Twitterpated

• 00:16 Does Ryan Seacrest have a stubble mustache? #
• 00:24 It bothers me that the only diet soda available at most restaurants is cola. #
• 00:43 Seeing Jimmy Fallon dressed up is kind of bizarre. #
• 09:00 The power went out, and something went wrong with the network connection. Great. #
• 09:13 I wonder why Google is going with a Tetris design today. #
• 12:23 tinyurl.com/lxtzqm @3x1minus1 is mentioned in Rolling Stone (albeit not under her real name)! #
• 12:25 @huggythuggy It's okay. I'm used to messy homes. #
• 12:27 I just learned today that kappa fart out of three anuses. Japan, why does your mythology have to be so gross? #
• 12:33 When did the "don't blame me, I voted for [losing candidate]" slogan originate? I first saw it in the Clinton era. #
• 13:06 Isn't common sense not really something you can ascribe to yourself? #

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Happenings in Hoboken

Yesterday was pretty cool. bethje and I went up to Hoboken to visit friends, including not_glimmer, who had flown in from Oregon. We met her at Gina and therealtavie's apartment, along with its two residents. Stephanie M. was also there for a brief time, along with Stephanie P. and Jen, both of whom I met for the first time. The three of them were going to a Nine Inch Nails concert with Gina, while Tavie was going to a wedding with yet another Stephanie. (I guess people of that name gravitate toward her. {g}) So, for those of you not keeping score, that left Erin, Beth, and me to hang out for a few hours, and go out to eat at a Middle Eastern restaurant called Ali Ba Ba's. Perhaps surprisingly, I quite enjoyed my chicken kebab pita sandwich with cucumber yogurt sauce. Despite my pedestrian taste that would usually prefer a cheese sandwich to something exotic, I've actually liked Middle Eastern food both times I had it. Then again, I've never gotten any of the spicy stuff. After dinner, we did a little research into Japanese panty vending machines. So much I've heard about the Japanese suggests that they're a nation of perverts, but they probably think the same about Americans. Anyway, it was past 11:30 when we got back on the road, and Beth and I were totally exhausted by the time we got home. Yet somehow, I'm awake now. (EDIT: It was about 10 AM when I wrote this, but I waited to get the pictures uploaded before posting it.) Oh, well. It's only twelve hours before I have to go back to bed so I can get up for work tomorrow, so I should take advantage of this time. Trying to catch up on my LiveJournal friends page counts as taking advantage of the time, right? {g}

In case you're interested, here are pictures from yesterday.

Pray a Little Faster

As I mentioned on Twitter, I saw a "pray to end abortion" bumper sticker a few days ago. This came across as a bit absurd to me, considering that the reason many (or at least the most vocal) people who oppose abortion do so for religious reasons. So let's see:

1. God says abortion is wrong.
2. But it happens anyway, which must mean He doesn't have much interest in actually enforcing the rule.
3. So what we need to do is ask the same guy who says it's wrong but isn't doing anything about it to end it. That'll work right?

Really, that's kind of how I feel about prayer in general, especially in a religion with an all-powerful, all-knowing deity. If God knows everything you want and need, and everything you WILL want and need in the future, and can do anything about it He wants, what's the point in asking? Yet again, it seems to result in the idea of the Lonely, Insecure God. He CAN help you out, but won't unless you ask Him nicely, because He LIKES being asked. Which I suppose works on a purely logical level, but why would a perfect being need attention? Of course, that's all a personal issue, and I'm certainly not going to stop anyone from praying if they think it DOES make a difference. But can people stop saying they're going to pray for people they don't like (recent example: Carrie Prejean with Perez Hilton)? You can DO it if you want to, but to announce it just comes off as totally passive-aggressive.

Also, when are we going to have an end of people trying to restore mandatory prayers in public schools? Is separation of church and state THAT hard to understand? It's not just that not everyone wants to pray (which they don't), but that everyone who DOES should feel free to do so in their own way. You'll hear people claiming that they should use "non-denominational" prayers. Yeah, okay, if you come up with a prayer that works equally well for every branch of Christianity, not to mention Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and paganism (and that's not even counting the atheists), then maybe we'll talk. I think a lot of these people are ones who grew up when prayer still WAS mandatory in public schools, and they have the rather bizarre notion that things were so much better back then. Sometimes I think people who have such beliefs have blocked out their actual childhoods.

But anyway, prayer. What do you think about it?