Catch ‘em while they’re young.

Maybe if I write this down and make it more public I’ll actually do it. … I just started working in a new clothing store, where I happen to like a lot of the clothing. On my first day I spent nearly $100… on my 2nd day nearly $100… that was while I was training in Kitchener. I started at my new store in Guelph this week and have spend probably around $300 at that store. …

1. A maximum of $100 a month will be spent on a new clothes.

My new store is in a pretty urbanized part of town, there is lots of fast food around… a subway right beside us, on the other side a Gino’s Pizza. There is a Manchu Wok, A&W, KFC and Taco Bell in the food court… Worst of all, there is a Mc Donalds within a 3 minute walk away, and a Starbucks within reach. I’ve had McDonalds 3 times this week (and almost did again today…) and Starbucks every day except for one.

Alright, now the obviously bad part of this is that McDonalds is just flat out bad for me and is slowing killing my insides with every big mac that enters my digestive system … but the other side is that it isn’t cheap. A caramel macchiato is just flat out expensive, nearly $5… and if I get a muffin or scone it’s another $2… Soo…

2. A maximum of one McDonalds meal every 2 weeks, and no more Starbucks.

That’s it. That’s all. This shouldn’t be hard to do, right? ….Right. Besides, I need to save money to pay off my loan and go on all my fun trips in June. So no more. Sorry McDonalds, I love you, but…. I can’t keep it up.

Boys scouts need to be straight. Not only do they need to be straight, they also need to be Christian.

I doubt they outly deny the fact that gay guys can do scouting, but its a funny clip -and a good episode of the shoe…rather I’m assuming the reason they needs to be straight is because being gay doesn’t following biblical rule. Even after being publically called out on it and facing pretty huge reprecautions in some cities there was still no change in the standards of the group.

“It’s disappointing, and it’s certainly a threat,” said Jeff Jubelirer, a spokesman for Cradle of Liberty Council, referring to the rent’s impact on the scouts’ chances of staying on the site.

Jubelirer said that $200,000 a year in rent “would have to come from programs. That’s 30 new Cub Scout packs, or 800 needy kids going to our summer camp.”

Nevertheless, Jubelirer said, scouting officials will ask City Solicitor Romulo L. Diaz Jr. for details on the real estate appraisals that yielded the $200,000 rent figure.

Cradle of Liberty officials have said they could not renounce the scouts’ long-established policy of not opening membership to atheists or openly gay people without running afoul of their charter with the scouts’ National Council.

Well, maybe make it a group that all young boys can join and then we’ll care about your issues. They have to be Christian because that’s where morality stems from… or so they say. (This happens to be my current biggest pet peeve - the notion that in need to have morals you need to have god. It upsets me.)

Anyway, so they have a straight and moral group. I guess that’s pretty good, I’ll let them do their thing.

Oh…

err….

but…

A 15 year old scout goes ape shit and kills his entire family.

Nicholas W. Browning remained jailed without bond after confessing early Sunday that he killed his father, John Browning, his mother, Tamara, and his younger brothers, Gregory, 14, and Benjamin, 11, according to Baltimore County police.

His father was a highly regarded business attorney, and the family lived in an affluent suburb. Browning played golf and lacrosse, was active in his church and was close to becoming an Eagle Scout.

Huh. Does killing your entire family count as being moral? I wonder if they’ll let him keep all his badges.

I’m not done.

Scout LEADER is California is accused of molesting boys.

A scout leader who once sued the City of Berkeley for challenging a national Boy Scout ban on members who are gay or atheist has been arrested on felony charges that for at least five years he sexually abused young males in the troops he led.

I think that counts as homosexuality AND lack or morality - but what do I know about morals, I’m just an atheist. Seriously, boys can learn some great things from boy scouts, how to camp, have fun etc… I think it’s a great idea to have a group like that for boys. I just wish it wasn’t full of hypocrites, people who discriminate against a boys sexual preference and their religion. I can only imagine the number of boys who are feeling homosexual urges but are repressing them as to stay in the group, to remain “part of them”… it’s sad.

I hope that one day the boy scouts open up their arms and becoming a little less judging and ridiculous so that all boys who want to be a part, can be.

It took me a while… but I found my absolute favorite politically incorrect valentine. Sweet.

I don’t really like Valentines day. Of course I like the premise behind it of love, and showing people that you love them. What I don’t love is the notion that we aren’t showing those that we love that we love them every day. … and that companies make a lot of money off of our love.

A bunch of roses cost upward of $30… chocolates can go up to $80… alcohol is always a popular one… and that can get pretty expensive… one of the girls I work with is going to some expensive restaurant in Toronto… It’s just a money grabber.

Anyway - I’m not a grinch about valentines day. And it’s not even that I’m alone and bitter - I have plans tonight… but it just so happens Thursday night is date night. The fact that it’s Valentines day didn’t spawn the date. … But I’m sure he’ll act on the holiday. But I’m not going out of my way to avoid all the Valentines day crap…

so…

alas…

Happy Valentines Day Everyone.

