Thursday, December 11, 2008

This is the story of the "Gaudy Christmas Ornament"

I was around 10 when my boyscout troop made Christmas ornaments. I don't need to explain the process as it is obvious from the picture coming. So, I wrapped up my beautify and facinating creation for my mother and put it under the tree for a Christmas present. Sure enough, mother loved it, or so she said. It took a place of honor at the front of the tree that year even though the honor was to be revealed as tainted.

Several years later, we were putting ornaments on the tree. Mom pulled out my ornament, and in a very sour tone says, "this thing is so gaudy". So, lets just point out the the boxes are full of homemade gaudy ornaments, however it is that one that is singled out and given the obviously dubious honor of being "the" gaudy ornament of the decade.

I responded, "mom, I made that for you and gave it to you for Christmas a few years ago.". Her response was, "I mean gaudy as in pretty; very colorful".

Now, my mom doesn't lie, but this is the one "white" lie (no pun intended) I recall her telling me. Of course there are always those white lies to protect your kids fragile egos, but hey, the darn thing IS gaudy, why call a piece of trash a gem?


For the record, dictionary.com has gaudy listed as:

gaud·y1
–adjective, gaud·i·er, gaud·i·est.
1. brilliantly or excessively showy: gaudy plumage.
2. cheaply showy in a tasteless way; flashy.
3. ostentatiously ornamented; garish.


Lets also do garish just to complete the picture:

gar·ish
–adjective
1. crudely or tastelessly colorful, showy, or elaborate, as clothes or decoration.
2. excessively ornate or elaborate, as buildings or writings.
3. dressed in or ornamented with bright colors.
4. excessively bright; glaring.


Now, lets see the picture:

So, lets link the two together. It is cheaply showy in a tasteless way; flashy and ostentatiously ornamented; garish OR crudely or tastelessly colorful, showy, or elaborate, as clothes or decoration AND dressed in or ornamented with bright colors. This is truly the perfect description.

So, what is the conclusion? It is gaudy AND garish. It is also pretty ugly. I would never put that on my tree unless one of my sons made it for me. So, mom was simply being to nice to me. Unfortunately I was at an age where I was no longer easily fooled, and it has backfired on her.

Now, it is a family joke. Every year, that ornament magically appears at the FRONT of the tree! Why? Well, every year since that year I have in joking fun said, "hey, it is the gaudy ornament". For the first few years it was, "I mean pretty" but for at least the last 10 or so now there has been a complete denial of the discussion, however I know for sure she secretly knows it otherwise that ornament certainly would NOT be on the front of the tree, but take more of an inside spot on the back of the tree somewhere out of site. Wouldn't you? Or, a nice existance in the local trash dump is more appropriate.

Anyway, I get a pretty good kick out of her still defending herself to this day. It will be interesting to see how she responds to this post.

Monday, December 01, 2008

UFC Final (maybe)

OK, so this is my (possibly) final posting on the UFC. After reading Mike's well written explanation of his position on this, I see his point. I have actually decided I agree with him to a point on some points as well.

1. I still do not agree with the comparison to boxing as UFC is many times more brutal and violent. That is like comparing a kissing scene in a PG movie to XXX.
2. I don't really agree with the "boys being boys" statement. Boys also tend to want to lie, cheat, steal, and a lot of other things like it by nature, and those things you would likely call sin. The tendancy for violence would be more towards the side of sin as this is the desire to hurt others, NOT the desire to defend yourself. I can live with you saying it is ok to defend yourself, but it is not ok to pick a fight. That is the same as saying it is ok to drink, but it is not ok to abuse alcohol. Also, I have never even as a kid had the desire to beat someones butt bloody, I have been so mad I wanted to hit someone, but that is different. I think this is a personality trait maybe?
3. Where as your statement about UFC being like video games and TV in promoting violence in kids is a good point, I will counter with the point that just because there are other examples of something bad doesn't excuse another. I don't fundamentally believe that we should have violent movies or video games at all. Since that is impossible in a world of sin, it is futile to even make such a statement. That does not excuse the UFC.

Next, your comments about taking the whole bible and not just parts are a bit misguided. If you can apply your logic this way, then I can also say it is ok to have a concubine since they did in the OT. Or I could say that I need to sacrifice a goat to forgive my sin. Christ did fundamentally change things. I believe to some degree this includes fighting and violent. With that said, there is not a whole lot of fighting in the NT now is there? It seems to be more along the lines of trying to bring your adversary to Christ instead of beating their brains out. Now there are a lot of examples of that. The OT was beat their brains out, but after Christ it was defend yourself only. I think this is were you are going wrong in your thinking, or at least it doesn't seem to be integrated in as it should with a Christian. Now, I am not stupid. If there is a baseball bat flying at my head I am not going to "take one for Jesus", but I shouldn't pick up a chair and throw it either (although I probably would).

