Protecting our youth?

On the way into work this morning, I listened to a brief discussion on the radio about The Golden Compass, a movie opening nationwide in theaters tonight. An adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, the film is apparently receiving negative response from various religious groups, some of which have implemented petitions and boycots.

"The Catholic League wants Christians to stay away from this movie precisely because it knows that the film is bait for the books... Though the movie promises to be fairly non-controversial, it may very well act as an inducement to buy Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials. And remember, his twin goals are to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity. To kids."

This situation is ironic because every religion and spiritual group has access to the children of it's participants virtually from birth; who is protecting the children from their indoctrinating rhetoric? If kids are in fact ill-equipped to make decisions and develop opinions about religion, why expose them to it at all?

Fall of '05

A gaggle of larger-than-average-sized men have congealed near the coffee shop’s back wall. I can only imagine these individuals have come together for some sort of support group.

At the opposite end against the front windows, a squadron of idiosyncratic characters has gathered: a man wearing roller-blader wrist protectors at the end of each chubby limb holds a strangely quiet child who, as if to follow suit, dons a pair of coke-can glasses framed in a translucent pink, petroleum-based solid… the coffee shop’s token fat-chick complete with green-dyed hair and stratified multi-color J-Crew scarf… what at first looked to be an ugly woman with the jowls of an angry man, but upon closer inspection more closely resembles (and, in fact, is) a man who simply looks like an ugly woman… a man sporting a mustache and hideous long hair but missing his trench-coat and fedora (a ghost of my freshman year roommate from college?). I would hazard a guess the last partook rather vigorously in Dungeons and Dragons games well into his late-20's.



Amidst this spectacle sits a singularity; a defiant homeless man in a last-stand attempt to stave off the grip of the cold outside these walls. His skin is more weathered than his coat and he looks to have long since rediscovered the common denominator that lurks behind our cotton-polyester blends and Abercrombie & Fitch sweaters. It has taken precedence over these things. I imagine that to him they must be superfluous, repugnant and, more importantly, stubbornly unachievable luxuries – meanwhile, these are the same things that many of us take for granted and hold to be basic components of our daily lives.

He is quiet, though I can see a dialogue rushes back and forth within his mind. This is bothersome neither to him nor to the rest of us that sit alongside and across and apart from him. To him and to us alike, the only thing that seems to exist is the understanding that he is not like us and that we are not like him; we each see the other as an ethereal article – nothing more than part of the background to which no amount of consideration is worth the effort.



My bubble has cappuccinos and iBooks. How about yours?

To My Solitary Reader

My most heart-felt apologies for maintaining an M.I.A. existence for more than a week's time. I have busy with the move, frolicking in the fresh snowfall and generally being awesome. I have neglected you and this I regret.

You will soon have much to view and read in the way of new posts and photos to boot!

Stay tuned, faithful reader. Your commitment will not go unpunished... I mean, rewarded.

Yum

We had some delicious food today.


It's after 8pm now, and Amanda and I have been cooking, eating or cleaning up after ourselves since 10:30am.

We also saw the first snow of the year. Notice, my pumpkin has proven more resilient and structurally sound than Amanda's. That's hers on the right.

WTF??

I walked over to the Saturn this evening to retrieve a few coins for the purpose of buying a stamp. Upon opening the driver’s side door, I witnessed this horrible sight.


During the course of the past few days, someone decided it’d be a good idea to break in my car’s window and…

That's the part that pisses me off; beyond a bunch of the contents having been shuffled about, nothing seems to have been removed from the car. The change slot still had all sorts of metallic currency in it; as much of the paperwork (insurance, etc.) as I can remember being in the glove box was present; the trunk still held all of its cargo. It doesn't make sense -- christ, at least TAKE something.

The perp did leave behind something to be remembered by.


Thanks asshole.

Nine more days of Uptown before I move on to more civilized environs. Good riddance.

Not Impressed

Within the last four or five months, Amanda and I learned of Minneapolis’ plan to connect its citizenry by way of a city-sponsored wireless network that was to be implemented by a Twin Cities tech company, USI Wireless.

We’ve both lucked out with wireless during the past few years; our iBooks have been pretty keen detectors of open networks within range of our respective apartments. Despite this, we were excited by the prospect of at-home wireless that was consistently available and circumvented traditional means that require package contracts for cable or DSL or the like.

Amanda decided to give the service a go and signed up for the latter of two options: rent/buy an expensive modem from USI wireless in addition to the cost of service that connects one’s computer to the wireless transmitters in the neighborhood, or log into the system’s “roaming service” by way of her laptop’s internal modem and the company’s website.

So far, I’d give this service a C-. She gets a signal at home but it’s weak – 1 out of a possible 5 bars. This makes for painfully sluggish web browsing and frequent site time-outs.

More lame than dial-up?

that's winter at the door

If you could be anywhere, would you choose this place?