Eva Mendes tempts the desert dwellers! (And everybody else.)

From the pages of The King Abdullah Gazette:

The Mid-Atlantic Air Museum's 16th Annual WWII Weekend is almost here!

ABOVE: Northrop P-61 “Black Widow”


The MAAM's 16th annual World War II Weekend happens June 2, 3, and 4 in Reading, PA.

For war bird freaks, it doesn't get much better than this. Aerial demonstrations, war bird rides, you name it, they've got it.

My absolute favorite is the P-61 Black Widow night fighter the museum has been painstakingly restoring for years. When they get her airborne, she will be the only one in the world that can fly. But the planes are just the beginning.

There are huge US, Allied, and Axis encampments, mock battles, memorabilia sales, big band music, food, and WWII vets swapping war stories.

It is a wonderful way to spend a day or three with your family. Bring the kiddies and show them real live history, up close and personal.

And if you can't make it this year, it happens every year on the first weekend in June.

Ray Tomlin, Xavier University Class of 2006.

Xavier' first black basketball player receives his degree at age 72. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports:

At Xavier University, men's basketball players have developed a reputation for graduating at the end of their playing days.

Add one more: Ray Tomlin, age 72.

More than five decades after he arrived at the Evanston campus as Xavier's first African-American basketball player, Tomlin will walk in today's graduation ceremony at Cintas Center and receive a bachelor's degree in liberal arts.

Tomlin doesn't need the degree for financial reasons. A former senior lab technician at Equistar Chemicals, Tomlin's been retired since 2000.

Tomlin needs the degree to live up to the academic standards that he preaches. He needs it to feel worthy of the illustrious image by which others view him.

That need pushed Tomlin back to Xavier's campus where, for the past year-and-a-half, he worked to complete the 18 credits he needed to graduate.

"It's made me feel so much better inside," said Tomlin, who lives in Springdale. "I just can't express to you how much this means to me."

Tomlin is proud of his life. He's quick to note that his 1952 Lockland Wayne High School team was the first Ohio state champion from Cincinnati.

But he's also not shy about addressing his failures.

Tomlin flunked out of Ohio State after one year, when he was one of the best players on the freshman basketball team.

He resurfaced at Xavier in January 1954, were he majored in physical education and minored in chemistry. A year later, he was eligible to play varsity basketball. Tomlin was never a starter, but saw plenty of playing time.

By 1957, Tomlin was out of eligibility, but still 18 credits short of graduating.

Then the military came calling.

"I was out of military exemptions," he said. "Back then, if you were out of exemptions, you got drafted."

Into the Army and overseas Tomlin went. He returned to Cincinnati in 1960. He got a job as a lab technician at Procter & Gamble. Got married. Became a father.

Tomlin was busy living life. Finishing his degree was an afterthought.

In 2004, four years after he retired, Tomlin got a call from Xavier. The school wanted to know if Tomlin would be interested in speaking to the All-for-One Club, Xavier's athletic booster group.

He was a hit. He told the audience at Cintas Center before a Xavier game how Xavier had protected him from racism in the South in the 1950s, how Xavier had put him up in the finest all-black hotel in Miami, Fla., and arranged for him to stay with a black dentist when the team traveled to Birmingham, Ala.

It was a volatile time to be a black man on an all-white basketball court, and Tomlin heard racial insults anytime Xavier players traveled south of the Ohio River.

"But Xavier did everything they could to keep me out of the line of fire," Tomlin said. "Xavier made sure I was mentally and physically protected, out of harm's way. A lot of the places I got to stay at were nicer than my home back in Cincinnati."

Tomlin's words were powerful, charged with emotion and brutal truth. He got a standing ovation.

"I was in tears, because I never realized what black people had to go through," said Evendale's Deirdre Mueller, who witnessed Tomlin's speech. "How they had to stay in separate hotels and how they were abused by white people. I didn't know what his story was, and nobody in the room was expecting what he was going to say. But people were in tears. It was very moving."

Read a freakin' book, will ya, honey?

So All-for-One director Dan Cloran brought Tomlin back that season to speak at a luncheon. Same result. People loved him.

Thad Matta, then the men's basketball coach, was scheduled to speak that day, too, and carried prepared notes. Then he heard Tomlin. Matta discarded his own speech and spent 10 minutes discussing how Tomlin embodied the Xavier spirit. Later, Matta asked Tomlin to address the team.
Tomlin didn't mind speaking, but did anyone realize, he wondered, that he hadn't actually graduated from Xavier?

It was March 2, 2004, the day before Xavier played George Washington, a team that had routed XU by 21 points a month earlier.

That year marked the 50th anniversary of Tomlin's association with Xavier. Tomlin had a request for the team.

