25CentLife.com

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. ~Henry David Thoreau

He that will not reflect is a ruined man. ~Asian Proverb

If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else. ~Yogi Berra

Instead of writing a really impressive motivational post regarding my plans for 2009, I’ve been spending my time doing a little New Year’s cleaning. I realized what sort of impact my not-writing for two months has done to my virtual housekeeping.

I logged into WordPress a few days ago to write my lead-in post for the New Year. Imagine my horror when I saw I had 6,500+ comments to moderate. Given my lack of posting in Q4 2008, I was pretty sure that all 6,500+ were spam. Yeah, not too keen on having to bulk edit those (which, I’ve found, I can do in either 20 comment or 50 comment chunks). I decided to leave them for whenever I decided to post again.

That ‘whenever’, means today. As a much deserved break from mass-deleting unwanted spam messages — deleting in chunks of 20 is faster than chunks of 50, since I don’t have to scroll through the entire ‘comment’. I’m posting. But not posting the content I’d hoped I’d post.

Lessons learned for today:

• post more
• keep better tabs on my spam count
• don’t procrastinate as much
• finish what I start

That last thing is really my official New Year’s resolution. I’ve got oodles and piles of things that I’ve started in the past, but never really saw them through. (Like my 3 or 4 draft posts on deck, at the moment. Should clear those out after I’m done posting.)

So, I’m going to finish this post. Make a bit more headway on this mass-spam-cleanup. Finish that mass-cleanup sometime this week. And, you know, post about all further progress and finishing of everything else I hope to finish this year.

Funnily enough, I had about 7 long interruptions trying to finish this post.

2009. Get ready.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

This year, I’m a corporate zombie! Oooh original.

Except I look more living than last year’s zombie costume…

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! 

Silence is a text easy to misread. ~ A.A. Attanasio

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. ~ Oscar Wilde

I thought that maybe I might enjoy the film, supposedly a ‘documentary’, possibly in the same vein as Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine ring a bell?), a few hours ago. Maybe I might have thought that this could be an ‘enlightening’ (for lack of a better word) experience.

Let me just preface the rest of the entry by saying that I identify Roman Catholic.

Having stated that, I’ll state that I found Religulous to be rather disappointing. It did paint most religious folk as largely unintelligent and uninformed sheep (save for the ‘Father of the Human Genome Project’). It (meaning Bill Maher) did focus largely on the irrational conclusions that most religion identifying people came to as a result of their unyielding desire to follow their God to the letter, without ever questioning why some things never made sense. Jonah and the Whale was brought up a few times, as well as the question if Jack and the Beanstalk were considered to be God’s Word, then did that mean that Jack and the Beanstalk were undeniable fact, despite the part where no solid evidence/proof of this beanstalk ever existed?

I don’t deny that a lot of Maher’s questions did point to the truth that most people who believe in some sort of God (I really feel that he (Maher and Larry Charles) placed too much focus on Christianity, and largely ignored other religions) do so blindly and never question what doesn’t make any logical sense. If it doesn’t make sense, they just chalk it up to God’s way. Which isn’t right.

Like that Senator. OMG. Total embarassment to our legislative branch: “You don’t need to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate.” Ugh.

I don’t think I expressed my issues well enough to my boyfriend (who went to see the movie with me) immediately after the film ended. Now that I’ve had several more minutes to gather my thoughts together:

I believe that Maher made the film for entertainment purposes only. If it were to be a true food for thought ‘documentary’ then it really should have delved deeper into its statement/hypothesis. Not just gathered together several clips from various interviews to ‘prove’ a statement that has already been presented to us as ‘truth’. Maher’s ‘truth’ is cobbled together from interviews he’s done with people who do nothing but prove his point, plus snark-laden subtitles, humorous clips, and clips from religious movies. Couldn’t he have also shown us examples of more intelligent people who have successfully balanced their religious beliefs with that of their command of religious thought? Just by answering that with ‘because people like that don’t exist’ is perpetuating the original ‘truth’ set forth in the film.

I suppose my line of thought is best expressed in this post (Docs in Progress) I came across while writing this:

And that may be the point. This film is like the point of a pencil which has run out of lead. My Docs In Progress colleague Adele Schmidt refers to documentaries as being a use of visual storytelling to explore a hypothesis; a documentary which enters production with the answer already in mind is not a documentary. It is an advocacy film. And this, in my mind, is what diminishes the potential of Religulous to either bring in new “believers” in disbelief or “preach to the converted” because we already know where the film will take us. There are no surprises.

The irony of Religulous is that, for a film seeking to critique the simplistic aspects of religious belief, it suffers from its own simplistic storytelling. And yet plods on for nearly two hours without really building the story beyond a one-trick pony of showcasing the extremes of religion. By not exploring faith in any thoughtful way but that which supports a pre-conceived notion, the film becomes a lost opportunity.

Attack, attack, attack, and not giving any opportunity for rebuttal. I think it’s totally possible to be a person who accepts religion and rational thought as equals. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. (see here for earlier post) But the film didn’t bother attempting to find a person like that. And that’s where the film fails a bit.

I’m all for being passionate about your cause… but this is just ridiculous (and I refuse to link to the PETA website).

GoVeg.com meet Cutout Dissection.com

As a former bio/pre-med major, I’m fine with dissection in the labs (specifically for Anatomy/Physiology sections of the class). You don’t really have any good alternatives to learn about anatomy without dissection. If it goes against your religion, then don’t do it. But, it’s a ridiculous action otherwise.

It doesn’t make sense for future doctors and veterinarians to not have dissections during their class. Drawings aren’t enough. You have to have the hands-on experience.

And on top of that, our animals (for labs) were roadkill. How do I know? My cats had tire tread bruising on their embalmed bodies. Not the best way to die, but at least they still served a better cause after death.

With the word “life” in my domain, I think it’s a given that my blog/site would be about my own life. Or life in general. Or general life events. Personal events. Not completely personal, though. That might detract from the appeal… and other personal matters of mine would prefer to stay that way (their words, not my own).

While browsing through my Google reader, I came across this wonderful presentation/video/media thing by Rohit Bhargava.

Presenting (and since I don’t know if I can embed this here… I’m just linking to it… lame… sorry) 25 styles of blogging!

I may try to incorporate one style in a post from now until… end of year? End of 2009? It’s a great way to FORCE myself to blog. Even to get into something I don’t normally post about… like politics. I’m not a fan of heavy politicking.

I am a fan of blogging, and admittedly, I’ve been falling short lately. My bad.

Try it out. Let me know how it goes.

Flu shot 2008.

First time I flinched during the ordeal (really, not that bad). But they must have grazed a nerve or something. My left deltoid feels all sorts of twitchy.

I love when people say you’re wrong when they’re wrong. It’s like the light at the top of a deep hole.