You Have A Marvelous Virgin
Hit the Reset Button, Ma

By Lord Lunch with help from the Catholic News Agency.
On her visit to Mexico last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a surprise early morning visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, bearing a bouquet of white flowers “on behalf of the American people.”

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious and cultural symbol, and the Basilica is the second most visited Catholic shrine in the world. (Pope John Paul II visited four times.)

On a hill near Mexico City in 1531, a peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a young girl surrounded by light. The Lady asked for a church to be built at that site in her honor. From her words, Juan Diego recognized her as the Virgin Mary.

Miracles of the Image
When Juan Diego told his story to the Spanish bishop, an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe miraculously appeared on the back of his simple peasant’s cloak.

The image has maintained its integrity for 500 years, though replicas made with similar materials normally disintegrate after about 15 years. In 1791, an ammonia spill made a considerable hole in the cloak, but the image reportedly mended itself within two weeks with no external help. In 1921, an anarchist hid a bomb in an offering of flowers placed next to the image. The bomb's explosion destroyed the shrine, but the image was undamaged.

Photographers and ophthalmologists have reported images reflected in the eyes of the Virgin. A Nobel Prize winning chemist concluded that the tint on the fabric is not from any known mineral, vegetable, or animal source. An infrared study of the image found portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle appear to have been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections, and no apparent brush strokes.

Mrs. Clinton’s Reaction to the Image
When Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Basilica, she was greeted by the rector, Msgr. Diego Monroy.

After respectfully viewing the image of the Virgin for a while, Mrs. Clinton asked the rector “Who painted it?”

Msgr. Monroy responded “God!”

As she left the Basilica, Mrs. Clinton told a crowd of Mexicans gathered outside, “You have a marvelous virgin!”

Holy Moo Cow!

Look at the time. Worse, look at the date! The date of the last post and the date of this, the most recent. From December 18 in the year of '07 'til today, March 7, 2008, has nothing happened to stir me from my slumbers? That's a rhetorical question of sorts, for I am out of sorts, having apparently slept through Christmas and the Super Bowl.

So, why now, I ask (I being the only one tuned in to this blog, the other person having long ago departed to a site more current, so it would not be proper to say 'Why now, you ask,') do I rub sand from mine my eyes and take quill in hand?

Good question, m' Lord, thanks for asking it.

Yew are most welcome.

(Get on with it! - ed.)

The answer is, er, for one thing, my man Bix has made me perhaps the most refreshing toddy ever have I had. And half way through the second serving of same, I am feeling verbal, mellowy verbal, not spit-bubble-blowing drunk verbal.

Not so verbal as to take up much more of your time, you being of course, the royal you, meaning me, since my reader abandoned moi whilst unsuspectingly I slept.

(DO get ON with whatever it is you're going on about! - ed.)

Right-ho. Sipping my toddy sans parasol capped swizzle stick, which kept poking me in the left eye before I had the sense to snap it in two and toss it towards the fireplace, where Bix shall have to put it after he picks it up off the stuffed Rhino-foot hassock where it landed, my aim being not what once it was...

(I give up --- And I'm Outta Here! - ed.)

Sipping my toddy, as I was saying, I revisted this page for the first time since December, saw the yawning gap betwix that date and this, and resolved to prevent said yawn from becoming wider.

Further, I was moved to memorialize my thoughts on Google ads. It was my impression that dear old Google possessed some mysterious machine, powered by moonbeams and pixie dust, that detected the nature of content on a web page and then sprinkled little ads on the page relevant to said content. But nowhere on the pages of this "Daily" Aspect are there any Google ads relevant to any content herein. At least there is no relevancy that I can devine. Perhaps a few more premium toddys from Bix will lubricate, er, illuminate my ability to find linkage.

Go I now into the night, praying I shall, from now on, more frequently return to these pages with inkpot and toddy glass brimming, and with quill poised and brain primed, to entertain, educate, and amaze all who venture here with incisive insights into the inner workings of this world of folly and fable.

Yours, etc., etc., etc.

Lord Lunch, Hamsammich Castle, Worcestershiresauce, England.

Oh, and P.S., please. Swizzle sticks. Parasol-topped swizzle sticks at that! They are for ditsy dainty ladies who sip thick, sticky, sweet, rainbow colored drinks on cruises, or under thatch-roofed poolside bars in exotic resorts. Certainly, toddy drinkers do not, and will not, be seen operating such sissy apparati. I have told Bix this, but it is, he insists, a rule of the Gentlemen's Gentlemen Union that drinks be served thus.

(Toddy drinkers, if you are unfortunate enough not to know, use the butt-end of their cigars to gently swizzle the ice around, if it is needed to be done. Or, absent a cigar, the right index finger serves just as well.)

Toodles pip!

A Distasteful Foretaste of HillaryCare

Wife gets apology over dying cancer patient's 8-month wait to see doctor

Lyndsay Moss - The Scotsman (lmoss@scotsman.com)

HEALTH bosses have been told to apologize to the wife of a cancer patient who was left waiting eight months to see a doctor.

Pauline Cheasley said her late husband Maurice's follow-up appointment was canceled twice by Stirling Royal Infirmary. When he was finally seen by a doctor, he was told his cancer was inoperable. He died eight months later, in March last year.