inspection by local authorities. Nor is it that bioaccumulation (the process of accumulation leading to progressively higher concentrations of a contaminant up through the food chain, via predators ingesting prey that have previously accumulated contaminants in their body tissue - thanks, Google, for helping me remember Grade 9 Geography) is really starting to show in ecosystems. While these do have that certain journalistic je ne sais quoi, I think I've pinpointed the real scoop.

Short-finned pilot whales are part of the dolphin family. Dolphins are highly intelligent. Dolphins are also pissed off, as penguins, previously the stuffy, tuxedoed snobs of the sea, have waddled, tap danced, and now surfed into our hearts. What happens when a highly intelligent, pissed off creature - who has access to methyl Mercury - realizes its going to be eaten by a bunch of Japanese schoolchildren that turned down Flipper AGAIN for Farce of the Penguins?

Oh, readers, I think you know.

What can you do to make sure we can enjoy delicious dolphin cousins for years to come? Firstly, if you have friended the rockhopper penguin Lovelace on facebook like I told you to, go and unfriend him right now. We don't want to make the dolphins think that we're switching over to penguin eggs because we like them better. And for that matter, if someone offers you a penguin egg, state very loudly, in the direction of the Pacific Ocean, "Oh, Christ, don't make me sick" (and take the egg ever so sneakily for an omelette).

This is all an assumption, readers, but I'm pretty sure I've uncovered the real roots to this story.

...

My back-up hunch? Sailor Mercury is behind this. She's a sailor, she's Mercury, it all makes sense.