Volume XXIX, Number 18
October 3rd, 2025

This Will Make You Laugh

I think you're gonna love this. It's been a serious year, so I decided that you might enjoy reading something that could make you laugh. Plus, we have our group prayer and lightbulb jokes! But first, I need to get just a little itty-bitty serious.

Birthday Blues

October 1st marked my sixty-third birthday on a very rough and very long day at the Mary Foundation. Plus, I had the flu.

So it was not much of a birthday, but then again, I've had sixty-two good ones.

For two weeks, the Mary Foundation has been getting hammered beyond any human control. We suffered actual damage.

Worst Setback in Thirty-Five Years

You see, since I last wrote to you a couple weeks ago, we had to deal with an extremely complex problem—our worst setback in 35 years—which caused delays while costing of us a ton of time and more money than I care to think about.

Everyone here got creative and we put our shoulders into it—and, as of today, we are firing on all cylinders again.

I'll spare you the details, but it was a pinpoint assault on our ability to ship the Daily Prayers to Save America book and its powerful exorcism prayers designed to help God deliver us from evil.

We're Definitely "Over the Target"

I'm excited, even as I honk up phlegm. The enemy has confirmed his vulnerability. This means if you are offering those prayers—or if you start offering those prayers—we are the ones the Queen of Angels is using to vanquish to the powers and principalities oppressing our nation and the world.

As the flyboys say, we are over the target, which means we're apt to take a few hits, which God permits for His own merciful reasons.

Your best response is to do your part to help even more Catholics offer these particularly effective prayers.

Obviously, our enemy wants you and others to stop (or not even start) praying. To the enemy, I say: thanks for the confirmation, dummy. To you, my brothers and sisters, I say: reload and fire at will.

Fellow Catholic troublemakers, let's make sure this powerful dragon-killing weapon is in the back of every parish, distributed to every group, available at every Adoration, at every gathering, in every school, and proclaimed all over social media.

Now for the Fun Stuff

I recently came across an email message I wrote way back in 2002, which I polished up for you today:

Jimmy Duffy Stories

Like most of you, I had a best friend growing up. Let's call him "Jimmy Duffy." (Everybody else did.) Picture a skinny, freckle-faced Irish kid with disheveled auburn hair.

Our large families moved onto the same street when we were three, and Jimmy and I probably spent more time with each other than with our own brothers and sisters. We were always on the lookout for activities we called "capers," which sometimes got us into trouble—although we never did any hard time.

During college I began regaling my friends with Jimmy Duffy Stories, which spread, and strangers actually came up to me asking for more. These usually included plot lines involving school bus tires covered with poster paints, running from security guards, "walls of fire," high-powered sling shots, charging "exorbitant fees" ("ripping off" is such a vulgar term) for snow removal back when New Jersey actually got snow, unleashing several hundred toads inside a grocery store (I can still hear the screams), successfully holding our youth minister's hub caps for actual financial ransom, scandalous altar boy fiascos, "borrowing" our relatives' cars in the wee hours of the night years before we had our licenses (my Driver's Ed teacher was so amazed at my road skills that he let me skip lessons), and other assorted hi-jinx which we would rather not put into print because our kids still live under the illusion that we were good boys growing up—and okay, in most ways, we were good boys, if one defines "good" as never getting kicked out of school.

Poor Old Mrs. Dunmeyer

For example, there was that time Jimmy came up with the delicious idea to stuff our dads' tools into two oversized pencil cases to facilitate the "deconstruction" of everything in sight ("vandalism" is such an ugly term), starting with unwiring the school bus tail lamps, loosening the urinal stop valves in the boys bathroom, and working our way to the screws that held poor old Mrs. Dunmeyer's desk and chair together.

She suffered no serious injuries in the fall.

In fact, she thought it was quite clever, and didn't bother to figure out who the culprits were—although she did look directly at us for some reason, her Irish eyes filled with mirth. Our planning usually included covering our tracks, too. No principal ever successfully pinned nuffin' on the two boys from Afterglow Avenue.

We often got our little brothers involved, because preparing the next generation was important to us. Just two handsome and intelligent young boys, exploring their surroundings in creative fits of educational energy, that's what we were.

With wrenches and screwdrivers.

And that was all during our Pre-Power-Tool Phase—relatively harmless fun. That incident took place during The Early Years, as the chapter will be titled in the (as yet, unwritten) New York Times bestseller.

The Learning Center Incident

Ah, how I wish I had the time to tell you how we shut down an entire school for two hours.

Actually, I do have the time. Imagine it's 1972, and you're eleven years old, and you're living in a typical New Jersey suburb. Decades before personal computers, our poor little Catholic grammar school must have secured a grant in order to set up this fancy, new-fangled "Learning Center" with booths featuring headsets for listening to mind-numbing recordings before filling out doorknob-dull workbooks.

It was built on the basement level and poorly lighted.

In retrospect, the first error by the volunteer mom monitoring the Learning Center was allowing Jimmy and I to sit ourselves next to each other in adjoining booths.

