THE FIVE TOED SLOTH: ENDANGERED OR MERELY LAZY?: The pictures below are, of course, simply an excuse to fill up space in the absence of anything else to put there. Ordinarily, these dry spells are the result of my having absolutely nothing to write about; in this case, however, I have plenty to write about; there are two pieces on the griddle at home even as I sit here typing away; it’s just that I’ve been too damn lazy to get on with it and finish them. Sloth sloth sloth sloth, nothing but damnable sloth, is keeping me from finishing those things up and getting on with other, more pressing matters at hand. I ought to be ashamed of myself, indeed I should.

In the meantime, here’s a story the monsignor told in his homily at Mass on Sunday. It seems as though there were these two brothers, the products of a devout, churchgoing family, and there were both the worst hellions ever dropped on a planet well known for the quality of its hellions. After one misadventure, the nuns brought the boys to the parish priest for a good talking to. The nuns brought the younger of the two brothers in first, and the parish priest went on and on about how could someone from such a good family be so bad. “Where is God in your life, young man,” the priest asked again and again. “Why is God missing from your life?” The young man said nothing, nothing at all, except when he was agreeing with the good father about what a horrible little snot he was. After a while, the priest got tired of talking to such a dumb lump of preadolescent flesh and told him to leave and send his brother in. As the younger brother left, he passed his big brother in the hall and quickly whispered, “Be careful in there; God is missing and they think we had something to do with it.”