again with the kids

Watching Engineering an Empire on History channel with The Boy. I was lying down, too close to dozing off to be healthy and not even aware that he was still watching. Going into a commercial break the narrator finishes up with a description of the coming segment ending with the phrase, "Descend into chaos."

At that moment, from The Boy, I hear, "Descend into chaos? Nnnnoooooo!"

the tree

After only a couple of times of being too late on the previously appointed day, we finally made it out to the tree farm and got a Christmas tree. I got the lights on it while Momma and Big Brother were at derby practice tonight, so it's glowing cheerfully in the front window.

We have one good place for the tree which is also the place we've chosen for our dining table the rest of the year. We have an oddly arranged house. There is no real room for a table in the kitchen, and there is no real dining area. We use the front window which is the less used half of the living room area. You'd really have to see our house to get it. The bedrooms, play room, bathroom and kitchen were once the entirety of our house. Momma's grandfather built an addition on the side to create the living room.

The addition is a cube, more square and slightly smaller than the original part of the house. One quarter of this space is the laundry room leaving a basical L shape for the living room. It's really an odd shape that leaves our prime dining table room as far away from the kitchen as is possible to get. We also have to move the dining table to make room for the tree. The moving of the table is a big part of our holiday tradition as is the wishing the table wasn't now stuck in the middle of the room.

The tree is up and lighted, and the ornaments await in their boxes, piled randomly behind me. Momma's schedule over the next couple of days and our need to finally do Christmas shopping may or may not effect the decorating. At some point tomorrow I know that the boys will start opening up the boxes of ornaments and that those ornaments will slowly make their way onto the tree. I know I didn't string the lights right, so I may have to add an extra string for the electric ornaments.

We've listened to Christmas music and have our tree up. I can't pretend this one isn't sneaking more quickly than the past few, but I also can't pretend we aren't always so ill prepared for the holiday. Any day now there will be a major influx of cheer like the foam that chases the cork out of the champagne bottle. For a moment I'll pretend that the whole peace and goodwill thing will finally this year come to pass, and I'll extend that with the timely viewing of a Christmas movie of some sort. Till then, I'll look at the pretty lights and throw the Elf soundtrack on one more time.

do we have time?

Do we have time for another stupid survey? It's no more or less stupid than any other survey I've taken, though it may be more enlightening, or not.

According to the quiz I have fairly accurate gaydar. I accurately judged 16 out of 20 people for gaiety and scored better than 87% of other test takers.

I'm sure I'd love to test out my gaydar skills in real life, but Momma would want me to share anyone that showed up, and I say no to chics at the sausage fest.

Want to test your own ability to spot the gays? Well, get you click on.

me in a nutshell, "help, how'd I get in here?"

Not sure this is what I was looking for. The Brutally Honest Personality test is not giving me arguable conclusions, which doesn't mean I'm especially happy with the results. I guess I'd just rather have come off as even slightly cooler in front of the web survey. So this is it, me in a couple of sadly accurate paragraphs.

Clown- ESFP 80% Extraversion, 46% Intuition, 33% Thinking, 20% Judging

Congratulations. You are the buffoon of society, the class clown, the general funny guy/gal. Your purpose on earth was to serve as entertainment for the rest of us sane ones. We're laughing with you and at you. Some people would kill to be as funny as you. Other would rather just kill you. You're spontaneous, fun-loving and optimistic. You're all in all an idiot. You wanna know why? It's because you would rather have fun than concentrate on your duties and obligations. You act before you think. You talk before you think. All in all, you don't think that much at all. You did terribly at school, didn't you? You were the class clown. Paid no respect to the teachers or to your fellow students. Paid no attention to your school work. And look where you are now... starting to regret your decisions? Get down to earth. Find a real job and start taking care of your responsibilities. Sure, people love you, but they don't love you because they like you. They love you because you make them laugh. They love you because they can always look at you and say "Well, at least I did better off than him or her!" ...but at least you’re funny, right? ***************** If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this. ***************** The other personality types are as follows... Loner - Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving Pushover - Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging Criminal - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving Borefest - Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging Almost Perfect - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving Freak - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging Loser - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving Crackpot - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging Sap - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging Commander - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving Do Gooder - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging Scumbag - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving Busybody - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging Prick - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving Dictator - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Extraversion You scored higher than 99% on Intuition You scored higher than 99% on Thinking You scored higher than 99% on Judging

