Happy Birthday Sumi!

I am still hungry and I have eaten all my food. Also, I forgot my wallet this morning and have to meet my old co-workers for drinks after work. Le Sigh.

In my experience, part of the "Not a real Christian" thing comes from an ethos where people are Christians or they are Not Christians. There are only two choices. So its less an analysis of the specific expression of faith than a "are they us or them" sort of thing. And Not Christians are pretty much all the same as one another cred-wise. (and that cred can vary wildly among the assessor) In that dichotomy a Catholic, a Mormon, a Jew, a Muslim, a Wicca or even a Presbyterian such as myself who believes in ::gasp:: evolution is in the Not Christian category.

(Eventually I got used to being described as "not really a Christian" by some of my more country classmates. Its like Jews who go to Utah and find out that they're Gentiles.)

What always cracked me up the phenomenon that saying someone is a "Good Christian" is tantamount to saying they are a good person. Like, even if they aren't actually a Christian. "I like Dr. Greenberg, he's a good Christian" is a perfectly cromulent thing to say.

Its like Jews who go to Utah and find out that they're Gentiles.

No, YOU'RE a gentile! No, YOU are!

The only people who get to claim that Catholics aren't Christian are the Eastern Orthodox, and that's more of a "Mooooooom! She's touching me!!" type of issue.

Ah-ha-ha! This is a lovely variation on how the Orthodox priest who married my parents described it; he described the two as identical twin sisters who got in an incredibly petty fight ages ago, neither one would back down, and they haven't spoken since -- although they still look and dress and talk alike and have all the same friends. They're still bent out of shape over the original fight, and everyone who knows both of them is all, "Okay, whatever, you're completely different and YOU are SO RIGHT" while @@ing like crazy behind both their backs.

But I think he'd like "Mooooooom! She's touching me!!" even better.

I'm pretty sure that when Steph talked about her time in the FAC, she said she didn't see Catholics as Christian.

Man in India Marries Dog As Atonement

NEW DELHI — A man in southern India married a female dog in a traditional Hindu ceremony as an attempt to atone for stoning two other dogs to death — an act he believes cursed him — a newspaper reported Tuesday.

P. Selvakumar married the sari-draped former stray named Selvi, chosen by family members and then bathed and clothed for the ceremony Sunday at a Hindu temple in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the Hindustan Times newspaper said.

Selvakumar, 33, told the paper he had been suffering since he stoned two dogs to death and hung their bodies from a tree 15 years ago.

"After that my legs and hands got paralyzed and I lost hearing in one ear," he said in the report.

The paper said an astrologer had told Selvakumar the wedding was the only way he could cure the maladies. It did not say whether his situation had improved.

Huh. I did not expect Kucinich to be the candidate my views are most in line with. (though Edwards and Obama being almost as compatible makes me feel slightly more mainstream). Giuliani was far and away the closest Republican to my views, but all the Democrats except Gravel beat him.

Apparently, my views were closest to Chris Dodd's.

OMG incredibly bored. Everyone in my organization is off at an event, I'm still not done with the one incredibly boring document, and it's not even 3 o'clock yet. Help me.