credit where credit is due for Obama on gay marriage…

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So yesterday President Obama officially voiced his personal support of gay marriage.

Ironically enough, already he’s gotten a lot of criticism from both sides – some that are offended that he would support gay people to begin with, and others that feel he should’ve done a lot more a lot sooner. And while I can’t say that I disagree that it’s disappointing that we haven’t legally put this one to bed with the same-sex partner of its choice yet, I still think you’ve got to give the guy credit for trying because being the first sitting president to announce his support of gay marriage is still pretty significant, in that he probably still wants to get reelected this fall and there’s already plenty on the table between the economy and the wars to keep him scrambling right up until November!

But for me, I kind of look at it like I did with healthcare reform – it certainly wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it was a step in the right direction and with a system as big and spread out and lethargic as US politics tend to be, that might be just about the best that we can honestly hope for. Sure, I’d love to wake up tomorrow and read the headlines stating that gay people have magically been granted all of the same rights and privileges as straight people overnight, just as I’d like to find that our healthcare system has been overhauled to refocus on compassionate care for all instead of merely those who can afford it … but the reality of both situations is that there are still a lot of people in our country who oppose each of these things, whether it be for biblical or profit-oriented or even just blatantly-ignorant motives, and ultimately it’s going to take some time for us to weed through all of that crap to really address the issues in a way that will work for over 350 million Americans.

And yeah, it sucks because in the meantime gay people continue to struggle with being treated like second-class citizens, but I feel like we need to at least give our current president credit for taking this first step while he’s still in public office because frankly, he’s the only one who actually has. It’s not like gay people have just now started wanting to get married and this is a new issue that Bush, and Clinton, and Bush Sr., and Reagan never had to deal with before! And you can sure as hell bet that Mitt Romney isn’t going to go there because he’s openly against same-sex marriage, so as easy as it is to pick President Obama apart for his delicate use of the word “evolving” or the argument that he should be doing so much more, at least he’s doing something and in the snail-paced world of American politics, I think that he deserves a boatload of credit just for that.

Thin Post : Is it impossible to be healthy in America???

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I really hate reading articles like this because they make it sound like we’re completely helpless against our own surroundings.

I mean, sure, it’s hard to be healthy when junk food is so much cheaper than healthy food and it’s readily available on every corner, and whenever you turn on the TV at night, you’re lambasted with shiny ads that just make all of those flavors just look so juicy and delicious … but it’s not like someone is literally forcing you to eat all of that crap instead of gnawing on a carrot stick or something that won’t go straight to your gut the next day. It’s not really fair for us to boast about having the freedom to do whatever we want! in this country if we’re then afterwards going to bitch about how we don’t have any control over being fat because it’s society’s fault…

It’s all about willpower, and I know this far too well because I struggle with it constantly myself, but nothing is impossible – you just have to make the decision of which is more important to you … eating that cookie now which will be gone in 30 seconds, or feeling better about yourself 6 months from now when you’re 40 pounds lighter than you used to be.

It’s certainly not easy, but it’s a cop out to point back at the world and say that you’d be healthy if it weren’t for all of these sugars that we put in everything nowadays, or if it wasn’t for all of the marketing persuading me to eat unhealthy foods. You can’t bitch about not wanting the government to regulate every factor of your lives and then also throw your hands up and say that it’s just not possible to be healthy with the way things are today.

Just to be clear, I’m certainly not in favor of taxing or trying to regulate junk food … even though I think what they’ve done to school lunch programs is a travesty and they could be doing a lot better when it’s the public dollar being spent to feed our children … but as for telling you and I how to spend our own money? That’s where we have to take some personal responsibility and say, “No thanks – I’ll pass on the Ding-Dongs today because I’m trying to lose some weight.”

Excuses never lead to results. Americans, myself included, tend to have a lot of them, and that’s something that we all have to work individually at to change.

Scribble’ing away…

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My wife hasn’t really used her Nintendo DS in a while, so I thought I’d commandeer it and maybe pickup one of the myriad of RPGs that have apparently been made for it. Instead, she already had Scribblenauts in it, which I picked up for her last Christmas because it was on sale and looked kinda cute, and I’ve pretty much been playing that ever since!

