I'm really excited by the Google interview, but also terribly nervous.

Somehow I doubt it will work if I drop to my knees and beg of them, "Pleeeeeease hire me. I worship at the altar of Google. And I don't want to take the job offer in sales which doesn't pay very well. Please?"

Somehow I doubt it will work if I drop to my knees and beg of them, "Pleeeeeease hire me. I worship at the altar of Google. And I don't want to take the job offer in sales which doesn't pay very well. Please?"

Only use that as a second-to-last resort.

Last resort is waving the gun around.

I'm equally at cross-currents. The Catholic Church (by which I refer to the Powers That Be and not any individual lay Catholic) has done a fair amount to answer for -- the pedophile priest scandal comes to mind, on several levels -- that I can't give the Church much room for moral high ground.

On the other hand, as others have pointed out, stealing communion wafers from a Catholic church for the purpose of desecration is so far over the line as to obliterate it. That's not a protest of objectionable policies or practices. That's just spitting in the Church's face. And if anything is going to make me sympathetic toward the Catholic Church, it's that sort of thing. (And based on the definitions as I understand them, it's at least arguably a hate crime.)

But death threats against -- not the thief, but someone who expresses support for the thief? Conversely, if anything is going to make me sympathetic toward the thief, it's an organized campaign of death threats.

I note that Bill Donahoe has A Reputation as a Professional Victim, Catholic subdivision. Whose campaigns are not necessarily supported by the Catholic Church.

(ETA: Just saw Jessica's comment on hate crimes and wanted to clarify what I said. The theft of the wafers was arguably a hate crime. Expressing support for the thief isn't a crime of any kind, as far as I know.)

If I could think of a single thing I could legitimately get hired for at the Google office in Cambridge, I'd be over there begging with my kneepads on.

Yay shrift!

I have no opinion on the holy cracker controversy. The church I was raised in used grape juice instead of wine, and I like to think that if they believed in literal transubstantiation they wouldn't have started with Wonderbread. Or maybe that's exactly the sort of bread they should have started with. Anyway, after a few UU "love feasts" featuring sweet rolls (with raisins—yes, lets follow that along food-to-flesh thought lines) and apple juice (this is My plasma, given for you) it's hard for me to work up more than a "huh" over the whole deal.

Huh.

Oxygen therapy might help migraine, cluster headaches

Speaking as a Presbyterian agnostic here, stealing communion wafers is horrible and disrespectful at the very least, and I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to prosecute it as petty theft of some kind.

(And based on the definitions as I understand them, it's at least arguably a hate crime.)

who is the victim? Plus, even if stealing a communion wafer for the purpose of desecration is a crime, the student who originally took the wafer did not do so for that purpose.

I do wonder if it wouldn't be possible to prosecute it as petty theft of some kind.

I dunno. The Church gave him the wafer (during communion), with the expectation that he'd eat it right there. Instead he took it home. Is that theft?

To call it a hate crime really, IMO, just cheapens the phrase. I actually do believe in transubstantiation, I believe that it's literally the creator of the universe right there in your hand (or, in the case of this college kid, who appears to have been doofy and clueless, not remotely malicious, your pocket), and I would still argue, fiercely, that doing some bad or stupid thing to it is categorically VASTLY different from targeting another plain old garden-variety mortal human being for some monstrous act because his/her skin color offends your miserable shittorific world view.

(eta, in case it wasn't clear, that IMO the latter IS a hate crime and the former is a world of not. And, WTF, is some official person supposed to prosecute it as a hate crime? How does that not completely piss all over the separation of church and state? Clearly, the people calling it a hate crime must really hate America.)