The cousin of Australia’s Cardinal Pell has written an impassioned open letter asking him to recognize her individual rights as a lesbian. She and her partner are both former Catholic nuns who devoted over twenty years each to the church, including working in the slums of Chile during Pinochet’s regime. (More information in accompanying article.) She points out that the Vatican isn’t interested in the service they perform, the Christian principles they live by, or the loving relationship that they have. All they care about is how they have sex. How screwed up is that?

Related: I’m reminded of a scandal at ND a few years back in which a much beloved priest (Father David Garrick, for those that know him) “came out” in The Observer. He was, of course, celibate, but he identified as gay and sympathized with homosexual student activists on campus. His letter meant a lot to some of my gay friends. Unfortunately – despite the Church’s stance that it’s all right to be gay as long as you don’t act on it – he was soon bumped from the schedule for performing Mass and was basically silenced. The last I heard he’d left the Church and was scraping by as a doorman for The Tonight Show in LA. Just thinking about it makes me angry and sad.

Knitted Elvis Wig Pattern. And some people still think knitting isn’t cool…

Periodically the Snook and I – in an effort to better ourselves – take turns recommending books to each other that the recommendee is obligated to read. Most recently he handed me his old paperback copy of Clive Barker’s Imajica. I was less than enthusiastic about the prospect (as he was well aware). I had a dorky boyfriend in high school who read nothing but Barker and Piers Anthony and it pretty much soured those authors for me for life. The only Barker I’ve ever been able to get through before was The Thief of Always (which I enjoyed, to be honest). Anyway, I dived into Imajica trusting that the Snook wouldn’t steer me wrong only to pull up short at the first sentence:

“It was the pivotal teaching of Pluthero Quexos, the most celebrated dramatist of the Second Dominion, that in any fiction, no matter how ambitious its scope or profound its themes, there was only ever room for three players.”

My sister would’ve immediately sneered, “I don’t read books with people named Pluthero in them,” and kicked him in the bum. But I persevered…My biggest problem with the story is that it takes so long to get any plot action going. I mean, things are happening that you eventually figure out tie into the plot, but without a sense of dramatic tension to propel the story forward I found myself wanting to set it aside several times. Barker has a great imagination but I can’t stand to read 500 pages of fantastical landscape and character description. It reminds me a lot of China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station in that respect: The author is just in love with his own vision and spends so much time describing it that you’re sick of the whole world by the time the actual plot rolls around.

I was also worried that Barker was setting up a lot of enigmas that were never going to be solved. That always pisses me off. Luckily the Snook was there to assure me that all the loose ends would eventually be explained. They pretty much all were, with one niggling exception… (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to be spoiled.) How in the world did Sartori – the one that set himself up as Autarch – meet up with Quaisoir? As I understand it, she was the “original” Judith and fell in love with Sartori, so he made the facsimile Judith to appease Roxborough (giving her eternal youth and bequeathing her to the family). Sartori also unwittingly made his own copy, who then messes up the Reconciliation and somehow makes his way out of the Fifth… with Quaisoir? Does she think he’s the real Sartori the whole time? Why did she change her name? (Or was that original name?) If the real “Gentle” Sartori was so in love with her, why didn’t he even mention her when he was asking Pie to wipe his memory? We didn’t even get a “Hey, look after that love of my life for me, will ya?” It’s really not a huge deal in terms of the plot but it’s pissing me off. Barker places all this huge universal importance on the idea of “lovers” but then completely drops the ball there.

Anyway, I finished the book last night and I’d give it a positive review overall. It starts slowly (and the ending isn’t quite as spectacular as I’d hoped), but there are some really great ideas and images in there that I’ll never forget. Oh, and a lot of really weird sex. I was reading it on the bus home from work yesterday and I think the person standing in the aisle next to me is scarred for life. It’s also really fun to try to guess where Barker is going with all the mixed metaphor and allegory and allusion. (Me: “So wait… If Gentle is Jesus, does that make Celestine Mary? And holy crap, are they going to have sex with each other?”) At least is generated some really fun discussions/arguments between the Snook and me. Now it’s my turn to choose… and it’s about time the Snook was introduced to Roland of Gilead, I think.

Saturday morning links to leisurely click through over coffee…

Not Fooling Anybody – a photographic chronicle of bad restaurant and storefront conversions, mostly in the Great Lakes region (via Ernie)

Pathetic Geek Stories – online comic illustrating real-life pathetic geek stories (via Matt)

Marginalia and Other Crimes – a display of “damaged and defiled” books from the Cambridge University Library. While I admit to writing and dog-earing the pages of my own books, I’d never dream of doing it to someone else’s. I like books. (Link via MetaFilter.)

Daring Fireball makes a convincing argument that the iPod minis are going to sell like hotcakes:

“Everyone wants to focus on the $50 price difference between the iPod mini and the 15 GB iPod. I agree that the $50 price difference between the mini and 15 GB iPods is negligible. That’s exactly the point. Take it a step further and imagine if Apple cut another $50 off the price and sold the 15 GB iPod for the same $249 as the mini. I say, even then, there would still be people who would choose the mini. For roughly the same price, you get to choose between a significantly smaller footprint and 11 extra GB. If hard disk capacity were the only factor that mattered, we’d all be using brick-sized players from Creative Labs.”

I totally agree and I’d even go so far as to suggest he forgot another selling point for the Mini – the colors. It sounds silly and sexist, but a lot of females would rank the pretty pastel case as a more important feature than a huge hard-drive. For proof I offer this Glitter thread. I’ve gotta believe that Apple absolutely knew what they were doing with this one.

I know I’m about six months late to the party on this one (as usual), but I am loving this “Hey Ya” song by Outkast. I’ve had it on heavy iPod rotation all week.

Today I had my first Vanilla Diet Coke since discovering the joys of plain Diet Coke plus Absolut Vanilia and I have to say… it sucked. After the first mouthful I checked the expiration date just to make sure it wasn’t off. The vanilla flavour was just wrong. It’s not as sweet as the vodka version and the taste is more synthetic. I can’t believe I never noticed before. I’m now fairly confident in pronouncing that adding vanilla vodka to plain Coke is infinitely preferable to adding plain vodka to vanilla Coke. The contrast is just staggering. Vanilla Diet Coke is dead to me now.

Apple did it. iPod Mini is here. I’m not sure about that pricing though… Who the heck are these things aimed at?

Barbie and Ken as Aragorn and Arwen from Return of the King. Oh. My. God. (Link courtesy of Lucy.)