So, I have the book.
And now I have a dilemma. See, though we had planned to read the first 6 in advance...we haven't. So now we have 7th and final installment, and I cannot decide if I want to indulge my curiosity and satisfy my need to know...or if I want to savor the last time I can read the story from beginning to end without knowing the end until I reach it.
What to do...what to do...sigh...
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
A Complete Mystery
One of the first things they tell you as you become an adult and assume the responsibility of things like paying for gas is that you should always look for the cheapest gas around, because those nickles and dimes add up. And, of course with gas prices being what they are, there's very rarely s need to convince people to search out cheap gas.
Which is why the Shell gas station on the corner of La Mirada and Imperial is truly a mystery to me. You see, while Sam's Club prices are currently roughly $2.92/gl, and ARCO is $2.89/gl, and even the Chevron down the street is $2.99/gl, the Shell gas station on the corner of La Mirada and Imperial is a lonely courageous soul. Rather than offering competitive prices to challenge the other stations (or even to be comparable to the station across the street) the Shell at that corner offers gas at generally no less than $.30 more than the most expensive competitors. I believe the last listed price I saw was something like $3.37/gl. I think this might be the station that inflates the national average gas price.
The oddest thing is that I actually see people getting gas there...I think I might even have gotten gas there once. I just don't get it; how could any manager think this is a good idea? Whatever the reasons, I salute the brave gesture flying in the face of the free market. You go, Shell of La Mirada & Imperial; overcharge for your wares at such a ridiculous rate that it baffles the mind why anyone offers you any business.
Perhaps they're a front for the La Mirada Mafia...
Which is why the Shell gas station on the corner of La Mirada and Imperial is truly a mystery to me. You see, while Sam's Club prices are currently roughly $2.92/gl, and ARCO is $2.89/gl, and even the Chevron down the street is $2.99/gl, the Shell gas station on the corner of La Mirada and Imperial is a lonely courageous soul. Rather than offering competitive prices to challenge the other stations (or even to be comparable to the station across the street) the Shell at that corner offers gas at generally no less than $.30 more than the most expensive competitors. I believe the last listed price I saw was something like $3.37/gl. I think this might be the station that inflates the national average gas price.
The oddest thing is that I actually see people getting gas there...I think I might even have gotten gas there once. I just don't get it; how could any manager think this is a good idea? Whatever the reasons, I salute the brave gesture flying in the face of the free market. You go, Shell of La Mirada & Imperial; overcharge for your wares at such a ridiculous rate that it baffles the mind why anyone offers you any business.
Perhaps they're a front for the La Mirada Mafia...
No robe for you!
I used to have a robe. It was heavy terry-clothe. Navy Blue. Warm. Even though holes tore open under the arms, it was still my robe. Comfy. Large. I liked my robe. I wore it frequently.
Then we reorganized our apartment. Threw out a ton of stuff that we no longer used or needed. Moved furniture, painted, cleaned, etc.
My wife decided that my robe was no longer worth keeping. I found it in the pile of stuff going away. I asked her why, and she said that with the holes, it was no longer worthy of remaining my robe. She promised to replace it. I tried to challenge her logic, suggesting that since I did actually use my robe, we should keep it until we replaced it. She, of course, prevailed.
Of course...we're broke...and robes cost money. And you know the old saying--a robe on the hook is worth two in the store.
Now I own no robe. I miss my robe. Sigh.
Then we reorganized our apartment. Threw out a ton of stuff that we no longer used or needed. Moved furniture, painted, cleaned, etc.
My wife decided that my robe was no longer worth keeping. I found it in the pile of stuff going away. I asked her why, and she said that with the holes, it was no longer worthy of remaining my robe. She promised to replace it. I tried to challenge her logic, suggesting that since I did actually use my robe, we should keep it until we replaced it. She, of course, prevailed.
Of course...we're broke...and robes cost money. And you know the old saying--a robe on the hook is worth two in the store.
Now I own no robe. I miss my robe. Sigh.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Culture-War Fatigue, or a Political Zoo, pt 2
Warning...serious politcal rant forthcoming...the dis-interested need not read on...
Let me begin by saying...I do not want our nation to suffer another attack.
Its important that I say that, because I am going to come dangerously close to suggesting otherwise as a result of my general frustration with our nation.
