SACRAMENTAL WHEAT: While I certainly feel sorry for this child who cannot receive Communion because she is allergic to wheat, the notion that the Catholic Church is going to change one of its sacraments to accomodate a small group of people is more than a little odd to me. If the Host may be anything other than unleavened bread, then why not go all the way with the concept? Replace the cross on the top of churches with golden arches and instead of unleavened bread the church can distribute Big Macs with a side order of fries. Getting the Happy Meal while attaining a state of grace would certainly increase Sunday church attendance and the Church can cut McDonald's in for a piece of the collection plate in order to cover the company's expenses. In fact, why not franchise Christianity in general? The Presbyterians could run Taco Bells, the Methodists could have Wendy's, and the Episcopalians, being the American version of the Church of England, an organization whose temporal head is Her Majesty, the Queen, could operate Burger Kings. I dont know if there is a market for blintzes or borscht, so the Russian Orthodox might have a bit of a problem, but the Greek Orthodox could nab the market on falafels and souvlaki. I do have a problem with the transubstantiation of a large strawberry shake into the Blood of Christ, but I am confident that some clever Jesuit, and is there any other kind, can pull off the necessary theological exegesis to everyone's satisfaction.

GREENELAND, NEXT STOP: Okay, the 18th century couldn't last forever, you know. Here is a very good article about Graham Greene. Read the whole thing, as Professor Reynolds is fond of saying.

...and continuing our 18th century theme, here is John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, the basis of Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Enjoy!

CANDIDLY CANDIDE: And now, for those of you who enjoy such distractions, The Passing Parade presents Voltaire's Candide, live and in person.

BRIGHT LIGHTS, SMALL CITY: The local constabulary found a dead opossum in the middle of Main Street this morning, an unusual event given that opossums (is opossa the plural of opossum, I wonder) generally avoid well-lit thoroughfares, preferring to live out their lives in the more rural areas around our happy little burg. Like the leopard in Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, no one can say how this particular marsupial came to die where it did. It was a fairly young opossum, or so I have been told by those who can tell the difference between one opossum and another, and I think that maybe what we saw this morning was just another casualty of this generation’s constant need for stimulation, for excitement, of moving on swiftly from this moment’s pleasure to the next, the hatred of boredom that seems to be the hallmark of the young these days. Perhaps it was the need for the bright lights that drove this young opossum into life, and inevitably, death, in the fast lane. There is a lesson here, I think, for all of us.

DEATH AND DYING: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the author of On Death and Dying, has passed away at the age of 78. This may be a good career move, given that she now has practical experience to go along with her academic training.

FEAR AND SMEAR ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: John Kerry dislikes the use of smear and fear tactics in this campaign. You will pardon me if I do not weep copious tears at his discomfiture. The man and his allies have been smearing President Bush on a regular basis for months now and now the much vaunted Republican attack machine is beginning to smear back. This is the way things work in American politics and if Mr Kerry cannot stand the heat he should be running for some other office. The shrieks of Republican conspiracies coming from the Democratic camp do not impress me either, given that the Democrats have aligned themselves with organizations like MoveOn.org, which can be loosely described as fronts for George Soros and his billions. I think I understand why the Democrats are shrieking though; Kerry's Vietnam service was supposed to protect him from Republican efforts to bring up his lousy voting record on national security issues. If anyone brought up his votes against almost anything having to do with the military Democratic operatives would sneer and bring up Bush being AWOL; in fact, as I write this I can practically hear James Carville doing just that in my head. But it isnt turning out that way and the Democrats are furious that Kerry's war record is not turning out to be the political prophylactic it was supposed to be.

They are equally furious that their pals in the Big Media can't bury this story. Tough luck, guys, but the fact is you've spent years squandering your credibility and now, with the Internet, you are largely unnecessary. A. J. Liebling once pointed out that the free press was only free if you owned the press. Nowadays all you need is a computer and a phone line. For further reading on the subject, I suggest Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, especially the chapters on the Renaissance Popes, the corrupt products of a corrupt system, blindsided by the invention of the printing press that ended their monopoly on information and scriptural interpretation, men too blinded by their own arrogance to see that their abuses of the Church were now evident to everyone.

