Merry Christmas Commentary

Taken from someone else's blog, quoting yet someone else:

Merry Christmas Commentary
Bob Scheiffer

If I wished you a merry Christmas, some would say, `Well, how improper. He's throwing his religion in my face.' But I hope I'm not, because to me the Christmas story is a message of love and forgiveness. To me, that means tolerance and respect for others. These are wonderful thoughts but no more admirable than Judaism's emphasis on values or Islam's command to help the poor, which to me are just different ways of saying the same thing.

I have come to believe that all the great religions are basically true, all part of the same peace, a conclusion I neither ask nor expect anyone to share. If it matters to you, I am a believer but, like Kirkegaard, I am suspicious of all organized religion because too often it professes to know the mind of God and who could know that?

To me, the greatest misunderstanding of religion is held by those who try to impose their beliefs on others and teach their children they are somehow superior to those who do not believe as they believe, which would seem to miss the point of all religion.

Rather than arguing over the details, wouldn't we all be better off to focus on the values that all great religions share? We'll find out later who got the details right. The one sure thing I know about all this is that the Christmas story helps me. It reminds me that I am happier when I try to be forgiving rather than revengeful, when I try to be helpful instead of judgmental.

So I do wish you a merry Christmas, if you know what I mean.

What the hell is going on here?

This state has lost it's mind! Christmas is being all but abolished for the sake of "political correctness". I can't believe what I'm hearing on the radio these days! Christmas carols are being outlawed. School plays are being censored or stifled altogether! What kills me is that these are not the result of public outcries, but rather one or two individuals (who likely haven't gotten laid in about 20 years) causing a stir...and New Jersey is listening!
The only ones being hurt (whether they are aware of it or not) are the kids! Why can't they experience the holidays as we did when we were kids? This country has gotten entirely too uptight lately. What's worse is that many of the people allowing the "rules" to exist are people my age! What happened? We need to just chill for a bit I think.
I just bought a book of stamps that have the Holy Mother and Child on them. It makes me crazy that I have to worry about offending someone if I use them!

I bet the tight-asses that are doing all the bitching have no problem taking the days off from work though! Can't stand hypocrites!

Anyway, Happy Holidays everyone!
Actually, nevermind that...Merry Christmas everyone!

A dreary day

What a lousy day it is outside today. Cold and rainy...the type of day you wish you could just stay under a blanket all day.
On the upside, I received a shipment confirmation from Amazon for my camera!
Very cool. Now maybe I can get some halfway decent shots at Nearfest.

I'm bringing my car in for a regular service this weekend. They're also replacing the CD player because it just stopped working. The caveat is that there are 5 CDs inside of it, and they tell me that I have to wait and get them mailed to me, and it can take up to six weeks. Very NOT cool. I can't believe there's not some sort of emergency eject like computer CD drives have.

Oh well...there's always a catch.

Just another relaxing Sunday

I love Sundays. Except for maybe a household chore or two, I'm pretty much a non-productive individual on Sunday. And that's how I like it.

After reviewing the Europe pictures taken by both my mom's camera (a 3.2MP Canon), and my inferior Sony DSC-30, I've decided that I need a new digital camera. I did some research and decided on the Sony Cybershot DSC-W1. I don't know if Sony has stopped making this one already (it was only introduced this past spring), but there seems to be out-of-stock issues at a lot of retailers. Buy.com stated it is OOS from the manufacturer, and I ordered it from Ebuyer.com (the best price I found), only to get an email from them saying my order has been cancelled due to it being OOS. Turns out this was a good thing, because I checked Amazon and found that starting today, there is a $50 rebate on the camera. It will turn out to be a $40 net savings over my original order...provided I don't get similar bad news from Amazon in the coming days.
Worse comes to worst I'll just pick it up on Ebay, because I had already jumped the gun and ordered a 256MB memory stick from Ebay.

Another highlight of Sunday is taking advantage of my NFL Sunday Ticket subscription and Tivo. Watched both the Miami-Buffalo game as well as the Colts-Titans game. Peyton Manning is fun to watch. Being a Dolphin/Marino fan, I really wanted Dan's record to hold up, but you can't help but root for Manning and be happy for him...and I've never seen a quarterback execute play-action better than him. By the time this guy's career is over, he will be the one who sets the standard by which future rising QBs will be judged. Hopefully he will be able to overcome the one hurdle that Marino couldn't. Provided he keeps playing the way he is, I think he can do it, because he has something Marino never had...that being a balanced offense.
I do hope though, that the remainder of Marino's major records hold up at least through Dan's lifetime. ;-)

Another year already

Today is the 11th anniversary of Frank Zappa's death. It seems like yesterday we were observing the 10th year of this occasion. Amazing how time is just zipping by.
Gotta play some FZ today.

RIP Frank