What we see in the UFC is not defense in many cases (in some it is like some forms of wrestling and grapling). Defense is the prevention of damage to ones self. In the UFC you must also have Offense. This is NOT required to defend yourself in the real world. Defense would be putting someone in a hold or doing a pain pinch or something that does not do any harm to an individual. Beating their face until it is battered and torn is not defense. Put the lip-stick on that pig anyway you like, but it is still a pig. If it was truly defense, and not offense, it would really be pretty boring. The beating is what is selling the tickets. So, I believe your position breaks down here since I don't see how you can justify the total arse-whoopins that go on in this sport.

I believe I will have to leave this in the realm of a combination of "agree to disagree" and put this into the classification of alcohol where it is something that is not necessary, but OK in moderation, but it becomes very bad when abused.

So, lastly, I will accept the desire to defend yourself. I accept the competition (to some degree) points about comparing fighting styles. You make some other good points as well.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

My last blah-blah-blah on the UCF

I have had a miniature argument with Mike L about the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). I say it is senseless violence and it only serves purposes of evil. Mike says it is good and seems to argue from the position of he is supposed to protect his family. I really don’t understand his position, so I would really need to let him explain it better.

However, I can sum up in a nutshell why it is bad-bad-bad. Other than all the other reasons, last night I had ESPN on waiting for a Purdue basketball game to start. There was one of those general sports shows that had a blurb about the UFC. They showed a scene of horrid violence of a man sitting on another man just laying into his face fist over fist. My son Ian happened to see that. What did he do? He walked up to his brother and started to do the exact same thing. Fortunately he was barely hitting him. I have never seen Ian mimic anything off of TV before. So, why this? Wow, to us non-fighting type people it seems to unbelievably obvious why this stuff is so bad. It wasn’t so bad when it was a pay-per-view, or a video rental. That way it wasn’t being put on a TV station where it should not be; i.e. somewhere that my son can’t see it. This is the primary reason I don’t like it is because of the influence on my kids even when I am told I can keep it away from them. The only way to do that is never watch TV, which maybe one day we will do.

The other main reason is the promotion of wanton violence on TV. If you want to learn to fight, by all means, go for it, just keep it off TV please. You see all the time now about kids doing this sort of stuff. Beating each other senseless, sometimes even causing death. There are dozens of posts a day on youtube about this. Kids don’t know any better. They don’t have the built in capacity to know what is right and wrong without being taught, so when they see that sort of thing, they mimic it and think it is ok.

I don’t see any point in it. What is the point of the UFC? It is very much the same as the porn industry. Except instead of peddling flesh, they are selling a product that is appealing to a males instinctive and primitive lust for blood. Much the same as males get such a rush out of hunting, or a sort of instinctual excitement over things like fire, accidents, police chases, etc. You can go on all day about protecting your family, and there is nothing wrong with that. But how does watching two grown men try and kill each other protect your family? I would wager that the violence it promotes in our society actually puts your family in more danger. The risk of your kids getting beat up is much greater. The risks of your kids getting into fights themselves are much higher.

Lastly I have seen it even argued that it is ok Biblically. So, fine, fighting is ok biblically. So is sex, but do you want sex on TV for our kids to see?

I am not a fighter. I have absolutely no interest in fighting. Frankly it sickens me, literally. I literally would get sick if ever force into a confrontation. Does that concern me? It used to. In high school, the whole concept of “I can beat you up” was actually important in the whole “cool” thing. However now that I am out of high-school, I see it more as just a chest beating exercise. Something for men to feel more macho than another. I don’t need to feel macho and never did. I think that really it is a fundamental difference between geeks and jocks. Geeks don’t have the athletic prowess to beat anyone up, and jocks are too dumb to rely on their brains to get them out of a situation. Sorry, that is a broad two ended generalization, and I know Mike L is a smart guy and actually probably some of both. But if I know I can outthink you, that gives me way more satisfaction and definitely is a MUCH larger benefit in this world. If you beat me up, you go to jail. If you out think me, you just end up having a better life in many ways. My way of feeling macho was to try and be smarter. Much the same way that people don’t like the guy that always runs around flexing his muscles, people don’t like the guy running around flexing his brain. I suppose in an apples to oranges comparison, it is fruit.

