Versus.

Prediction: The hottest movie of 2016 will be that picture about the superpowered flying hero against the mysterious caped crusader.

Of course, I am referring to these guys:

I got part of the script from a screenwriter with a fondness for mai tais. Here's the pivotal moment in the film: Spoiler alert!

(SCENE: In a dark alley in Empire City, Mighty Mouse lands. Courageous Cat whips into view, driving the Cat Mobile. He crashes into Mighty Mouse, who does not flinch although the car is destroyed.)

MIGHTY MOUSE: Next time they shine your Cat Signal in the sky, don't go to it. The Cat is dead. Bury it. Consider this mercy.

COURAGEOUS CAT: Tell me. Do you squeak?

(MIGHTY MOUSE sneers.)

COURAGEOUS CAT: You will.

MIGHTY MOUSE: (angry) Look, I know you were created by Bob Kane and all---

COURAGEOUS CAT: But you were just cooked up by Paul Terry of Terrytoons, not Siegel and Shuster, like that big flying human.

MIGHTY MOUSE: So?

COURAGEOUS CAT: You're a ripoff. I'm an homage.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Yeah, Kane making fun of his own work. You're campier than I ever was!

COURAGEOUS CAT: (smiles) Didn't you supposedly get your powers from eating food in a supermarket? Or vitamins XYZ? You're about as serious as Super-Rabbit.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Oh, don't even---

COURAGEOUS CAT: And my career is far better. I had 130 adventures; you had 80...

MIGHTY MOUSE: I was in the movies! You were just on TV.

COURAGEOUS CAT: Like your Bakshi series in the 80's? Do you want to bring up your problems with drugs, squeaky?

MIGHTY MOUSE:: That was not drug humor!

COURAGEOUS CAT: Blah blah blah meow meow meow meow...

MIGHTY MOUSE: Well... Everyone knows my battle song. "Here I come to save the day!"

COURAGEOUS CAT: My theme was... wait... (thumbing phone) Okay, Wikipedia says it was influenced by the Peter Gunn theme and it was even covered by the New York Dolls. Get the idea? I was one. Cool. Cat.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Well, look... I can fly! You have no superpowers! You just shoot guns and things!

COURAGEOUS CAT: (muttering) I must have some kind of superpowers -- I always have like fifty different guns on me. Magnet gun, boxing gun, rope gun, parachute gun...

MIGHTY MOUSE: Huh. That's a lot of guns. Hadn't thought of that.

COURAGEOUS CAT: Well, yeah, I guess I hadn't either.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Funny that that Bat guy supposedly won't use guns, but that's all you do.

COURAGEOUS CAT: Mine are mostly nonviolent guns.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Hey, look, cat. Maybe we don't have to get into this stupid fight. Sorry about the Cat Mobile.

COURAGEOUS CAT: My fault.

MIGHTY MOUSE: Wanna go get a coffee or some cheese or something?

COURAGEOUS CAT: Here. (Shoots Cup of Coffee Gun twice; mugs of coffee appear, followed by lumps of sugar and cream.)

MIGHTY MOUSE: Thanks... That's a lot of cream.

COURAGEOUS CAT: Sorry. Cat thing. Hey, can I get a lift back to the Cat Cave?

(END SCENE)

I made a rhyme (and eye liked it).

We're all familiar with eye rhymes, although I only discovered the term recently. An eye rhyme involves two words that look as though they should rhyme, like tough and through, but don't. At one time many of the words, which are spelled similarly, actually did rhyme, but changes in pronunciation caused them to cease doing so, especially during the Great Vowel Shift. Many lost their lives in that horrific seismic disaster.

I thought it would be a great idea to write a poem that doesn't actually rhyme, using only eye rhymes. I hope you'll play along at home by reading. To make it work properly, read the lines as if they actually did rhyme. Read aloud for the whole family to enjoy. Fun and educational!

"Moved by Love" 

by Frederick Key

The muse dost now within me move

To sing the virtues of my love

The perfect face, the perfect height

Long hair, and somewhat zaftig weight

All men say she’s a livin’ doll

(No, really! Here’s the latest poll!)

I bought her flowers at Ye Home Depot

Which she, forthwith, commenced to repot

Her taste proved flawless yet again!

Too bad her mother’s such a pain

Her father, though, is full of laughter

And fond of she, his youngest daughter

As well as all the family brood

Who swelled about me like a flood

One winter's day when, told to come,

I joined them in their modest home

And of my hunger I did slake

Upon some mushrooms (shiitake)

And bowls of peas and shredded wheat

Dad's generosity, it was great

But mother gave an angry cough

And said I ran through too much dough

She said that I would feel her shoe

Were I to eat just one more sloe

Dismissed, I sought a tree to climb

To reach my love from outstretched limb

To spirit her away to town

Elope, and make my love my own

But quelle surprise! And what a bother!

I got the window of her mother!

And with strong arms she used to knead

She threw me down upon my head

Now suffering grievous body harm

Through snow I slunk to go get warm

I sit in pain upon this tuffet

Within Ye Local Hometown Buffet

And muse upon my fortune low

With worried look on bloody brow

My heart within me deigns to break

My injured soul feels kinda weak

My hand so feebly inscribes this book

By just another lovesick kook.

Enough already.

"Dude, you still going on and on about that? It's been, like, a day and a half since your dad died!"

