Watch. Remember. Hope. Tomorrow brings a new chance. But it’s only that, a chance.

And, after watching this video, if you have any doubt about a) the silliness of organized religion b) the rationality of followers c) the danger (they could really hurt themselves) then we live on vastly different planets. Yes, this is but one flavor of practicing religion and it’s extreme. However, it’s no more strange than drinking grape juice and eating crackers to show devotion on a weekly basis…..

You can imagine a new ad campaign: Voice over from James Earl Jones This is your behavior. [cut to video above] This is your behavior when hooked on god.

After eight years of angst, religious faith, faux cowboy wisdom, and more missteps than any leader has a right to make, George Bush (43) departs the Whitehouse. Today is his last full work day. Which is odd to say about the man who took more vacation than any other President, 485 days. Good work if you can get it, that means Mr. Bush was out for 33.2% of his term.

Oddly, I find myself wondering if we might all have been a little better off now if we had encouraged him to vacation a little more. No, I will not miss George Bush as Commander-in-Chief. He simply bumbled from one fiasco to the next thinking everything would turn out alright in the end because god wants America to succeed; after all, this is the chosen nation. If there was justice in the world, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, and the rest of the gang would all be tried for war crimes and torture.

Well, goodbye George. While I haven’t agreed with virtually anything you’ve done, I do believe you were acting in accordance with your belief and within your clearly limited capacity for rational thought and decision making. Please, take a long vacation now. You might find the bottle or other drugs again, it would likely make the time pass a little faster and might keep you out of the public eye. I wouldn’t recommend pulling a Palin post-election…..

One last parting thought to you, as a devout christian:

“Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!”

As many of you know, my personal mission is to “Be A Good Ancestor.” I use that as my lighthouse to help guide my decisions, large and small. As a consequence, we have compact fluorescent lamps in our sockets, we recycle stuff (more than the obvious paper, aluminum, and glass – clothing, toys, household items, electronics, etc.) and we now have a hybrid gas-electric vehicle that I use on my 82 mile (~132 km) round trip to work. Not that these things alone qualify in succeeding at that mission, but they do contribute.

And while I respect the efficiency of the 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid, I don’t particularly like it. As to the title of this entry, “Car Wars,” on the weekends I like to drive my 2006 GMC Sierra 1500 pickup truck. It’s 18 miles to the gallon in the truck vs. 42-49 mpg in the Honda. But, on every single dimension other than carpool lane stickers and fuel efficiency, my truck is a better vehicle and I simply like to drive it.

Why is this true? Well, for one thing, I like the visibility the truck affords, my vantage point in the driver’s seat is probably 2-3 feet (~0.60-0.90 meter) higher than the Honda. The vehicle is spacious, it’s comfortable, and it’s solid. Couple that with (gasp) better fit and finish than the Honda and better creature comforts (built in hands-free phone, satellite radio, automatic climate control, automatic headlights and wipers, etc.) and it’s no competition between them. Additionally, I like to be able to throw stuff in the bed of the truck as necessary and I do it more than I thought (since driving the sedan.)

The problem is, every time I slip behind the wheel of my truck, I don’t feel like I’m being consistent with my mission. I’m burning more fuel, spewing more CO2 NOx and SOx into the atmosphere, putting more wear and tear on the roads, and “optically” not sending the message I’d like to send with my practices. Now, I’m not driving it to work, it’s simply the around town stuff people do on the weekends, but it still makes me yearn for this vehicle (with access to the carpool lane) for my daily commute. Ugh.

I have been contemplating for some time whether to undertake the project of converting the truck to an all electric vehicle ala the electric Mini in the UK (640 hp!) or the same project with a 1 liter displacement motor for realtime charging of the battery system as required. Aside from the obvious cost, my beloved spouse would strangle me as I barely have time to spend with the family – imagine my behavior in the garage every night for six months performing such a conversion. Nope, can’t happen now.

