I’m right there with you, Dame Helen. The same thing happened to me.

“There is a close-up of a woman having a baby, a close up straight up her vagina, and that’s all you see, and these are thirteen year old boys and girls, and its bloody and disgusting. Within thirty seconds two boys had fainted and the lights went on and they were carried out. I put my hands over my face because I realised I couldn’t watch this.”

The actress, who is married to American director Taylor Hackford, said she was deeply affected by the film: “I swear it traumatised me, I haven’t had children and I can’t look at anything to do with childbirth, it absolutely disgusts me.”

Is she disgusted by gallbladders? This is straight out of Dr. Moreau … or Hannibal Lecter.

MONDAY, Sept. 17 (HealthDay News) — French surgeons report removing a gallbladder through a woman’s vagina, joining a handful of surgeons around the world who have tried the novel technique because it eliminates visible scarring and minimizes postoperative pain. In March, surgeons at Columbia University in New York City performed a similar operation, and, last week, so did surgeons at the University of California, San Diego. The procedure has also been used for removing the appendix.

What next? Your Costco groceries? Even kids, for the most part, are “optional,” as is everything else that goes in/out … but not through. Seriously. That is just plain wrong. What sick bastard came up with the “let’s try this exit” approach? I’d rather have a scar on my side then a gallbladder in my - oh, I can barely even write about this. Dame Helen, where are you?

Thank the Virgin Mary that there is someone on our side:

“As a woman, I find it distasteful and invasive to have the vagina used as a midtown tunnel for the traffic of surgery, simply because there are a few surgeons who are looking to find something new to do,” said Dr. Christine Ren, an assistant professor of surgery at New York University School of Medicine.

Think of it this way: knowing that a gallbladder had taken the tunnel would you stop at that rest stop for a bite? I think not.

Dana Johnson, who had her gallbladder removed through her vagina at the University of California at San Diego on Sept. 11, applauded the technique. “I think it would be more gross to have it taken out of my mouth, but that’s just me,” said Johnson, 42.

Let there be lightening …

USC players, coaches and supporters aboard the team’s charter flight from Los Angeles endured a harrowing arrival in South Bend, Ind., on Thursday night. Several players, administrative staff and coaches’ spouses said passengers were hurled out of their seats and hit their heads on the ceiling when the plane dropped while making an approach through a lightning storm. The pilot aborted the approach and circled before landing without incident, said Dennis Slutak, USC’s director of football operations. Some of the passengers were not wearing seat belts at the time, but others said their seat belts broke.

trojanwire

Where was Father Elvis? Or Father “I’m not Gay”?

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco’s top-ranking Catholic clergyman apologized for serving Communion to two men dressed as nuns during a church service in the heart of the city’s gay community.

In a letter posted on the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s Web site, Archbishop George Niederauer said when he offered Communion to the two members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at the Oct. 7 mass, he didn’t recognize either as wearing “mock religious garb.”

He apologized for giving them the sacrament, calling it “a mistake.”

That’s even better. He didn’t even notice? Have you ever seen the Sisters? They wear more makeup than my alcoholic hairdresser aunt! Good job, Father — he musta been hitting the “blood of Christ” a little too heavily before Mass.

Members of the decades-old group dress in heavy makeup and elaborate headdresses to satirize the church and draw attention to a variety of causes, including gay rights and access to AIDS care.

You can read the whole thing here.

At Communion time, toward the end of the line, two strangely dressed persons came to receive Coummunion. As I recall one of them wore a large flowered hat or garland. I did not recognize either of them as wearing mock religious garb.

Well, I guess when you’re in an organization where the men dress like this, you really wouldn’t notice.

Return of the Chocolate Jesus - just in time for the holiday season. Actually, he’s a new version, because …

Chocolate Jesus sculpture returns to NYC

NEW YORK (AP) - “My Sweet Lord,” an anatomically correct milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ that infuriated Catholics before its April unveiling was canceled, returns Oct. 27 to a Chelsea art gallery, its creator said Tuesday. This time, artist Cosimo Cavallaro said he expects the public exhibit to proceed without a problem.

“There is nothing offensive about this,” Cavallaro said of his controversial confectionary work. “If my intentions were to offend, if I did do something wrong, I wouldn’t be doing this. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Cavallaro, who received death threats before the April show was canceled, said the vast majority of his mail was in support of his six-foot piece.

“I got a lot of positive mail from people in the Catholic Church, people studying theology, people in monasteries — all kinds of letters and e-mails of support,” he said.

The last show was criticized for its timing and its location. The exhibit, in a gallery visible to passers-by on a Manhattan street, was set to open one day after Palm Sunday and four days before Christians marked the crucifixion of Christ on Good Friday.

The Catholic League, which led the charge against “My Sweet Lord” back then, said the change to the Proposition Gallery and the exhibition’s new opening date would keep it from calling for another shutdown of the sculpture’s showing.