"I want you to tear George Washington apart and give it to me as a present," he said

Xavier won by 16. "Lit George Washington up," Tomlin said.

The Musketeers kept winning, all the way to the NCAA Regional Finals, and just missed making the Final Four.

Tomlin attended the postseason banquet. Former Xavier president, James E. Hoff, S.J., who would soon lose his battle with cancer, was inducted into the Xavier athletic hall of fame.

An Enquirer photographer snapped a photo of Hoff and Tomlin standing together. It ran on the front page the next day, with the words "Providing inspiration" above the photo.

"I've got that photo hanging on my wall," Tomlin said. "There I am with Father Hoff and the word 'inspiration,' and I don't even have a degree. And I'm sure Father Hoff was under the impression that I'd had a degree."

Hoff, whom Cloran said had great respect for Tomlin and how he represented Xavier, passed away three months later. By that time, Tomlin had discussed going back to get his degree with James Boothe, Xavier's department of education chairman. Boothe was a former teammate of Tomlin.

Another speaking engagement sealed Tomlin's decision.

"I was the keynote speaker at the athletics banquet, and that's a pretty prestigious thing," Tomlin said. "I'm talking about the importance of getting a degree from Xavier and what that means - I don't even have one. All these professors are up on stage with me. I look down the row; they've got all these honors and degrees. And what do I have? Nothing.

"I said, 'If you guys call me to give another speech, I'll die right there.' That's when I knew I was going back to school."

So for the past three semesters, Tomlin completed those final 18 hours on his weekends. He admits he felt a like a dinosaur at first, and his old friend, Boothe, had to teach Tomlin to type on a modern computer.

But Tomlin tried his cap and gown on the other day. He said it felt like being back in 1957.

Tomlin's son lives in California and can't make it to today's ceremony. Tomlin's wife passed away a few years ago.

But a woman Tomlin's been dating, Margaret Enoch, will be watching.

"He's got a lot of gumption," Boothe said of his longtime friend. "It wasn't easy for him to be the first black player back then, and it wasn't easy to come back and get his degree.

"I'm really proud for him. He's a great asset to Xavier."

The Theology of the Body: 111. Love Is Ever Seeking and Never Satisfied

In his General Audience of 6 June 1984, the Holy Father continued his analysis of the Song of Songs in connection with his catechesis on Theology of the Body. On the basis of a love which is both spiritual and sensual, the significance of the body is reread, and their union becomes the sign of the mutual gift of self.


Love Is Ever Seeking and Never Satisfied

At the general audience in St Peter's Square, on Wednesday morning, 6 June, Pope John Paul II continued his analysis of the Song of Songs in connection with his catechesis on the theology of human love in the divine plan.


1. Again today we will reflect on the Song of Songs, with the aim of better understanding the sacramental sign of marriage.

The truth about love, proclaimed by the Song of Songs, cannot be separated from the language of the body. The truth about love enables the same language of the body to be reread in truth. This is also the truth about the progressive approach of the spouses which increases through love. The nearness means also the initiation into the mystery of the person, without, however, implying its violation (cf. Sg 1:13-14, 16).

The truth about the increasing nearness of the spouses through love is developed in the subjective dimension "of the heart," of affection and sentiment. This dimension allows one to discover in itself the other as a gift and, in a certain sense, to "taste it" in itself (cf. Sg 2:3-6).

Through this nearness the groom more fully lives the experience of that gift which on the part of the female "I" is united with the spousal expression and meaning of the body. The man's words (cf. Sg 7:1-8) do not only contain a poetic description of his beloved, of her feminine beauty on which his senses dwell, but they speak of the gift and the self-giving of the person.

The bride knows that the groom's longing is for her and she goes to meet him with the quickness of the gift of herself (cf. Sg 7:9-13) because the love that unites them is at one and the same time of a spiritual and a sensual nature. It is also on the basis of this love that the rereading of the significance of the body in the truth comes to pass, since the man and woman must together constitute that sign of the mutual gift of self, which puts the seal on their whole life.

2. In the Song of Songs the language of the body becomes a part of the single process of the mutual attraction of the man and woman. This attraction is expressed in the frequent refrains that speak of the search that is full of nostalgia, of affectionate solicitude (cf. Sg 2:7) and of the spouses' mutual rediscovery (cf. Sg 5:2). This brings them joy and calm, and seems to lead them to a continual search. One has the impression that in meeting each other, in reaching each other, in experiencing one's nearness, they ceaselessly continue to tend toward something. They yield to the call of something that dominates the content of the moment and surpasses the limits of the eros, limits that are reread in the words of the mutual language of the body (cf. Sg 1:7-8; 2:17). This search has its interior dimension: "the heart is awake" even in sleep. This aspiration, born of love on the basis of the language of the body, is a search for integral beauty, for purity that is free of all stain. It is a search for perfection that contains, I would say, the synthesis of human beauty, beauty of soul and body.

