"Will you please hold my hand?
I can't, I'm independent!
I want to be your man
You can't, I'm independent!

I'll call you the phone
You can't, I'm independent!
Let me know when you're home
I can't, I'm independent!"
--The Forces of Evil, "Independent" from Friend or Foe?

My Time Among the Vampires
This afternoon, proving that television advertisements really are quite effective, I donated blood at the American Red Cross downtown. It's been far too long since I last donated; Wednesday evening, I saw an ARC ad warning of a grave blood shortage and, damn it, I did my duty as a semi-concerned citizen and dialed 1-800-GIVE-LIFE.

The health questionaire asked about the possibility of having contracted Creuzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human form of mad cow, from spending time in Europe between 1980 and 1996. I just really like looking at the word Creuzfeldt.

Above my head were ceiling tiles painted by local high school students. One bore a large peace sign and the words "Peace Ya'll." I had never before encountered a misspelling of the word y'all. Fascinating. Another bore a lovely American flag (with fifty-five stars) and the words "God Bless America" in letters of alternating red, white, and blue. From little kids, okay, I'll accept any old number of stars; I suppose I should just be happy there were the proper thirteen stripes. I found myself wondering what those five states of a future United States might be. Cuba? Manitoba? England?

Mid-donation, the lady who had inserted the needle into my arm swapped jobs with a ham-handed guy sporting a mustache. Ham-handed, you ask? When he was withdrawing the needle from my arm, I heard him say "Whoops," which is among the last things you desire to hear when a needle is being extracted from one of your veins. And the needle hole seemed to bleed more profusely than usual. Thus, ham-handed. But, my arm has yet to turn black; so, I think I'll be okay.

Holy Mother Church and the Twelve Tribes
I've very glad that His Holiness Pope Benedict has visited the synagogue in Cologne. Hyperlink. The Catholic Church has centuries of official anti-Semitism for which to atone, and I'm not sure God will ever be able to forgive us for our collective inaction during the Holocaust. But, since while most Poles hated the Nazi occupation they were more than willing to aid in the extermination of their Jewish countrymen, it is fitting that a Polish pope was the first to even visit a synagogue. And it is most appropriate for a German pope, in his youth a reluctant inductee into the Hitler Youth, to be the second.

A Pole and a German: symbolic dynamite. May God forgive us both for what we did and, perhaps more importantly, for what we failed to do.