I am so exhausted by the state of dazed boredom that captivates our collective national conscience in the face of actual war. I am not entirely sure what to attribute it to...whether it's the information age, which moves so rapidly that a national tragedy is now either forgotten completely or is referred to as a conspiracy or a political lightening rod, or if its the nature of the enemy we face, radicals willing to fight to the death and sacrifice without personal regard, whom Americans and Westerners in general no longer understand.
Perhaps its our perpetual prosperity that is killing us from within; in spite of a national disaster and the longest sustained troop deployment in 30 years, there has been zero impact on the personal life of citizens in our nation.
Regardless of the why, the fact remains; we don't think of ourselves as being at war...having forgotten the last successful strike on our own shores, we have become convinced that the actions we are currently involved in are unrelated in the slightest to preventing future tragedies. Instead of insisting on victory, we are demanding that our "sacrifices" end before the job is done.
Instead of a government that leads us, that communicates clearly and lays out a unified plan to secure our nation, we have politicians that take every opportunity to strike at our confidence in the government as a whole by attacking each other constantly. This applies to both sides...though the radicals on the left take special pleasure in filling their attacks with venom, making reconciliation impossible. One half of this country is being conditioned to hate the other half; the left suspects the conservative Christian population of being of the same ilk (meaning religious absolutists) as those who attacked on 9/11, the Jihad extremists.
It's madness.
In the midst of all of this, during a time when the multitude of enemies that have designs against us have little or no problem working together, we divisively draw further apart. We are engaged abroad while we ignore our own freaking borders. And when Michael Chertoff, our Homeland Security Secretary, tells us that our intelligence points to a real problem, and his response is to worry that an attack is actually imminent, we mock him and criticize him, and spread suspicions that it's a scare tactic...revealing once again our complete lack of recall. The President has been roundly criticized for years now because nobody said anything about the possibility that an attack was imminent in 2001.
I am tired of trying to defend the need to take this seriously. I almost want to allow the Liberals their chance to have their way. Forget Hillary or Obama--get Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan into the White House. Turn over the Congress. The Republicans aren't leading anyways, might as well get their worthless suits out and let the surrender monkeys have their go. Let them bring our troops home tomorrow. And ultimately...let our enemies come to burn our cities. I am tired of having to urge our own people to try and prevent it. Civilizations that whore themselves out to their enemies and citizens of other nations don't last. We shouldn't have to convince our populace to fight for its survival...so maybe its time to let it die a little.
As a student of history, I can tell you its not uncommon. This Republic won't last another generation--that I predict in complete seriousness. Our nation of the last 200 years is dead, and is about to disappear entirely. The world has changed in the last 50 years, and in the meantime a way of life ended...and what will take its place is still to be decided.
In the past, the evolution of the American nation has involved a metamorphosis that promised the hope of a brighter tomorrow at the cost of a potentially more comfortable today. We evolved from a collection of colonies to a unified nation. We changed from powerful individual states to states contributing to a powerful federal government, capable of mobilizing into an amazing machine. We morphed from an open, lawless frontier into centralized, civilized city life that could prosper and create a powerhouse to challenge the ancient power of the old world. We adapted from the protection of isolation to become the greatest ally to free people on earth. We lead the globe in just about every industrial field and medicine, have the most advanced military, put a man on the moon, and could feed the world with relative ease from our abundance.
At every turn we have faced the choice of comfort, ease and popularity, or the challenge of leading towards a better world, through difficult but necessary sacrifice. Today is no different...only the stakes are our national security, possibly our general way of life, and the future. If I sound a little dramatic...good. Its my son's future. And I am exasperated that I live in an age within easy memory of WWII where the majority of our leadership and press spend all of their time trying to convince our population that we need not believe we're really at war.
But we are actually at war. And I almost wish something would happen to remind us of that inescapable fact. Its a war I doubt we can "win" in the conventional sense. Our enemy doesn't consider death a defeat. The best we can do is endure...but we hate enduring.
I really am tired of the news. I really do almost think we need to bleed to remind us of the danger that wants to hurt us. It just seems wrong to accept such a fate. What do you do when your nation no longer cares to defend itself? To whom do you turn when the majority of the leadership denies the need for action and ignores the reality of our enemies and vulnerabilities, both foreign and domestic? It's too much. Is this what it felt like to live 1600 years ago in Italy? I wonder...
Well...that's done. I warned you I was going to rant...
Let me begin by saying...I do not want our nation to suffer another attack.
Its important that I say that, because I am going to come dangerously close to suggesting otherwise as a result of my general frustration with our nation.
