Archive for category Religion
Genuinely worthwhile.
Posted by Tony Hatter in Angry Rants, Religion, The Dog, Uncategorized on October 18th, 2006
The US Mint is running television ads promoting thier commemorative coin collections. The ads depict various ordinary people in ordinary situations acting strangely because they are numismatists (coin collectors). There is a woman who is fishing through the penny tray next to her convenience store cash register, there is a man with a metal detector in his bedroom and a long-distance runner who stops and sits down on the race path mid-marathon all because they are inspecting coins they have run across.
First of all, these are not the type of people who want to “collect” coins they ordered from a catalogue. That’s not collecting, that’s shopping. The mint should be honest with themselves and admit that their target for these ads is the well-intentioned aunt/uncle/grandparent/neighbor/family-friend who is looking for a graduation/birthday/congratulations gift for little Timmy or Sarah.
More importantly, though, is the slogan emblazoned on the screen and read aloud for the blind at the end of the commercials. “Genuinely Worthwhile” Does this refer to coin collecting, or the US Mint as a whole? Is this a desperate attempt on the part of our government to make a push at catching back up with the Euro? Would stimulating the coin collecting industry really bolster the value of the dollar all that much? Am I reading too much into this? Probably. The mint just wants to sell pre-collected coin collections to unsuspecting doofuses who are either dumb enough not to realize that the fun of collecting things is the colleting and not the actual possesion, or are lazy enough to want to have a collection without having to go to the trouble of collecting anything.
Thank You for your time. This has been Genuinely Worthwhile.
P.S. The Dog has a halloween costume. He will be a lobster. Both he and I are thoroughly pissed.
In God We Trust
Posted by Tony Hatter in Religion, Uncategorized on August 30th, 2006
I was literally run off the road by another driver today. Nobody worry, there was ample space on the shoulder and I’m exaggerating quite a bit. When I said literally, what I really meant was kinda almost. But seriously, I did have an encouter on the road with another driver who, as best I can tell, must have been driving with her eyes closed. I won’t get into the details of where we were or who drove where, but having spent some time now sitting at home going over the situation in my head, the only logical explantion is that she was driving with her eyes closed.
Any normal, intelligent person would read that sentence and argue that for me to conclude that driving with her eyes closed was the only explanation may be true, but it is not very logical at all. Yes, I agree that the thought of driving with your eyes closed is not very logical at all, but I’ve left out one important detail… in her rear windshield was a sticker which read “In God We Trust” My logical conclusion is that she trusts so wholly in God that she felt confortable driving with her eyes closed.
I continued down the street wondering just how much trust one must have in God before this seems like a good idea. I’m not completely without faith in God (if pressed for an answer I would claim a very hazy western agnosticism with foundations in basic Buddhist philosophy) but I certainly don’t have faith enough to drive around blind. I have too much respect for other people’s lives and their own individual choices to endanger theirs with my own.
The best part of the story, though, and this is the (pardon my french) honest to God truth, is that while calculating the faith-to-rationality ratio involved with driving sans vision the friendly neighborhood mormons decided to test their God by darting across the busy four lane street on their bicycles.
Maybe it was by the hand of some benevolent God that Ms. No-Eyes didn’t squish Mr. Mormon, I don’t know (that’s the agnostic in me). Maybe by being what they percieve to be model human beings who choose good rather than evil they are insuring themselves against bad fate (that’s the buddhist in me). Mostly, though, I’d really just rather people leave God at home and watch where they’re going.