I'm in the New York Times!

I'm so proud. Read how awesome I am in my very own New York Times bio. This is better than IMDB! Oh wait, I'm in that too. Oh, and on Hollywood.com, and...well, I just can't keep up with it all.

Inexplicably, my popularity is down 35% this week on IMDB. I guess 7 of my 20 fans must have had enough of my insatiable need to be famous. But what can I do...they're family.

Anyway, I would like to thank the Académie (française, that is. The Other One is trademarked).

And don't worry...I've already submitted the 3 missing film credits to IMDB. They assure me the diss was unintentional. I guess you have to be much more famous than I before they intentionally diss you.

Freelancing for Fun and Fame

I knew this day would come.

No one blog is broad enough in scope and target audience to contain all the wisdom I have to offer this world. So, I took the plunge and wrote my first guest post on a topic and blog very different from what you'll find here.

First, read the nice introductory send-up from my gracious host, to remind you why you like me so much.

Then, on to the main course, the highly stimulating apology on how one can in good conscience be both Mormon and Libertarian, aptly titled Mormon Libertarian: Not an oxymoron?.

Still, editors being what they are, I was asked to pick a punchier headline, so for those of you camels out there who've put on a few pounds and can no longer fit through the eye of that proverbial needle: Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy:

Latter Gay Saint overturns Luke 16:13 with new Revelation: Ye can serve both God and M(or)mon.

Here's hoping this doesn't use up my 15 minutes of fame. I'm not done basking in it!

The Literate Presidency

Mark Nickolas has consulted the Oracle of Redmond to render an objective judgment on Obama's and Bush's literacy.

While mere humans are still processing Obama's first Presidential press conference, Microsoft Word has already reached an unsurprising verdict: Obama is smarter than Dubya.

Or at least presents himself more intelligibly. In unprepared answers to reporters' questions, Obama speaks at a 10th grade level, Bush at a 7th grade level. To be fair, Obama is still talking down to us, whereas Bush was fully utilizing his English skills to their utmost. Perhaps when Obama gets more comfortable with the long-dormant intelligence and education of his audience, he will let drop more sesquipedalia. In the interim, it already gives me hope just to hear our leader speak extemporaneously on at least a high school level of written English, after the prevaricating and evasive locker room bro-speak of the previous tenant of that high office.

Or, as Henry Higgens had it, “You'll get much further with the Lord if you learn not to offend His ears.”

Mine too.

Quo vadis, Papa?

The Independent reports that Pope Benedict XVI has overturned the excommunication of four bishops ordained by the arch-conservative Society of Saint Pius X.

Who are these wayward souls so deserving of mercy? According to The Independent, three of the four are:

• Richard Williamson
  
  British bishop consecrated by schismatic French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Has said the Vatican is controlled by Satan and once declared the historical evidence was “hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers... I believe there were no gas chambers.”


• Floriano Abrahamowicz
  
  Regarded as unofficial chaplain of Italy's separatist Northern League. He told an Italian newspaper: “I know the gas chambers existed... but I don't know if anyone was killed in them. I know that, in addition to the official version, there is another version based on the observations of the first Allied technicians to enter.”


• Gerhard Maria Wagner
  
  Appointed auxiliary bishop in the Austrian city of Linz last week. In 2005 he suggested that disasters such as Hurricane Katrina were the result of “spiritual environmental pollution”. “It is surely not an accident,” he added, “that all five of New Orleans's abortion clinics... were destroyed.”

Why would the Pope rehabilitate such Holocaust-deniers? Maybe he felt the need to short up his base after the election of Obama and the decline of the Catholic Church in Europe? Maybe he's willing to sacrifice the Jews (and the moral standing of his flock) to lure back the idolaters left behind by Vatican II? Maybe he is merely isolated in his Papal Apartments by a Machiavellian Curia?

Or just maybe, the Vatican really is controlled by Satan. This explanation is the least frightening alternative, and has at least the merit of freeing Catholics from the shame of this decision. Not that His Holiness needs my advice: the Pope seems to be without shame already.