In the Song of Songs the human eros reveals the countenance of love ever in search and, as it were, never satisfied. The echo of this restlessness runs through the strophes of the poem:

"I opened to my lover—but my lover had departed, gone.
I sought him but I did not find him;
I called to him but he did not answer me" (Sg 5:6).

"I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my lover—
What shall you tell him?
that I am faint with love" (Sg 5:9).

3. So then some strophes of the Song of Songs present the eros as the form of human love in which the energies of desire are at work. In them, the awareness or the subjective certainty of the mutual, faithful and exclusive belonging is rooted. At the same time, however, many other strophes of the poem lead us to reflect on the cause of the search and the restlessness that accompanies the awareness of belonging to each other. Is this restlessness also part of the nature of the eros? If it were, this restlessness would indicate also the need for self-control. The truth about love is expressed in the awareness of mutual belonging, the fruit of the aspiration and search for each other, and in the need for the aspiration and the search, the outcome of mutual belonging.

In this interior necessity, in this dynamic of love, there is indirectly revealed the near impossibility of one person's being appropriated and mastered by the other. The person is someone who surpasses all measures of appropriation and domination, of possession and gratification, which emerge from the same language of the body. If the groom and the bride reread this language in the full truth about the person and about love, they arrive at the ever deeper conviction that the fullness of their belonging constitutes that mutual gift in which love is revealed as "stern as death," that is, it goes to the furthest limits of the language of the body in order to exceed them. The truth about interior love and the truth about the mutual gift in a certain sense continually call the groom and the bride—through the means of expressing the mutual belonging, and even by breaking away from those means—to arrive at what constitutes the very nucleus of the gift from person to person.

Following the paths of the words marked out by the strophes of the Song of Songs, it seems that we are therefore approaching the dimension in which the eros seeks to be integrated, through still another truth about love. Centuries later, in the light of the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul of Tarsus will proclaim this truth in the words of his Letter to the Corinthians:

"Love is patient; love is kind.
Love is not jealous; it does not put on airs; it is not snobbish.
Love is never rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not prone to anger;
neither does it brood over injuries.
Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth.
There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.
Love never fails" (1 Cor 13:4-8).

Is the truth about love, expressed in the strophes of the Song of Songs, confirmed in the light of these words of Paul? In the Song we read, as an example of love, that its "jealousy" is "relentless as the nether world" (Sg 8:6). In the Pauline letter we read that "love is not jealous." What relationship do both of these expressions about love have? What relationship does the love that is "stern as death," according to the Song of Songs, have with the love that "never fails," according to the Pauline letter? We will not multiply these questions; we will not open the comparative analysis. Nevertheless, it seems that love opens up before us here in two perspectives. It is as though that in which the human eros closes its horizon is still opened, through Paul's words, to another horizon of love that speaks another language, the love that seems to emerge from another dimension of the person, and which calls, invites, to another communion. This love has been called "agape" and agape brings the eros to completion by purifying it.

So we have concluded these brief meditations on the Song of Songs, intended to further examine the theme of the language of the body. In this framework, the Song of Songs has a totally singular meaning.

There's crazy, and then there's nuts.

The always classy Philly Daily News puts it this way:

Sac attacker was AWOL from mental hospital

But seriously, folks, our mental health system has been wrecked by those claiming to be filled with compassion for the mentally ill.

A Nicetown woman who tried to tear off her husband's testicles with her bare hands Tuesday had skipped out on a four-hour pass from a mental facility the day she attacked him, her brother said yesterday.

Monica Randolph, 39, was charged with aggravated assault and related offenses for skinning the scrotum of her husband Howard, 52. His genitals suffered severe wounds that required stitching, an overnight hospital stay and a lot of morphine.

"They asked me to describe the pain between one and 10," Randolph said yesterday. "I said 20. I honestly don't think I could have gotten through this without the morphine."

Monica Randolph's brother, George Meade, said yesterday that the case is more complicated than it appears and represents a failure of the city's mental-health system.

"We have tried to get her help for years. She would pull some stunt, and they would 302 her [commit involuntarily to mental- treatment facilities] sometimes and keep her for a few days, but other times they'd send her home," said Meade, 31, of Mount Airy. "It's like you almost have to do a major crime to get help. Now my sister might get the help she needs, but more than likely she's going to prison, and that's a shame."

Randolph said his wife has never received the treatment she needed.

"It's like every six months, the people trying to help you all change," he said. "One day you go for treatment, and everyone is a stranger."