The second error? I blame the PhD education consultants. The high partitions designed to help us concentrate on the Very Important Stuff gave Jimmy and me the freedom to "learn" in privacy.

The booths were adorned with slim electrical outlets that were not on the walls beneath our desks, but were, in fact, due to the elegant modern construction, right there between our booths, sleekly nestled at desk level. Practically at eye level.

And one day, my outlet began calling out to me, "Buuuudddd—stick something made out of metal into me."

I clearly remember that it was during a history lab—and so I turned to Jimmy and asked, "Whaddaya think would happen if I stuck this paperclip into this outlet?"

Jimmy was the ideal expert to consult, as he was already somewhat of a mechanical whizkid. He sagely hypothesized—I believe that is the proper scientific term—that the paperclip "would glow."

To test his theory, I unbent the clip and went to unceremoniously stick it into the outlet, but Jimmy wisely grabbed my wrist to stop me. This might be dangerous, we thought together, nodding.

Looking around our dank setting, Jimmy alighted on the ingenious idea to auger the paperclip through an eraser at the end of a pencil in order to form a crude fork-like instrument of inquiry. (I believe the correct term for this sort of precaution is making use of "insulating material.")

The tense moment arrived. Headsets on, eyes wide, and our heads as close to the outlet as possible to observe "the glow," I carefully inserted the fork into the outlet.

Then came the beautifully bright and sparkly white light and a massively loud explosion. The entire school—both buildings—went dark. Alarms blared.

He and I were undamaged. I suppose the headsets protected our hearing. The jerry-rigged pencil protected us from electrocution. I don't remember what protected our eyes beyond pure reflex. We both felt...awesome.

Black soot and smoke were everywhere and metal was melted. Mildly disappointed at not seeing any glow or even a fire, we meekly filed out along with the rest of the entire student body. Everyone was thrilled to receive an unscheduled extended recess as the firetrucks showed up.

I remember it was a warm, sunny day. We told everyone it was us, and basked in the sunshine and the adulation.

Of course, we were dutifully hauled before the principal. It was, as Jimmy explained to the authorities, "a science experiment." Truthtellers, we related precisely the same story I described above.

And we got off scot-free. Nothing can stop the Science.

From then on, it often seemed to us that the only priority to which our teachers truly adhered was making certain we never sat next to each other, not even at First Friday Mass. Where was their sense of adventure? We caused, as they claimed, "distractions," for the other students. If Ritalin had been invented back then, we'd have been pegged for the clinical trials.

Surprise Ending: No Jail Time

Hard to believe that was over fifty years ago. Jimmy got married after college, had kids, worked on Wall Street for a spell, and if you can believe it, became a teacher at a private girls high school. He also did well with a public storage business and was able to retire a few years ago. He now spends most of his time in Maine with his lovely bride. Last week he texted me Happy Birthday from France, of all places.

People of France, I beg thee, learn from Our Lady of the Lake School.

First, keep me out of France while Jimmy is there.

Second, don't let him near any tools.

Light-Bulb Jokes

How many does it take to change a light-bulb?

Presbyterians: None. Lights will go on and off at predestined times.

Pentecostals: Six. One to change it, and five to pray against the spirit of darkness.

Mormons: Also six. One guy to change it, and two wives to give him advice on how to change it, plus three wives who nagged him to change it in the first place.

Zen Buddhists: Two. One to change the light bulb, and one to not change the light bulb.

Agnostics: Two. One to change the light bulb, and one to doubt whether the power company really exists.

Pantheists: Two. One to change the light bulb, and one to pray to it.

Electricians: One. (Get it? One electrician. Ho ho! Yes, this is the one I made up.)

Cows: None. Lack of opposable thumbs.

Catholics: None. Candles only.

Amish: What's a light bulb?

Punching—and Praying—Back Harder

From the opening prayer in the Auxilium Christianorum exorcism prayers found in the Daily Prayers to Save America, let us, tens of thousands together, begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

Most gracious Virgin Mary, thou who wouldst crush the head of the serpent, protect us from the vengeance of the evil one.

We offer our prayers, supplications, sufferings and good works to thee so that thou may purify them, sanctify them and present them to thy Son as a perfect offering.

May this offering be given so that the demons that influence or seek to influence the members of the Auxilium Christianorum, participants in Operation True Cross, and all residents of the United States do not know the source of their expulsion and blindness.

Blind them so that they know not our good works. Blind them so that they know not on whom to take vengeance. Blind them so that they may receive the just sentence for their works.

Cover us with the Precious Blood of thy Son so that we may enjoy the protection which flows from his passion and death. Amen.

Yes, blind them. Thanks for having my back, my friends. Until next time... fear nothing.

Choose the right tool.

Smile.

Get a good night's sleep.

Pray the Rosary for peace.

Do something fun today.

With Our Lady of the Rosary,

Bud Macfarlane
Man of Science

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