Link: The Brutally Honest Personality Test written by UltimateMaster on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

big kids

Big Brother mentioned that he was getting hungry and wanted to fix himself some lunch. Though I'm working to get around the trap of what I would usually have said, my first instinct was to suggest that perhaps he be a bit more patient and that I'd get to it.

My first instinct as a parent has not always gotten me into great situations or prepared the way for great relationships with my boys. I can be a bit anal in that I'd too often rather do it myself to get it done more quickly and right, but doing for doesn't give kids any experience. Experience watching your dad do everything for you is technically a kind of experience, but it's not the learning from kind that I want for them.

So I shout down the voice in my head, the one that wants Big Brother to just be patient and let me do it in a minute. I tell him to go ahead and start working on it. He can fix what he wants. And that's a little scary because it further reinforces that there are so many things that he doesn't need me to do.

This isn't the first time Big Brother has fixed his lunch, though in the past it's been confined to the classic pb&j, the easiest sandwich ever. We have a nifty cheese cutter with no sharp edges, so that's not only easy for him but for all of us as well. Side items are easily taken care of with banana chips for The Boy and banana peppers for Big Brother. Oh, and since we are out of mayo and vegenaise, and because neither son likes mustard, they get ranch dressing as a sandwich spread today.

So my patience and allowing Big Brother has saved me having to fix lunch. I did wash the cheese cutter while he worked, and I cut the cellophane wrapper from the loaf of bread for him. I also poured some ranch into a small dish so that he wouldn't end up with a torrent of dressing from the bottle when a little spread was what he wanted.

All this is further proof of them growing. I have that torn between feeling so many parents get, wanting them to stay sweet, innocent little babies that we can easily forgive anything and everything versus knowing that they are inevitably growing, learning, becoming more and more able, having opinions and asserting themselves.

For the record, there certainly are plenty of growing up kinds of things that absolutely thrill me such as the fact that, seemingly suddenly, the diaper bag is not quite as necessary as it once was. If we are going to be out for a while, we carry it with some back up clothing, though we now refer to it as a just in case bag since there are no longer diapers in it.

a question

What are we going to have instead of Christmas when the evil Darwinist gays finally win the war on Christmas? Seriously, we are at war or something, and someone is trying to steal baby Jesus and make him not be in Christmas anymore.

Seriously, it's a battle, and we all have to choose sides. Do you love baby Jesus or not?

Well it's time for his birthday, and baby birthdays are always the best. Everyone gets him little clothes and hats and toys and educational software. It's soooo sweet, and he's so darling, little baby Jesus.

But he wants to have a party, and some people think we shouldn't have a party for Jesus. Somebody's going down over this. They can't steal our Christmas and baby Jesus from us. We'll make them celebrate and party like they're supposed to, or baby Jesus will get totally mad at them.

So you better say Merry Christmas to everyone, or you hate baby Jesus.

programming language thingy

I have no idea what this means. Apparently this is the programming language I am, and I'm sure it means I'm super not cool. I don't know why I bothered to take it, so I blame it all on Ron. Dadburn it Ron!