Meade, a mental-health worker at Graterford state prison, said his sister has suffered from bipolar disorder since she was about 19.

Her mental problems prompted her to drop out of Cheyney University and led to a life of paranoia, volatile relationships and criminal troubles, he said.

She tended to go off her medication when she felt better, prompting relapses that would turn her into "a monster," Meade said. Before pulverizing her husband's privates, (Read that sentence again, kiddies, and then substitute "pulverizing his wife's pudenda". It's not quite as funny, is it? - F.G.) her most serious run-in with police was in 2003, when she barricaded herself in her mother's home, he added.

She was involuntarily committed to a residential psychiatric- treatment program about a month ago, Meade said, adding that he did not know the circumstances of her placement.

Police and city mental-health officials declined to confirm Monica Randolph's psychiatric commitment, citing medical-confidentiality laws.

Her mother got permission Tuesday to take her out on a four-hour pass to get a new driver's license, Randolph said.

But when the pair stopped by her apartment, Howard Randolph said he refused to let her return to the mental facility.

That night, Monica Randolph sneaked up on her husband as he slept and grabbed his groin, ripping into his gonads with her fingernails and ending her attack only after he fled the house and locked her inside.

She told arresting officers that she attacked her husband because he was having an affair. Her frequent absences for mental-health treatment stoked her distrust in her husband, who she felt cheated on her while she was gone, Meade said.

Randolph said he had not cheated on his wife.

Meade said the couple's relationship has been marked by mutual physical abuse.

"He did not deserve what happened to him; I'm not taking my sister's back on this," Meade said. "But he is not innocent. He beat my sister up plenty of times, and my sister beat him up, too."

Howard Randolph spent yesterday recovering at home, but he denied that he had beaten his wife.

"The only time I ever hit my wife was the other day to get her to let go of my balls," he said.

Other times when they fought, he said he would just grab and hold her until she calmed down. He said he has never been arrested for abusing her.

News of his injuries prompted lively chatter on local radio stations yesterday and a flood of e-mails and phone calls to the Daily News.

Many male readers spouted outrage that such an attack on a woman wouldn't result in tongue-in-cheek headlines and double entendres.

Yep.

"The double standard in this country when it comes to sexual abuse sickens me," reader Joe Shields wrote.

Others were more appreciative.

"Your story was classic. I have forwarded it to many people. You brightened my otherwise aggravating day," wrote one male reader.

Har dee har har har.

Al Gore's dark paranoid fantasies erupt from his subconscious (sorry) yet again.

The Canton Repository: Al Gore promotes global warming movie in Cannes
The United States is emerging from a 'bubble of unreality' about the problem of global warming, former Vice President Al Gore said Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.

Please, please, please, please, please, PLEASE run for president again Mr. Gorehound.

How about that? I didn't know Ray Nagin was white.

AFP: Nagin narrowly wins re-election as New Orleans' mayor
Ray Nagin, who faced sharp criticism over his response to Hurricane Katrina, has narrowly won re-election as New Orleans' mayor, pledging to rebuild the flood-wrecked city.

Gratuitous Jennifer Love Hewitt Photos of the Day. (What? You were expecting Oprah?)

From the pages of The King Abdullah Gazette:

Fyodor recalls a creepy dream from last night.

I usually don't remember them, kiddies, but this one stuck. Some of the details are a little fuzzy...

I was walking in Tokyo with Jennifer Love Hewitt... (Sure it's a dream, but you never know...) Or maybe we were walking in L.A., surrounded by Japanese tourists...

Anyway, it seems the latest Japanese fad in dreamland is signing other people's underwear. Since I'm still a nobody even in my own dreams, it is not surprising I was asking Japanese strangers to sign my unmentionables, but Miss Love Hewitt was doing the same thing. And that's it.

I know, I know. Even my dreams are boring. Even my half-naked dreams featuring sexy Hollyweird starlets are boring.

That being said, Miss Love Hewitt, if you are even remotely intrigued, have your people call my people.


Memo To The Freudians: Keep it to yourself. Nobody cares what you believe.

Judge Johnny "Monkey Man" Jones channels Thomas Jefferson and other noted deists.

Remember ol' Jonesy, the Hanging (from his prehensile tail) Judge? Pittsburgh's other newspaper reports on his latest bit of nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah aimed at the rubes over whom he rules with impunity.

Judge in 'intelligent design' case reflects
...if only he were capable of such a thing...(heavy sigh)

CARLISLE, Pa. -- A federal judge who outlawed the teaching of "intelligent design" in science class told graduates at Dickinson College that the nation's founders saw religion as the result of personal inquiry, not church doctrine.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones gave the commencement address yesterday to 500 graduates at Dickinson College, his alma mater.

