The journey from there to here
Gideon MacLeish's Articles » Page 19
March 12, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
On a couple of other threads, we've had a couple of people getting on extolling the benefits of eating organic foods. While I believe in eating healthy, and I believe in eating naturally, I am increasingly becoming of the opinion that eating organic is bad for the planet, and that, ironically, organic food eaters who claim to "think globally" are, in fact, bigger contributors to world hunger than fatso Americans who chow down on large pizzas. See, "organic" farming is basically one of the big...
March 11, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Finally! Something I can blame on George Bush! I woke up this morning to a sight. My clock read the right time, but my phone, my computer, and my car stereo did not. Ok, OK, the car stereo is MY problem, but it's rather new and I still don't know how to set the presets. A+ certified and I still can't fix the clock on a danged car stereo! My computer, of course, suffers from "not being connected to the Internet-itis". When George Bush made his idiotic decree changing daylight savings time (...
March 11, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Ireland had its potato famine. I believe that 2007 will be regarded as the year of the peanut butter famine. We all know about the Peter Pan/Great Value fiasco. And we've all either dismissed it as bunk or blamed it for every sniffle of the young year. But now a look at the local WalMart shows shelves nearly bare of peanut butter. When I walked in today, I had two choices: Skippy or Jif. Beings how I wasn't in the mindset to overpay for ANY peanut butter, I declined the choices offered. I ...
March 11, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
I spent part of my day on a quest. Well, the part of my day I didn't spend sleeping, or eating, or...well, those trivialities are unimportant. Anyway, I have a project for Interpersonal Speech. Big grade thingie, have to put together a good example of interpersonal speech from a movie and analyze it. Kinda cool, really, especially since I lucked out and have no partner (we'll forgive the irony of a solo project in an interpersonal speech class for the moment as it is wholly irrelevant to the ...
March 8, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
A funny thing happened to my hometown rag... See, I grew up in a smallish community in Oklahoma (after two years in a town where the stray dogs literally outnumber the people, I have a hard time calling Enid, Oklahoma a "small town"), and being close to it, I pay close attention to the newspaper, because if there's an event worth attending, it's a nice road trip and we're there. This paper has a forum on the forum service "Hey Martha!", ostensibly kept for Enid citizens and interested peop...
March 6, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Every once in awhile an article means something to me personally. This is one of those. Yahoo! News reported the Library of Congress' 2006 "inductions" to their sound archives. These are recordings that are considered historically significant. The article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070306/ap_en_ot/sound_archive The selections this year include the following: _"Uncle Josh and the Insurance Agent," Cal Stewart (1904). _"Il mio tesoro," John McCormack, orchestra conducted by Wal...
March 6, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Link It's official. Michael Eisner has now pretty much destroyed my childhood! In news today, an Eisner led group has purchased Topps, Inc., the baseball card trading company. Eisner, who pretty much destroyed Disney, is now poised to do the same to the trading card industry. While Topps has declined as "the card to have" over the past several years, for many years, it was THE card. After Bowman exited the scene in the early 50's, it was Topps that carried the ball all the way into the ...
March 6, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
In the wake of the demand that we triple federal spending and tax those bastard rich to pay for it, I thought I'd offer you the other side...the primary reason why I believe that EVERY government department, EVERY program, could stand at least a 10% cut. It's also a reason why I've come to loathe the way our bureaucracy so often works. For 5 1/2 years, as you all know, I was the manager of a group home for the developmentally disabled. I'd get to see the budgets "from the inside". Our...
March 5, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
As drugs seem to be on the rise in the country today, us Generation Xers are wont to harken back to a simpler time, our childhood in the seventies, between the reckless indulgence of the sixties and the almost ubiquitous consumption of drugs of either prescription or illicit varieties that seems to infect our current society. It is an idyllic dream, to be sure, but we had our drug, we had it in a complex combination of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. I twas available cheaply, often freely by th...
March 4, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
I'm enjoying the new wheels. We got to load up this morning and check out a church "in town". We've given up on the ones in our community; it will take a very specific number of things to happen before we cross the doorstep of the Baptist church in the community. But church is VERY important to us; not having a ride made it impossible for us to go previously. So we loaded up today and headed in. We checked out one church specifically because they have an active homeschool group, something...
March 4, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
It is, in my opinion, the single biggest cop-out used by CINOs (Christians in name only). They'll sport bumper stickers and T-Shirts that proclaim "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven", which, translated means "I can treat you like an ass; my God doesn't care as long as I pray about it at the end of the day". Now I have always considered myself a Christian. I am beginning to believe I'm a Christian heretic, though, because I don't buy it. Being a Christian to me means more than just sayi...
March 4, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Link By now you've all heard the news. Or if you haven't, it's one of those articles you skim and pass on by. The story of the bus crash involving students from the small Mennonite College of Bluffton University. For me, it would have passed as a footnote as well, except for one thing. See, in 1992, in my first halfhearted attempt at completing college, I attended a small but prohibitively expensive school in my hometown. I was 22, a few years out of high school, and I really didn't wan...
March 2, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
In all of my years, I have never been called to jury duty. So I was somewhat surprised to see my first ever jury duty notification in the mail today. I don't know why I've dodged it so far, but it was past time for me to get the call for jury duty. I mean, I've been an adult, a registered voter, for over 18 years. So now, on March 12, 2007, I will show up in district court and present myself for jury duty. And promptly attempt to have myself dismissed (I'm a FT college student, so I may ha...
February 28, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
Working in my little cubicle, with these days where my schedule consists largely of working, school, eating and sleeping, I eat out far more often than I should. It's usually a pick between "do I want to go out and GET dinner, or can I have it delivered?" Delivery consists of three choices: pizza, pizza and pizza. Three restaurants, basically. Now, technically, there's also a sandwich shop, but unless I can get my coworker to go in with me, that's usually out as they have a minimum order fo...
February 28, 2007 by Gideon MacLeish
A recent discussion on debt free living got me to thinking. Well, that and the truck we just purchased. We want to live debt free, we're moving to it, but sometimes, in certain situations, debt such as a car payment is essential. See, when we moved here, it was initially my intention to try to buy a car and "make payments in advance" and trade my way up. Big mistake. And one that cost us a lot in the long term. At the end of six months, I counted the costs, and we had spent over $2000 on...