i'm a whiner . . . at least when it comes to this blog i'm a whiner. maria and i watched Julie and Julia last weekend, or sometime (i try to forget), and Julie just whines through the entire movie and it annoyed me greatly.

so, i am going to quit whining on this blog (except after the oscars, we'll see how it goes). positivity folks, that's where it's at.

BOOM! SMILES!

my plan is to eat the one with it's mouth open. i don't like it's attitude.

stupid cars

Report on vehicle incidents.

01.06.10 - driving to work, had to stop suddenly, and was rear ended gently. stupid driver, no damage.

01.09.10 - had driven to Duluth Friday night and back from Duluth Saturday and was backed into when we arrived home. took place in our parking lot, several feet from parking and safety. stupid driver (didn't look before backing up), left headlight damaged and hood dented.

01.09.10 - was informed by close friends, will remain anonymous for security reasons, that due to a stupid act of vandalism, two tires on their car were slashed and flat. 80 other cars in the parking lot suffered the same fate. stupid bored idiots, severe tire damage.

here ends the transmission.

stories are important

fairy tales are more than true:

not because they tell us that dragons exist,

but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

- G.K. Chesterton

quote taken from the novel "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

illustration from "Coraline" by Dave McKean

opinions . . .

do they matter?

maybe, maybe not.

the End of the Line

Maria and I went and saw this film tonight . . . it needs to be seen by as many other people as it can.

The issue of over-fishing does not get the light of day and I think it is a big enough issue that it should be getting some very serious attention paid to it. It is not just because I love the oceans, it is not just because the creatures of the sea are some of the most spectacular creatures on the planet, it is also because I love humanity.

If we continue to over fish a huge food source for the planet will have been squandered, and only so that the rich can get richer by breaking the rules and ruining things for the honest fisherman. I do not have an issue with local fisherman who are trying to earn a living, what I do have a problem with is the huge fishing conglomerates that are draining the ocean of fish and making it even harder for those local fishermen to make a living.

Fishing does not need to stop, but it does need to be controlled. And there are things that we can do to help as well. The film does a much better job of explaining these things than I do, so please go and see it. It is playing now through Thursday at the Lagoon theater in Uptown.

Here are a few things from the film that infuriate me and just prove that the human race tends to be wasteful and reckless.

The majority of the fish caught is called "by-catch". That means that these fish are unwanted and so are allowed to die aboard the ship and tossed back into the ocean.

Fish "farming" actually kills more fish than it produces. Live fish are caught and ground up into fish meal to feed the fish in these "farms". The fish in the pens only grow in size, they do not reproduce. There is nothing produced using these methods, more is just being used.

Trolling is a method of fishing by which a net is weighted and drug along the bottom of the sea. Entire eco-systems are destroyed using this method of fishing. To use an image from the book, imagine if we were to do that in the African plains, if a net was drug through that land and lions, elephants, and everything else was destroyed. There would be an outcry, no lament is made for the beauty of the oceans.

Please see it. Read the book by Charles Clover. Visit http://endoftheline.com/film/.

Thank you.

Please check this out, it's important *Shark Related*

http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=a8545898-cf74-4476-b09d-66f0293d464b

words that I need to live by

"Both the Conservatives and the progressives seem to me to be full of the same kind of intolerance, arrogance, empty-headedness, and to be dominated by different kinds of conformism: in either case the dread of being left out of their reference group."

Thomas Merton
July 3, 1968

" How true it is that the great obligation of the Christian, especially now, is to prove himself a disciple of Christ by hating no one, that is to say, by condemning no one, rejecting no one. And how true that the impatience that fumes at others and damns them (especially whole classes, races, nations) is a sign of the weakness that is still unliberated, still not tracked by the Blood of Christ, and is still a stranger to the Cross."

Thomas Merton
July 22, 1963