"The founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry," said Judge Jones, who was thrust into the national spotlight by last year's court fight over the teaching of evolution in the Dover school district.

WTF??? Johnny can't even spell "establishment clause", [Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"] let alone comprehend its genius (or reason his way out of a wet paper bag, for that matter). But those things don't really matter in our endarkened age (or post-enlightenment, as Jonesy might call it) because the law is what our moral and intellectual superiors say it is, not what the law itself says it is. (If you can understand the fine nuances of this particular school of ignorance, you must be Bill Clinton and should not be here.)

The founding fathers -- from school namesake John Dickinson to Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson -- were products of the Enlightenment, Judge Jones said.

"They possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason," he said.

They never met you, monkey boy. I doubt they could have even imagined a man of your particular intellect and demeanor ever becoming a stableboy, much less a judge.

"This core set of beliefs led the founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state."

The Dover School Board was attempting to free the children in its charge from indoctrination in the government sanctioned religion of neo-darwinism, which just happens to be a key part of the perverse rebel worldview of elitist establishment types like Judge Jones. Convenient, no?

Following a six-week trial last year that explored concepts in biology, theology and paleontology, Judge Jones concluded that the Dover Board of Education had violated the separation between church and state.

Intelligent design holds that living organisms are so complex they must have been created by some kind of higher being. In his ruling, Judge Jones called it "an old religious argument for the existence of God" and accused the school board of "breathtaking inanity" in trying to teach it.

Behold the bias inherent in the antique media's system:

The school board had argued that it hoped to expose students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Actually, it was a statement to be read to the kiddies saying "Darwin's not God".

The case cost the district more than $1 million in legal fees -- and cost school board members, who were turned out in November's election, their seats.

Judge Jones credited his liberal arts education at Dickinson, more than his law school years, for preparing him for what he called his "Dover moment."

Obviously, Jonesy. The law was irrelevant to you.

"It was my liberal arts education ... that provided me with the best ability to handle the rather monumental task of deciding the Dover case," he said.
Rather. Imbecile.

Why is it so easy to believe the worst of the peaceloving geniuses who enslave Iran?

The Washington Times via the World Peace Herald (!): Iranian badge law sparks outrage

Reports of Iranian plans to force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear color-coded badges in public sparked a flurry of outrage in the Bush administration and elsewhere yesterday, despite an emphatic denial by the only Jewish member of Iran's parliament.

Canada's National Post newspaper reported in yesterday's editions that a law passed Iran's parliament earlier this week that would require Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth, Christians red and Zoroastrians blue.

Iran's only Jewish member of parliament, Maurice Motammed, denied the report late yesterday, calling it a "complete fabrication" and "totally false," according to a dispatch by Agence France-Press from Tehran.

Of course, there were more than a few German Jews who urged everyone to refrain from overreacting to the Nazis...

By then, however, Iranian exiles had "confirmed" the report, and the U.S. government and world leaders had condemned Iran, some comparing the purported measure to Nazi laws that required Jews to wear Star of David insignia during the Holocaust.

Mr. Motammed said he had been present in parliament when a bill to promote "an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women" was voted on. "In the law, there is no mention of religious minorities," he said.

"This is an insult to the Iranian people and to religious minorities in Iran," he told Agence France-Presse.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the idea behind the legislation was "despicable," but added U.S. officials did not have a clear idea yet of what was in the bill.

He said reports of the measure had been circulating for months as it worked its way through Iran's legislature.

"I'm not going to try to delve too deeply into giving a definitive comment about something on which I don't have all the facts," Mr. McCormack said.

NATIONAL DOG BITE PREVENTION WEEK, MAY 21-27

I know a former mailman who believed he picked up various dogs' urine while walking across lawns and this is what provokes dogs to single out mailmen. After he began walking only on sidewalks and periodically spraying his shoes with a pet deodorizer, dogs stopped bothering him.

Postal Service asking customers to close door on dog attacks

- Many letter carriers attacked by dogs last year were victimized by pets which broke loose of their owners grip to jump through screen or glass doors. As part of its messaging to kickoff National Dog Bite Prevention Week, May 21-27, the Postal Service is asking customers to place their pets in a separate room and close the door before accepting mail at their front door.

"Dogs are protective in nature and may perceive a letter carrier handing mail to its owner as a threat," explained USPS Vice President and Consumer Advocate Delores Killette. "For the same reason, we also ask parents to instruct their children to refrain from collecting mail from our carriers in the presence of their pet."

"Last year, 3,249 letter carriers were bitten by dogs across the United States-including 82 letter carriers from the Cincinnati metro area. Thanks to our aggressive community outreach efforts with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Veterinary Medical Association, and other organizations nationwide, 71 fewer letter carriers were victimized by dog attacks last year. But even one bite is one too many."

