24 posts from February 2008

What's the biggest leap of faith you've ever had to take?

There was this one time when this building was burning and I was trapped in it and this big burly man I'd never seen before said, "do you trust me?" and I said, "yes!" even though these things never end well, and we jumped and we landed in this water and swam to shore where these guys with guns chased us and we hid in this rundown motel and I cut my hair and dyed it black and then we had the most INCREDIBLE runaway fugitive sex and then we hatched this plot to get revenge on the CEO of this front company for the mafia and we implicated government agents in the process and then took all of this money we found in a hedge account and then went back to The Island where our plane had crashed a while ago and...

Oh, wait, that's like the plot of several movies and TV shows garbled together.

I married my husband.  That was a leap, of faith.  I got two babies out of the deal which is nice.

Garfield- MINUS Garfield!

Instead of a humorous comic about a cranky lasagna loving cat, you instead watch as Jon slowly descends into suburbian madness.  The man who came up with this is BRILLIANT.

May I submit:

I couldn't fall asleep last night, and I started obsessing about the word "quixotic" and how people pronounce it, to the point that it has become a blog post.  I have no idea why this bothers me.  I even had a dream of our Dear Leader (Mr. Bush) saying, "I'm tilting at windmills, so quixotic" except he said it like, "quicks-oat-ick" and it BOTHERED ME.

I am having NIGHTMARES about POOR PRONUNCIATION.

I NEED HELP.

I find statistics fascinating- I may have mentioned this.  That is partially why I take my WordPress statistics intravenously.  Looking over the search terms that have led people to my blog I've found a few... interesting things.  Let's see if you all find them as interesting as I do:

The search terms that have led people to my site (listed from most hits to least):  (The reader automatically cuts them off.  My apologies.  I have no idea how some of these were meant to end.)

beijing olympics homeless	10
sex	6
beijing olympics homelessness	3
why obama would make a good president	2
why would barack obama make a great pres	2
why do people think it is wrong for chil	2
steroids and the economy	1
hillary	1
the bible (should i follow love or the e	1
obama teaching	1
beijing olympics	1
america olympics	1
steroids in foreign countries	1
sins of solice	1
hate churches	1
christian don't want afterlife	1
racism still a factor in 2008 election	1
asterisk olympic	1
obama has no plan	1
why obama has no pets	1
beijing olympics stadium homeless	1
legislature and morality	1
christian and unbeliever relationship st	1
truth claimes of christian language	1
dragons	1
church dont believe in homos	1
obama would be a great president	1
raising your child to find their own rel	1
what the hell is a pet issue	1
the truth about hillary

I hate:

1. Writer's block:  I've been wanting to write about the 60 minutes special on Don Siegelman and how the broadcast was interrupted (AP link) and I'm just flummoxed.  Gr. 
   
2. The fact that my daughter won't eat today
3. Being sick
4. Not writing creatively

I love:

1. Ice cream
2. Pepsi
3. Duma Key by Stephen King
4. The kids sleeping (kind of) through the night

Good day, all.

What's the meanest thing you've ever said to someone?

I could answer this truthfully and talk about all of the tear filled half-screamed heart to heart conversations my husband and I had, back in the days that neither one of us were sure if this relationship would last.  I could, but I won't, because I don't feel like reliving it and I doubt any of my Vox neighbors would appreciate being subjected to that sort of thing.  In fact, QotD, I'm a little miffed at you for asking a question that would lead to such an exposure.  You must not have thought this one through very well.  While a lot of people will probably jokingly answer, "I once told so and so they had an ass face" I honestly find mean things that are said in jest to really be, well, not actually mean.  The meanness comes not only from meaning, but intent, and to talk about times where one has felt such intent...  well, I wouldn't want to.

    Although, I must confess, I call my son Stinky Butt so often that he answers to it.  I hope it doesn't stick.  I can just picture his high school year book caption:
    Josiah "Stinky Butt" ShushSon
    "Not all that glitters is golden..."

    At least we plan on enrolling our kids in a mixed martial arts course so they can defend their honor...
   

I have new jeans.  Finally.  Since my favorite three pairs all had holes, two in the knees and one somewhere where someone noticed I wear pink panties.  *blush!*
    So YAY for new pants!
    And I also vacuumed and cleaned the house, but I didn't wash the dishes so YAY for a clean house and *self flagellation* for not doing the whole job.
    My friend Ginger also hooked me up with a new dresser and bed frame- TOTALLY FREE!  So YAY for best friends who make the world spin in the right direction.  Seriously, life can be a living hell and everything can taste wrong and the sun can look dark in your eyes- but if you've got one good friend, you've got everything in the world.  Some people don't have a best friend.  I don't know how they survive.
    So, to celebrate the world being a happy place:

   This is what nights are like around my house, with my husband and I trading turns being the person who must spread truth online.  It's probably a good thing that we both have the same worst habit, so neither of us can be overly angry with the other.    {poached from XKCD)

He just bought me the new Stephen King book!

And a two liter of Pepsi!

YAY!

Now, back to being angry about human rights violations.

During the Atlanta Olympics, homeless people were put into temporary housing to keep them off the streets.  There was a little bit of protest, because people felt that America was posing and simply hiding the blemishes instead of curing the problem.
    Imagine, then, if two million people were forcibly evicted, imprisoned and beaten if they demanded restitution.
    I imagine that wouldn't go over well.  When Beijing won their bid for the 2008 Olympics, they said it showed a new era for China, acceptance into the modern way of life, and that it would improve conditions for the Chinese people and lower human rights violations.  Two million people who have lost their homes and forty thousand who have been imprisoned and beaten for staging quiet protests would have something else to say about that. An estimated two hundred thousand are still living on the streets, unable to find temporary housing and not able to stay with family.  Two hundred thousand.  That is nearly ten times the amount of people who live in my hometown.  Imagine if the town of BumbleBee Indiana (fictional name) were to be ENTIRELY DEMOLISHED to build an Olympic stadium, the townspeople were offered no restitution or temporary housing, and were beaten for protesting?
    The international community would not be silent.
    I cannot tell you all how hard it was to find any reporting whatsoever on this topic.  The one Washington post article simply cited "a continuation of human rights violations" with no specifics.  All I could find were blog posts and one good article from the UK. (thank you SweetMisery for bringing this to my attention and Carol for the good link.)
    I find it bitterly humorous that a celebration of the world's unity and friendly competition would come at the price of such heinous violations of basic rights to housing, compensation and due process.  I also find it bitterly humorous that due to America's own sketchy acknowledgment of human rights for prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, we may have no leverage for voicing our disdain.
    Please, neighbors, think long and hard about what it means to be human.  Think about the rights of our fellow man.  Think about what it means to be a member of the world stage.  People are people, regardless of their situation.  People have rights, because we want to have rights we need to acknowledge that these rights exist for all people.  The fact that China owns our debt shouldn't keep the United States from speaking, and the fact that we are afraid shouldn't be a good enough reason to violate the rights of others, even if they are possibly terrorists and enemies of ours.

Some links to more information about Beijing's human rights violations:

2,000,000 lose homes due to Olympics
Beijing Slum Demolitions
Homes Forcibly Destroyed without Prior Warning
Demolition destroys history, a way of life

Jesus is going from house to house?

SELLING SKIN CARE?

:)