For now, I’ll just have to have my weekend guilty pleasure with my truck and relegate it to driveway duty during the week. I can rationalize the weekend use, but it does still make me feel somehow hypocritical and inconsistent. Oh well, I’m a human, I guess that just makes me normal. Anyone have any bright ideas about how I can have my cake and eat it too?

Well, it’s almost been a month since ripping the advertising off this site. Since that time, while it might be subtle, I’ve felt much more free to write about what I want and say whatever might be on my mind relative to any particular subject.

Here are the entries post-advertising in case you may have missed them:

• The Dreaded Bread Threat – A satire of the danger of bread. Frankly, a rip off of the “Dread Tomato” referenced in the post.
• Sunday School: A Businessman Can’t hold a Candle to a Clergyman – Revisting (and posting) George Carlin’s video monologue on the subject.
• Sunday School: Deserved Descration – Biology Professor PZ Myers holds nothing sacred, and neither should any of us.
• See Slumdog Millionaire – An extraordinary film that should be seen. It has now won some hardware. I found it disturbing on multiple levels and unfortunately, it does track my observations of India in certain ways.
• 2008 By the Numbers – Who would have thought so many people read this blog? Not me. Somehow, it still seems unreal even though I analyze the logs….Thanks for reading.
• The Tragedy of Faith – A look at the seedy side of religion. Binny Hinn and his money machine steal money and hope from the sick, the poor, and the old. Sickening.
• O Fortuna – A fluff entry linking to two creative videos with alternate words set to “O Fortuna.” To be fair, they did make me laugh.
• Go Bucks! – I’ve moved the Buckeye Football content to The Buckeye View – but I couldn’t resist. Interestingly, most of my social/religious views are diametrically opposed to most Buckeye football fans; thus the separate venue.
• Blown Coverage Ends a Great Game – See above. Commentary on the Fiesta Bowl.
• Open Letter to Arnold – I wrote a letter to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him to revoke the tax exempt status from large non-profit organizations. As you might expect, it’s had zero impact. But at least it’s floating out there and we will get a drum beat on this issue going over time.
• Gorgeous Day on the Coast – Often I have to pinch myself. This entry talks about the extraordinary weather we’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks. Today it’s also true.
• Visual Travelogue – Talks about a web tool that will generate maps of where you’ve been in the world, India, and the United States. It’s pretty cool.
• I Get Mail: Blast From the Past – My life as a young cad with little to no moral fiber is laid bare for all to see. Interesting comments, I’d love to see more of this in the future (the dialogue through comments – not my bad behavior.)
• Ten Best Lyric Phrases – My non-exclusive list of the best lyric lines I can conjure. Again, great comments. Perhaps I should write more like this?
• Vide Deus Ad Oculos – See god with your own eyes. A personal seal offered for any who would like to adopt it for their own use. A commentary about where I’m really going with my active atheist leanings.
• The Power of Work vs. The Power of Prayer – A repost of WellingtonGray.net’s pithy little matrix that brings the truth to our attention.
• From Wheat to Eat – A link to a TED Talk on the art, craft, and science of baking. Utterly fascinating.
• Newseum: Preserving the Print Dinosaurs – A nifty little tool that geographically organizes local print newspapers with commentary about the downfall of print media (and their other counterparts affected by digital media.)
• Car Wars – A narrative of my experience in a hybrid electric vs. traditional vehicle and the conflicted feelings that come from owning and having access to both flavors at my whim.

Have you noticed any differences post advertising? Do you care? How’s the posting going? Do you like the (subtle) difference in what I’m writing about? How about the style? For what it’s worth, this platform is a good outlet for me to comment about things that have somehow impacted my thoughts and somehow keeps me sane regardless of readership. In a certain way, I guess it was a completely selfish act to take the ads away as it freed me to be even more candid and write about things that I might have shied away from when advertisers were present.

Have a thought? Share it. I’m listening. And, by the way, thanks for dropping by. I can’t say I know why so many of you do, but perhaps you get something from some of this content too. The experience is richer when you contribute to the conversation. I do moderate, but for spam only (163,225 spam comments caught to date…)