Why I Can Barely Look At Myself In The Mirror

Every morning, I hit up some of my favorite blogs only to discover that they still haven't been updated, days, weeks, sometimes even months after the last update.

And I cry. (Maybe that's a little melodramatic, I don't actually cry, maybe I die a little inside, how about that? Yeah, let's go with die a little inside.)

Then, I realized, that I have become that blogger, the blogger that kills a little bit of me with every passing week of no update. Is there someone out there to whom I am doing the same thing?

Probably not, but there might be someone who is slightly disappointed with no recent updates.

Anyway, sorry about becoming "that blogger", but things have gotten a little hectic and of my three blogs (for baseball, check out 100 Years Later, for television and movie news check out Josue23) this is the one that got short changed.

I'm going to try and do better as time goes on, really I am.

To make it up to you, I present the return of Quote of the Day, from one of our favorites. Perhaps it can help explain why I have fallen off in my duty to bring you retrospective reflections.

"Life is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half of one for breakfast."
Douglas Adams

I think that that says it all.

Thoughts About My Jobs Part Two

My other job is as an Interim Youth Minister. There is a possibility of the position becoming permanent, but I have to decide if I want that or not.

I've enjoyed it so far, although I've only done it for a few weeks now.

At my last Youth Group meeting, I led a meditation sort of thing, but I realized that I didn't have a good meditative cd to play during the meditation.

I used to have hours worth of the stuff. It was all on my laptop, but that laptop got stolen, so all of my meditation type music was gone as well.

Not a big deal, I thought, I'll pick something up at the store on the way to church. I also called one of my sponsors and left a message with her. She called me back right as I was about to pull into the store parking lot and said she was sure she could bring something. I said great and continued to the church.

Her son (one of my youth) said that he had something and he put it on his iPod to bring it up to the church.

So, he gives it to me and I hook it up to the speaker without even looking at what it was.

It wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Instead of being meditative music, it was a meditative sound type thing. You know, nature sounds.

I had already started the meditation before I started what I thought was going to be music and when the waterfall sounds started it was too late for me to come up with a different plan. I was just going to have to go with it.

I was reading them a story (from The Last Western, the greatest novel ever written, don't bother looking for it at your local book store, it is out of print), the story was set in America, long before it was known as America, in fact, long before it was discovered.

The story opened with a man jumping from a cliff into a river. The waterfall was quite appropriate.

The man gained the name Eagle for his feat, at this point the meditation went to birds, again perfect.

He became king and angered his people with his talk of peace and love. The meditation went to wolves howling and whining; it was quite appropriate.

He was captured by an enemy tribe and tossed from another cliff into a river, again, the water was there.

The few who believed in him saw a miraculous sight, a huge bird unknown to humanity, came out of the water where his body had fallen. Again, the birds began.

Afterwards, the youth thought that I had planned the sounds to match the story. I told all who asked that it was just an awesome coincidence.

It's crazy how sometimes when things don't go exactly as you planned they end up far better then you could have imagined.

Thoughts About My Jobs Part One

So today I had to go to a lunch meeting of the county Builders (one of my currently two jobs is as an apprentice home builder) and there seems to be a bias towards drinkers of tea.

I don't like tea, never have, not a tea drinker. I know that this is Texas and a majority of people here LOVE their iced tea, but I'm not one of them. Maybe it is because I was born in Chicago.

Anyway, I drank water.

The waitresses at the club house where our meeting was held came by a few times with a pitcher of tea to refill everyone's tea.

Not once did they come by with a pitcher of water. Not once.

I guess if I ever want to be a successful builder, I'll have to learn to like iced tea.

Tax Day

The return of the Quote of the Day

"A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5 x 11 inch paper cannot be understood."
-Mark Ardis

I'm told that my taxes are easy to figure out (not surprising since I don't make that much money) but I really have no desire to try and figure it out for myself. After all there are people whose job it is is to do taxes. Why take money out of their pockets?

Anyway, hope that you got your taxes done.

Some Political Stuff... Are You Surprised?

Well, always on the front curve of the news, I'm proud to announce that we here at Retrospective Reflections talked a little about the VP issue for John McCain before CNN.com. Unfortunately for us, CNN.com did it much better. Fortunately for you, however, here's the link to their story.

Pretty interesting list of names, including the four that we mentioned yesterday.

Back to the Democratic side, the race everyone is paying attention to is the upcoming vote in Pennsylvania.

Clinton had held a huge lead in the state, but as the date of the vote (April 22) gets closer, Clinton's lead has been shrinking.

In the latest polls from CNN.com, Clinton's lead is down to 4 points, 46% to 42%.

If Clinton loses Pennsylvania, it will be hard for her to justify staying in the race. Even if she wins there will be many calls for her to drop out unless she wins it significantly. A close vote that only gains her a few delegates won't help the fact that she is currently down 143 Delegates. She's behind by 171 pledged delegates, and her once large lead in the Super Delegate count is now only 28. The longer that Obama keeps a sizable delegate lead, the more Super Delegates go over to him.

