John Wesley Thomas "Red Jet" MacMhurchaidh’s Neighborhood
I really do make this face ALL the time...
I think it's when I am concentrating.
A good friend sent me a Christmas card this year that happens to be the best Christmas card I have ever received or seen anywhere. (It even has a picture of a snow bunny on it.*) I want to share the card with you as a wish for all of us in 2010 and beyond.
"From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted."
And, as a backlash.... Repeal the Irish Blasphemy Law
From the link:
"
This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.
We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.
Publication of 25 blasphemous quotes
In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern.
Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalised, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement.
Campaign begins to repeal the Irish blasphemy law
We ask Fianna Fail and the Green Party to repeal their anachronistic blasphemy law, as part of the revision of the Defamation Act that is included within the Act. We ask them to hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution."
I'm ready to join the Irish Atheists myself!
Happy New Year! Big hugs and lots of love to you all!
Let's all hope (and pray, if that's your thing) that next year and next decade will be better than the ones we just survived through. Or at least no worse (lowered expectations, much?).
I'll be on my couch at midnight with Mr. LT, having a cheap bottle of bubbly, watching TV. The kitties will either be asleep or having the midnight crazies.
We made it, together. Whoof.
Rachel is home. She went home yesterday after six harrowing days in the hospital. She looks great. Her mom and dad don't look so hot. She had the pericardial drain removed, but still has the pleural drain in place. She developed one bloodclot in one arm and three bloodclots in the other arm. I don't know if she had to go home on oxygen. They were deciding that yesterday when I left.
She has to inject herself with anticoagulants to get rid of the bloodclots.
Her blood sugar got all out of whack while she was in. "Did she develope diabetes, too?" her stricken mom asked me.
Well, as of yesterday morning, the blood sugar went back to normal.
All of her blood tests are coming back negative and the biopsy of the heart tissue was also negative. This is VERY good news. It appears as if she was stricken back in September with a virus (H1N1? wouldn't surprise me). This virus inflammed her heart which caused fluid to back up around it and then the lung and just sent her entire system into a spiral.
The blood clots are probably from all the lines and IVs she had in, so, God willing and the creek don't rise, she will go through a (probably long) recovery period and put this all behind her.
Her older sister, Jessica, did a great job of taking care of the home, the animals and making sure her mom and dad got their immune systems boosters so they didn't get sick from all the stress. Great job, Jess! ;)
I've been on "vacation" since Christmas day. I was supposed to go to brunch at a coworker's house but I felt crappy and stayed in. The roommate was back home, so that means that I had 4 uninterrupted days of couching, internetting, and napping. It was glorious. He came back Monday, and that was also the day that I left the house for the first time since Thursday. While on the bus to meet my BFF at the hotel bar where he works, I was pickpocketted - some jerkstore stole my bus pass and pass case out of my coat pocket. There was only a day left on the pass and my expired library card, some movie ticket stubs, my Kerry/Edwards sticker from 2004 and a package of dental cement for my crown. What a haul! Luckily for me I had my new pass already, so I just bought a case and am ready for action, but still...
The rest of the week was uneventful. I spend most of the day Tuesday waiting for my Best Gift to Myself Ever:
My big NYE plan is venturing to the corner store to buy some milk. New Year's Day will bring me Sherlock Holmes with the BFF and his wife. It's a new theater with VIP seating and a bar! And it's next to Target! I can't argue with any of that.
Since you've put up with this piffle for so long, I will include a pic of kiki and the Christmas tree.
Avatar at the Imax was sold out for the rest of the evening. Which was fine with me as I work at 6 am, and would rather have seen a shorter film, anyway. We'll save Avatar for a night I have no work the next day.
I enjoyed Sherlock Holmes very much. The visual imagery was wonderful. I always love dreary old London. The music was enjoyable. Lots of strings with the occasional Irish, even a little country twang thrown in. The banter between Holmes (RDJ) and Watson (Jude Law) was lots of fun. They are generally easy on the eyes and they both have amazing forearms if you're into that sort of thing. The two girls were fun, too.
There was good action, there was a bit of deduction and reasoning.
There was, of course, too much action.....too many fight scenes with unlikely and wacky happenings. They always get these going and I am rolling my eyes or ready to zzz out until they are over.
However, in spite of those, I still thought it deserved a 3 out of 5 stars! Quite enjoyable!
In brief: benefit e-fiction today and tomorrow only for authors Spider and Jeanne Robinson. They need money b/c Jeanne's battling cancer and even the Canadian system can't cover it all.
They are great authors and even better people. So buy some fiction from their friend and help out.
(Also, buy all of their books and read them till they fall apart. Then buy new copies. If you are interested in the human condition and how compassion helps. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll do both at the same time.)
"Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased; thus do we refute entropy." -- Spider Robinson
