Catholics Clash in Columbus

"You're born Irish first, and then you're baptized Catholic." So says Mark Dempsey, defiant president of the Columbus (Ohio) Shamrock Club. Ignoring protests from the local bishop, the clubs plans to put on its annual St. Patrick's Day Parade on St. Patrick's Day. It seems that for the first time since 1940, the good saint's day falls during Holy Week, meaning that mass cannot be celebrated in his honor on March 17. With no actual liturgical authority to back them up, some bishops have pressured municipalities into rescheduling parades so that they don't fall during Holy Week. This is the kind of power-tripping over trivialities that helped make a lot of us ex-Catholics. Mercifully, Catholics won't face this painful dilemma again until 2160.

The Nation's Charles Taylor of  reviews  Zeroville (Steve Erickson), my favorite novel of 2007.

Who'd a thunk it? It turns out that the 16-year old kid living down the street is a crack-smoking, counterfeiting, terrorist murderer. He's probably an arms dealer in the bargain. At least that's what the bad news bores at the RIAA claim.

Nuts and Bolts: I've made some changes to the blog layout in the interest of making it easier to find web galleries and sites that may of interest to my readers:

The Places I've Been, The Things I've Seen: Web galleries of personal photos of family and travel.

Killian Heard: Music and musicians that I've reviewed or referred to.

Iraq: Expert commentary on the Iraq war.

For A Good Time, Click Here: Blogs and web sites I especially enjoy.

Artists & Writers: Blogs and web sites of artists and writers of my acquaintance.

Also, soon I will change the name of the blog to Citizen K. The web address (URL) will remain the same.