“We don’t approve of the piece at all, but it’s not something we’re going to protest,” said Kiera McCaffrey, the league’s director of communications. “This is much less an in-your-face assault on Christians, and it’s not happening during Holy Week.”

The exhibit, at the Proposition Gallery in Manhattan, will be accompanied by a set of chocolate Catholic icons created by Cavallaro, a group that includes the Virgin Mary and saints Francis, Augustine, Michael, Jude, Anthony and Fermin.

“After the cancellation of the show, it got me to look into the Catholic religion a little deeper,” Cavallero said. “I started thinking about the saints, how they were ostracized for their beliefs and then canonized.”

Cavallaro’s work features Christ with outstretched arms, as though hanging from an invisible cross. Unlike traditional religious depictions of Christ, Cavallaro’s Jesus lacks a loincloth.

The sculpture is actually a new version of “My Sweet Lord,” created with 200 pounds of chocolate over three days. The original was stored in a Brooklyn facility where mice nibbled away at its hands, ears, nose and feet, forcing Cavallaro to toss the original and recast the sculpture.

What is going on? They’ve all just lost their minds.

SORBO, Italy (Reuters) - Romanian-born Antonio Petrescu believes you can worship God and Elvis at the same time: as a Catholic priest and Elvis Presley impersonator, he finds his spiritual inspiration in the late rock legend.

“People ask me ‘How can you reconcile Elvis impersonations with your choice of professional work?’” said Petrescu, who puts on his glittery suits and swivels his hips when not working as a parish priest in the Italian town of Avezzano.

Interviewed by Reuters on a church visit to the tiny town of Sorbo — population, 52 — in southern Italy, the priest said he believes Elvis is an appropriate inspiration for Christian worship because he sang of “love in general”.

The 34-year-old’s Web site has two separate entries — one for the priest, another for the artist, which talks about his “fiery voice” and discography including the singles “Lovin’ Arms” and “Reach out to Jesus”.

The pop doesn’t stop at Elvis: Petrescu also incorporates the lyrics of singers like Celine Dion into his sermons.*

Petrescu feels his responsibility as a priest is to “walk this Earth in love for Jesus Christ”, a task in which he is inspired by Elvis’s “search for spirituality in his own life”.

*Those must be “this is what hell is like” sermons.

“Only pretending to be gay” has to be one of the greatest headlines ever.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man said in an interview published Sunday that he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.

Stenico was suspended by the Vatican after he was caught on tape making sexual advances at a young man. In an interview with La Repubblica newspaper, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico said he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men as part of his work as a psychoanalyst.

He said that he pretended to be gay in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity.” Vatican teaching holds that homosexual activity is a sin.

“It’s all false; it was a trap. I was a victim of my own attempts to contribute to cleaning up the Church with my psychoanalyst work,” La Repubblica quoted Stenico as saying.

Aha! The old “beat ‘em at their own game” trick. Hell, I’m from Boston - we invented that one. Ooh, I just remembered the sexy priest calendar. Ever see it? Seriously, what do people expect from a profession where the men wear dresses with matching hats? And different colors for every season? Not to mention beads … and scarves, with tassels. Come on.

I’m a bit puzzled by the Jagermeister and plastic covering on the windows - where is he?

Evicted nuns, that’s who! No, not the ones in Santa Barbara, or the other ones from the Army of Mary, or even those feisty Italian nuns, but rebellious, Polish nuns! It’s turning into a regular “Nuns Gone Wild: International Edition” year.

Updated: 2:31 a.m. PT Oct 11, 2007

KAZIMIERZ DOLNY, Poland (AP)- Police evicted 65 rebellious ex-nuns Wednesday from a convent they illegally occupied for two years after defying a Vatican order to replace their mother superior, a charismatic leader who had religious visions.

The defeated nuns walked out in their black habits — some carrying guitars, drums and tambourines — after a locksmith opened the gate to the walled compound and police in riot gear rushed in and arrested the mother superior. A former Franciscan friar who had locked himself away with the nuns also was taken into custody.

Several nuns, many of whom appeared to be in their 20s, screamed at police, calling them “servants of Satan,” as they were escorted out and into waiting buses.

“They were disobedient,” said Mieczyslaw Puzewicz, a spokesman for the Lublin diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican formally expelled the women from their Sisters of Bethany order last year, but has revealed almost nothing about the dispute.

About 150 police in riot gear went into the compound to find the ex-nuns defiantly singing religious songs and playing instruments, Puzewicz said. Lublin Archbishop Jozef Zycinski called the police operation a last resort meant to help the ex-nuns.

Well, that’s an interesting approach to “helping.”

Mother Jadwiga is a charismatic figure who claimed to have religious visions and was reportedly attempting to transform the convent into a contemplative order. The Lublin diocese hinted at that portrait in a statement on its Web site that said: “Mother Jadwiga’s private revelations, and the fact that she made it a guideline to stick by them, caused unease to the Congregation.”