WHO YA GONNA CALL? FATBUSTERS!: I wonder how long it will be before those clever Japanese figure out how to fit this fat busting microwave oven they've just invented into a tanning salon machine. Millions of overweight Americans are looking for a way to lose weight without exercising or giving up junk food and get a good tan while they're at it. The Japanese could get a licensing deal with Wal-Mart; every superstore in the country would get a weight-loss tanning salon, preferably next to the aisle with the ten pound economy size bag of potato chips and the boxes of Coca-Cola, ensuring that the customer base would never disappear. The market is there, people; it only takes an entrepeneur of genius to go out and sell the concept to the nation and the world. Emerson was right: build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

MATH CLASS: My niece, an innocent and trusting young naif, asked me today what exactly a protractor is used for. I tried to explain the utility of the thing, going on in a very long and turgid explanation of the measurement of angles and arcs and there being no royal road to geometry, but it did not clear the matter up to her satisfaction. In fact, she seemed dubious about the whole concept of protractors despite my best efforts to make it crystal clear, the confused child looking at me with the same hard-eyed squint people usually reserve for fast-talking used car salesmen trying to sell them a sample of last year's crop of lemons, until I finally fell back on the explanation I first heard from Billy McGrath in the sixth grade: a protractor is a measuring device that teachers use to make math class seem even longer than it is.

GEOGRAPHY: The Moscow Times informs the world today that the situation in South Ossetia is unsustainable. This may very well be, for all I know; the politics of the Caucasus region are not my particular field of expertise; but in reading this I can't help but wonder: now that I know where South Ossetia is, where exactly is North Ossetia?

SEX AND DRUGS: A survey of American teenagers confirms the link between sex and illegal drugs. I do not wish to seem crass or unsympathetic; I am sure that the organization sponsoring this survey is made up of serious and well-meaning people; but doesn't this survey and its findings more or less come under the heading of No Shit, Sherlock?

CZESLAW MILOSZ, RIP: Czeslaw Milosz has died at age 93. For anyone who wants to understand how Communism and its lies utterly corrupted so many members of the Polish intelligentsia in the postwar era, I strongly recommend that you read Milosz's book, The Captive Mind. I don't know if Milosz meant the book to be as truly frightening as it is; I strongly suspect that he did or why else write the book; but his description of the slow poisoning of minds that should have, and often did, know better is as scary as O'Brien in George Orwell's 1984 using his power to convince Winston Smith that two plus two equals five.

BASE CLOSINGS: Yes, indeed, the Germans are deeply concerned about the closing of U.S. bases in Germany. This move will, of course, leave the Germans open to unprovoked Polish aggression. Without American protection the Poles may, in a series of swift diplomatic and military maneuvers that will once again bring all of Europe to the brink of war, compel the Germans to stop eating bratwurst and start eating kielbasa. The horror, the horror.

HOUSEHOLD HINTS: Steamy mirrors got you down in the morning? Are you tired of trying to shave in a fog? Sick of always cutting large gobbets of flesh off your face simply because you don't have time to wait for the mirror to defog? Well, friends, I have an answer to all of your excess humidity questions. If you rub just a little amount of dishwasher fluid on the mirror in your bathroom, it will not fog up for a few days. Just another household hint from The Passing Parade.

THE OLYMPICS: This article about putting the Olympics in one place and keeping them there certainly makes sense to me.

MUSIC AND THE ULTIMATE QUESTIONS: The folks next door are having a concert of sorts outside on the sidewalk, complete with a hired band and everything. I say a concert of sorts since, to my mind, a concert entails the actual playing of music and that doesn't seem to be happening here. I spoke to one of the musicians about the notable lack of music in this particular concert and he told me that they were on break. This, of course, leads to the philosophical question: how do you take a break from something you aren't doing?

CAR ALARMS: Maybe it's just me, but I wonder why anyone bothers with car alarms in the first place. There's been one going off outside my door for the past fifteen minutes and so far as I can tell no one is paying the least bit of attention to it. Certainly this burg's always on the ball constabulary is taking no note of the alarm; if this were an actual grand theft auto in progress the thieves would have this car stripped down to the axle and be halfway to New Jersey with their ill-gotten gains by the time our always on the ball constabulary arrived on the scene. And for those who are paying attention, such as myself, the alarm is not alarming; it's just too damn annoying for words. Maybe if the alarm went off and played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or the Theme from The Pink Panther or maybe something by Sinatra someone would take note, but if the owner of this car thinks their crummy little alarm is going to protect their property from our happy little burg's more sociopathic citizens then they are in for quite a shock someday.

THE OFFAL GERMAN LANGUAGE: I suppose there's a lot to be said about reforming German spelling, but I think the main problem with German spelling is that this spelling is, boldly and unashamedly, in German. I could say more, but why say it when Mark Twain has already has, and much better than I ever could. Now, if we could only get someone to reform English spelling, that would really be something. The clever bastard who figures out how to do that will dream of riches beyond the dreams of avarice and will wind up dirt poor and probably in the nuthouse as well. English orthography will never be reformed, simply because we've all too much invested in the way things are spelled now.

Just as a sidelight: a government commission ordered the changes in German spelling. Can anyone imagine a government commission in an English speaking country doing the same thing and expecting the citizenry to take the ordered changes seriously?

