For the Love of a Child

This one is for the parents out there, cause unfortunately they are the only ones who are going to understand this entry at the visceral level. The rest of you might understand it at an intellectual level, but until you've got a kid of your own… well, you will never truly get it.

Parenthood is one of the 'great adventures' of anyone's life. Oh sure, you can climb Everest, you could swim with the piranha's in the Amazon (I don't actually recommend that one though…), you could hop into one of those big balloons and float around the world! All of those – well, not the swimming one – are no doubt one heck of a good time!

But if you want a down and dirty adventure that never stops, nothing beats parenthood!

Since becoming a father, I've been bitten, peed on and pooped on! I've been hit, kicked, head butted, and stabbed with all sorts of eating utensils. I've had toes up the nose, fingers in the ears and more drool rained down upon me than I could ever care to remember! Just the other day I was rudely awakened by my 13 month old, who made the executive decision that dumping a big glass of ice cold koolaid onto a sleeping Daddy was every bit as good as waking him with a shower of kisses! In her defence, I probably was dryer having had the koolaid dumped on me than I would have been with the kisses!

I've lost more sleep and spent more time in the hospital anxiously awaiting a doctor's prognosis on removing peas from noses and for the x-rays to be developed, than I ever wanted too. Honestly, if I never spend another moment at the hospital because of a hurt or sick kid, I won't complain. (Not holding my breath though…)

I would work three jobs to keep them fed, I would face down any threat and I have feel no shame when I say I would kill anyone who tried to hurt them.

In short, there is absolutely nothing I wouldn't do for my kids, even if I knew there was no way I'd walk away from it.

Not surprisingly, I found myself feeling a profound sense of kinship with a fellow I read about tonight on the Globe and Mail website! A 77 year old father, taking on one extremely unhappy Grizzly Bear mother protecting her cub (yes, animals are parents too!) to protect his 39 year old son.

Now seriously, I'm sure that there are lots of non-parents who might take on a grizzly to protect someone – hero's come in all shapes and sizes! But how many of you are going to do it bare handed? My hat's off to this gentleman!

So go to the top of Everest, plumb the depths of the seas – it will be over in a few days! But parenthood? Man, that ride lasts forever!

One hell of a hello!

As anyone who’s spent more than a few hours with me can tell you, there are few things that drive me more insane than stupidity and religion. Some will no doubt chime in now and remind me that religion is stupidity in a formalized setting – you know what, I’m not getting sucked into that debate. I know that there is a difference between religion and faith and that the former often has nothing to do with the later – but that’s another rant.

So what has me frothing at the bit now?

I tripped across this thing called Stumble a while back and have entertained myself to no end with the bizarre, inane and sometimes insane sites that fill up that nebulous thing we call the world wide web! And then every once in a while I come across one that just makes the little bubbles in my brain boil over!

Today was one of those days!

Some inbred butt monkey in Texas (Don’t get me wrong, I love our American cousins, I really do – but seriously, isn’t it time they started licensing breeding down there?) actually convinced a town council that it was a really good idea to change the official town greeting from ‘Hello’ – used throughout the world and sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft as a universal greeting – to ‘Heaven-O’ because, and I’m quoting here folks, the word Hello contains the word ‘Hell’. Apparently saying ‘Hell’ oh to every smiling person you encounter on the street is just one more of those paving stones on the road to the infernal swimming pool!

Don't believe me? Here is the Wikipedia entry that details it... (sigh.)

That sound you hear right now is the top of my head blowing off…

There’s a reason I keep my glorious locks of auburn hair cut so short – it’s so I can’t pull it out in frustration! But still, as an intellectual exercise (bet you didn’t even know I knew what that meant) I decided to extrapolate this idiocy a little further! So here are some other words you can no longer use and their new substitutions!

Henceforth you can no longer use the word ‘Grape’ as it clearly contains the nefarious word ‘Rape’, instead you will have to refer to the fruits formally known as grapes as ‘Those purple dangly things that make wine.’

Wow, I’m feeling safer already! Let’s see… We should probably also eliminate ‘Skill’ and all its variants because they contain the word ‘kill’, instead we’ll use talent! Oh, no, wait. That has the word ‘lent’ in it… I think that’s a Jewish holiday and that might offend supremacists… Ability? Yeah that works!

I could go on and on, but I it’s late and I’m heavily into ‘fuzzy logic’ at this hour… We keep censoring ourselves because something we might say might offend someone. There is nothing wrong with equal right for all races, creeds and sexes. But there comes a point, I hope where we have to say enough is enough!

We already can’t say we don’t like people who would like nothing more than to see our way of life destroyed. I don’t agree with racists – I think they are ignorant. But the Gods help you if you stand up and say I’m an idiot and I don’t like you because of the colour of your skin or the sex of the person you love, or the big deity in the sky you happen to subscribe to.

If it were applied equally to all, this sort of stupidity might almost be acceptable.

Make a cartoon of the prophet and half the world is suddenly doing its very best to rip your throat out – but make a cartoon with Christ visiting a brothel and nobody bats an eye because that’s not racism.

Say hello and damn your neighbours to eternity in a lake of fire…

So where does this leave us? Scratching our heads? If I were a member of this town I would be putting up a great big sign on my lawn that says ‘HELL – o’ – but then I’m a trouble maker J

Apparently the separation between church and state has become a little vague, not unlike the separation between logic and insanity!

We’re surrounded by idiots I tell you and they’re going to be the death of us all.