Patsy is clinging to life.

I ended up taking her to the vet to be tube-fed colostrum.

Don’t laugh.

Okay, I’m not much of a farmer. But I didn’t want her to die - even if it isn’t economically sound to save her.

She’s standing up now but Wooly is reluctant to let her nurse - I guess she figues Patsy ought to have died, so she only has to feed one.

So I’ve been milking her and giving the milk to Patsy in a bottle.

Stay tuned.

I am not Catholic.

As such, my opinions about the practices and dogma of the Catholic church are irrelevant. They can believe their beliefs and I will believe my beliefs.

But I do have to admit that JP II’s quest to elevate Hitler’s Pope to sainthood stuck in my craw. Not that I believe in sainthood. I ought not to care about another church’s veneration of anybody.

But still.

Hitler’s Pope?

I wonder whether Ratzinger’s elevation puts a temporary kibosh on Pious XII’s candidacy. I think that it might be politically expedient for a German and a former member of the Hitler Youth - however unwillingly - to canonize a Pope who symbolizes the moral paralysis of the mid-century church.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader does like one particular aspect of the blogosphere above many others. The aspect of which he is speaking today is the ability of a blogger to focus attention on a problem, issue, or situation that is being largely overlooked by other news outlets.

Dr. Rusty over at The My Pet Jawa Report has been a constant champion of the family of Roy Hallums. If it were not for Rusty’s periodic updates, your Maximum Leader would doubt that anyone would have heard or cared about the fate of Roy Hallums, a hostage of Iraqi insurgents.

You should go and read part one of an interview with members of Hallums’ family on Rusty’s site. The Damned of the West (part 1): Interview With Susan Hallums. Rusty says part two will be out later this week.

Remember Roy Hallums.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader felt a great disturbance in The Force. He felt it this past weekend. But he thought it might be a minor flux.

Then he felt it again today…

In his groin…

And it felt good.

The prodigal Anna has blogged again. Okay so maybe she is actually only looking for advice… Perhaps we can hope that she will keep at it and grace us with a post every now and again.

NB to Anna: Your Maximum Leader will gladly take you back… But how does he get that punishment fuck you were talking about?

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that his prediction is half-way right. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was elected by the Cardinal-Electors of the Roman Catholic Church to be Pope. But, he took the name Benedict XVI and not Pius.

Your Maximum Leader knows that this election will be analyized to death over the next days and hours. So before it gets too tiresome let your Maximum Leader offer some of his thoughts.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t feel that Pope Benedict’s election is a harbinger of doom or ill fortune for the Church. (As others have predicted.) In his prior church duties, Benedict XVI, was a conservative theologian under John Paul II. He may well turn out to be a conservative Pope in the spirit of John Paul II. But remember, if you will, that before John XXIII became Pope he was widely viewed as Pius XII’s theological bull-dog. John XXIII became the greatest reformer Pope in recent memory. It should also be remembered that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was a key figure during Vatican II.

It is impossible to tell what God has in store for Benedict XVI.

God bless him, and guide him in his way. God bless Benedict XVI.

Carry on.

UPDATE: Welcome to those of you who are coming here on Robbo the Llama Butcher’s recommendation. Here is a Reuters article that seems to imply what your Maximum Leader was just saying.

UPDATE II: Okay, okay already. We all know that Ratzinger ran a very tight ship while Prefect of the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith. Yes, yes we all know that he did not tolerate much dissent. And your Maximum Leader thinks we can all surmise that he will not be changing long-held church beliefs on women, gays, or homosexuality. It is also safe to assume he will not be changing any long-held church doctrine on The Resurrection, The Trinity, Transubstansiation, or the Divinity of Jesus. What the hell did people think? Did some of you out there actually think the Cardinals were were going to elect John Kerry or Ted Kennedy Pope? Really now… Benedict XVI, like every other man to become Pope, will be his own man. One can’t really predict what will happen. But no one should act shocked when the man elected Pope appears to fully stand by the teachings of the Church.

