Time now for a random assorted blog entry!

First off, some housekeeping. The wife and I are no longer (as the post below would seem to indicate) at a hospital; for the past week and a half or so we've been (mercifully) back home, with Debra on strict bedrest. Figured I should at least address that, so as to not receive unwarranted sympathy points!

I do a lot of my best thinking, strangely enough, in the shower in the morning. Ideas come to me better then; perhaps because my brain has had some sleep, and is not completely spent from overuse at work all day. This morning I had some cracking thoughts about Global Warming and the Green Religion, and I intended to document them here, but they have evaporated since. Well, I'll give it a bit of a shot. One of the things I've noted with Greenduism is that Greendu practitioners have a particular love of ritual and symbolism. The practical effects of a ritual are secondary to what it represents. The same is true for most religions; the Lord's Supper is not primarily about enjoying a bit of crusty bread with a nice kosher red wine, it is about remembrance, and symbolism. Greendus have any number of rituals; changing lightbulbs to compact fluorescents, recycling, driving a hybrid car, telling people about how they drive a hybrid car, etc. As long as these rituals are adhered to, sins are absolved. This is why a person who drives 50 miles a day in a hybrid car for commuting is more righteous than a person who drives 5 miles a day in a petrol-swilling heathen car. The net effect of "emissions" is actually greater for the hybrid car driver, but his holiness meter registers higher because the ritual and intentions are more crucial in Greenduism than the practical effects. Recycling (which is so widely accepted even outside of Greenduism it is almost to the point of being unfashionable) was partially debunked on an episode of a show by Penn and Teller (the title of which is slightly saltier than the tender ears, or eyes, of my faithful blogreaders should be exposed to); many types of recycling are enormously high in energy costs, but again, the idea of recycling is what we value most, not its effects. I say this as a long-time recycling sympathizer...it's the sort of thing even the non-Greendu agnostics and skeptics can get on board with. Also, now that carbon dioxide is officially a pollutant, can we start taxing Al Gore for breathing?

While I'm on the topic, I really need to link to what to me has been one of the most comical things to surface on the web in some time:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/

Lastly, I bought (for very cheap) a copy of one of Steven Raichlen's books, this one focused on ribs. Surprisingly it was not full of pictures of Mr. Raichlen comically pointing out the location of various types of ribs by pointing to his own body. I say comically, because I find it funny, but when he does it on his show he's serious. "The baby backs are the tenderest, juiciest ribs...have a look at them right here" [turns to point down his back] "yeah, that's nice, huh? Now let me show you the loin..." Yikes!

Sorry, I guess my wife and I get a great deal of humor out of things that were not necessarily designed to be funny. With Steven Raichlen, it's all double entendre...how he keeps repeating his mantra of "keep it hot, keep it clean, keep it lubricated", which you've got to admit has a slightly naughty ring to it (it would definitely fail in Don't Be Dirty). With Lidia's Italy, an Italian cooking show that comes on an hour before Steven Raichlen's BBQ University, it is these weird things she says, with her thick Italo-slavic accent. Such as, when speaking lustily of the joy she gets in manually smashing tomatoes for her sauces: "I LIKE TO CRUSH THEM!". This gets parodied at our house with frequency, with the latest idea being a horror film parody of Gojira for tomatoes, with Lidzilla trampling through the streets of Tomatokyo, angrily crushing every innocent tomato she can get her claws on. I LIKE TO CRUSH THEM!

Mind you, I like these shows quite a bit. I used to view Bonanza the same way, a great show that I watched almost daily on channel 50. But half of the joy of that show was mocking the characters. Full grown (balding) men still living unmarried at home with Pa, well into their 40s. The plots were delightfully predictable in a way no other show has ever been...the romantic ones (with enormously shallow female characters who were quite often portrayed by very poor actors) were particularly fated to end with the female lead either dying or leaving town in the final two minutes.