Which Programming Language are You?

college prep toy

As homeschoolers, we find more and more that our children's path to college is not really different from their schooled friends. It's natural that we want to find ways to help this transition in the lives of those we've nurtured for so long. This nurturing and preparing so often seems to forget the nuances. We do forget the vagaries of youth as we age, as so much is different, especially for those of us schooled and raised in ways so completely foreign to what our children have been afforded. So as we prepare the children, don't forget the games. We can't very well play quarters for shots with our kids, but we want them to be able to maintain. Enter this gadget with its hand full of steel ball bearings which you bounce for points. Modeled after the popular game Skee Ball, but without the tickets and the crappy cheap toy that you trade those tickets for and with bouncing instead of rolling. Maybe your son or daughter didn't rack up the Skee Ball tickets, but you certainly don't want them racking up the tequila shots. They won't even know what they trained for till it's time to bust out the quarters and shot glasses. And as they learned at our sides how to bounce shiny things for points, they'll be saved the ruinous overindulgence in alcohol.

poor toes

This weather is killing me. In the past three weeks, we've gone from the most miserably cold day for a soccer game, to a beautiful day that we didn't wear jackets, to a sad gray day with snow(flurries really, but some flakes stuck on a chair outside) and we are now at downright cold.

We are supposed to be in the teens tonight, which is likely if it hasn't already happened. I'd wager that we're there. The time it takes to smoke just about froze me, and it doesn't take me long to get my pollute on.

I pretend each year that I appreciate the cold. It's part of the balance of nature or some such horse shit. If nothing else it kills the bugs off for a while, unless those bugs are those new killer yellow jackets they're breeding down in Georgia. But mostly it just seems like winter is a pretty raw deal for the most part.

I try to think thoughts of sweaters and girls in sweaters, and there's Christmas to look forward to. But then it just gets cold with nothing but spring and soccer to look forward to like a distant pinprick of light. If you want to make time stand still, there's a pretty valid candidate.

The worst of it all is the feet. If my feet would actually get warm between trips outside to smoke, I'd be in decent shape. If I quit smoking, I wouldn't have to go outside so often, and that whole health thing too, and I might be able to get my feet to warm up, but then I'd never go outside at all.

more marching band love

In my parade post I mentioned a certain love I have for marching bands. This isn't something I'm hugely into, just something I've always had a certain affection for. I don't play anything, so of course I wasn't ever in a band.

I won't say I've scoured the internet looking for marching bands, but off and on since that post, I've done some amount of searching. I started with the obvious first choice, YouTube, but there were honestly too many videos. I tried to narrow my search by searching schools, but I didn't really know which schools had the really good bands. I finally just googled different search options.

One school that seemed to keep showing up, often in comments at YouTube about other school band videos, is Mississippi's Jackson State University. I then began searching them in particular, looking for good videos of their band, The Sonic Boom of the South. The name alone clued me in, and for the most part, I've enjoyed listening to and watching them perform.

Listening to them brings me to the next hassle of the search. Marching bands often don't perform in the best possible venue for recording live music. Too many videos were ruined by poor recording quality, while many were ruined by outside noise, such as fans.

If you want to view more JSU or just more bands in general try Marching Sport. Music will start playing immediately, and to stop it, click at the top in the glare off the horn. They have lots of videos of bands as well as drum lines. Many of the ones I viewed sounded pretty good, but again, considering the venue and the assumed recording devices, we can't complain too much.

So, without further ado, The Sonic Boom of the South.

suffering on wheels

Today was a busy day. Thankfully I finally bought something for the cold that wants to kill me, so soon after I got around to being awake, I wasn't suffering as miserably. It was a great day to not feel like shit. I keep thinking every day that it's got to be about over, but this isn't the same old cold I usually get.

Momma and several other derby girls had a float in a local Christmas parade. She was supposed to make a pair of moons as part of the Nightmare Before Christmas theme, and she left early. I got the boys ready when I got up, we all had some cereal and I tried to google the exact parade location. They weren't in the local parade, but they were in the parade in Maryville, a little south of us big city folks. Not familiar with the area, I had to meet a friend outside of town and follow her in.

I really enjoyed the parade, and the boys got yet more candy. I did come away with a few thoughts concerning the Christmas parade, or at least those in this town. I haven't actually yet been to a Knoxville Christmas parade, though Momma and the boys have been to a few, and according to her, the past few haven't been that great. She saw our town's Friday night as it made its way down the street where she works, and she said it was good this year. Though the boys and I had planned to attend, we were quite caught up with Legos.

