Oh N.O.!

It was only 3 months ago that my fiance, Shannon, and I decided last minute to go to New Orleans to celebrate our 4 year anniversary and my graduation from college. It was a great experience, and now considering the events that are transpiring there due to Hurricane Katrina, we will cherish that trip even more.

Instantly I compared New Orleans to my hometown of St. Louis, MO. They have more of a reverence for historical landmarks and buildings there. The blocks are covered in old buildings, especially in the French Quarter. Their river walk is amazing, covered with things to do and things to see, like sculptures and other various works of art, not to mention the Audubon Acquarium.

St. Louis doesn't have an acquarium or a river walk.

The French Quarter itself contains more to do than the entire downtown area of St. Louis, with its eclectic mixture of restaurants, shops, countless bars, and voodoo related spots (apparently New Orleans is the voodoo capital of the U.S., if not the world). Bourbon Street is only a small part of the quarter, and I found it actually kind of annoying, because all it is is bars and strip clubs, with balconies overhead filled with horny middle aged men hoping that one female will show her breasts to them. Such a sad world we live in.

That however, was one of a few drawbacks of this beautiful place. The streets are inhabited by more homeless people than any other city I have visited. Most keep to themselves, which I appreciate as sad as it sounds. I tend to give money to the ones that don't beg. I wonder how many of them survived this disaster.

There already was a horrible stench to the area, reeking of trash, which is left curbside for pickup because of no alleys, and of sewage. Add several feet of water to that and god only knows what the smell is like.

They are saying that 80% of New Orleans is flooded now, with at least several feet of water. What we saw only a few months ago may never exist again.

One creepy aspect of the whole situation is the dead. The city has numerous historical cemeteries with people buried above ground in various types of vaults, sometimes very simple, sometimes very elaborate with statues and columns. There has been speculation that the remains from these cemeteries may get lose in the flood water along with the gas and oil that already contaminates it. An AP photo showed a body of someone that died in the storm surge floating in the water. Imagine remains of the already dead mixed with that already disturbing image. Those people were buried above ground because of fears that underground burials would not be secure due to the city being below sea level. It's ironic that all of that may have been done for nothing if the cemeteries like St. Louis #2 is laid to waste.

New Orleans...I may have only got to know thee in a few short days, but I feel for you and your people.

I only hope the casualties were kept to a minimum, and this great city can recover from this mess.

For photos of the Hurricane's effects in N.O., go to NOLA.com.

Teaching kids about conservativism?!

I thank Tom Tomorrow for this. I don't even read him much, but I stumbled upon his site. Thank the lord, because otherwise this would not have been brought to my attention. This is very disturbing.

Why do kids need to learn such things at an early age and with such bias? Why not "Help mom, there's terrorists under my bed!" with illustrations of foreigners under the bed? Or "Help mom, a very stupid, evil man has taken over our country!"

I liked it better when we were just teaching kids about poopingand fartingin their picture books.

Why must my bitch hump me like a boy?

I have a female boxer puppy at home named Sadie. She has a thing for humping my fiance and me, but has taken a real liking to my leg as of late. I thought only male dogs would hump like that, since it is their sexual position. How does a female learn such things and why do they even want to do that?

First off I should say that some have asked why I allow her to do it. I don't let her continuously do it, but for a moment it is hell-arious. For instance, yesterday she humped my leg and I allowed three thrusts. Why? With each one she farted loudly, and that is the best laugh I had all week.

So I asked Jeeves about this, and he lead me to some answers. The best site, Vetinfo.com, said this:

Spaying a female dog will sometimes result in an increase in testosterone influence, if they produce androgenic (testosterone-like) hormones at higher levels than most females and then the suppressing effect of estrogen is removed due to spaying. This can cause an increase in aggressive or dominance behaviors and that can mean that mounting (humping) behaviors will occur.

That all makes perfect sense, because she was spayed a month or two ago, and happens to be very dominant over other dogs, and she's very non-discriminant about it as long as the other dog isn't toering over her.

The article also said this though:

Whether or not you should be concerned is hard to say. This is actually
relatively normal behavior unless it does get so prevalent that you have to consider an obsessive/compulsive or anxiety based cause. In those cases, there are medications that can help, such as fluoxetine (Prozac Rx) or clomipramine (Clomicalm Rx).

Whoah...give my dog Prozac...share my precious prescription. That's crazy talk. Or is my dog crazy? Or is my leg just really attractive?

Play "Find the sexual predators near you"!

As kind of a follow up to my pedophile priest posting (how is that for alliteration?), I saw this site on the news recently--Map Sex Offenders. You can type in your address and find all of the sex offenders near your home, nicely mapped out. The map is even available as a satelitte image, which is scary enough by itself. One must take into account though that there is the off chance that the offender could be considered that simply for urinating outdoors, and what guy hasn't done that?! That is a very slight possibility though, so I say plot out the predators around you, get a mob together with some torches, and surround their houses.