I am so exhausted by the state of dazed boredom that captivates our collective national conscience in the face of actual war. I am not entirely sure what to attribute it to...whether it's the information age, which moves so rapidly that a national tragedy is now either forgotten completely or is referred to as a conspiracy or a political lightening rod, or if its the nature of the enemy we face, radicals willing to fight to the death and sacrifice without personal regard, whom Americans and Westerners in general no longer understand.
Perhaps its our perpetual prosperity that is killing us from within; in spite of a national disaster and the longest sustained troop deployment in 30 years, there has been zero impact on the personal life of citizens in our nation.
Regardless of the why, the fact remains; we don't think of ourselves as being at war...having forgotten the last successful strike on our own shores, we have become convinced that the actions we are currently involved in are unrelated in the slightest to preventing future tragedies. Instead of insisting on victory, we are demanding that our "sacrifices" end before the job is done.
Instead of a government that leads us, that communicates clearly and lays out a unified plan to secure our nation, we have politicians that take every opportunity to strike at our confidence in the government as a whole by attacking each other constantly. This applies to both sides...though the radicals on the left take special pleasure in filling their attacks with venom, making reconciliation impossible. One half of this country is being conditioned to hate the other half; the left suspects the conservative Christian population of being of the same ilk (meaning religious absolutists) as those who attacked on 9/11, the Jihad extremists.
It's madness.
In the midst of all of this, during a time when the multitude of enemies that have designs against us have little or no problem working together, we divisively draw further apart. We are engaged abroad while we ignore our own freaking borders. And when Michael Chertoff, our Homeland Security Secretary, tells us that our intelligence points to a real problem, and his response is to worry that an attack is actually imminent, we mock him and criticize him, and spread suspicions that it's a scare tactic...revealing once again our complete lack of recall. The President has been roundly criticized for years now because nobody said anything about the possibility that an attack was imminent in 2001.
I am tired of trying to defend the need to take this seriously. I almost want to allow the Liberals their chance to have their way. Forget Hillary or Obama--get Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan into the White House. Turn over the Congress. The Republicans aren't leading anyways, might as well get their worthless suits out and let the surrender monkeys have their go. Let them bring our troops home tomorrow. And ultimately...let our enemies come to burn our cities. I am tired of having to urge our own people to try and prevent it. Civilizations that whore themselves out to their enemies and citizens of other nations don't last. We shouldn't have to convince our populace to fight for its survival...so maybe its time to let it die a little.
As a student of history, I can tell you its not uncommon. This Republic won't last another generation--that I predict in complete seriousness. Our nation of the last 200 years is dead, and is about to disappear entirely. The world has changed in the last 50 years, and in the meantime a way of life ended...and what will take its place is still to be decided.
In the past, the evolution of the American nation has involved a metamorphosis that promised the hope of a brighter tomorrow at the cost of a potentially more comfortable today. We evolved from a collection of colonies to a unified nation. We changed from powerful individual states to states contributing to a powerful federal government, capable of mobilizing into an amazing machine. We morphed from an open, lawless frontier into centralized, civilized city life that could prosper and create a powerhouse to challenge the ancient power of the old world. We adapted from the protection of isolation to become the greatest ally to free people on earth. We lead the globe in just about every industrial field and medicine, have the most advanced military, put a man on the moon, and could feed the world with relative ease from our abundance.
At every turn we have faced the choice of comfort, ease and popularity, or the challenge of leading towards a better world, through difficult but necessary sacrifice. Today is no different...only the stakes are our national security, possibly our general way of life, and the future. If I sound a little dramatic...good. Its my son's future. And I am exasperated that I live in an age within easy memory of WWII where the majority of our leadership and press spend all of their time trying to convince our population that we need not believe we're really at war.
But we are actually at war. And I almost wish something would happen to remind us of that inescapable fact. Its a war I doubt we can "win" in the conventional sense. Our enemy doesn't consider death a defeat. The best we can do is endure...but we hate enduring.
I really am tired of the news. I really do almost think we need to bleed to remind us of the danger that wants to hurt us. It just seems wrong to accept such a fate. What do you do when your nation no longer cares to defend itself? To whom do you turn when the majority of the leadership denies the need for action and ignores the reality of our enemies and vulnerabilities, both foreign and domestic? It's too much. Is this what it felt like to live 1600 years ago in Italy? I wonder...
