on Catholics and cats

It's so unfair! There's a story in today's "Star" about a couple who own a foul-tempered cat with an expressive face. They posted pictures on the internet, the cat became a superstar, and the family of 3 has been flown to Austin, Texas for the SXSW festival on there now. Phooey! I have a VERY crabby cat, as you all know, but no one is flying US to Austin; I will have to pay to fly there myself in only a few weeks. Should get pictures of this beast on the 'net. But she doesn't frown like that one; she mostly sleeps, and then casually slashes the hand that strokes her. Practically ripped my thumb off last week. She's giving me the evil green eye right now. If we had our act together, El Crabbola, we'd be on our way to Austin!

Pardon me if I continue in this whiny tone, but I simply do not get all this @#$# fuss about the Pope. On and on, the radio obsesses, the TV - the cardinals are eating breakfast! They will thread their votes together with a golden needle! The world awaits with breathless anticipation ... not. Who cares that a bunch of old white men - well, there's a brown face or two - are gathering in Rome to decide which old white man will take over from Ratzinger? I've been singing his name recently to the tune of "Goldfinger."
"Rat-zinger ...
He's the man, the man with the bright red shoes ...
He's got the blues..."

I know, irreverent. But I have no respect for an institution which sits on billions, condemns women to hordes of children and illegal abortions and then protects child-molesting criminals. Sorry to my intelligent Catholic friends, all 4 of them - Lynn, Denis, Anne-Marie and Ken - but I think the Catholic Church, except for people like them, sucks.

Ooo. I bet that really hurts, Church.

And then I opened the Star to find a chart of the world's religions. Guess which is by far the largest? Christianity, 32% of the world's population. 2.2 billion people, 50% of whom are Catholic. So I guess there are quite a few people who care about the Pope. 23% of the world is Muslim, 15% Hindu. 16% are my people - "atheism, agnosticism, or no religious affiliation." 1.6 billion people, including 700 million Chinese. And way at the bottom of the list - 0.2% of the world's population, or only - this is unbelievable - 15 million people - are Jews. They make a lot of noise and take up a lot of space, those measly 15 million Jews. My father liked to count the number of Jewish Nobel prizes. Proportionately - out in space.

Big news: this half-Jewish atheist is going to have a garage sale soon. Get rid of stuff. Lots of stuff. You can all come and buy my stuff, and then perhaps one day, you'll have a garage sale, and I can come and buy it back. Deal?