The Vatican, which has authority over all convents, has traditionally been wary of people claiming visions, in part fearing others could be drawn in. When the Vatican formally expelled the nuns from their order in 2006, the women refused to leave the convent and cut themselves off from the outside world.

The church eventually sought legal action to remove them, and a court in nearby Pulawy ordered their eviction. The convent’s electricity was cut off earlier this year, but sympathetic local residents secretly funneled them food at night.

Aww! The underground nun railroad!

What is it with these freaky ministers? White shoes, wigs, rubber suits! Why did it take an autopsy to find two rubber suits?

A Montgomery minister found in his home this summer died with his hands and feet bound behind his back and dressed in two rubberized suits, an offical autopsy showed.

The Montgomery Advertiser obtained a copy of the 13-page report on Friday, one day after District Attorney Ellen Brooks authorized its release.

The Rev. Gary Michael Aldridge was found dead June 24. Police ruled the 51-year-old pastor of Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone at the time of his death and that there was no foul play involved.

The autopsy, prepared by Senior State Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Boudreau of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences, lists “accidental mechanical asphyxia” as the cause of death. It gave a one-paragraph description of what the examiner saw when he conducted the autopsy on June 25.

A toxicology report showed no signs of drugs in Aldridge’s system, but did find traces of ethanol, also known as ethyl alcohol. Boudreau explained that a body that is decomposing creates ethyl alcohol. Aldridge’s death has been the subject of rumors since the church asked the community to “refrain from speculation” until police completed their investigation.

Brooks said Friday that her office gets hundreds of cases requiring autopsy reports every year.

“I don’t know anything about any speculation,” she said. “I’m a prosecutor. I have no case to prosecute. It is not a criminal matter at this point. If you’re asking about idle curiosity, I’m not going to comment on that.”

Capt. Huey Thornton, a police spokesman, said Montgomery Police used an out-of-state agency during its investigation, but he would not name the agency. He said the agency corroborated MPD’s finding that Aldridge was alone when he died.

The Montgomery Advertiser requested a copy of the autopsy in a July 11 letter to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. On July 12, the department replied that “… the report(s) cannot be released to the public at this time because the District Attorney has determined that the case is still under investigation. …”

After police reported on Wednesday they had completed their investigation, the Advertiser made another request for the autopsy report.

Rod Kennette, deputy director of the state Department of Forensic Sciences, said he received Brooks’ authorization to release the report shortly before 5 p.m. on Thursday.

The medical examiner who conducted Aldridge’s autopsy said Friday the long wait for the autopsy findings was not unusual.

“These things happen,” Boudreau said. “We see probably two of these a year. If you’re not used to seeing that sort of thing, it’s probably unusual.”

Here’s the full autopsy report on The Smoking Gun.

A: NUNS GONE WILD!

Italian archbishop closes convent after nuns come to blows

1 day ago

ROME (AFP) — A convent in southern Italy is being shut down after a quarrel among its last three remaining nuns ended in blows, press reports said Sunday.

Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista, reportedly upset about their mother superior’s authoritarian ways, scratched her in the face and threw her to the ground at Santa Clara convent near Bari in an incident in July that was kept quiet until now.

Archbishop Giovanni Battista Pichierri tried to reconcile the nuns but finally decided in late August that they had “clearly lost their religious vocation” and asked the Vatican for permission to close the convent.

Sisters Annamaria and Gianbattista moved to another convent, but Sister Liliana barricaded herself inside, refusing to leave, the reports said, adding that she suspected Battista Pichierri of planning to cede the convent to another community.

Liliana has been at the convent since its founding in 1963.

Someone call in the Army of Mary!

They’re calling it the “Oliver Twist” case, which makes it sound all cute and … smudgy. However, the reality of “asleep in a McDonald’s parking lot” isn’t exactly picturesque:

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, N.J. - A man who authorities say was seen on a surveillance video using his 4-year-old granddaughter to steal a purse from a boardwalk arcade worker was arrested Saturday in Connecticut, police said.

Police said 52-year-old Daniel Twomey was arrested at about 10 a.m. after being found asleep in his car in a McDonald’s parking lot in Greenwich, Conn. Police tracked him using a tip that a signal from his cell phone had been traced to the area, said Greenwich Sgt. Jim Marr. Seaside Heights police said the theft happened just after midnight Sunday at Lucky Leo’s in Seaside Heights.

The video shows an adult with shoulder-length brown hair using a foot to push the girl under a swinging security door and the child steals a worker’s purse. The investigation eventually focused on Twomey after an anonymous phone call and his attempt to use the victim’s ATM card, Szalkowski said. The girl was identified as his granddaughter, said Szalkowski.

Twomey faces potential charges of endangering the welfare of a child and employing a minor in a criminal act, Szalkowski said. Bail had been set at $150,000 upon Twomey’s arrest,

and he’s been ordered not to have contact with his grandchildren.