Well...that's done. I warned you I was going to rant...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Its a Wonder-full World
So, apparently the Seven Wonders of the World have been updated.
I have two responses to this news...and actually one response to something from the story.
First on the story: this line, "However, Paris-based UNESCO distanced itself from the seven wonders ballot, saying it reflected only the opinion of those who voted," made me laugh. That UNESCO organization is truly a brain trust. So, get this, only those who voted were represented by the vote. It takes some time and an official title to figure that one out...I might not have understood if I didn't have a Paris based branch of the UN to tell me that voting only represents those that vote. Of course they're based in France. Where else could they be based? Center of redundant snottiness. ANYWAYS...
Now, as to the actual story...first, I think this is kinda cool. I am all for taking pride in the wonders around us, and investing in making things of majesty and wonder. But this ultimately leads me to my next response, which is...
Disappointment. Not in the list itself, but in what it reveals about us. Its no secret really...all you have to do is visit Tomorrow Land in Disneyland to see just how much we've dropped the ball. You see, the list reveals that we have accomplished nothing that competes with the Pyramid of Gaza or the Great Wall of China, both thousands of years old. Granted, those are pretty awesome, and they have always been on my list of things to see before I die...but as with Tomorrow Land in the Magical Kingdom, so in real life; we have failed to continue to reach for new challenges to make this new world as majestic and profoundly challenging to the future as those who came before us managed to do with their "now" back then. Where are the modern monuments that will challenge generations to come to consider who and what we are?
Its hard to be an Evangelical Protestant Christian and advocate building monuments; we tend to think that building to last, and more importantly building to inspire and awe is lower on the priorities...but I have been convinced that for a thing to be true and good, it should also be beautiful. Our churches fail in that respect all too often. It also reveals a lack of ambition, which we as Christians should be terrified by. Tomorrow should be the horizon of unending possibility, and that means today should challenge us to make a mark to echo into tomorrow. Everything we possess today comes from those men that strove mightily yesterday for their tomorrow. We are leaving no challenge to those that come after us, no monument to the things we hold precious to remind tomorrow that there are things greater than ourselves, things worth pouring our lives into without looking back.
Ultimately, my response is that this list should challenge us, to leave our mark on this earth about those things that matter to us. And also...I want to go travel and see the new list...
I have two responses to this news...and actually one response to something from the story.
First on the story: this line, "However, Paris-based UNESCO distanced itself from the seven wonders ballot, saying it reflected only the opinion of those who voted," made me laugh. That UNESCO organization is truly a brain trust. So, get this, only those who voted were represented by the vote. It takes some time and an official title to figure that one out...I might not have understood if I didn't have a Paris based branch of the UN to tell me that voting only represents those that vote. Of course they're based in France. Where else could they be based? Center of redundant snottiness. ANYWAYS...
Now, as to the actual story...first, I think this is kinda cool. I am all for taking pride in the wonders around us, and investing in making things of majesty and wonder. But this ultimately leads me to my next response, which is...
Disappointment. Not in the list itself, but in what it reveals about us. Its no secret really...all you have to do is visit Tomorrow Land in Disneyland to see just how much we've dropped the ball. You see, the list reveals that we have accomplished nothing that competes with the Pyramid of Gaza or the Great Wall of China, both thousands of years old. Granted, those are pretty awesome, and they have always been on my list of things to see before I die...but as with Tomorrow Land in the Magical Kingdom, so in real life; we have failed to continue to reach for new challenges to make this new world as majestic and profoundly challenging to the future as those who came before us managed to do with their "now" back then. Where are the modern monuments that will challenge generations to come to consider who and what we are?
Its hard to be an Evangelical Protestant Christian and advocate building monuments; we tend to think that building to last, and more importantly building to inspire and awe is lower on the priorities...but I have been convinced that for a thing to be true and good, it should also be beautiful. Our churches fail in that respect all too often. It also reveals a lack of ambition, which we as Christians should be terrified by. Tomorrow should be the horizon of unending possibility, and that means today should challenge us to make a mark to echo into tomorrow. Everything we possess today comes from those men that strove mightily yesterday for their tomorrow. We are leaving no challenge to those that come after us, no monument to the things we hold precious to remind tomorrow that there are things greater than ourselves, things worth pouring our lives into without looking back.
Ultimately, my response is that this list should challenge us, to leave our mark on this earth about those things that matter to us. And also...I want to go travel and see the new list...
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