Random Thoughts

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Religion is not for perfect people who don't have to try, but for imperfect people who are willing to try.

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The correct way to eat spice drops: separate out all the white and all the purple or black ones to give to me, then choose what you like from the rest.

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Hmm...an Asian-American makes a live-action movie from a cartoon series set in a fictional world composed of people who all belong to one of "four nations" (some of whom live at the South Pole!) and to portray these fictional peoples he chooses to use actors from a variety of real-world countries and ethnicities ... yeah, that makes me assume racism all right. Hell, it's right up there with apartheid.

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There are times I wonder if I'm out of step with my fellows (fellow women, fellow Americans, fellow contemporaries, fellow humans), then there are the times I know I am.

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Leaving aside perhaps a few percentage points worth of people differently configured emotionally, it seems every man deep down really wants the approval of the woman in his life.

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I don't want to take away any of the blame owing to addle-pated theorists, but maybe part of the reason substituting "gender" for "sex" caught on in middle America was that people were tired of the joke "Sex?" "Occasionally."

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Sometimes I think if I hear one more person refer to pants and skirts that sit at the natural waist as "high-waisted", my head will explode.

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Does any compliment other than "sexy" exist any more? Girls and women used to be pretty or beautiful, charming, sweet, smart, good. Now they're sexy. They wear sexy clothes, have sexy hair, engage in sexy pursuits (reading is sexy, knitting is sexy, etc.), and sometimes have sexy livelihoods (librarians are sexy). Nothing else exists.

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A trip to the grocery store reveals prunes are now called dried plums and high fructose corn syrup is now corn sugar. If people have a problem with your product (e.g., giggle at its reputation for having mildly laxative properties or think it's a cheap and unhealthy substitute for sugar), just rename it. After all, changing the name changes the thing. Just ask KFC.

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Maybe if older women had more grandchildren to hold there would be fewer spoiled rotten little dogs and doll collections.

If young women had babies younger, there'd definitely be fewer chihuahuas in skirts.

Maybe the main beneficiaries of delayed childbearing are small dogs.

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Sometimes I wonder how many people around me (here in the Bible Belt, in a country where something like 89% of the population still self-identifies as Christian) have actually read the Gospels, let alone the rest of the Bible. Believer or not, you can't consider yourself an educated Westerner if you don't have at least a basic familiarity with the Bible, but I'm not sure the average American has it anymore.

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I never seem to hear anyone say "damn" or "damn it" any more. But "f---" is everywhere.

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Parades must be strange experiences for the two and three year-olds that get taken out to see them. At a time when you might ordinarily be getting ready for bed, you inexplicably get taken out to a public street to stand around in a crowd and wave at people going by in fancy getups. You're allowed to stand in the edge of the street, perhaps encouraged to make little dashes into it between floats. And your parents, who ordinarily tell you not to eat anything that's fallen on the floor, are picking up candy from the ground and giving it to you.

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Are Americans collectively forgetting how to use nouns? Everywhere I look it's "bringing back sexy", "bring on the awesome", "how to create sexy", "she delivers the cute", "keep your normal off me" ...

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Many prayers could be summed up as followed: Oh God, please don't let me experience the normal, natural, and wholly predictable consequences of my freely chosen actions!

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A lot of Anglo-Americans find it weird that Mexicans and Americans of Mexican heritage will name their sons Jesus. But a lot of Anglos name their daughters Christi (or Christie, Christy, Kristi...). It only takes about two seconds of thought to see that is clearly weirder.

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