The other town's parade was quite a scene. The first "float" fooled me. We were in the parking lot of a large strip mall. The parade came from behind us and travelled the driveway directly in front of the stores. We could see something bobbing along above the head of the people closer to the beginning of the parade. The parade got a late start, and The Boy was starting to get tired of standing in a parking lot, so this should have been a great relief. However, as the "float" came around the corner and I hear the sharp shout of the carney, I knew something was wrong. Some guy, I'm guessing a carney, came by with a modified shopping cart stuffed to the top of a built on cage, with every inflatable toy you don't expect at this particular moment. Inflatabe Spiderman and Christmas go together like . . .well, like those plastic trumpets.

The rest of the parade was still a few minutes off sadly as the hawker made his way past with his offer, "Last chance to get souvenirs." We were at a parade. I thought having seen it and catching candy were the souvenirs. Damn carneys!

It was the usual southern Christmas parade I imagine. There were tiny cheerleaders, local politicians and a pair of news people. We saw Li'l Miss Sumshitorother and the runner up. I couldn't help but wanting to yell at her that the runner up is the first place loser, but I'm not mean enough to get past the thinky parts when it's that bad. There were a couple of tractors. The Shriners drove little semis, the kind that Shriners would drive.

We were next to a cool family on one side, the kind of people that'll shoot the shit with you at the parade, and on the other side was the exact opposite. Friendly family's son was certainly going for the candy, but he seemed to understand that there was enough for all the kids. Other family didn't seem to have the same scruples. Friendly family's dad was hollering at random people in the parade and seemed to know about half of them. Those he didn't know you'd have thought he did, and every one that did know greeted him with the biggest smile. He was fun attend a parade beside.

One thought based on float placement that I noticed should be dealt with. There really have to be a few floats between musical elements. Also, the marching band should always stop in front of me, but that's probably going into that mysterious other post pile that I always forget about. I should start writing these down, but . . .

Just because the marching band and those two kids on the flat bed trailer are from the same school doesn't mean they have to be right up next to each other. They are obviously two different parts of the parade, so their respective music should not bleed into each other. The two kids on the trailer, one with the marimba and the other with the steel drum, I'm sure they were good, but the marching band stopped just past us, and I could still hear them pretty well, so I ignored the two kids on the trailer. I didn't really mean to, but me and marching bands, I'm just a sucker.

The local churches were well represented in this parade, mostly in the form of great gaggles of bored looking kids in flat bed trailers tossing candy. One church however brings me to the whole point of this post. A particular item and its bearer and a travesty of engineering somewhere along the way cumulated in . . . I seriously can't stop laughing at this. The device and situation have also caused the most thought from this long day, so I'm plagued with a giggly sort of thoughtfulness.

Yeah, I mean this guy, suffering like Jesus under that heavy cross. The poor cross is way too short, not to mention the weakness in material We know it wouldn't be any good for crucifying anyone. If it were longer, the fellow could have dragged it like we imagine Jesus doing. As he walked by, he was trying to get a grip on it, and that alone seemed kind of funny. This poor dumb kid who an hour ago thought he was Chief Sumshit for getting to be Jesus is wishing like hell the other kid had gotten that honor. And even worse, as he walks past having to carry the cross like Jesus would have, his dumb ass knows full well that there are wheels on it.

search fun

While taking a gander at ye ol' statcounter, I've come across yet another hit that yielded my blog through a search I wouldn't expect to find. I do still get hits for searches involving "myspace evil."

Well, if you search "extra big dicks" I will show up. No, it doesn't just show a picture of me being ( you know, 'cuz I can be an extra big dick,) and it doesn't have anything about my really rather average genitalia. What does come up is the following blurb from a post I wrote about soccer and of course the link to that post.

i was never a really big football fan, though i do watch at least a little of ... christians that we were, we were still total dicks to these poor kids. ... the cheap kind of adidas that have that annoying little bit of extra toe. they ...

