I used to think that freedom was defined as the ability to choose to what or whom one would desire to be a slave. Some choose to serve their desire for money, women, or fancy cars. Others choose to serve God. But after someone I know (call him Adam) left his wife and shacked up with another woman all in the name of freedom, I came to rethink my definition. Continue reading
I like to rant. Get me started on a topic that irks me and I could go forever! So where better to do this than on my blog? I figure once the month of lists ends next week, I’ll have to come up with some kind of theme or schedule that will keep me on track, and what better than a weekly rant? I’ll give you fair warning, though: Topics will vary, as will seriousness. Generally, topics will cover any and every thing that inspires the “WTF?!” response from me and maybe you.Â
Having said that, the very first “WTF?! Wednesday” was spawned from something that happened to me yesterday while at work. Actually, I was coming in from taking a walk outside for a brief break. See, I have this ritual of sorts. I go out for a break, come back in, go get a drink from the water fountain, and then go back in. Not so yesterday. My daily 3:30 ritual was all screwed up.
When I climbed the stairs, standing there at the water fountain–a community water fountain, mind you, there right in the open–was a young girl who looked to be in her 20’s, and she was brushing her teeth.Â
Did you catch that? Brushing. Her. Teeth! IN the water fountain! She actually was scrubbing, going “up like the sun, down like the rain, and back and forth like a choo-choo train” right there in the middle of the open community area. Surely I was seeing things, right? I thought so at first. Then she spit. And it wasn’t a dainty “rinse and spit” either. Oh, no… There was sound involved. This girl took her rinsing and spitting seriously, and left the remains of her brushing sitting right there in the fountain.Â
There was froth. I saw it. I saw it even from a distance!Â
I don’t know about you, but certain sounds can make me gag or grate on my nerves until I nearly lose my mind. Loud gulping, chewing, vomiting, and spitting all make me lose it. Hearing Toothbrush Girl nearly made me run past her to the restroom, but I was so dumbfounded to see this going on that I was stuck standing there staring.
As if that wasn’t enough, she then looked at me–I was standing against the far wall with a look of utter horror–and proceeded to clean her toothbrush in the fountain!!Â
Are you EVEN serious!? Who does that?! Who does that when the bathroom, complete with four, count ‘em, four sinks and a door, is no more than 10 steps away?? At what point does someone make a decision that, “Hey, I don’t need to go to the bathroom to do this in the sink where normal people would go, I’ll go ahead and do it right here in the open, where people DRINK, and leave my nasty germs all up in this piece!” I bet she leaves the sink all gross and nasty after she brushes at home too–or worse yet–at someone else’s house. And she showed no inkling that this was improper behavior whatsoever!
Maybe I’m the only one who is profoundly disturbed by this, but I’ll be taking bottled water from now on, thankyouverymuch. I have nothing against good, proper oral hygiene, and I know plenty of people who brush their teeth after lunch, but they all do it in the bathroom where anyone within hearing range can just turn and be sick in the appropriate place. It didn’t even phase her that I was watching! It was like a train wreck, I assure you. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help myself! I was so thrown by the event that I couldn’t even say, “Hey, you know the rest room is right there…” or, more likely, “Uh, excuse me, but WTF are you doing?!” I was speechless.Â
So, boys and girls, the lesson for today is always do your brushing in a toothbrush appropriate place where you won’t be pointed out and made the subject of a blog post. And don’t even get me started on people who talk on the phone in public rest rooms… That’s a topic for another Wednesday.
Write well,
~Dawn
I can’t sleep. This isn’t so much what you’d call good. To pass the time and hopefully bore myself into unconsciousness I decided to watch some news on the internet. The last story I saw was particularly enlightening. Researchers in Britain have found that the average person can add about fourteen years to their life if they do the following:
1) Cut back on alcohol.
2) Eat a diet of mostly fruits and vegetables.
3) Exercise a minimum of 30 minutes per day.
Great research there. Genius scientists of the world, I implore you. Find a way I can live fourteen more years without fricking giving up everything that makes life worth it.
Thanks in advance,
Bitterman
On a webpage somewhere (sorry, I can’t remember where) someone asked, “What do pro-lifers really want?†He was skeptical that pro-lifers (PL’s) really knew what they wanted.
This struck me as strange. I would think it odd that the actions of PL’s (the sane ones, you know, the non-bombers) don’t speak for themselves. We silently protest with prayers outside abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood (usually the same thing). We vote for pro-life politicians. We march on Washington (DC) every year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
PL’s want abortion, just like murder, to be made illegal. PL’s don’t want anyone to be able to eliminate zygotes, embryos, fetus, or babies. PL’s don’t want embryos from test tubes to be destroyed (ones from IVF and laboratories). PL’s want women to be given choices of how they are to bear and raise their children, not how to destroy their children.
Yes, abortions will still take place. However, murder and rape are also illegal and still happen everyday. PL’s also don’t want hit men to be permitted to have a room into which they lure their victims for blood-cash.
Ultimately, what PL’s want is for society to view all people as precious and sacred and to be safeguarded in the fact that all human people are to be defended. What abortion does (in addition to euthanasia) is to make society as a whole accept that some people are to be used or eliminated for other’s benefit.
Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Denver puts it very well.
The first principle of Christian social thought is: Don’t deliberately kill the innocent, and don’t collude in allowing somebody else to do it. The right to life is the foundation of every other human right. The reason the abortion issue is so foundational is not because Catholics love little babies—although we certainly do—but because revoking the personhood of unborn children makes every other definition of personhood and human rights politically contingent.