The DaVinci Pandemic

Hi All, Happy Wednesday! The week is half finished, and tomorrow is payday! Whoo Hoo! Bills to pay!

Congratulations to those more astute readers who cracked the 'code' in Marcello's story, 'The DaVinci Code, A Garden Gnome Perspective" To those of you who missed it...ah well, don't beat yourself up to bad, as I said yesterday, just refer back to my earlier article, "Am I Stupid?" you may find something there you can relate to.

Marcello and I were sitting on the front porch of the Lodge this evening watching the sunset over beautiful Silverhorn Lake when of course, the subject of the DaVinci Code came up. The little bugger never misses a chance to draw me into a conversation about it, or the Holy Grail, or a related subject. Anyway, tonight Marcello was commenting on the Catholic Church's response to the DaVinci Code story and he made an interesting point.

Since the publication of the book, and now more than ever since the release of the movie, the Catholic Church has come out against the Code story. Many books have been penned rebuking the story, and the Church has made no secret of it's displeasure (is that a word?) with the tale. In fact tonight I noticed a sign on a local church billboard, 'Jesus is the DeCoder'.

Fair enough, but what Marcello, my astute little garden gnome noted is how the Church appears so interested in discrediting what the author himself has described as a work of fiction...fiction....yes, someone should let the folks at the Vatican know that fiction means made up, fabricated, not true facts, as opposed to non-fiction, which should hold a ring of truth. However, the Church, wittingly or unwittingly, has provided Dan Brown and his book with lots of additional publicity, perhaps more than he could have hoped for had they ignored it as a piece of pulp fiction. Their response plants the idea, at least in Marcello's small gnome cement mind, that perhaps there is more non-fiction involved than they would like us to believe....Well, that is the opinion of a garden gnome, I have yet to make up my mind. Perhaps they have decided to pay it great credence, in order to convince suckers like Marcello and me it is a conspiracy, thus hiding the true conspiracy....nah...they just aren't that calculating ....

My final word on this subject, at least for now, is read the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, it is informative, interesting, perhaps wrong as well, but it will give you things to think about. While you are at it, pick up and read The Second Messiah by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception, also by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, oh yeah, while you are doing some summer reading, grab a copy of Controlling cholesterol by Kenneth Cooper, MD, MPH, it isn't as interesting as the Holy Blood, but it does have to do with blood and it may save your life. There, I plugged my guys, I am done with it. My final word...I promise, no more DaVinci Code....Marcello on the other hand, may have more to say if I ever let him near the computer again.

Changing the subject before I am sued or visited by members of the 'Opes Dei' squad, lets move on....The ambitious Ebayers are still cooking with gas, selling the chair right out from underneath me. The convinced someone in Seattle that it is a collectors item used by the famous or infamous author of The View From Silverhorn Lodge to write his enthralling treatises (I think that's a word) on life and in particular life on the mountain. I think they got $5.00 for it but they seem excited anyway because it is in US dollars.....Now they want me to find a box big enough to ship it to Seattle.

And speaking of pandemics, (don't bother to read back, I wasn't really speaking of pandemics) due to the much reported pandemic that is in the news on a regular if not daily basis, I have asked my team of researchers to pull together some pandemic planning for the Lodge, in case the bird flu, or chicken pox or mad garden gnome disease strikes around here. I am not putting a lot of effort into it because I catch whatever is going so if a pandemic is coming, and it's lethal, I am pretty much resigned to being one of the first to go anyway, so why spend too much time worrying about it. Around the lodge the management team feel that a plan is necessary so we can stay in business if the pandemic strikes....yeah...well, here is my plan.
Disaster - Pandemic Strikes Silverhorn Mountain
Response - Silverhorn Lodge Closed, owner barricaded in basement with food, water, girl and shotgun loaded with 3000 bullets.
End of Pandemic Plan.

Oh yeah, card carrying members of the lodge are welcome to join me provided they bring a doctors certificate indicating they are pandemic free and provided they bring more girls and bullets......





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