The searcher is in an island nation in the northern part of South America whose national team did a fair job in the World Cup. They were obviously not looking for that sort of post based on their search terms, and a fair number of my hits over the day came from that lovely place. I'm not really sure what to think. I do hope that their search for large penises is more rewarding in the future while also hoping that they enjoyed my blog and visit often.

those horrible wiggles

The pain of it all is still fresh in my head, though I am purging the beast with good music. The cheerfulness that is the color coded Wiggles is finally being washed away by the flesh eating corpse love of the Misfits. It's a fitting trade off in my opinion.

The episode I saw today, hopefully the only I'll ever have to watch, involved Wiggle Dork Red and an inability to wiggle. It was apparently catastrophic, as the show was devoted to solving the issue of lack of wiggle. Of course their was plenty of time for them to play music and have seizures they called dancing. I was even treated to the giggling dimwit Captain Feathersword, a particularly offensive character.

Babies can't eat the foods that older kids and adults can. It's not like we are saving the good stuff because we don't like our babies. We are giving them what they need because we do like them. We want them to have food that they can both ingest and process. A baby may enjoy the flavor of a ribeye steak, but with their little gums, the best they can hope for is to suck some of the blood out. We know this, so we nurse our babies and give them food that is texturally and nutritionally appropriate.

This is not the case with music or other art. Perhaps children won't have the same appreciation for Degas and his dancers or Lee Perry and his hip shaking syncopation. That doesn't mean that they need to be fed crap, and it certainly doesn't mean that I should have to listen to, watch or even hear something so inane as the Wiggles. Kids need good music, assuming the parents know what that is. Perhaps that's the real problem with kids' music is that the parents just don't realize the damage that this crap is doing to this young generation.

If it's baby's virginal ears that concern you then find something that is lyrically safe. Look up early rock music for an example when sex alluded to in the sparsest of terms, terms that could be assumed to mean what they said as opposed to what they really meant. Find some old jazz, back when it meant a full band as opposed to some boring three piece combo. Give them Bach and Chopin and Scott Joplin.

I won't pretend I gave it a chance, and I'm not pretending I set out this morning to attempt to give a shit. There really was nothing good on, so I stopped on Disney to see what all the fuss was about. Sadly, my preconceived notions were proven to be well founded. I knew when I saw the Wiggles that I was going to be sinking into a pit of hate, but I watched, for you dear reader. I also wanted to be able to say that I'd seen it so that I could have justification for my vile feelings.

The song about animals was really demeaning to animals. Not only is that not how a monkey moves, but the tiger isn't going to roll around and giggle with you. She is going to claw your guts out and eat them still fresh, steaming and wet, bloodying her muzzle in the gaping cavity she made in your abdomen. And pirates were not going to do a little dance with dogs while laughing like an escapee from an asylum. He was going to cut your ears off and wear them around his neck right before he tossed your ass into the churning sea, and his laugh was at you as you sank beneath the waves, not because he's insane but because your pleas for life are funny.

So do your kids a favor. Don't insult them with shitty music. Of course they are going to like it if that's what you're offering. They won't know any better, which doesn't mean that the Wiggles are good or okay. They are neither and are in fact harmful. Giving your kids their own special kids' music is setting them up for a lifetime of liking crappy music. When they bring home Justin Timberlake and think he makes quality music, when they watch The Simple Life, it will be your fault. You started them out, introducing them to a life in which the lowest common denominator is seen as high standards.

Hat tip style down at the bottom, I have to thank Zero Boss, who seems to like this crap. Were it not for his concern for sick Wiggle Dork Yellow, I could have easily and happily lived a full and happy life completely unaware, for the most part, what this childhood ruining group were really about. Now it's too late.

unschooling blah, blah, blah

Fancy me saying the following, but if you are going to rant against something, you might actually take the time to know something about that which you are going to rant against. So we come to unschooling. This is only partially prompted by that dumb fuck Dr. Phil who seems to have a PhD in being a loudmouth jackass more than anything else.

Most people who have opted for any variety of homeschooling have plenty of experience and knowledge about public and/or private schooling which may or may not have prompted their decision to alternately provide for their children's education. We know of which we speak.

