A Big Return

Thank you all for your support, you've renewed my fervor. So I shall now return to the blogisphere with some of the things that have been rattling around in my head for the past few days.

Where to begin? I think I'll start with what I am least passionate about and escalate from there.

More about Gloucester: It has supposedly come to light that the girls in Gloucester did not form a pact to get pregnant. They claim that their pregnancies were coincidental and they simply decided to stick together through this life experience. I wonder, then, why the school nurse admitted to administering over one hundred and fifty pregnancy tests to girls who were disappointed when they were negative. These are not girls who were messing around with their boyfriends and are currently in the midst of a "scare." Girls who are afraid they might be pregnant wait a few months in the hopes they are not. Girls who want to be pregnant check whenever a new test would be warranted, if you catch my drift. If there was no pact, why would a girl have allowed a 24 year old homeless guy to father her child? I think the girls simply realized just how stupid it was. Or perhaps (and this may be more likely) they just want to keep it a secret. They have this sisterhood agreement and the last thing they want is for it to come to light. I wonder if they are resenting the interviews and attention from all the news outlets. Granted, a portion of the spike was from students transferring to GHS under the guise of wanting to take advantage of some alternative educational opportunity so that they could actually take advantage of the free day care. I don't really think that "Juno" or "Knocked Up" has played as big of a role as some have claimed. I do have to say this: I'd have much more to rant about if the rate of teen girls having abortions rose as sharply as the rate of pregnant girls have. I think that fact (that so many are keeping the babies) lends itself to the pact "theory" as well.

The End of the World: Look, enough with the Mayan "prediction" that the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. It's not an actual prediction, it is misinterpreted as one. The Mayans had two calendars: a "Calendar Round" for shorter periods of time (the calendar repeats itself every 52 years) and a "Long Count" calendar for longer ones. The long count calendar had 5 spaces in which they would record the number of days that had passed since August 11, 3114 BC. (Much like our calendar has eight spaces (12/34/5678) for recording the date.) When the five spaces are full it is equal to the number of days between August 11, 3114 and December 21, 2012. To add even one more day would require adding another space to the calendar. To assume this is a prediction of the end of the world would be akin to declaring that the modern era is predicting the end of the world to be December 31, 9999 (or 12/31/9999) because to go another day would require another space. It's simply sophomoric and ignorant to make the assertion that the Mayans purposefully predicted the end of the world in this fashion. So, can we agree to stop, please?

Energy: There is a big argument between Obama and McCain as to how we should solve the current energy crisis. McCain wants to drill and open the reserves. Obama's "Yes We Can" campaign slogan says "No We Can't" to both ideas. Obama's reasoning for not drilling off shore or in Alaska won't help the situation for another ten years so we shouldn't start drilling. Funny thing is, ten years ago (which was only 1998) we decided not to drill. Sure would have been helpful if we'd made a different decision then. But let's make sure we make the same mistake now, too. Obama wants to tax the profits of the oil companies. Yeah, because that wouldn't be pushed off onto the consumer in some way. No, no, good thinking, really. Both candidates are pushing for renewable energy. Here's something I don't understand: Renewable energy is renewable. It comes back. Why, then, is it so friggin' expensive? If a commodity is dissipating, why is it less expensive than something that "renews?" And if my understanding is incorrect and the energy itself is actually less expensive, why is the initial cost to get to a point where one could utilize it so prohibitive? Sure, a hybrid uses less fuel, but costs five grand more. Solar panels cut down on the electricity my house uses but costs 25 grand to install. But it'll save me $500 a year in electricity. Let's see, I'll have earned my initial investment back in 50 years!

Bumper Stickers: Truly, I find few things to be more cowardly than bumper stickers. People make their pithy snide comments as they zip past you anonymously in their 1987 Ford Station Wagon. They announce to everyone their opinions on politics, religion, sports, music, etc as though anyone had asked them to do so. (sound like a blog? At least you can tell me where I'm wrong once you've read it.) If these people felt so strongly about these matters, I say we put bumper stickers on our houses. No more anonymity. No more avoiding responsibility for what we've affixed to our property. Suddenly, we are accountable for what we've chosen to display. People can knock on our door, put a letter in our mailbox, or affix an opposing view house sticker on their own home. What has gotten me this fired up? Ignorant bumper stickers. For example, I've seen the following bumper stickers with my own eyes: "You keep prayer out of my schools and I'll keep thinking out of your church." "Impeach Bush, Nixon did less!" (Nixon was not impeached.) "World Champion New York Giants" (OK, so they may have earned that one... somehow...) Anyway. I think that we'd be much more careful with what we say and how we say it if we were suddenly responsible for our comments.

Monogamy: More and more these days I'm hearing people claim that we, as humans, simply weren't made to be with just one person. According to them, monogamy is something that we try to force our our species and that is why we are continually fighting against it. (I was in a crafty-ACMoore-ish store and they had plastic "educational" animals for sale. The little booklet that came with the bald eagle said, "Unlike humans, eagles mate for life." Excuse me?!) Here is the problem that I see with that argument. Even with people that subscribe to that line of thought, when a relationship ends and they prove their theory to be "true" there is still so much pain involved! I've spoken with people who were in an "open" relationship (where both they and their partner have the freedom to mess around with others) who either felt jilted when it ended, or began to become envious because they wanted to be the only one! The happiest people in the world are not the ones who have been married seven times. Nor are they the single swingin' people who are alone in their sixties. The happiest people are the ones who know that they've fought the good fight, stayed the course, battled through thick and thin and have a relationship tough as leather, strong as cinder blocks, and precious & beautiful as gemstones. If nothing else, our desire to explain our tendency towards infidelity as instinct and excuse ourselves from trying to remain faithful because it's unnatural does nothing more than expose and magnify our slavery to sin. It also displays our intrinsic knowledge of it. We're doing something we know is wrong, so we try to explain it away as just the way we are.

So, there's just my opinion, what's yours?