Still Alive

Ecuador was good.

In Chicago for a while before school starts up again. Doing some reading for my master's and catching up with Spartacus; it's been a long time. :-)

I've had political thoughts lately, but I've tried to stifle them for my own good. Maybe more on that at some later date when my intestines are not so riled up.

Happy long, lazy weekend before the New Year, y'all.

Less Tongue, Please

I've been convicted lately about my unruly mouth. So much trouble over so few words... I need to try to follow James's council:

If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless.... With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.

Thus begins tongue patrol, day 1.

Best. Governor. Evar.

Cheers to Florida's newly elected governor, Charlie Crist, who has opted to cancel his inaugural ball and donate to charity the money that would have been spent on the opulent event.

If the rest of his term is undertaken as thoughtfully and compassionately as this first bit, Florida will unqeustionably benefit from Crist's tenure as chief executive.

Wow. Just... wow.

I don't know if you've been following the Vern Buchanan/Christine Jennings election contest in Florida, but Howard Dean and the DNC have been calling for a revote because of alleged voting machine problems. Nothing new in Florida, right? :-)

Here's the "wow" part. Florida Republican Tom Feeney (I don't think he's any relation to the crotchety principal in Boy Meets World) released a statement containing this sentence:

DNC Chair Howard Dean and his liberal entourage should be called the UNDemocratic party for their refusal to honor the election results from Florida's 13th Congressional District.

I could say a lot about this, but I'm just not sure what to add. I could talk about how Feeney refuses to address the issues, instead setting up a straw man and making a ridiculous ad hominem attack worthy of a 6-year-old, but that just seems too easy. Any suggestions?

Sometimes I Am Astounded...

...by my lack of love.

I have been forgiven of much, and I have been given innumerable blessings. Why, then, should it bother me in the slightest when a silver Mitsubishi with Johnson County plates pulls out in front of me illegally and then proceeds to ride the brakes the whole way down the hill?

More troublingly, why should I become enraged and want to do something -- anything -- to show my displeasure to the Mitsubishi's driver, to anyone else nearby, and, indeed, to the whole world?

If I have received forgiveness for every fault, every mistake, every willful act of disobedience, then why don't I relax and pray for the will to love Mitsubishi Man with my whole heart?

And why don't I smile more?

On Christmas Card Lists

Making a list of people to send cards to is a surreal activity, as I discovered today.

"Should we send one to the N family?" Mrs. Luaphacim asked me.

"Hmm... nah," I replied, and took a casual swig of my cinnamon-hazelnut coffee. About two milliseconds later, I nearly choked on the coffee as I thought through the implications of what I had just done.

The N family was, once upon a time, my family's closest set of friends. They visited us at holidays, and we visited them on many weekends. They were much worldlier than we. For instance, it had never occurred to me that cutoff overalls were even an option as a fashion item until Z, the N child closest to my age, wore a pair -- with one shoulder strap recklessly unfastened -- to our Fourth of July barbeque one year. Those cutoffs were a revelation to me, and they were also the genesis of my ill-advised and much too long-lived Grunge phase.

Z influenced innumerable other things in my life besides fashion: my computer games, my music (ska was once the coolest genre in existence, believe it or not), and certain choice invective. He was the one who revealed to me what, exactly, Mike Tyson had done to earn universal scorn. He was the one who enlightened me with regards to the utility of waterproof firecrackers in fishing.

Now, with a single word -- a carelessly uttered word, at that -- I had banished Z and the whole N family to the realm of impertinence. They no longer mattered in my life.

Behold the fearsome power of the Christmas card list.