Of course the whole concept of education needs to be discussed, another point I'm not quite going to bother going into here. I could go into it because I have fairly strong opinions about it. What does education really mean in a time when most of what we think we know can easily be expected to be outdated and proven unnecessary in very little time?

It seems that unschooling is the newest horse that is going to get beaten past the point of no noticeable pulse, and those horse beaters are not really in a position to have a say. And if it ended there many of us on the pro side wouldn't care. The path to shitty laws, like the road to hell, is paved with the very best of intentions (see prohibition for more info) which makes the anti crowd think highly of themselves and their opinions, but they seem to forget the whole "to hell" part.

Please understand that we welcome everyone to their opinions. That's the beauty of a free society, that people can think any outlandish thing they want (see young earth creationist for more info.) That same freedom gives me the right to tell people that they are idiots.

Unschooling is lots of things to lots of people. Like anything in life, there are some people who claim authority to decide what is and isn't unschooling. For some it means fairly broad avenues of freedom for their children to be and act in any way they want. For some it means that they do schoolwork sitting in the floor instead of at the table. For some it might mean a fairly active life full of options for them and their kids to learn as much as they can and want to learn. That last one most accurately describes most homeschoolers and unschoolers.

Many people would say that we unschoolers are lazy parents who allow our kids to watch tv all day with no input. I'd say the lazy parents are those that let the school educate their kids and then blame those schools for their kids problems. See how that works, how I generalize about parents of public school kids? It isn't accurate for all public school parents, and I know that, but I like to make blanket statements about things even though I do know different. It's different from some bloggers who make blanket statements without the knowledge.

I know families involved in all the varieties of childhood education. I know families whose children all attend public schools and would never even consider homeschooling. I know families who homeschool some kids while other kids attend school. I know families who school their children very formally using one single curriculum. I know families who school fairly formally using a variety of educational options including curriculum for certain areas as well as a piecemeal approach for other areas. I know families who don't use any sort of recognizable schooling, families who completely unschool letting their children learn as children do when allowed, and that's the option that we've chose for our kids. I've seen all of these approaches work. It's not my place to tell any of these families that their chosen option is wrong or right.

I wasn't going to write this post, though because of the Dr. Phil fallout, it's been stuck in my brain wanting to get out. I am daily amazed at the misconceptions that people dream up and call fact. If I called fact everything that came into my head, this blog would be a far more fucked up place than I've already made it. You people don't realize how lucky you are that I practice some self control. At least I try to pretend I've done some research before I freak out on paper (okay, not really paper, but anything else ruins the flow.)

And finally, totally off topic, but Blogger needs to figure out that homeschooling and unschooling are indeed both words and that I have not misspelled them several times. I'm tired of the little red underlines from Firefox as well. I know how to spell damn it!

more jams

I prefer certain musical genres over others, as I imagine most people do, but I haven't found a particular type of music in which I can't find some band I like. Today being library day, we have a few new cd's to which we'll shake our booties for a couple of weeks. I am generally willing to give the boys a chance to pick music from the library. Big Brother often does, though The Boy usually doesn't.

This time he did. He doesn't read yet, and he has no noticeable musical leanings other than Thomas the Tank Engine music which is kid's music that I willingly make allowances for. Usually he just gets the first thing his hand happens to land on. Today he grabbed Vic Damone. I feel pretty certain that I've heard of but can't place Vic. I just put the cd in, and I'm willing to listen for a bit before refusing to let the cd end. According to the case, the songs include both Tonight and Maria from West Side Story. That's not a bad sign.

The selections I made that I'm most looking forward to are James Galway and the Chieftains album In Ireland as well as a best of cd of George Jones. I love George Jones, but I don't actually own any of his music, so we'll have it now. The Chieftains are a band I've recently gotten into. Having listened to The Thistle and Shamrock, a celtic music show on NPR, I was sure I'd like them. My mistake the first time I picked up one of their albums was getting the album on which they team up with various country musicians to play uninspired versions of country songs. I have listened to other Chieftains albums since and know that I'll be likely to enjoy the one I picked up today.