I knew that the big draw was that you could create just about any object from real life in the game, but I didn’t realize just how awesome the parameter of any object could actually be! A couple of examples…

  • Playing one puzzle, I had two buttons that I had to hold down both at the same time. I tried creating a BRICK, but I had trouble getting it to balance right on the button. I needed something with a wider base, so instead I tried making a BEAR … which then proceeded to eat me! On my retry, I substituted my bear for something a bit less carnivorous and went with a COW, which stood there just as dumb and happy as can be and held the button down so that I could get my star. 🙂
  • Another fun puzzle, I had to help a farmer collect some flowers, but in the way were both an angry bee and then later a piranha in the river I had to cross. I first tried to play nice with the bee, thinking that if I gave it some HONEY, it would just let me pass … but no dice. Alright, bee – if that’s the way you want to play it … next I made a FLAMETHROWER and most definitely succeeded in killing the bee, but unfortunately I also managed to burn down the tree that its hive was in, not to mention the barn that the tree was standing next to … so, my bad.
  • When I finally got past the bee without resorting to arson, I knew that there weren’t many ways to skin a piranha, but I quickly found that dumping some POISON in the water managed to do the trick! One of the “achievements” that I got for completing that one was for Bio Terrorism, so at least I’ve got that going for me…
  • And lastly, my favorite of all was just in the free-play section because that’s when I discovered that you can even create dinosaurs in Scribblenauts, too! My first was obvious – a T-REX … and he proceeded to eat me. Then I made a STEGOSAURUS, thinking that I’d give my next T-REX somebody to play with other than me. He ate the stegosaurus and then proceeded to eat me. It was then that I realized I needed some sort of escape mechanism, and remembering his amusingly tiny arms, I crafted myself a ZEPPELIN and took it to the drop of the screen. From there I was free to make many, many T-Rexes, which surprisingly just sort of left each other alone, mostly feasting on whatever other random animals like KANGAROOS and SHARKS that I tossed in front of them just to see what would happen.

I haven’t quite figured out if there’s an easy way to take videos or screenshots of the things that you come up with, but it looks like I’ve still got a lot of goofing around to do!

GIANT NICE FLYING WINGED DRIVEABLE BANANA?!

😯

Well played, Sir! Very well played, indeed…

Mini Main Street Electrical Parade

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As much as the soundtrack just drives me absolutely nuts, this is still pretty cool. I’ve seen some of these miniature buildings and parade floats in The Art of Disney and needless to say … they’re not cheap! … so it’s pretty amazing not only to see such a huge collection of the models assembled to look just like the park is in real life, but then to also animate the beloved electric parade to tour the streets in a glowing spectacle of music and lights? Very cool.

You can find more by the artist at bygeorgeithinkyouvegotit.com.

Thin Post : I Eat My Sugar Cereal…

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So I’m trying an interesting experiment this week – I’ve actually started eating sugared cereal again.

My reasoning is this … my sweet tooth has really been aching a lot lately, and it’s driving me to splurge on cookies and candy bars and other high calorie treats that don’t really have any place in my diet. For a while I’ve been going through various flavors of Cheerios – I’d have a bowl when I got back from walking the dog each night – and I had settled on Cheerios simply because of all of their heart health claims … it just always seemed like it was a healthier cereal, even though I was eating Honey-Nut Cheerios and Chocolate Cheerios and Peanut Butter Cheerios, not necessarily the plain, old boring ones…

Well, the other week I finally thought to stop and look at the boxes, and I realized that honestly, a serving of Honey-Nut Cheerios isn’t really all that different than a serving of something like Cinnamon Toast Crunch (which I looooove!), so I figured – why not swap out one for the other, and this way I get a little more sweetness for my itch without splurging on half a package of cookies that I know I don’t have the control to keep in the house right now anyways! So far it’s worked out quite well – I do have to be careful and make sure that I leave the box in the pantry because otherwise if I bring it to my desk with me, there’s a tendency to want to fill up a second bowl instead of sticking to my predetermined amount, but I’m not craving chocolate afterwards and I can kind of look forward to it as a little reward when I get home, so ultimately I think that’s a win-win!  😀

P.S. I couldn’t possibly use that headline without also including this video, so rock on, Beets fans…

retirement on tortoise island

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Last link for the night!!!  

86 year-old guy lives on his own private island that he bought in the Indian Ocean 50 years ago for £8,000 – not too shabby of a way to retire, if you ask me!

Just a man and his giant tortoises, in a veritable paradise…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdqTmBGcg3M