Greetings, loyal inions. Your Maximum Leader likes it when people can just get on with a job and not drag it out.

White Smoke from Vatican Signals New Pope Elected.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has three words for you:

“The Fat Duck”

According to Restaurant Magazine, The Fat Duck in Berkshire (UK) is the top restaurant in the whole of the world. Really… You can read about it on the news wire: British restaurant declared best in world.

Now your Maximum Leader is something of a gastronome. He has also had some fantastic meals over the length and breadth of Britain. But until now he has not actually heard of “The Fat Duck.” And, he must say that one shouldn’t colour him impressed by the dishes he’s heard described. Bacon & Egg Ice Cream? Sardine on Toast Sorbet? Those dishes might have “wowed the judges” but they don’t ilicit much of a response from your Maximum Leader.

He reads that the number two restaurant in the world is “The French Laundry” in Yountville, California. Now, your Maximum Leader has not been to Thomas Keller’s “French Laundry;” but he has eaten a dinner prepared by Thomas Keller at a charity event in Washington DC. That is a tough act to beat.

And Keller didn’t attempt to disgust your Maximum Leader by defiling dessert with something like “toast sorbet” or “bacon & egg ice cream.” (Admittedly though, your Maximum Leader did once have a fairly disgusting ice cream. It was a squid ink ice cream he had at a posh japanese restaurant in DC. He thinks the chef saw it on Iron Chef and had to give it a try. It wasn’t really disgusting. It was not very flavourful during the eating. And it left a weird aftertaste in your Maximum Leader’s mouth.)

Anyho… If any of your Maximum Leader’s readers are able to try “The Fat Duck” in Berkshire, please let him know your thoughts.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader reads a number of different blogs every day. He also sees that many people have polls on their blogs. Indeed, your Maximum Leader once tried to have a poll posted on nakedvillainy for a while. But thinking up a good poll question can be a chore. In fact, most poll questions suck.

Excursus: Your Maximum Leader is NOT talking about JohnL’s SciFi babes poll in this post. Damn. His polls are great. Your Maximum Leader actually looks forward to the new one.

So, imagine your Maximum Leader’s surprise when he saw the newest Sunday Night Poll at Six Meat Buffet. Ah Preston! Your Maximum Leader must give credit where it is due. Your poll is great. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know which of the possible answers he should choose. So he will vote over multiple days and multiple PCs to give all of his desired choices a fair shake.

Go thee now and vote…

Carry on.

Yeah, I’m O-positive.

It’s not just Koreans; it’s East Asians in general who subscribe to this nonsense.

Then again, in the US we’ve got blood-type diets.

_

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reading the news wire when he came across this article: Bad Days for South Korea’s Type-B Men. It seems that there is some sort of belief in a connection between blood type and personality type in Korea. Thus Korean women instead of asking “What’s your sign?” now seem to ask “What’s your blood type?” when picking up men.

Perhaps this is the root of the Big Hominid’s woman problems.

Carry on.

As someone raised in the Lutheran “God helps those that help themselves” tradition and as a current member of the Episcopalian Church, I’m usually not muc for believing in God’s daily intervention in my life.

My father, the ever obstreperous parishioner (see the previous post on how he told his temperance-minded preacher that Jesus’ first miracle was making wine for drunks at a party), has also opined that he thinks it is ridiculous that his minister attributes everything good to God’s divine grace and everything bad to something the victim did to deserve it.

I’m about to relate my “I think God intervened in my life yesterday story.” I do so with a feeling in my gut that it is true, but I’m also intellectually aware that the idea of God intervening to save a sheep’s life is rather silly if he didn’t intervene to save the live of the recently killed girl in Florida. So take the following story as you will.

On Sunday in church, during the sermon, I suddenly felt really faint. My wife tells me my pallor went entirely grey. We left early and I came down and laid down for most of the afternoon. I felt like gopher puke.