"Safety always comes first," Killette continued. "If a letter carrier perceives an unrestrained pet as a threat, we may curtail delivery and ask the customer to pick up their mail at the Post Office. If a pet roams a wide area, this may also result in the neighbors' mail being curtailed. In these cases, we won't resume delivery until the situation is safe."

Houston postal employees suffered the most dog bites last year with 108 followed by Santa Ana, CA with 94; Indianapolis metro area, 83; Bay Valley, CA and the Cincinnati metro area with 82 bites.

The USPS is offering these tips for avoiding dog bites.


How to Avoid Being Bitten

Don't run past a dog. The dog's natural instinct is to chase and catch prey.

If a dog threatens you, don't scream. Avoid eye contact. Try to remain motionless until the dog leaves, then back away slowly until the dog is out of sight.

Don't approach a strange dog, especially one that's tethered or confined.

While letter carriers are discouraged from petting animals, people who choose to pet dogs should always let a dog see and sniff them before petting the animal.

If you believe a dog is about to attack you, try to place something between yourself and the dog, such as a backpack or a bicycle.


How to Be a Responsible Dog Owner

Obedience training can teach dogs proper behavior and help owners control their dog in any situation.

When a letter carrier comes to your home, keep your dog inside, away from the door, in another room.

Don't let your child take mail from the letter carrier in the presence of your dog. Your dog's instinct is to protect the family.

So far, these ideas are commonsensical. But the next two seem to blame the dogs and not their idiot owners.

For instance, this is one of my pet peeves. (Ha! Get it?) A properly trained dog does not need to be fixed. (Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!) And when your dog is in heat, lock it up or find a neighbor who wants puppies.

Spay or neuter your dog. Neutered dogs are less likely to bite. HSUS statistics reflect that dogs that have not been spayed or neutered are up to three times more likely to be involved in a biting incident than neutered or spayed dogs.

Dogs that haven't been properly socialized, receive little attention or handling, or are left tied up for long periods of time frequently turn into biters.

In other words, treat your dog like a pet, not a toy. And above all, don't pretend it's human.

Wait'll those Austrian bears get a load of this.

Belleville News-Democrat: SIUC braces for deer attacks against students

CARBONDALE - Tammy Emery once thought of deer as docile and darling. A chance encounter a year ago with a hard-charging Bambi changed all that.

The 31-year-old secretary was among at least seven people threatened or injured by female deer last year on Southern Illinois University Carbondale's campus, prompting the school to wage a broad public-service campaign this approaching fawning season to prevent further attacks.

Experts say the combination of instinctively protective mother deer, squeezed habitat and, in some cases, the merely curious made for a dangerous situation in a sprawling wooded patch with trails in the midst of the 20,000-student school's campus.

The message now: Keep your eyes peeled for deer, don't approach them and, if a wild-eyed deer starts bounding your way, run in the opposite direction.

"Before last year, no one really had heard of this sort of thing," said Clay Nielsen, an SIUC wildlife ecologist whose research on deer attacks following last year's incidents uncovered few other examples elsewhere. "It's unusual."

Nielsen believes different deer were responsible for the three attacks that sent Emery and at least three others to the hospital, mostly with minor injuries.

"It wasn't like it was one crazy animal," Nielsen said. But some of the attacks may have been avoided, he thinks, if those victims hadn't done an absolute no-no: moving in on a fawn to pet it.

Now with fawning season soon to peak -- last year's attacks here happened June 7-15 -- Nielsen and other campus officials are using signs, radio spots, e-mails and fliers to put out a word of caution about the deer still roaming the school's Thompson Woods. Later this month, Nielsen even will head a seminar titled "Avoiding Deer-Human Encounters of the Third Kind on Campus."

Silly Salukis.

The effort also includes a two-year study by Nielsen and other researchers to census the local deer population, pinpoint how the animals affect the campus' ecosystem and gauge what locals think of the animals. Nielsen said the study will offer no recommendations on what, if anything, to do with the deer, leaving that often-contentious issue to administrators.

Remember, all you Antlered and Antlerless Americans, you don't have to answer the census question that asks if you are an albino. That's just rascist.

In vitro, no one can hear you scream...

Kansas City Star: Teacher fired over in vitro fertilization

Kelly Romenesko was teaching French at two Roman Catholic schools in Appleton, Wis., when she and her husband decided to start a family using in vitro fertilization.

After asking for time off in September 2004 to complete the procedure, the lifelong Catholic gave her boss an update about a month later: She was pregnant.

Days after that, she said, she got a pink slip from the Catholic school system. Administrators, according to her attorney, James C. Jones, alleged that Romenesko violated a provision of her employment contract saying that a teacher has to act in accordance with Catholic doctrine.

