I quit smoking this morning. It is going pretty well so far.

I just need to get past to Friday and I'll be OK. My one smoking co-worker is off on vacation this week so this is my best chance to avoid temptation. We're each other's doom when it comes to quitting.

I quit for a few years, up until New Year's eve last year when I was a little drunk and had one, and then slowly over the couple months after that I ended up hooked again. So it's been a year now of on-again off-again smoking and I hate it so much.

Plus lots more:

..ever.



From 826 Valencia (Children's Literacy Organization)

It took me almost 2 hours to get from my house to the end of the block. I should've worked from home.

I am finally, gloriously, not sick. I was too afraid to say so yesterday -- but today, today I can confirm it! 3 weeks of misery is thankfully over.

No more flus or colds or aches or pains.

It feels nice :)

Reader's note: The 'you' in this writing is directed at the Catholic Church, not the reader. If you really like the Catholic Church you might not want to read on, for what I write below is 100% anti-Catholic Church, although not necessarily anti-Catholic person.

I was on Wikipedia, and somehow ended up reading about Catholic Apologetics and the infallibility of the Pope and inerrancy of the Bible.

Not a topic to soothe my mind with, and a bad way to mentally prepare for staying with my ultra-Catholic in-laws next week.

But seriously, Catholic Church, if you advocate things which involve violating the Law of Conservation of Mass and then claim you are infallible, and then use circular reasoning to justify the whole sorry mess, I'm going to call you out as wrong and a vicious liar.

"By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory." -- Pope Pius the 12th, 1950

The scope of observations that we've made about the universe covers the scale from individual subatomic particles to giant galactic superclusters and background radiation from the Big Bang. That's solid, dependable, re-verifiable knowledge. If you had to start over from scratch you'd find the exact same thing.

You, the Catholic Church, think that heaven and hell depend on randomly believing preposterous things with no evidence and no usefulness, and then claim you're more accurate at discerning truths then the scientific process which can divine billions of years worth of history. Essentially you are mentally ill as an organization. Science is powerful because it knows it's full of errors and corrects for them over time. 20 centuries of Popes helming your rock are jackasses because they thought they spoke for god.

Show me any piece of Catholic scholarship that is remotely as awesome and mind-blowing as this, a study on the shape and history of the Universe:

Give me anything that's 1% as convincing and I'll convert in an instant. Until then, I hope you die and rot, you miserable relic of superstition and hatred.

But you, the Catholic Church, will never produce anything remotely as truthful as that study on the topography of the Universe, qualified and incomplete though it is. Instead you'll natter on about virgin births and bodies taken up to heaven, with occasional diversions fitting the maximum number of angels onto heads of pins. Have fun with all that, just stay out of my way you corpulent bloated anachronism.

2,000 of years of navel-gazing does not infallibility make.

Catholic Church: you are hereby my mortal political, temporal, and moral enemy. Your own actions and lies have placed you in that position, until you achieve the following two things, necessary and sufficient to reclaim your place in polite society:

1) Stop claiming that you are the keepers of universal truth.

2) Stay the hell out of politics.

Since that will never happen, I'll take any chance I can get to kick you when you're down. Please feel free to excommunicate me, as my initial childhood involvement with you was against my will and not looked back upon fondly, and you're screwing up my life these days, too.

I don't even feel bad about hating you, Catholic Church, because you certainly aren't one to live and let live, and that's my minimum requirement for respect.

You have declared that dialogue with you is impossible, for how can the Catholic Church bend to any when it is the sole arbiter of truth? For that I condemn you with all my heart, every ounce of my being.

You scorn all else, and thus I scorn you, Catholic Church.

Don't bother defending yourself in kind terms based on your community and good works, Catholic Church. If something proceeds from lies and derangement, and discounts all but itself, a bit of polish and shine little makes up for the disease at the core.

SUMMARY: DOWN WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND ITS MANY ERRORS. YOU ARE USELESS AND ON BALANCE A FORCE FOR GREAT EVIL AND LIES. Such I pronounce. And don't forget, I am infallible on such matters, speaking ex-ex-Cathedra.

Rick Warren is going to be the minister at Obama's inauguration.

He started the whole 'Purpose Driven Life' movement.

It's like the shortest possible summary of what turns me off of religion.

Purpose #1: You Were Planned for God's Pleasure (Worship)
Purpose #2: You Were Formed for God's Family (Fellowship)
Purpose #3: You Were Created to Become Like Christ (Discipleship)
Purpose #4: You Were Shaped for Serving God (Ministry)
Purpose #5: You Were Made for a Mission (Mission)
--

This kind of thing is the worst though:

This spiritual servitude only has negative connotations in a culture that is obsessed with asserting the rights of the individual. Civil rights, human rights, gay rights, minority rights-we hear about this constantly. Instead of asserting our rights-even if we have the freedom to do so-we are choosing to set them aside for a greater thing: the opportunity to serve the living God. What are you setting aside in order to serve God? --

I don't get it at all. Hearing that sort of talk is the only time that I believe in the otherwise-unbelievable claim that "religion is the opiate of the masses".

Divorcing 'God's purposes' from actual human justice seems abhorrent to me, and I don't even believe in God.

Hey Everyone -

I've been out sick the last week and before that on vacation. I guess I totally screwed up my chance to plan an (e:strip) holiday dinner.

Sorry!