WIND CHIMES: It's never really occurred to me before, but my crazy Aunt Mary, as opposed to my two Irish Aunt Marys who are not at all eccentric, other than in the usual Irish ways, keeps her collection of wind chimes inside the house, in a room without windows. Collecting wind chimes is a silly habit, I think, but then it is probably no sillier than any one of a vast array of human collectible silliness; there are, for example, people who collect ancient Thessalonikan salt shakers and Art Deco matchbooks stolen from fashionable European hotels in the 1930's, of all things, as well as those people who invest in antique Albanian accordions or spend tens of thousands of dollars for 19th century bottles of wine whose contents have long since turned to vinegar. I suppose I could ask her why she keeps wind chimes, a device, if you could call them that, meant to be hung outside the house and in a place usually guaranteed to annoy those next door neighbors you don't like all that much, in an inside room where there is no wind and therefore no chime, but that would spoil all the speculative possibilities, wouldn't it?

TOESUCKERS: Sometimes you just can't make up stuff as good as this. The Dutch will, no doubt, ban toe licking in public places sometime in the immediate future and toe fetishists will have to go to Amsterdam's red light district to indulge their quirk. Just one more country Dick Morris need not bother going to.

THE BLIND LEADING...: An article, from The New York Observer, in which Nicholas von Hoffman, a resident of New York, proves that he has missed, by a country mile, the significance of the events of the past three years.

NEWS OF INTELLIGENCE IN WASHINGTON: President Bush's endorsement of a national intelligence director proves once again how politicians and civil servants still cling to the old dictum that all the troubles of bureaucracy can be solved by more bureaucracy. You'd think that after a while the politicians would catch on and see that this is not necessarily so, but it's an election year and politicians hate to look idle in an election year. It makes them nervous.

PARTY PATCHES: We have before us the Spectator issue of June 2, 1711, in which Mr. Spectator, Joseph Addison himself, no less, comments on the then new fashion amongst stylish women of attending the opera wearing small patches on their faces, the better to advertise their political affiliations. Patches worn on the left side of the face branded one as a Tory, whereas patches on the right side marked the lady as a Whig. Women born with a mole on the partisanally incorrect side of their faces were at something of a loss at the time, what with having to defend themselves against charges of betraying their party from the womb onwards. The price of having a zit in the wrong place could mean social and political disaster.

In our enlightened age, we are more advanced than the poor bewigged wretches of the 18th century, so for us patches are not necessary, but the need for a strong party identification remains, so the Federal Elections Commission has ordered that henceforth Democratic women will wear donkey shaped tongue studs and nose rings to demonstrate party loyalty, whereas Republican women will wear tasteful pearl earrings and a butterfly tattoo on some portion of their anatomy not immediately visible to the curious onlooker. Republican women may have a problem with this, as the elephant is the traditional symbol of the GOP, but Microsoft has bought the rights to the elephant symbol for an undisclosed amount of cash and several Western states, and so the Republicans, as part of that same deal, will now use Microsoft's butterfly logo as its party symbol. What it lacks in tradition, however, it makes up for in looks. Butterflies, let's face it, are more attractive than elephants.

NEWS ON THE MARCH...WELL, MAYBE A SLOW WALK: Scott Peterson was apparently going broke in the fertilizer business, which only goes to show you that there are, in fact, some things that the government can do better than private enterprise.

HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK IF SOMETHING ELSE WERE AVAILABLE? : Now things have come to a pretty pass when the local wildlife is so contemptuous of private property that deer have no compunction about eating your hedges and geraniums and Canadian geese use your front lawn as a combined buffet and rest room, but the situation has clearly reached another order of magnitude when my mother goes out to her garden and finds her cantaloupes mauled to bits. At first we thought it was the same deer that has taken to pruning our shrubs, but forensic examination of the violated cantaloupes showed that an animal with claws ripped through the rinds and chowed down on the fruit within. This evidence eliminated the deep from the list of possible garden invaders, as well as snails, slugs, and other Francogastronomic garden pests. My brother and I maintained an intense surveillance on the garden, keeping a watchful eye over the surviving cantaloupes and melons. For an entire week we watched ceaselessly, without a moment’s notice given to anything that might distract us from our appointed task, except for meals, Yankee games on TV, golf, movies, work, and sleep. At the end of the week, just when we were about to give up the surveillance, the criminal showed himself.

“There it is!” my brother shouted from his secret observation post high atop the sofa in the living room. I rushed to the back window. There, in the garden, chewing on a cantaloupe I’d planned to have with my breakfast, was Marmota monax, the largest of the squirrel family, the creature more commonly known as the woodchuck, or, in some places, the whistling pig. This particular specimen was the largest woodchuck I’ve seen in a long while, weighing in at about forty pounds (half that is the norm for woodchucks). “Look at the size of that bastard,” my brother, hereinafter known as the Great White Hunter (GWH) or Bwana, yelled. My mother shouted at the beast to go away, but the gluttonous rodent, hereinafter known as the Elusive Beast, looked at us as though we were mad, and then went back mauling my mother’s cantaloupes. Then my brother made a fateful choice. “I’m going to shoot that thing in its big fat ass,” he announced, and ran up the stairs to fetch the BB gun.