“All she was trying to do was have a child, which of course should be a wonderful thing,” Jones said.

Violating the Natural Law is never a wonderful thing, shyster.

In vitro fertilization involves extracting eggs from a woman’s ovaries and fertilizing them with sperm in a laboratory dish or test tube. The fertilized eggs are implanted into the woman’s uterus.

Catholic teaching holds that the procedure is morally wrong because it replaces the “natural” conjugal union between husband and wife and often results in the destruction of embryos.

Wait a minute. Sexual intercourse between husband and wife warrants scare quotes when called natural by the Catholic Church? I guess turkey basters are more natural...

Even though the couple used their own eggs and sperm and no embryos were destroyed in the process, the church forbids such donations and condemns all forms of experimentation on human embryos.

First of all, conception outside the womb is monstrous. Second, prove nobody was killed. Third, this woman claims to be Catholic. Fourth, she knew the rules when she started teaching in Catholic schools.

Romenesko, 37, filed a discrimination complaint against Appleton Catholic Educational System Inc./Xavier, which runs seven Catholic schools in Appleton, about 100 miles north of Milwaukee.

An investigator from the Equal Rights Division of the state Department of Workforce Development upheld the firing in December, and Romenesko appealed. A hearing was set for Friday but was postponed, probably until September.

If the administrative law judge sides with Romenesko, the state could award payment for back wages, benefits, attorney fees and other expenses, Jones said.

School district president Tony Abts referred inquiries to lawyer Gregory Gill Sr., who didn’t immediately return a call. Diocese spokesman Tony Kuick did not return calls seeking comment.

The coolest hockey story of the day is...

BEARS 4, PORTLAND 0
Harrisburg Patriot-News: Cassivi denies Portland ... again

Anytime you conjure memories of Gordon "Red" Henry while wearing a Hershey Bears uniform, you know you're doing good stuff.

That's exactly what goalie Frederic Cassivi did again last night at Giant Center with a bounce-back 4-0 shutout of the Portland Pirates in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Cassivi made 38 saves to pitch his fourth shutout of the 2006 postseason, moving within one shutout of tying what is believed to be the club playoff record of five set by Bears great Henry in 1947. Team playoff records are incomplete before 1946.

Ack!

Cassivi was good early and often as he improved to 11-1 in the playoffs.
Hershey took a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven series and can advance to its first Calder Cup finals since 1997 with a victory in Game 5 tomorrow at Portland.

"Yeah, he made some great saves and we had some good opportunities that we couldn't finish, so it goes both ways," Portland head coach Kevin Dineen said. "But, certainly, their goaltender has been the story of the series thus far."

The Pirates, riding the momentum of Saturday's 6-5 double-overtime victory, swarmed in the first half of the first period. At one point they had an 11-2 shot advantage, but they couldn't convert.

Echoing their Game 2 power-play frustration, the Pirates went 0-for-9 and failed to score on a lengthy 5-on-3 (1:37).

"Freddy and the PK were obviously the difference," Bears head coach Bruce Boudreau said. "They had 12 shots in the first 10 minutes of the game.

That's a pretty hard pace to keep up by any team. Once we weathered that storm, I thought, stay the course and if we could get that first goal we'd be in the game."

That first goal came midway through the second when Jakub Klepis followed his own rebound to give Hershey a 1-0 lead. Portland came within inches -- centimeters? -- of tying it late in the second.

With two minutes left, Cassivi made an initial save on a Pierre Parenteau left-circle shot. A rebound deflected off crashing Shane O'Brien, but Cassivi reached out a big Bear paw to smother the puck as it trickled toward the goal line.

With 67 seconds left, an Aaron Rome shot hit the right post.

"I think they tried the same thing [as Game 3], trying to take as many shots as they can and get tips and rebounds," Cassivi said. "When you try that, sometimes you get the bounces and sometimes you don't.

"I guess tonight I got more bounces. Last night, they got more bounces."
Hershey opened the scoring floodgates in the third with goals from Kris Beech (10:35), Dave Steckel (14:38) and Jonas Johansson (5-on-3 power play at 18:47) on goalie Nathan Marsters (27 saves).

Hershey was buoyed by Steckel's presence in the lineup and Lawrence Nycholat's return after missing the last five games due to injury. Steckel missed two-plus periods of Game 3 after getting hit on the leg by a puck, but he took overnight electric stimulation and ice to be ready for Game 4.
Having Steckel for the duration certainly helped on the penalty kill, which surrendered four power-play goals in Game 3.

"We definitely got our pride taken away from us," Steckel said. "It was important to us to get that back."