HP, phone home.

Our HP wireless printer/copier/fax is a handy piece of office machinery, and is used almost every day.

No, not just for printing pictures of the dog!

Sometimes I go to coupons.com too.

But the printer is not without its flaws. Some days it decides it is a teenager, and refuses to connect with the rest of the family. Its screen shows that it is connected to the network; you can reboot its connection (at which time it huffily asks why, since it is already connected, Dad!), and it still remains unconnected. You have to reboot the modem and router and sometimes unplug the cable from the wall for a period of three minutes or more before it will come out and play.

Every time that happens -- or I got to buy toner -- I look at the thing and say, "This is why Carly Fiorina is on the golf course instead of out in front in the presidential race."

Yesterday it demanded a blank sheet of paper for a self-diagnostic, and produced this:

What the hell is that supposed to be? I've had printers produce still-lifes with fruit as frame-quality art for a self-test. But this?

It can only be... some kind of alien message!

Probably just some bizarre means of testing the printer heads or whatever they have in there. So, most likely not anything alien-related.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to brush up on my alien languages, just in case.

Five bad dinosaurs.

Allosaurus grouchomarxii

Brontosaurus racingstripex

Eoraptor caffeinitis

Spirosaurus parisienne 

Tyrannosaurus beehivicus

Easter Monday.

Worst Catholic ever.

Yes, now that's it Easter, I feel the need to unburden my soul. I am, as far as I know, the worst Catholic in the entire universe.

He's disgusted.

It may be a common feature among Catholics. There is a legend that when asked "What's wrong with the world?" G. K. Chesterton said, "I am." It's unconfirmed, but it sounds like him.

As Catholics, we are taught right from wrong; that ignorance of morals is a mitigating circumstance, but those of us who have received the blessings of the church must shoulder the full responsibility for our actions. So I may have better morals than Heathen Harvey, but his bad behavior may be the result of ignorance, while mine comes from stubbornness, selfishness, pride, greed, all the usual stuff.

Now, there may be plenty of lapsed Catholics who don't think of themselves as Catholic anymore whose behavior is abominable. They can't claim ignorance, but they have removed themselves from the church, so I can't count them among worst Catholics. (From the church's point of view they still are, unless they very specifically and officially renounce their baptism and demand excommunication, and very few do that.)

As for me, I suck. Here are some reasons why I am the worst Catholic ever.

1) I hate social justice. I hated it even before the Social Justice Warriors began using it as a rallying cry to commit despicable acts in the name of goodness. The French Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolution began their butchery the same way. There is no question in my mind that in the modern sense you cannot have any kind of "justice" without someone being punished. And yet the church and many Catholics love and embrace the term, as if it were not a well-trodden path to violence and societal collapse. The term may have come from a Jesuit in the 1840's, but is generally used more by people who want to burn and break than help and aid. Their interest is not so much in elevating the lowly as tearing down the high, a purely Communistic instinct. We should not be making common cause with Communists of any shade of red. Given the choice between ruining the rich and saving souls, they'll grab the guillotine every time.

2) I am a bad person. I get furious with God. I keep thinking I am receiving heavenly guidance on matters important to me while I am probably just listening to my own wishful thinking crap, and then I get my heart broken and I blame Him. He made me, but He didn't make me a moron. I do that to myself. And then blame Him.

3) The viper's nest of greed, pride, cowardice, and spite deep in my heart is nothing I have been able to vanquish. I can't get anywhere with it. St. Paul and C. S. Lewis said that becoming Christian naturally brings us to better things, makes new men of us, but try as I might I'm still the same old jerk. I have changed nothing about myself except out of the most dire and selfish need. This is progress?

4) I'm told to love God, which I still can't figure out how to do, and to love my neighbor as myself, and I'm not sure my neighbor would be happy if I did. As you can tell, I'm not always high on Freddy. Lewis knew he could be that way, and pointed out that even when he didn't like himself, he always loved himself, in that he wished he would be better and be happier for it. Maybe. Doesn't feel like the kind of love that moves one to action, though. And love without works is like faith without works.

5) All too often I wake up in the night with my faith in doubt, thinking about death. Oh, well, back to sleep! (Atheist Philip Larkin wrote about this in "Aubade"; his friend Kingsley Amis advised him to get up and do something, or "put the light on and read Dick Francis.") If I had the slightest solidity to my faith I am sure I would not have these nocturnal bouts of horror.

6) That leads to another issue, which is that I have the same amount of emotional control as a toddler. I'm not sure you can be a good adult Catholic and behave like a twit. I would like to be one who carries on with the light of faith burning inside through failure, heartache, sickness, disaster, straight to the door of death, but I'm a whiner and a dope, and I complain for fun.

7) I don't want to wash anyone's feet in Calcutta or anywhere else. There, I said it. I want to write a check once in a while to feel better about myself and not have to think about the poor and suffering and lonely and sick and otherwise miserable, that vast ocean of humanity that is worse off than I am. I don't want to meet them, I don't want them in my house, I don't want them on my lawn. Here's twenty bucks, sad people. Go away.

And that's why I'm the worst Catholic in the world. I can't see into anyone's conscience, so I can only judge me, and on that basis I have to assume I'm the worst.

So, if you're Catholic, deep in your sins, relax; you're at least one ahead of the rest of the world. And if you're poor, sick, and needy: get off my lawn.