To end this, I simply do not see how fighting can ever be appealing to anyone in any way. If really thought I had to protect my family from harm, I would buy a gun. But you know what? I can’t be with them 24 hours a day. Also, whooping some butt doesn’t help any if somebody else has a gun. In the adult world, there aren’t people lurking around the corner ready to fight you like there was in high school. You really have to go looking hard for a fight. I used to watch my friend Chris who after a couple beers would both become extra friendly, but also a bit more easily offended to the point of offering a fight to just about anyone that came within 10 feet hinting at anything other than just being a nice person, sort of in the superman type roll, so it was always leaning towards fighting evil and protecting the innocent. In nature I don’t think it was the beer talking, but more the beer bringing out the superhero in him. I think he would side with Mike 100% on this, but maybe they are of the same personality type. Not sure why I am so against it. Maybe that is my personality type. Maybe it simply boils down to the fact that it makes them feel safer to simply have the knowledge that they can protect their family. Maybe that is a fundamental fear that they face? If there was some reason like that, I think it would be a much more understandable thing for me.

Monday, November 17, 2008

More incorrect assumptions

It is utterly amazing how people can be so wrong (not just stupid). This "anonymous" brainiac is at it again with his usual garbage. Lets start with this one:

"Basically the message your anonymous poster is trying to conveye is that MANY conservative religious folks believe that God made everything within our environment for us to use, basically with no discretion or conservation at all. Yep, God will take care of all of us, we don't need to worry about energy resources or anything else. We pray, we have faith, etc, etc.....
Speaking of "hate" it seems that you've mentioned some anti democrat/libral comments before. Bud, it's just different opinions. It really doesn't have to mean "hate". Intellectual individuals can have differing ideas on how things are. I am just saying, scientific minds tend to test things rather than just base truths on "faith". But absolutely no hate intended to christians or republicans. One of the great things about this country is our freedom to have these different beliefs. AMEN"


First, lets just say that you grossly assume this thing about Christians not conserving. That is like saying all liberals want to take ALL money from anyone who has anything, and give it to anyone that has nothing. Lets distribute the wealth a little bit, or completely?

Ok, I am a Christian. Let's see how my family is wasting: Let's see, we completely recycle, I make my own compost out of all our food waste. My wife does 100% cloth diapering. She uses 100% washable butt-wipes on the kids. My house is sealed up like fort Knox to save energy. We have moved to using things like Vinegar to clean with instead of buying chemical cleaners. I thrown away zero yard waste. We are very conscious about concerning electricity. So, what are you doing to be more "green"? Does this make me a non-Christian?

Truth be told, the bulk of the people like your buddy Al Gore and all his Hollywood flunkies are the definitions of wasteful people. I would wager like then, you sit around and throw stones, but won't lift your own finger to help out. THAT is one good definition of a liberal among many like it. They all use a bleeding heart agenda that is purely to get votes. They would never actually practice what they preach.

I am quite sure it would be 100% provable that a VERY large majority of the people conserving are CONSERVATIVES.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Why idiots rule the world

I have an "anonymous poster"! God forbid that you admit your identity as we know that would mean that we know who this idiot is! Let me quote this idiot to refresh you all:
“I think it was just meant to express his feelings about how ultra right wingers or I guess we can now call them the religious right, since religion seems to play such a great role in politics these days, believe there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect. I'm just sayin'...”
This was in response to my post about farts and blood pressure. Wow, I am so sad that self proclaimed scientists of the world are so freakin stupid. We are doomed for sure.
He also said (assuming it is a male, which is not necessarily true):

“What a utopia with only christians, right? None of those pesky folks with scientific minds that believe earthly resources are being consumed at an alarming rate.”