I also picked up Danger Doom, The Mouse and the Mask. I know very little about this group other than that they are hip-hop. I seem to remember some song of theirs that I liked. I haven't listened to it yet, at least not past the first song. I put it in leaving the library and decided I just wasn't in a hip-hop mood at the time. It didn't help that there were bits from Cartoon Network characters, which I hope does not occur throughout the album. Even good music can be tainted with crap to the point that it's rendered suckfull.

Finally, I grabbed some David Bowie, a cd titled Early On. It replaced Danger Doom in the car and is not what I expected from Bowie. I'm not saying I didn't or don't or won't like it as I need to give it more of a chance, but it isn't what anyone would expect who is used to the more typical David Bowie. We were listening to Ziggy Stardust in the car going to the library, so that was certainly on my mind when Early On began. As the name implies, it's early Bowie. It has a sort of early-mid '60's garage sound, and it isn't bad. I'll just have to listen to it again without the preconceived notion thing happening.

Having basically finished this post, I've also listened to just over half of the Vic Damone, and I don't exactly hate it. He is/was a good singer, but he kind of sounds like a cut rate Frank Sinatra. That's not the worst way to be, and if it pays the bills then have at it. He sounds like grandmothers swoon over him in small southern towns that trick the law by digging moats that they fill with technically floating riverboat casinos. Suffice it to say, it's worth listening to because he picks good songs to sing mostly okay.

bottle cap school?

I'm enjoying a bottle of Honest Tea Assam Black Tea. It's really delightful stuff and could easily turn me into a tea geek were it not for coffee and beer. Honest Tea always prints something in the cap of the bottles, often some informative tidbit. This time it's even interesting, so I'll type it exactly as it is on the cap.

Tea was introduced to Europe in the mid-1600's. By the 1700's, it had replaced beer as the beverage of choice at breakfast.

When your best water is likely to make you sick, beer, because it's been boiled and sanitized, is a much better option. Tea, and then coffee, both because they've also been cooked and due to the stimulant caffeine, brought us an end to day long drunkenness and the beginning of the enlightenment. I imagine that they also helped us learn to quit pissing and shitting in our water supply, or maybe with the various scientific advances, we figured out that certain things leave our bodies for a good reason and should therefore not be reingested. Some days however, beer for breakfast isn't the worst idea I can imagine, though it made a lot more sense before having children.

I always feel like . . .

. . .somebody's fucking with me. Is it Bloglines or Blogger/Blogspot? Reading one of the blogs I've subscribed to via Bloglines, I realized that I hadn't seen new posts from her in some time, though perusing her blog, I also realized I'd missed several posts. So I did some investigating.

Turns out I've missed a number of posts from a number of bloggers. I'm really bad about not noticing sometimes when folks don't post for a while. I put people in little categories and rather than visit each individual blog, I'll just click the category and read all the newest posts by the assorted bloggers.

As it turns out, many of my favorite bloggers were not taking time off, but someone or something was. So I've gone through and unsubscribed to a few people and resubscribed hoping that will fix it. It's especially easy to subscribe to blogs now with the newest Firefox. I get a little prompt in the address bar that I click and subscribe. Ease of subscription does not lessen the annoyance of having to fix this. Hopefully I've learned a lesson about paying attention to bloggers I like and care to read.

bleah

Because I don't whine enough on this blog or in real life, I'll go ahead and share today's delight. I feel completely like crap.

Because of the rib thing that I've mentioned, I can only lay on my right side. Laying on my left side, back or stomach causes an insane amount of pain both in the rib shot area as well as in my back, directly opposite the rib thing. Today is just over a week since I got hit, and the pain is not really any less than it has been. I haven't slept for shit in a week, and it's really starting to wear on me.

The kids have been variously sick over the past week, though they seem to mostly have gotten over it. The Boy got the least of the cold, and Big Brother seems mostly over his. I on the other hand woke this morning to the usual back and rib thing as well as a lovely head thing. I feel like a sinusy cotton headed ninny muggins.