That day and the days after it were days of terrible frustration for my brother. The Elusive Beast taunted him at every turn, mauling melons and making holes in tomatoes at every turn, launching raids on the radishes and assaults on the asparagus (Mom doesn’t actually grow asparagus, but I like the assonance there) whenever the brother was not about, and then fleeing back into his hole whenever he perceived that he was being watched. My brother found this all terribly frustrating, the more so since it was not at all a matter of killing the Elusive Beast, but rather educating the little bastard to stay away from the cantaloupes. “If I kill the Elusive Beast,” my brother explained, “then I’m going to have to get rid of its lousy flea-bitten carcass so he’s not stinking us out of house and home. No, I got to teach him not to come into the garden.”
The brother said this with an air of tremendous self-satisfaction, as if this were the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.

In reality, my brother was now embarked on one of the great scientific adventures of our time, an attempt to prove that the experiments carried out by Pavlov and Skinner could be carried out in a completely uncontrolled environment. The call went to behaviorists everywhere in the world, and they came in their hundreds and then in their thousands to see the results of this great experiment. In the end, they got too damn annoying for words and GWH began shooting them in the end instead, causing them to flee back to the ivory towers from which they emerged. Proving that this experiment would work with academics, however, is not the same as proving it would work with the Elusive Beast and his merry band of fruit thieves (yes, there were more than one of them; apparently this unfit parent recruited members of his family to help him with his depredations). No, indeed, they would prove a much more cunning foe.

So the Great White Hunter lay in wait in his stand by the back window overlooking the garden, kept alive by a Spartan diet of sour cream and onion flavored potato chips, Key lime pie, and Coca-Cola brought to him by underpaid native bearers from the nearest Wal-Mart. He waited and waited, hoping to catch the Elusive Beast as he broke cover and went for the cantaloupes, but over a week of waiting went by and nothing happened, not even a possible sighting, although he did see an opossum that looked vaguely like Elvis in profile. Did our hero despair? You bet your ass he did, but he kept at it, despite the laughter and none too gentle taunting of friends and family, waiting patiently for the Elusive Beast to reappear.

Then, just as he was about to give way to the counsels of despair, the Elusive Beast showed himself. The rotund rodent emerged from its burrow underneath the house next door and waddled across the line between our property and the neighbor’s, making a beeline for my mother’s small garden, or as much of a beeline that any wallowing woodchuck can muster. The obese Beast trundled towards the garden, its mind aflame with the possibilities of despoiling yet another cantaloupe, displaying in its every ponderous step a basic contempt towards all of humanity. The Great White Hunter carefully aimed the BB gun at the woodchuck’s hindquarters and gently squeezed the trigger.

He missed by a country mile. The Elusive Beast stopped and sniffed the air and then continued its march, evidently concluding that a low-flying aircraft had just flown overhead. The GWH swore under his breath and pumped the BB gun up to maximum pressure once again. This time he aimed carefully and then let fly.

The Elusive Beast stopped dead in its tracks and looked around, wondering where the bee that stung it had gone to. “I got him,” shouted the GWH, and rapidly pumped the weapon up again. He fired again, and struck the Beast yet again. The Beast, now realizing that he was in the open with a potential predator zeroed in on him, ran for cover, tripping time and time again over his pendulous belly. But the GWH had not done with him. Again and again the BBs flew, forcing the once Elusive and now abject and sniveling Beast to change course over and over again, driving him further away from the protection of his burrow. Yes, the BBs flew, clipping an ear here and a paw there, with one memorable shot clipping the Beast’s scrotum. The Beast howled and galumphed around the back yard, looking for some protection from the rain of stinging missiles that now harassed his every move. Finally, the GWH ran out of BBs and the Beast scurried back to his burrow, all thoughts of gorging on the delicious cantaloupes gone from its mind.

Since then the Beast has been back a few times, testing to see if the GWH awaited him, and each time the Beast bolted back to his burrow, followed by a veritable tornado of BBs. He sits there to this day, debating the meaning of it all with the wisest of woodchuck natural philosophers, some of whom hold that the BBs do not exist, while others hold that the Elusive Beast is the victim of an advanced Oedipal complex manifesting itself as BBs. In any case, the Elusive Beast is staying on his side of the property line, having learned, if nothing else, something about the sanctity of private property. And the cantaloupes are delicious. I thought you’d want to know.