Ok, let us get to the facts here. First, what do we know about this person? Let’s analyze:
1. He hates “ultra-right-wingers” and anyone who disagrees with him is some evil plague to the world. Typical “ultra-left-winger” talk. It is sort of funny how there is such a large cult of haters out there. They want us to blindly accept their beliefs and put a huge filter on half of the truth out there, and what does that do? Turns you into an ultra-left-wing-liberal jaw flapping jerk whose sole purpose in life is to trying annoy people.
2. He is stupid. He says things like “the religious right doesn’t believe there is a greenhouse effect”. I don’t recall EVER hearing ANYONE say there is no greenhouse effect. There is CLEARLY a greenhouse effect! That would be like saying “there no idiots like you in the world”. What WE on the opposing side of this argument say is that there is NO PROOF that the greenhouse gases such as CO2 are the key and main ingredient in global warming. We believe in certain key elements in the universe that you dumbasses tend to deny, like the fact that we have a star in our solar system. No, it can’t be the sun effecting global warming! Now, with that said, once you people start to provide some proof of a correlation between greenhouse gases and global warming, and that it has nothing to do with sun cycles, or anything like that, then we will listen. We, as in “my group” want to consider ALL the facts, not just the ones that bolster your side of the argument. The end point being that we don’t want to shut the world down simply because you people want to.
3. We do need to worry about global warming, we should be looking at ways to curb greenhouse gases, but if you simply go and shut down all the power plants, factories, automobiles, and quit farting, all you are going to do is make China, who is already rapidly outdoing us in everything out do us or even do us in even quicker. They certainly aren’t going to stop polluting. If we stopped 100% of our GHGs we would only slow global warming by like 20%, which gives you a few more years before your beachfront condo is underwater. Just sell it now. That will only grow exponentially worse moving forward. Why don’t you move to China and do your worrying there were it is really needed?
4. You a scientific mind? Hahahahahah, that is some seriously funny stuff! What is your IQ little person, 90… 80…? Forest Gump would whoop you in a game of tic-tac-toe over and over and over. Second, you are a fool if you think no scientists are Christians. C.S Lewis, somebody infinitely more intelligent than yourself sought out to prove scientifically that Christianity was false, and what happened? He failed, and became a Christian. The truth is you know NOTHING about Christianity other than what you hear on the news, which in-case you didn’t know has a liberal bias, and thus a bias against Christianity. A true scientist would be truly unbiased in both global warming and Christianity. You are neither, which means you are an idiot.
5. We are consuming resources at an alarming rate. Who would argue that? Some may say “who cares, Christ will return soon”, and those people are also idiots. The problem is that it is you idiots doing most of the consuming! Read this, you idiot. You and your Hollywood loneybin friends are the worst violators of this! http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
6. Lastly, the Onion is VERY LIBERAL PAPER! It is for HUMOR! They wrote the Al Gore article, because it was FUNNY! Only you “scientific minded idiots” would turn this into a Christian thing. To sum it all up, lets refer to this cartoon:

It is so unbelievably hysterical to actually say that “liberals are smart or scientific”. The truth is exactly what this cartoon says, but the difference being that liberal politicians will say anything to get elected. Look at all the ridiculously unachievable promises that Obama made in this election! He is not a dumb guy, he knows this too, but will say it because he knows that the bulk of the populous is too dumb to know the difference, and YOU are proof of that! The other side of the coin is academic people. They live in an idealistic dream world that doesn’t work in reality. This has always and will always be true. I read this recently:

"One of the big debates over the past half-decade was whether China had reached a point in its economic development at which its internal economic gravity would allow it to "decouple" from the global economy. If so, it could continue along its fantastic growth trajectory, even as growth in the U.S. or Europe ceased or reversed. That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's important. The U.S. has a $20 billion monthly trade deficit with China. It's funded by China's willingness to hold U.S. treasuries in its Central Bank (essentially, we're borrowing the money). China manages the arrangement by pegging its currency (the yuan) to the dollar at an artificially low rate, and by not worrying so much about certain niceties like environmental regulation and labor protection."

This outlines the fundamental problem. Liberals want to do all this stuff to protect the world, which is idealistically great. But since China, who will very soon completely dwarf us economically doesn’t care about all that. So what happens? We become what China was, starving people with no jobs, and they prosper as we were before you liberals came along and screwed it up for everyone. Look at France. They are a perfect example of what you dorks cause. A government that gives money to everyone, and a lazy population that is not replenishing that money. It runs out eventually buddy. I am all in favor of helping the poor, but the way you want to do it isn’t going to work. Look at the USSR. Didn’t we learn anything there? Why don’t you move to France. They are perfect for you as you will fit right in with all the other low IQ liberals.

Again, too be clear, I am in favor of environmental protection, and labor protection. But what we see now is that our reaction to these things is starting to bury us. Instead of whining to me, go whine to China!

Friday, October 24, 2008

"The Stink in Farts Controls Blood Pressure!"

Ok, so love the title, article is a bit boring. How's it going everyone? Did anyone else find that "anonymous posting" below awfully weird? I think it just shows that the ultra-left wingers are a bit on the wacko side.

-e

Friday, August 01, 2008

Some seriously fantastic humor from the Onion

Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet

The Onion - July 30, 2008 | Issue 44•31

Gore and son

Young Gore sets out for his new home, where the sky is clear, the water is clean, and there are no Republicans.