I am only kidding, but the site is still interesting and worth checking out.

R.I.P. Cody "Eda" Mulligan 6/7/1997-8/24/2005

My fiance's dog, Cody, passed away earlier today. My sympathies to the family. And he was a definite member of the family. He put up with being blind very well for the past year, and he was the happiest dog I've ever met. Rest in peace little buddy.

Mad Russian Free...For Now

On Tuesday, Vladimir Noskov, AKA The Mad Russian, was released on a $3000 bond from the Lincoln County Jail in Troy, MO. Read the Post-Dispatch blurb here. It states that he will have his deportation hearing on September 6th. Good luck to him with that.

To catch up on Vladimir's story to date, check out The Plight of The Mad Russian .

As an aside, I bumped into a guy last Thursday on a drinking excursion that knows Vlad from University City. He very angrily told me how he was friends with him, but Vlad owes him money for various things. He doesn't like to see anyone in jail, so he hopes Vlad gets out for good, but he said he wants to be the first to kick his ass. Hopefully the Russian doesn't have a lot of friends like that.

I wish him the best of luck with his deportation situation and just want to say that he doesn't owe me anything.

McGrath Didn't Molest Me...Thank God

In last Thursday's edition of the Metro section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I noticed a small blurb in the "Local Briefs" entitled "2 Sue Priest, Ex-Priest, Allege Sexual Abuse." What stood out was:

A Missouri man sued Michael S. McGrath, claiming the former
priest sexually assaulted him beginning in 1981 in a movie theater, a van and McGrath's aunt's house in Oklahoma. McGrath was at St. Patrick's Parish in Wentzville at the time, the suit says.

McGrath has been sued 18 other times since 2003, according to
court records.

McGrath was laicized, or dismissed from the priesthood, on February 4th of this year; a full 2 years since the first accusations. He still lives life as a free man in the Richmond Heights area.

But I knew McGrath when he was Father McGrath, and he was my religion teacher at Bishop DuBourg High School in 1997. My sister also had him in 1995. He was a peculiar man with a crooked sneer, that seemed to get off from giving high school students demerits for piddily dress code violations. He always wore a polo shirt, most of the time with an accompanying sport coat, and he always wore sandals, which I was told was so his feet could breathe because of fungus issues.

As a teacher in the classroom though, I thought he was great. His methods certainly were unorthodox to most though. He had a living room set-up including a couch and two plush chairs, which for one week a month, your table could sit at for class. He even had a great Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven" poster on the wall. One time, after school, he tried explaining to me and a buddy that the song is entirely about Mary and Jesus, but I don't remember the specifics.

As he lectured, if he noticed someone sleeping or trying to sleep, he would apologize and say something to the effect of "you will learn more from your dreams than from me, so I have no problem with your slumber," except when he said it, it sounded very sincere, but coming from a kooky guy. He taught us the "Celestine Prophecy," which to this day I cannot explain, except it is a book about a guy looking for something...hey, I was sleeping.

I mentioned that I spoke with him after school. I also left school property with him and my friend. I am not sure why. He lured us with Rold Gold pretzels that were left over from a blood drive. Luckily we weren't getting driving lessons from him, which seems to be a frequent striking time for him. We did meet a friend of his, a younger guy, who was on his break from driving a bus. Oddly enough, McGrath went on to do the same. The thing is, I find it strange that we came so close to such a sickening creature, and we had no idea.

He actually left DuBourg in the middle of the year he was teaching my class, without any explanation. It was not until later that I found out why he was actually removed by the Archdiocese.

He went on to drive buses for Metro, which the Riverfront Times actually did a cover story for, but didn't mention his unknown past. Click on the link, and check out that creep.

I was raised Catholic in St. Louis. I went to St. Joan of Arc for all of grade school. In 1992 or 1993, when I was in the 5th grade, we had a deacon named Bryan Kuchar. To us kids back then, these guys were like celebrities to us for some reason. My sister, who was in the 8th grade that year, had him autograph her skirt. In 1995, he sodomized a boy 3 times. In November of 2003, he was sentenced for 3 years in the St. Louis County Jail. Kuchar was also laicized at the same time as McGrath. Luckily, I chose not to be an altar boy in my grade school years.

During High School, I dated a girl who answered phones for Michael Campbell, then pastor at Our Lady of Sorrows. In March of 2002, he left there because of allegations of abuse from 12 years prior.

I could go on, but my point is that as much as these are played off as stray incidents, I can find multiple priests from my life in the Catholic church that were criminals. It's frightening to consider my close brushes with these men. It's even more frightening to consider that McGrath still walks free. At least the St. Louis Archdiocese has done their part by giving back over $2 million to the victims. What good does that do? And where does that money come from anyway? Is it the same money that my family put in the collection plate, or that we spent on gambling and booze at their wonderful picnics?

I'm sure God is looking down with such approval.

Related article (added 1/19/06, but from 6/27/03)