Anyone who believes the rumor that the forthcoming new volume, The Sic-Cardinal Ratzinger Correspondence (Latin title, Dies Irae) has been banned by the Vatican because of an alleged recklessness with inclusive language is nuts.

When NCR Copy Editor Patty McCarty asked a friend if she had read the Starr report, the friend said she had and added, “I don’t like reading sexy stuff. It makes me feel all turned on and alive. I hate it.”

Everyone knows the health care industry is in flux. These surprising excerpts from medical records explain why:

“Patient has chest pains if she lies on her left side for over a year.”
“By the time she was admitted to hospital, her rapid heart had stopped and she was feeling much better.”
“While in the emergency department, she was examined, X-rated and sent home.”
“She is numb from her toes down.”
“She stated she had been constipated for most of her life until 1989 when she got a divorce.”
“If he squeezes the back of his neck for 4 or 5 years, it comes and goes.”
“Discharge status: alive, but without permission.”

But seriously. Sic has taken on some heavy hitters in the course of our journalistic enterprise. But that was just kids’ stuff. After fooling around for years, conniving, as it were, with trivia to amuse the masses, This Space is now ready to go after the devil. Satan. The Big Stinker himself (excuse the exclusive language).

Since this is a new enterprise (about five minutes old), we are still without a plan of action. We aim to stop for lunch before getting down to the details. First, we have to find the Big D. But you can’t tangle with Naked Evil on an empty stomach.

Headline from Catholic Times, newspaper of the diocese of Springfield, Ill.: “Sr. Loretta Vetter celebrates 50th ordination anniversary.”

A millennium or two from now, won’t historians be confused?

This came in on the Internet, so it must be true:

VATICAN CITY -- In the sternest papal edict against the endocrine system in over 150 years, Pope John Paul II added the adrenal, pineal and pituitary to the Catholic church’s list of condemned glands Monday, decrying them as “sinful hormone producers which encourage and incite the human body to commit all manner of unholy acts.”

The pope’s rationale: These are functions “which God could never have foreseen or intended when he created the human body.”

An anagram, as everyone knows, is messing up a word or phrase so it means something else. These came from Judy Gross:

Dormitory: dirty room.
Desperation: a rope ends it.
The Morse Code: here come dots.
Slot machines: cash lost in ’em.
Animosity: is no amity.
Snooze alarms: alas, no more z’s.
Decimal point: I’m a dot in place.
The earthquake: that queer shake.
Eleven plus two: twelve plus one.

“To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune:” in one of the Bard’s best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

(Is that amazing or what?)

Edgar Alan Poe was ahead of his time, nothing more:

Once upon a midnight dreary,
fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high, and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bedsheets,
still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line, I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
And waited for the disk to store, only this and nothing more.

(Yes, there’s more, much more)

Readers should know about The Angel Cookbook published by Strawberry Patch in Atlanta. Recipes include Sanctimony Macaroni, O Come Lettuce Adore Him, Joyful and Try Eggplant, Fettucine Al-Pray-do and Dominus Vo-Biscuits.

The following is the highbrow part of This Space:

Accordionated: being able to drive and refold a road map at the same time.
Burgacide: When a hamburger can’t take any more torture and hurls itself through the grill into the coals.
Disconfect: To sterilize the piece of candy you dropped on the floor by blowing on it, somehow assuming this will remove all the germs.
Elecelleration: The mistaken notion that the more you press an elevator button the faster it will arrive.
Lactomangulation: Manhandling the “open here” spout on a milk container so badly that one has to resort to the “illegal” side.
Peppier: The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.
Petrophobe: One who is embarrassed to undress in front of a household pet.
Phonesia: The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling just as they answer.

As This Space went to press, a thorough search of the real world had failed to uncover Satan. This raises questions, but Sic doesn’t know what they are. We have watched for hooves, horns, pointy tails and the smell of burning flesh. And Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. To no avail. This may mean Old Nick is roaming the earth in some weird disguise such as Elvis Presley or even as a tomato. Something about tomatoes makes Sic suspicious. Stay tuned.

Is this a scoop or what? People have long wondered how infallibility works. Here’s how. Sometimes, when the pope feels especially inspired or holy or is just having a slow day, that old feeling comes on, and he asks one of his faithful servants, usually from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to plug him into the Big Think Tank in the Sky, as our photo, brought to our attention by Mary Alice Henkel of Toledo, shows.

This no doubt explains why Sic failed in our recent gallant bid for infallibility: We couldn’t find the right outlet.

John A. Lynch writes from Framingham: “A friend in Schnecksville writes me that Kraft, well-known for its cheese, is building the largest all-brick building in the USA at Nazareth, Pa., where they will consolidate all their warehouse activities. It will be known as Cheeses of Nazareth.”

National Catholic Reporter, October 2, 1998

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