LONG LIVE JETER HALL!!!!

Quick, plug in a firing solution for tubes one and two! Colette's birthday is the 20th, it's National Patrimony Weekend, so all the castles and museums are open for free. But it's usually best to see them some other weekend, when it's less crowded. We went to Anglican church a few weekends ago and liked it a lot! We think we'll stay there. Harhar if you're Roman, you can follow the liturgy from A to Z. We are spoiled with a super organ, a super organist, and a really cool spartan Roman church.

If you've heard about Ben XVI's lecture about faith and reason at Regensburg that has caused so much controversy, you can read the thing for yourself. If you see the pictures of the illiterati protesting in those mahometan parts of God's green earth, Bennie's comments become justified. Il Babba's words are not "those of Hitler and Mussolini," nor do I think he "misunderstood Islam" when he reflected upon the transcendance of the Muslim God. The fiasco is best summarized on the drudgereport.com page in the headline "Benedict XVI fails to master media machine."

The presidential race is well, not heating up. I have the joy of working with a lawyer who studied political science, and says that Ségolène Royale will never be president. Good news, because Ségolène is a 1.)woman, 2.) a socialist and 3.)a representative of this post-1968 France, who has a "Civil Pact of Solidarity" with her "partner," (a man) another big wig in the Socialist Party.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the "only hope" for French politics, is good, but disappointing. But the edge that he has over Chirac, de Villepin, and Royale is that he has good experience with the Interior Department, which is more taking care of crooks and rebels in the interior than it is National Park Service.

Big stuff going on in America : I read this article on cnn.com and was shocked that students should be deprived of hardy living, forced to drink martinis and imported beer instead of well, Jack Daniels and Bud Light. Well no, seriously, a moving company for coming into the dorm? Where is the satisfaction of having hauled your refrigerator into your dorm room? Heck, I didn't even have a tv in college (ok, by choice), but plasma screens?!?!? I think it's about time that we should get our priorities back on line.

Sure, I live with a pre-September 20, 2004 vision of America, where there were still some glimmers of spartan hope, where I was proud to drive a 15-year-old Jeep with a tape player and no AC. Do any of those kids know how to camp? Canoe? Load, shoot and clean a gun? Kill or grow your own food? Tie all the right knots? Open a book? How can you expect God to bless America when it's populated by over- (or under-)educated yuppies?

John Out.