Perhaps I should change my friends-page name...

Since I started Reflections of a stormy petrel two years ago, the friends page has always been called Thank God for the following people, for fairly obvious reasons. But for over a year now, I have been aware of a peculiar phenomenon: there always seems to be at least one f-list member who is expecting. No sooner had synaesthete_7 had Paul Nathan, than hafguk became pregnant with Simon. And now that Simon has come along - and what a charmer he is - prylliepwns delights us with news of her coming Dee Dee. Perhaps it ought to be The Fertility F-List.

So you see what you have to do, ladies. If you want a baby, you do not have to spend thousands of pounds or dollars going through IVF, or finding a surrogate mother, or adopting someone, or performing spells, or making a pilgrimage. Just friend me, and sooner or later one of you at least will be carrying her own little princess or princeling.

And my love and congratulations to you all.

Cat-holic joke (from the Happy Catholic blog)

A newly discovered chapter in the Book of Genesis has provided the answer to "Where do pets come from?"

Adam said, "Lord, when I was in the garden, you walked with me every day. Now I do not see you anymore. I am lonesome here and it is difficult for me to remember how much you love me."

And God said, "No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourself."

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam. And it was a good animal.

And God was pleased. And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and he wagged his tail.

And Adam said, "Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I cannot think of a name for this new animal." And God said, "No problem. Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG."

And Dog lived with Adam and was a companion to him and loved him.

And Adam was comforted.

And God was pleased.

And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that Adam's guardian angel came to the Lord and said, "Lord, Adam has become filled with pride. He struts and preens like a peacock and he believes he is worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught him that he is loved, but perhaps too well."

And God said, "No problem! I will create for him a companion who will be with him forever and who will see him as he is. The companion will remind him of his limitations, so he will know that he is not always worthy of adoration."

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam.

And Cat would not obey Adam.

And when Adam gazed into Cat's eyes, he was reminded that he was not the supreme being.

And Adam learned humility.

And God was pleased.

And Adam was greatly improved.

And Dog was happy.

And the cat didn't give a shit one way or the other.

Umberto Eco on Dan Brown

I wonder how many of the people who read my blog when I took a couple of hard swings at Dan Brown's loathsome THE DA VINCI CODE are with me still - most, I hope. Anyway, what I remember is that one person asked me about Umberto Eco's THE FOUCAULT PENDULUM, from which Brown was said to have swiped most of his plot. I did not answer, because I had not read Eco's book (and, to be truthful, I had not made it through all of Brown's, missing in particular the revelation of Teabing's villainy - but who can read hundreds of pages of a book whose style, content and ideology he finds uniformly detestable?). However, Eco, who to the best of my knowledge had not so far said anything about his brother novelist's successful effort, did finally oblige with a few pointed remarks, in the context of an interview about the general concept of conspiracy theories.

[My translation]: In my work on "Pendulum," I used conspiracy-theory literature, down the very worst dregs, to exorcise it. Instead of which, Dan Brown rolled into town with his "Da Vinci Code," taking those booklets as literally true, and immense numbers of readers in America actually ask me whether the whole corpus of work and doctrine of the Catholic Church is in fact a conspiracy. Eco, adds his interviewer, was hoping to chop down conspiracy theories with the Ockham's razor of reason, and they sprang back stronger than ever, insolent and universally present. I will add that Eco, one of a number of people who migrated from Catholic youth groups to the old Italian Communist Party in the early sixties, is not a believer and is regarded by Italian Catholics as an intellectual opponent. But he has way way way too much knowledge of the real intellectual and artistic achievement of the Church to take Dan Brown and his rubbish as anything but an insult to the intellect.