Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was watching some of the Pope’s funeral and at one point he did wonder what was going to happen during the ritual exchange of the Sign of Peace.

Well, to your Maximum Leader’s surprise, everyone seemed to shake hands politely. So you had George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac shaking hands (and presumably saying the traditional “Peace be with you.”) Prince Chuck of Great Britain shook hands with Zimbabwean (Criminal) President Robert Mugabe. And the most reported of all, Israeli President Moshe Katsav shook hands with Syrian President Basher al-Assad AND Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

All in all the moment was rather surprising. Surprising in a good way. A moment of civility amidst an eternity of antipathy.

Of course now everyone who hates everyone else is disavowing that the handshake was anything more than protocol. Ah well. There was a moment.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the news wires that Anna Nicole Smith is not going to go to Canada to protest the killing of baby seals. She claims that she fears for her safety.

Your Maximum Leader knows the real reason.

She has been advised that her saline implants will freeze, and her boobies will explode.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the news wires that a House committee has voted to recommend extending Daylight Savings Time.

Great Jeezey Chreezey!

Now your Maximum Leader is all for sensible measures to conserve energy. And he is all for measure to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. But come on! Screw with Daylight Savings Time? Your Maximum Leader already HATES Daylight Savings Time. It is an abomination against the whole concept of time. If you want more daylight - why not just adjust the work day seasonally?

Or even better… Let’s just declare the US to be a “Whatever the hell type of time we want zone!” Or a good Federalist solution, let the states decide what time they will keep. Even better! Lets start using universal time and Stardates from Star Trek! Woo hoo!

What else can we do to mess with time some more? How about rather than using the decay rate of cesium beam clocks to measure time we start keeping time by some other method? Your Maximum Leader will suggest we use the number of sand grains passing through the official sand-glass kept in UN Headquarters in New York. (It will give the UN a real purpose.) The basic unit of time could be measured in sands - which your Maximum Leader sets at 1000 grains. 1000 sands would equal kilosand. 1000 kilosands would be a megasand. And after a 1000 megasands passed, the process would begin again. So if you asked someone what time it was you would be told: “Oh! The time is X megasands:Y kilosands and Z sands. My watch doesn’t measure grains.”

Damn screwing with time..

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is going to turn in early tonight so that he might get up early to watch the Pope’s funeral live. But before he turns in allow him to state something on the record.

This: Vatican Gives Cardinal Law Role of Honor is wrong.

Very wrong.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has enjoyed reading Brian’s recent post concerning the spat of postings yesterday from our very own Smallholder. Your Maximum Leader should also direct you to Ally (who in the course of two paragraphs wanted to beat the Smallholder silly then kiss and make up - so to speak).

Your Maximum Leader wanted to make one comment on the Smallholder’s post about the Pope and Terri Schiavo. The Pope’s position on Terri Schiavo was predicated on a belief that Terri was not dead (despite her massive brain damage). Her physical body was reasonably healthy and would survive with a feeding tube. Of course, the Smallholder (and your Maximum Leader) begin by assuming the massive brain damage equated to death. (Which is a debatable point to many.)

The church is against euthanasia, but they do not condemn the refusal or avoidance of “heroic acts” or “medical treatment” to save a person. The church has not considered food and water heroic acts or medical treatment. Of course, the Pope did muddy the waters on the Schiavo case. Heretofore, the church wouldn’t have looked askance at denying a feeding tube. (Just as they wouldn’t look with ill favour on denying unwanted medical care to a dying person.) As your Maximum Leader understands it, a feeding tube had been considered “medical treatment.” The Pope’s pronouncements before his death appear to say that a feeding tube is now “food and water.” (And as we know the Pope himself had a feeding tube for his last few days.)

It is a complicated matter. One worthy of further debate.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader was reviewing his site server statistics from the good people at Superb.net today.

After doing the math and checking figures…. It seems that Nakedvillainy.com passed the 100,000th unique visitor some time in March. Your Maximum Leader is confident of the numbers, he is just a little sad that he couldn’t pin down the lucky IP address of the 100,000th loyal minion. He thinks that it is really something to have gone in one year (the period for which he’s been using Superb.net as his host) from roughly 51 unique visitors a day to nearly 450 unique visitors a day currently. This site has averaged over 10,000 unique visitors a month for a while now.

