It Just Irks Me

This is about a pet peeve of mine, and thus contains no wisdom, insight, or thought- provoking queries that will enthrall the reader and leave him waiting for my next post. In other words, here comes the same old crap I usually write about on here. This particular vexation is on a Hollywood phenomenon that is quickly becoming overused and annoying. It's the scene in so many action movies, they're often put into the movie's trailer, where the main character sets off an explosion and casually strolls away -never looking back and often in slow motion- while a huge building and half a town is blown apart four feet behind him. Of course he's never hit by any shrapnel or knocked down by the blast, that wouldn't be very heroic-like now, would it? Am I off target here, or has that scene been in about a dozen action movies over the last few years? Just once I'd love to see a Nicholas Cage character do that and get his arm blown off and his bad-ass self flung across the street, crying in pain. Yeah, maybe you'll think about using a longer fuse next time, loser.

You can tell I've got earth shaking thoughts on my mind today.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all the party revelers and bell ringers whose excitement for the season is so readily apparent. Merry Christmas to all the children of the world with their youthful anticipation of Christmas morning. Merry Christmas to family and friends, the people we hold closest to our hearts. And Merry Christmas, most of all, to the people who can't think of a reason to go on living another day, and to the ones to whom this holiday season brings a deepened saddness, and to those who feel most disconnected and isolated from the rest of the celebrating world this Christmas season. For them I wish a small miracle. Just a spark of one, to show them that they are not forgotten, that someone understands what they're going through, and that they're not really alone.
Merry Christmas

Up, Up and Away

I went flying the other day. More precisely, I was an airplane engine for a while, my grandson did most of the flying. We went through the house several times in our makeshift plane, until we hit a lot of turbulence at about three feet(with the engine huffing and puffing) and crash landed. I put the scarf and hat on him and told him it was his flying scarf and hat, and he wouldn't let anyone take them off him after that, even when he got all sweaty. So much fun, but what a workout... for one of us!

Thinking Out Loud Again

I watched a show on tv last night about the development of life as we know it, and about other life forms that we never realized were sharing this existence with us. A scientist had discovered microorganisms living in soil deposits rich in life-destroying arsenic. These organisms weren't fazed by the introduction of arsenic 100 times more concentrated than the amount in which they were found living. They had RNA that was completely different from all other life on earth.
This reinforces an idea that's been kicking around in my mind; that everything we see is some form of life, whether it be a pile of dirt, a rock, or a barren moon orbiting a planet. I suppose you could substitute the word "energy" for life, because all life is a form of energy, but maybe it's the other way around ,too. Maybe the stars we see are actually complex beings with their own dance of life which is far too complicated for humans to try to comprehend. I'm betting that even in the vacuum of space life can be found, if we knew how to search for it.

So what's this mean? Have I abandoned my religion in favor of some "Big Bang" kind of theory about the origin of life? No. In fact, thinking like this only solidifies my belief in a Supreme Creator for two reasons:
1) If I dwelled on trying to search for how and why we are here at this time in this place I would literally go insane. For almost all questions we ask there is an answer waiting somewhere if we only look hard enough, but the question of what life is and where it came from is one of those that do not have a concrete answer, only theories with no proof. Therefore, I choose to have faith that either; all will be revealed in time or, none of my questions will be relevant when I die because the afterlife will be something so extraordinary that comparing it to earthly measures is impossible.
2)Even if it's found that there are many different structures of what would be considered life, I still believe that there is someone orchestrating everything down to each individual detail, and my actions play a part in the overall scheme of things. I've been given an understanding of the rights and wrongs of the human part of that scheme and it's my job to try to live my life in the way that seems to be the right one according to my understandings, and to be answerable for those actions at the end of this life.

I see the discovery of new life forms as something exciting, though I doubt that we, as mere humans, can ever connect the dots to get a full picture of the development of life as we've come to know it. So I guess I'll go on worshipping the same god and every now and then stop and marvel when another of His creations is revealed.

The First Semester

With my first semester of college almost over I figured I'd put down a few thoughts on my back-to-school experience so far.
Most of the students are very well-behaved, intelligent young people who have a desire to learn. I never thought I'd be saying that about a bunch of kids just out of high school, considering that I've worked among the public for a very long time and have seen quite a few who represented the other end of the spectrum. I'm really pleased at getting to know some of these people and interacting with them in class.
The instructors are about what I had expected them to be, some more serious than others and some more knowledgeable than others, but they all seem to enjoy their work and respect their students.
The campus itself, Kent State Tuscarawas, caters not only to the student, but to the community, and is constantly expanding. I love the fact that they have just about everything I need, and I could almost live there if they stayed open all night. They've just opened a new Performing Arts Center, which is a huge, architecturally beautiful building, and I'm hoping to be able to go to the open house they're having for it this weekend.
Learning to study again after all these years has been the biggest challenge yet, but it's starting to come back to me and I've discovered that it's exciting to cram knowledge into my mostly-empty brain. I'm hoping that excitement stays with me until I graduate, at least.
Overall, I'm really glad I made this move in my life. My only regret is not doing it a lot sooner.