I think that it is very possible that this could be decided by the end of the month, as it's beginning to look more and more inevitable that Barack Obama will win the nomination. Of course this race so far has been anything but normal.

A Little Look at Possible VPs

Sunday, Republican strategist and former Bush administration official Dan Senor claimed that Condoleezza Rice was angling for the Vice President slot on the Republican ticket, saying, "Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this."

Rice, however, claimed that there was no truth to this statement and claims that while she will be watching the election with interest as a voter, she plans on returning to Stanford after her time as Secretary of State.

I'm not sure that Condoleezza Rice would be a smart move for the Republicans, since the way that McCain can win will be by distancing himself from the Bush administration, whereas having Rice on the ticket will be something for the Democrats to point to when they call a vote for McCain a vote for Four More Years of George W. Bush Politics.

The other names that have been floated for McCain are Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, either of which might appease the Conservative base that still don't feel completely comfortable with McCain, but would also push a lot of the Independent voters (who will be very important this November) over to the Democratic side.

An interesting name I've heard a couple of times, but don't really see as possible, is that of Joe Lieberman, who was the VP on the Al Gore ticket. He is now an Independent and has moved far to the right of where he used to be, but is still probably closer to a Democrat on many issues then he is to Republican. While this ticket would appeal to the independents, it would probably cause a lot of the Conservative base to sit out the election all together.

While the Democrats continue their struggle to select a nominee, McCain's search for a Vice Presidential candidate becomes a more intriguing story to keep an eye on.

IN HONOR OF MLK

Forty years ago today, the world lost one of its best, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

I look forward to the day when the world that he dreamt of becomes a reality.

In the meantime, I leave you with a quote from him, today's Quote Of The Day...

"Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

If only you were still here, for there is still work to be done, and I can only hope that we are strong enough to do it in your absence.

Free Will v Destiny in a Cage Match

Something I've been thinking about recently (for a story I'm writing) is the idea of free will verse destiny. It's always a big thing in sci-fi and fantasy, the idea of destiny.

Harry Potter's whole life was driven by a prophecy, he had no choice in the matter of Voldemort. The second Snape heard that portion of the prophecy, Voldemort was going to try and kill him and was going to continue to try until either Harry was dead or Voldemort was.

But at the same time, Harry had a choice about how he was going to live his life and he chose to live it and accept his role in the battle against Voldemort as opposed to staying in hiding and just letting the more experienced Wizards protect him at all times.

So, it would seem in the world of Wizards and Muggles at least that one can have free will to some degree despite destiny.

Such might not be the case in a series such as Battlestar Galactica.

Throughout the series's first three seasons we have been told that Starbuck (television's best female character ever, although President Roslin from the same show isn't far behind) has a destiny, and as Season 4 is about to begin it certainly appears that is true.

At the same time, many characters have uttered the phrase "All of this has happened before, all of it will happen again" taken from the human's scripture.

Well this phrase certainly argues against the notion of free will. Everyone has a part to play and no decision about it.

This idea works well for a television show (or a book series such as The Wheel of Time which employs a similar central thought), but I don't really enjoy the idea of this being true in real life.

Sure, the fact that we have no choice in our actions could make us feel better about some of the stupid things we've done, but overall, the idea that we don't actually have choices would make me feel trapped.

In real life, I'm not sure that there is much belief in destiny on a large scale, but you do often here the idea out there.

I'm sure most of us have even used the idea (even if we didn't realize it). Certain things definately feel "meant to be" and the idea that something is "meant to be" is nothing if not in the corner of destiny.

Maybe there are things that are supposed to happen, choices that we are supposed to make, things that are meant to be, but not necessarily destined to be.

Our free will still gives us an opportunity to make decisions that keep those things that are "meant to be" from actually being.

If that's true, then free will can be kind of a scary responsibility.

But I stand by the idea that I'd rather have the scary responsibility of free will (and the possibility that I'll frak it up) then the idea that I have no choice in what I do and instead am stuck on a path that I have no say about whatsoever.

April Fools!

In honor of this holiday, I would like to give a link to a story that I think is hilarious, and apparently actually fooled a large number of people.

Alabama Changes Number of Pi to Biblical 3.0

The article was written as a joke in reference to the lawsuits occuring in New Mexico at the time trying to outlaw the study of Evolution in schools. After it was posted on a website where that issue was regularly discussed (with plenty of clues in the article as to the fact that it was a hoax such as being written by April Holliday of the Associmated Press), the article was quickly forwarded to other places (but with the clues changed or removed). The Alabama Legislature was bombarded with calls outraged that they would change the value of Pi.

The best line from the article in my opinion is from one of the scientists, "I wish they had discussed this with people who actually use Pi."

National Geographic online has some looks at other famous April Fools pranks (as well as info on this one.)