Things got a little better in the evening and I managed to get outside to plant some potatoes with Emilie and Sally. I definitely wasn’t myself because I was panting after hoeing a twenty foot row.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt kind of lousy again. I would have gone to work anyway, but a little voice in my head told me to take it easy - I had been really sick the day before. The deciding factor was that my family was leaving for a week in Florida, so I could say goodbye if I slept in.

Rather than be hurried with my morning barn chores, I went out a little later (in daylight). I noticed Wooly, my daughter’s favorite ewe, laying down all by herself in the upper pasture. If I had not called in sick, I would have missed her entirely.

I walked up and found her lying down, panting, with a giant lamb’s head sticking out. She had obviously been straining to pass her baby for hours and had given up. The legs were tucked back inside the womb so the baby couldn’t move forward. The baby looked deader than a doornail, so I grimly moved in to try to save my ewe.

I reached inside, found a foreleg, pulled it gently out, but could not find the other leg. I gripped the dead lamb around the midsection and pulled until it came out. I laid the body aside to tend to Wooly - and it coughed! Wooly, excellent mother that she is, clambored to her feet and began licking and nuzzling it.

The baby was huge - as big as one of my two-week old lambs (we later measured it at 11 pounds).

I went inside to call the vet and see if I should do anything else for Wooly. When I returned five minutes later, Wooly had dropped a second lamb (half the size) right next to the first. I guess I must have unplugged the works. If I hadn’t been sick I would have lost all three of them.

This is one of those times when you take a deep breath and say “Thank you, God!”

I may still lose the lamb that was stuck - it had a really hard time. Keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned.

Who’s your daddy now, Maximum Leader? Since I control the weather, I can seriously fuck you up.

Believe.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: I still have you in agility and intelligence… I’ll just have to keep my distance.

REPLY FROM THE MINISTER OF PROPAGANDA: My water attack capitalizes on your hydophobia, and shifts the combat results in my favor: if you run the match-ups, I’m victorious in three out of six combinations, and the other three are ties. Loyal Minions should ignore our Maximum Leader’s futile spin of the facts — welcome to the MofPWO!

P.S. We can test it when I see you in July.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just had to play. He saw that JohnL was having fun with Giant Battle Monsters. So your Maximum Leader had to try.

Here are results…

Your Maximum Leader thought that he had posted this before sometime, because he had been to the site before. But he couldn’t find that he had posted it. Perhaps it was one of those long lost drafts that never materalized into anything…

Carry on.

The Minister of Propaganda sent me a polaroid, which arrived last night.

A picture of a movie star: Donald Li, who played Eddie in the greatest “truly bad movie*” of all time, “Big Trouble in Little China.”

* Term ruthlessly stolen from a blog I recently stumbled across by way of lovelorn Sadie.

Truly Bad Films is an intersting blog about drunken book trucks, movies, bibliophilia, and DIY medical procedures. Although Chairista tragically (or so it seems from a quick scan of her archives) fails to see the wonder that is Jack Burton vs. David Lo Pan. She also gets points for being a neighbor - she writes about the vaguely defined “Central Virginia,” a location also containing Sweet Seasons Farm.

Brian B. has asked me to clarify my defintions, preparatory to hoisting me onto the rack.

The term creationism is a slippery one.

By one defintion, I’m a creationist. I believe God created the universe and world and set it to operating according to natural law. One of the outgrowths of natural law is evolution - so one might say that God guided evolution. Now, the intervention of deity is not amenable to empircal proof. So: Evolution is scientific fact. I BELIEVE it was guided by God.

In my post of two days ago, I was specifically attacking those creationists who believe that faith is incompatible with religion and refuse to accept science. I would define these magical thinkers as “creationists who reject the theory of evolution.” My real bone of contention is with this lot - the people who disingenuously “attack” “holes” in Darwinian theory.