Merry ChiCom Christmas!

Read about just one struggle of Catholics in China. From the London Times:

The next day workers of the construction company that is renovating the houses appeared and tossed their makeshift stoves and heaters into the street. The workers attacked the group with iron rods, clubs and bricks, leaving several of the priests and nuns with injuries that required hospital treatment.

Rest In Peace, Ellie

Elrod Hendricks has died. Elrod was the longtime bullpen coach for the Baltimore Orioles. He also played for the O's during the glory years, sharing catching duties with Andy Etchebarren in the late 60s and early 70s including three straight World Series from 1969-71.

One of my earliest memories of him was going with my sister to batting practice back in Memorial Stadium. We were standing at the rail behind home plate but we were both too timid to ask any of the players to sign. After a while Ellie saw us standing there and asked us if we would like him to sign our baseballs. "Yes, please. Thank you, sir". I think we got a couple of other players that day but the only one I remember was Ellie.

I also remember a few years ago when my sister and I went to the final game of the year. Being the bullpen coach, Ellie was always one of the last people in uniform to leave the field and that year he was scheduled to have back surgery in the off season. So after the game we waited around in the flag court and decided to try to get his attention. Now the flag court is a maybe a couple of hundred feet from the bullpen. So my sister and I yelled out together, "ELLIE!" He looked in our direction, saw us waving like maniacs, smiled and waved good-bye.

I only met him a couple of times and exchanged a handful of words but it sure feels like I've lost a friend.

Good-bye, my friend. Good-bye.

You tell 'em, lady!

I was watching a report on Fox news about Iraqis voting in Michigan. They showed an older lady named Betty Dawisha submitting her ballot and she wanted to thank those who made it possible. "Anybody who doesn't appreciate what America has done, and President Bush, let them go to hell."

Cool Pope Pic

Originally from AFP/Vincenzo Pinto by way of Yahoo.

The Incredible Shrinking Blog

Not dead, just resting.

I don't think I've been getting into the whole spirit of blogging. I was into it, if you go back and look at the first few weeks of the blog, but certainly not lately. So I will now attempt to give all of my faithful reader(s) [C'mon, Sloth, not even you read this thing regularly. -ed.] a Larry King style digest to keep you all happy.

• Upgraded my monitor to a Dell 2005FPW. It's a 20 inch widescreen (1680 x 1050) that also pivots into portrait mode. A big improvement over my old 17 inch Hitachi CRT.

• World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne looked great. Thumbs up to the Pope.

• I see Mark Shea has resumed blogging. Thanks for picking up my slack, Mark.

• Been listening to Fr. Roderick's podcasts. Great stuff. When does he find time to sleep?

• Just read that the TSA will allow small pointy things onto airplanes again. Great news for pocket knife fans like me.

• Have the Ragemonkies mentioned the new Kong movie yet? If not, why not?

• Whatever happened to Marcel Marceau?

• Saw Keira Knightley on a late night talk show. Fantastic!

• Joe Paterno's still got it.

• Peggy Noonan is the best writer out there today. Bar none.

• My favorite contributor on NRO's Corner is Cosmo.

• My heath insurer send me a new card because they changed my benefits. Who knew? Not me, at least until they sent me the card.

• The Social Security people sent my grandfather information about the new Medicare prescription benefits. Great, except my grandfather died in 1983.

• Been watching the furor over the new Xbox. I remember when Atari was the thing.

That's all for now. I'm off to Church.