Apparently Valentine’s day is when there is a grossly high level of suicides amongst young women. “To Write Love On Her Arms” exists to promote this sad truth and to try to let women know that they are loved. (Stupid Valentine’s day.)

I really was hoping on getting home like… less than an hour after work today so that I wouldn’t be tired and crappy. But the bus system in Guelph is horrible horrible horrible - so I didn’t get home until nearly like 8… And now I have one of those headaches that is like a knife penetrating the back of my skull and then proceeding to protrude out of the forehead. … If you’ve never had a headache like this, I hope you never do. It’s horrible (and also means that a migraine is on the way.

About 3 months ago I started getting migraines. I had never had one before, and the first time I got one I was at Future Shop… I felt ill, I started to cry, I couldn’t even open my eyes - it was sooo bad. Ever since then I get them quite often. I don’t know what triggers them yet either. It can’t be lack of sleep - but maybe stress? Or being really angry or fed up with people? I don’t know. But, I get them… and if I don’t go to bed/take advil within the next 30 minutes I’ll be out of commission for the next 3 days. Thus - no posting. My apologies. But I do have Thursday off - so that will be fun fun.

<3 [is the movement]

Stuart Kauffman, Ron Brown and Larry Moran at the Center For Inquiry - Ontario, Feb. 8 2008 (click to inflate)

Event synopsis:

REINVENTING THE SACRED: How the Paradigm of Emergence Offers New Scientific Views on the Origin of Life and Biodiversity, Economics, Ethics, and Spirituality

Stuart Kauffman, Institute for Biochemplexity and Informatics, University of Calgary

“I would like to begin a discussion about the first glimmerings of a new scientific world view - beyond reductionism to emergence and radical creativity in the biosphere and human world. This emerging view finds a natural scientific place for value and ethics, and places us as co-creators of the enormous web of emerging complexity that is the evolving biosphere and human economics and culture. In this scientific world view, we can ask: Is it more astonishing that a God created all that exists in six days, or that the natural processes of the creative universe have yielded galaxies, chemistry, life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, culture without a Creator. In my mind and heart, the overwhelming answer is that the truth as best we know it, that all arose with no Creator agent, all on its wondrous own, is so awesome and stunning that it is God enough for me and I hope much of humankind.”

I was excited for this one! Really, I was… I had the option of leaving slightly early and catching a bus to get home at a decent time, or catching the 11:30 bus and getting home super late and getting no sleep. I was going to catch the late bus… because I wanted to hear this speaker sooo badly.

I left early. …And Pamela followed me out.

Alright, the guy is a great public speaker. His voice is fantastic, he is very eloquent and over all really well spoken. But his talk was just flat out bad and boring. He was so redundant. His main point that went on for over an hour - “biology can not be reduced by physics” … Well no. shit.

He went on with a million and a half examples about why biology couldn’t be reduced by physics… Why physics can’t explain life, basically. He went on. and on. and on. and on about it. And all I could think was “well, no shit buddy - that’s why they are totally different departments.” Physics doesn’t explain why we socialize, or why we decide to get together to have discussion, or why we decide to have complex relationships that ruin our lives or why boys blow up at you and go crazy when you can’t keep plans because you have a life that doesn’t involve them. It just doesn’t explain those things. Because that’s not what physics is the study of.

It would be like me getting up and giving an hour and a half lecture about how photography can’t be reduced by urban planning. Well no shit! Photography has nothing to do with urban planning! (alright, sometimes you take pictures of urban areas to compare, but you get what I’m saying…)

To make matters worse the guy’s ego was taking up all the extra space in the room. Every chance he got he’d drop one of his books or a name like Richard Dawkins, Al Gore or whoever. He was telling a “joke” that involved him saying his “best line” to “Mr. Vice President” … and no one laughed. It was clearly an attempt to show who he had conversed with in his time. The worst part was when he claimed to have found the biological definition for life…… okay.

Kate and I are pretty good at paying attention during these lectures at CFI. No matter how boring everyone else (aka Allen) thinks they are we always pay attention and have a comment or two to share at the end. …But we ended up text messaging each other back and forth through the talk. Pamela and I spent the entire walk to the bus station talking about how horrible the talk had been.

Seriously. I rarely give a bad review of lectures. I think anyone with the intelligence to talk to a room of extremely intelligent people deserves my respect, for sure. I think that most lectures have an ounce of reason to them and I can usually find one or two things to take away from it. But this guy. Oh, this guy. Nothing, I got absolutely nothing.

It wasn’t all horrible. I saw Ron, Kate, Joe, Pamela, Justin… etc, all the CFI people who I wish I got to see more often. Next time I’ll look a little more into the speaker and make sure he isn’t going to be totally horrible.