I've been a little nasaly stuffy all day, and regardless of whether I blow it out or snork it up, it sends shivers of pain through my chest. It's really pathetic, and I feel really pathetic. I know for a fact that I sound more pathetic than I feel, but it's my blog dammit.

I'm now looking forward to roughly an hour from now when I can justify drinking a beer or five. It will be close enough to pajama and bed time for the boys that I'll be okay with the drinks. I did feel well enough to cook supper, and not counting the frozen pizza from two days ago, this is the first day that we didn't have enough Thanksgiving leftovers to shirk my cooking duties.

Okay, rant off for now. My tears are drying on my cheeks, and Keith Olberman is on. Damn I want a beer, my pain med of choice.

faithful dogmatic atheists

An atheist is a person who believes that god does not exist. An agnostic is a person who does not believe that god exists, though agnostics often allow for the unprovability of a god. Though it seems like minor semantics, there really is a fair difference in that one is a belief while the other is a lack of a belief.

Faith is something that is believed, or as the Bible says, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, from the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. Christians often use as an example of faith sitting in a chair. According to the example, one has faith that a chair will hold their weight, but this is an inane example. One has every reason to believe a chair will hold them based on past performance of chairs, which is why it's so damn funny when someone sits in a chair that doesn't hold them but instead sends them ass over tea kettle. This isn't really the point here, but it is indicative of how faith can be seen as something that it isn't.

Some atheists are extremely dogmatic in their belief in the nonexistence of god. Dogmatic means to strongly hold opinion as fact. One could even suggest that these good people are atheist fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are people who strongly demand adherence to their belief system.

These fundamentalist atheists see the world in strongly black and white terms. To them, you are either an atheist with a strong disbelief in god and anything unprovable, and therefore rational, or you are irrational and may actually believe in gods, unicorns and farts that smell nice.

Atheism is a belief system, though many adherents would strongly disagree with this fact. I claim to be an atheist, and I may just mean weak atheist. I do believe that god does not exist in the form we've been taught generally to view him. I do believe that this stance is not at all provable or unprovable. Christians can no more prove their god does exist than atheist can prove that he does not exist. To me, this means that both views require faith. Don't tell the fundamentalist atheist this, as faith is completely anathema to them. Faith, to them is irrational, and they would not dare be irrational. Yet, as we've discussed, faith is a belief in something for which we have no proof.

Is it possible that there exists some broadly categorized interstellar entity with the power to have created the earth and the living being upon the earth? Nothing I've seen suggests that this does in fact exist, but I must also admit that nothing I've seen suggests that it isn't possible. I tend to doubt that it's likely, but I have no argument to stand up to the possibility of this. I would argue that god doesn't seem likely based on my view of the earth, and I'd further argue that the god I was taught about as a child seems highly unlikely to exist based on my understanding of the world. But however we dance around the argument, neither my stance nor that of the christians of the world are provable or unprovable.

That's what it comes back down to, proof. I don't think that there are any vampires, but if I were one, I'd not want my existence to become known as many people would likely want me dead, Anne Rice fans notwithstanding. Are there Martians? If so they too have done a great job of hiding, but again, the rover not seeing them isn't the same as the rover sending us proof that there are no Martians.

In the end, we come down to so many people are willing to strongly argue their personal convictions as fact. To do so is dogmatic fundamentalism, and I contend that this attitude is more ruinous to human relations than anything short of war. It is sad when self professed scientists argue so stridently against the existence of god when science should be expected to contain itself within the realms of things provable whether that proof is able to deny or confirm the existence. If it isn't testable, it isn't science.

Hat tip to PZ Myers since without his usually interesting blog, this subject would not have nestled in my brain as a grain of sand around which the pearl that is this post formed.

oh please

Someone please tell me it's not just me. Tell me I'm not being some moralistic freak. Tell me that this as an image of babyhood really is fucked up and that I'm not some kind of weird prude. I'm a pretty open minded guy, by which I mean that I believe in equality of race and gender and sexual orientation. I can't accept that this is a good message for our girls, especially given the destructiveness of so much that girls have to face.