ZACH JOHNSON AND JESUS

Well, I finally must admit I did see what a Christian saw at the Master’s Tournament in Augusta. Zach Johnson claimed that he owed his Master’s victory to the presence of Jesus all around him on Easter Sunday where, against all Bible warnings, Zach failed to keep the Sabbath Holy and worked at his trade. Why Jesus helped Zach win, I have no idea, but there Jesus was, helping Zach in so many ways. I personally witnessed Jesus reach out and tip the backswing of one of Tiger’s tee shots. Jesus also kicked sand in the face of Phil Michelson during another bad moment in the tournament for that past master. In a third case, I saw the Lord move the lie of Stuart Appleby. At another point, I cleary heard him hurling imprecations against Vijay Singh just as he started a putt. In fact, I saw Jesus everywhere, tipping the scales in Zach’s favor, with his swarthy skin and filthy loincloth, his bow legs and the tip of his enormous you-know-what hanging below the lower folds of his loincloth. I even witnessed the young but filthy god taking a leak behind a magnolia tree, which was okay, but when he squatted in a sandtrap on the 15th hole to relieve himself, I thought that was a little vulgar, but, then, Jesus probably doesn’t understand Master’s Tournament etiquette very well. I believe all of you who watched the Master’s must have witnessed many similar things from the Lord, for, of course, if none of us did witness his favoritism to Zach Johnson and his prejudice toward all the others, then, of course, this Jesus presence must have been an aberration on Zach Johnson’s part, the same sort of aberration one hears in the speech of mental patients usually locked up in institutions or at least heavily sedated with drugs. I do apologize to any honest schizophrenic if I have insulted you by comparing you to Zach Johnson.

WHY REPUBLICAN FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE SO ANGRY

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By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter
posted: 01 April 2007

(HealthDay News) — While most people are upset or concerned when someone gives them an angry look, there are others—with high levels of testosterone—who actually enjoy angry expressions and seek ways to provoke them, new research suggests.

"It's kind of striking that an angry facial expression is consciously valued as a very negative signal by almost everyone, yet at a non-conscious level can be like a tasty morsel that some people will vigorously work for," study co-author Oliver Schultheiss, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, said in a prepared statement.

He said the findings may help explain why some people are so fond of teasing.

"Perhaps teasers are reinforced by that fleeting 'annoyed look' on someone else's face and therefore will continue to heckle that person to get that look again and again. As long as it does not stay there for long, it's not perceived as a threat but as a reward," Schultheiss said.
He and lead author Michelle Wirth measured testosterone levels in volunteers and then had them do a computer task in which certain complex keyboard sequences triggered different images on the computer screen—an angry face, a neutral face, or no face.

Males and females with higher testosterone levels than other members of the same sex learned the angry face sequence better than the other sequences. This did not happen among volunteers with lower testosterone levels.

The association between higher testosterone levels and better learning of the angry face keyboard sequence was strongest when angry faces flashed on the computer screen subliminally—too fast for conscious identification.

"Better learning of a task associated with anger faces indicates that the anger faces were rewarding, as in a rat that learns to press a lever in order to receive a tasty treat. In that sense, anger faces seemed to be rewarding for high-testosterone people but aversive for low-testosterone people," Wirth said in a prepared statement.
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This study was published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.

SOMETIMES A GREAT (BIG BABY) NOTION

Some days when some little problem has got me down and has me in a leg lock and is pushing my face into the dirt, I wish there was a big, tall woman in my kitchen, baking cakes, while I sit cross-legged on the living room rug, playing with my red, green and yellow blocks.