There Is Always Hope

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
- Chuck Palahniuk

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
- Andy Dufresne

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.”
- Anne Lamott

Silly Advertising

Sometimes I like to see what kind of advertisements Google is placing in this space, just for kicks. Obviously, the advertisements are generally geared toward the content, making use of key words to assign "relevant" ads. At one point, I posted a series of explorations concerning my disillusionment and frustrations with the church as it exists today. Google responded by placing ads for churches and other religious organizations. Today, I hopped onto the front page of the blog to see what ads Google decided to send my way. What did I find? An ad for a new book demonizing the "ruling class", complete with a forward by Rush Limbaugh. I guess the algorithm missed the part where I expressed my misgivings with the Republican party and politicians in general. Either way, I got a good chuckle out of it.

And so on...

Politics, Politicians and Me

The time has come once again for election projection/coverage/news to dominate the television channels I watch, the newspapers I read and the conversations I overhear. Elections are tomorrow. Fantastic. Suffice it to say that I do not consider this to be the most wonderful time of the year.

Disclaimer: if this seems disjointed at times, I apologize. I've been working on this post off and on for a while; hopefully it doesn't show.

My frustration with and general dislike of our political system is well documented (if you know me well, that is). I consider politicians to be sleazy salesmen of a product that does nothing but dig a deeper hole than we already find ourselves living in. The irony is that my frustration towards the system (as a whole) and its participants (by and large) leads members of either "wing" (some of whom I am aware read this blog, and to them no offense is aimed) to believe that I am a lackey for the other end of the political spectrum. No joke: some of my more conservative-Christian-right wing-Republican friends/acquaintances believe that I am a crazy liberal, while many of my liberal-Democrat-left wing-Bush hating friends label me as a hopeless right winger. This fact makes me laugh to no end. Oh, lest I forget, some of my Libertarian buddies find me far too big government for their tastes (more on that later). Regardless of who you ask, the same point resonates: rhetorictocrats (copyright to Xander) of every political persuasion view me as too far one way or the other to fit with their party...and fortuitously enough, I agree. Let's dive a little deeper.