Your Maximum Leader thanks all of you for reading and coming back. He is especially thankful for his top referrers. They are: The Big Hominid, Sadie, Rusty, Bill, Rob, The Llamas, JohnL, Brian, The Crack Young Staff - let’s call him “Chip,” Eric, Kathy, Rachel, Christina, Wizbang, Misspent, Skippy, and the Celebate. Thank you all.

Of course, with all you readers out there you’d think that someone might go and buy a nakedvillainy t-shirt or something. Afterall, wearing nakedvillainy.com apparel has been shown to increase your sexual allure to members of the opposite sex; and spontaneously add 20 points to your IQ…

And, if you have noticed, there are a few changes over on the sidebar. Welcome additions include: itsapundit.com, TeaFizz, and Deleted by Tomorrow.

Of course, the saddest change to the sidebar is the new subcategory of the “Loyal Minions” area. The oft lamented and much missed Kilgore Trout was added to the rolls of “Our Glorious Dead” the day that chaoticnotrandom.com no longer resolved to a web page.

And that is all the housekeeping for now. Thank you all again. And try the veal! Don’t forget to tip your servers, we’re here all week!

Carry on.

Via Pike’s Peak: A Living Will!

I hate the recent trend in which mass media outlets conduct polls to see what “the people” feel about a topic. The polls’ revelations about the state of the American system of education invariably depress me.

On CNN the other morning, they had a pollasking American Catholics about the next pope. I don’t remember the actual numbers, but I’ll ballpark it.

Should the next Pope be:

More Liberal? 15%
About the same? 55%
More conservatibe? 25%

Followed by this question:

Should the next Pope allow:

Birth control? 80%
Married priests? 60%
Women priests? 50%

Idiots.

As the Pope’s health failed and he drew near death, he made the reasonable decision to not go to the hospital.

This is a decision we should all be able to make.

When my Grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, she opted not to receive treatment and went home. When she was able to get around anymore, she spent her last weeks at her son’s house. This is as it ought to be.

But I have one nagging problem with the Pope’s decision. He had spoken out against allowing Terri Schiavo’s corpse to die. Surely he had more “life” to be held in sanctity than a woman with spinal fluid where her cerebral cortex ought to have been.

I have disagreed with JP II many, many times. But I always respected him as a man of conviction. His acceptance of the physical suffering wrought by Parkinson’s confirmed this respect. But perhaps, at the very end, he realized he could not follow those convictions into a prolonged death struggle.

I’d make the same call - but I haven’t been going around condemning Micheal Schiavo.

I continually recieve e-mail and see blog articles that contain the tagline: “You’ll never see this in the MSM, but heroic soldiers…”

Down with the press! I’m really angry that they have been hiding the awarding of the Iraq War’s first Medal of Honor on Page A1. Darn those pinko journalists!

Maximum Leader,

Your henchman begs forgiveness for his recent silence.

You see, Ally agreed with one of my posts and I was too busy dodging the flying pigs to write anything else. (Of course, Bill disagreed with me)

Is there anything cooler than coming home from work, walking out to the pasture with your daughter, and discovering that one of your sheep has delivered fat, saucy twins?

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that death has claimed another monarch. He reads on the news wire that Monaco’s Rainier Dead at 81.

Your Maximum Leader hopes that Rainier is going to be reunited with his lovely wife Grace. And he hopes that Prince Albert of Monaco decided to settle down and get to making heirs. Your Maximum Leader isn’t sure that any of Caroline’s or Stephanie’s children should get the job.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is both pleased, and occasionally shocked, by the news stories being run surrounding the death of Pope John Paul II.

In a story that is far from shocking, he reads that there are lots of people (in Ireland at least) laying odds on who will be the next Pope.

Allow your Maximum Leader to make a (half-way serious) prediction. He thinks the next Pope will be…..

<drumroll>
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, current Dean of the College of Cardinals, and head of the Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
</drumroll>

And Cardinal Ratzinger will take the papal name Pius XIII.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader directs those of you who have a little disposable income to go over to Kathy’s site and make her day. She is a worthy cause and quite deserving.

NB: After conferring with his counsel, your Maximum Leader should state on the record that the title of this post does not actually imply that donations to Kathy’s site are, according to the IRS, tax deductable. It is a teaser people! It is to induce you to click through to Kathy’s site and do what your heart (and your Maximum Leader) tell you to do.

Carry on.