Winning 10 in a row at the start of the playoffs was swell. But the Bears showed themselves something by rebounding from their first playoff defeat.

"It's important how you react after a tough loss," Cassivi said. "We had a two-goal lead with five-six minutes left [in Game 3] and let it go and lost in double-overtime. Some teams don't bounce back from those things and we did. It's nice to see. We didn't know how we were going to be because it was our first loss of the playoffs. It was new territory there and we reacted very well."

NOTES:
Eric Fehr, who had one assist in the previous five games, was replaced in the lineup by Johansson, who made his Hershey playoff debut. ... The Game 4 win guarantees that Hershey will at least host Game 7 if it can't close out the series in the next two games at Portland. ... Zenon Konopka, Portland's leading scorer, again was on the ice for a late-third-period fight. This time he fought Louis Robitaille, who mimicked Konopka's Game 3 celebratory gesticulations after the bout. ... During one stretch, referee Gord Dwyer awarded Portland six straight power plays.

From The Those Wacky Germans Department:

AFP: Bear reported in Germany, first for 170 years

A bear has been reported in Germany for the first time since 1835, police at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps said, following the discovery of seven sheep carcasses.

The animal crossed into Germany from Austria, where about 30 bears live, and was spotted near the border on Thursday after destroying a beehive.

See, it's not even a German bear! Neville Chamberlain, call your office.

The German section of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature said that the last wild bear seen in Germany was one killed in 1835 in western Bavaria.

The regional authorities have mobilised teams to find the bear, anaesthetise it briefly, identify it and release it, a spokesman said.

Regional environment minister Werner Schnappauf said the bear "was welcome in Bavaria" and urged people not be afraid of it. Austrian experts who have been tracking the animal said it was unlikely to approach humans.

Hunters' associations said the bear's presence was "positive" but warned of the possible consequences for farmers.

Bavaria's wildlife inventory includes some 50 golden eagles, 20 adult lynx and a few wolves.

The second coolest hockey headline of the day is...

TSN: Oilers offered moose-dropping necklace

PEACE RIVER, Alta. (CP) - A northern Alberta Cree leader is offering an unusual form of help for the Edmonton Oilers on their quest to capture the Stanley Cup.

Bill Sewepagaham, First Nations co-ordinator for the Peace River School Division, is donating a necklace made out of lacquered deer and moose droppings, which he says will bring good luck to whoever wears it.

According to ancient Cree legend, hunters who had a rough day capturing food would smear their weapons in animal droppings and their fortunes would change.

Sewepagaham says there's no doubt in his mind that if Oilers coach Craig MacTavish wears the necklace, his team will bring home the Stanley Cup.

The magic of the necklace might not work right away. It was still in Edmonton as of Friday while the Oilers were already in Anaheim to face the Ducks in the first two games of the Western Conference final.

Memo To My Seneca Brothers: If you have anything similar to help the Sabres...

Saint of the Day and daily Mass readings.

Today is the Feast of St. Rita of Cascia, the patroness of impossible causes. Pray for us, all you angels and saints.

Today's reading for the Feast of St. Rita is Philippians 4:4-9.
Today's Responsorial Psalm is Psalms 1:1-4, 6.
Today's Gospel reading is Luke 6:27-38.

Everyday links:

The Blessed Virgin Mary
The Rosary
Our Mother of Perpetual Help
Prayers from EWTN
National Coalition of Clergy and Laity (dedicated to action for a genuine Catholic Restoration)
The Catholic Calendar Page for Today


Just in case you are wondering what exactly Catholics believe, here is

The Apostles Creed

I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.He descended into Hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into Heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Amen.


Memorare

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession,was left unaided.Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins my Mother; to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful; O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy clemency hear and answer me. Amen.


St. Joseph, her most chaste spouse, pray for us.


Prayer to St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire

Dear St. Anthony, you became a Franciscan with the hope of shedding your blood for Christ. In God's plan for you, your thirst for martyrdom was never to be satisfied. St. Anthony, Martyr of Desire, pray that I may become less afraid to stand up and be counted as a follower of the Lord Jesus. Intercede also for my other intentions. (Name them.)


Prayer To Saint Michael The Archangel

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the divine power, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.


Prayer to End Abortion

Lord God, I thank You today for the gift of my life, and for the lives of all my brothers and sisters. I know there is nothing that destroys more life than abortion, yet I rejoice that you have conquered death by the resurrection of Your Son. I am ready to do my part to end abortion. Today I commit myself never to be silent, never to be passive, and never to be forgetful of the unborn. I commit myself to be active in the pro-life movement, and never stop defending life until all my brothers and sisters are protected and our nation once again becomes a nation with liberty and justice, not just for some, but for all. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.