some ramblings.

So I've come to the conclusion that there are really three things that a person should not try and comprehend. One is the glory of God. Another is the vast and unimaginable hugeness of space and creation. Another, which I found out today, is what a person might or might not be thinking befor death.

My Grandmother is presently in the hospital. She is on a breathing machine, and is basicly in that state of "There is no pain". Which is to say, "The state just befor death or becoming a vegitable"

Sitting in her room I came to these three conclutions.

The suddeness of this whole thing has done a great deal for showing me just how fragile life is. Which is suprisingly fragile if you ever do start to think about the vastness of creation. As a matter of fact, you might take a crack at thinking about the hugeness of creation, its quite an amazing creation...after all, have you ever looked up on a clear night?

Scrooge and a Dead Guy.

Its sunday, and this is the last night for "the Gospel according to Scrooge" my churches christmas play. I play Jacob Marley, which is sweet cause he's cool...although it takes like and hour to do my make up and costume stuff. I'll try and get some of the pictures if I can (hard to take pictures of myself on stage).

Man, four shows in a row can take a toll on a guy...I'm tired.

Five to Twelve and two days to an Art show.

so its five to twelve and I've got the blog bug really bad today...sad part is I don't have anything to blog about. Hopefully I'll have a picture or two scanned into the computer and posted up tonight or tomorrow. And I've got my final project due next week, so with any luck I'll get them posted asap.

PS: Any one interested in art: There is an Exit Portfolio Art Show this wed. (Dec 3) at TTC. Starts at 5:30 and ends at 7 (pm). Its in the 410 building (student lounge/admissions building) Come check out some top notch stuff from the Visual Communications Department.

We got Greed

Heres an eye opener...
it is estemated that world hunger could be solved...cost: 30 billion dollars a year
it is estemated that the world water crises could be solved...cost: 4 billion dollars a year

In 2007 the US had 301,139,947 people the number is now more BUT we'll go with that.
it is estemated that the average american will spend 800 dollars on Christmas this year (down about 100 dollars from last year)

that means we will spend about 240,911,957,600...it would take 15% of that a year to SOLVE WORLD HUNGER...

Do you know what 15% of 800 dollars is? $120

Yeah, tell me how alot of the 300 million americans are kids and how alot of them are not spending 800 dollars on christmas bla bla bla. Ok, cut the number in half, $120,455,978,800 spent, 28% solves the problem. which is $224 per person for 150 million people.

So what am I saying? that every one needs to go out with their $120 or $224 and solve world hunger? well, yeah...if some one could actually mobilize the effort then thats exactly what needs to happen...but I know its not going to. (minus an act of God, which I am so up for if He is)

What I'm saying is that maybe we need to look at what we spend our money on. Maybe its time we stop worrying about how much we have and how much we can get and start looking at how much we can do with what we have already.

Maybe, just maybe, every now and again we can stop getting paid to work and turn around and Pay to work. I know, its a novel idea, its like sliced bread, or grace and forgiveness...take your pick.

Maybe its time we did the right thing and didn't ask for anything in return.

We got enough Greed to go around...anybody got Jesus?


::EDIT:: Thank you Dan for correcting my math (really big numbers clogged me up that day) I make no claim to be a math wiz, so I've made the changes. .15 is now 15, so on and so forth.
(I wonder what it is when you spread it amongs the all of the people in the top 10% of the worlds economy? not just the US?)


the new magic number:: $120 dollars a year.
To quote that stupid insurance commercial "wow...thats a new pair of shoes"...

We got Gas...

So I'm heading out the door and realize that I don't have any gas in the car, (about a gallon if I'm lucky) and I get twenty bucks to put in...figured I'll get enough to last the rest of the week right? Well I fill up and basicly get a full tank with twenty bucks...$20! thats about twenty bucks less than it cost to fill up about a month ago. Needless to say I am very happy about this downward spike in gas prices. It came to late to actually help anybody of course, but I think if it stays down...or gets lower, (gasp!) then we might actually see a turn around!

Lets do the time line shall we?

-0-0-0-

-Gas went up...Sky high would be an understatement.

-People still had to go to work, so they had to buy gas. (or take the bus...which had to buy gas)

-People had less money to buy STUFF with.

-The companies that make the STUFF made less money...and had to start laying people off.

-People got layed off...which means they are making even less money...and buying even less STUFF.

-The companies that make the STUFF are forced to cry to the government because nobody can afford to buy their STUFF and they are not making any money and they don't want to fire any more people and they need a bail out.

-Congress does what it does best...absolutly nothing usefull at all. (Any one hear how much of that 700 BILLION dollars actually went to bail out the economy? and how much are they trying to "Save just in case"?)

-Now all the sudden some guys up top of the real world powers (the oil industry) get something done and the oil prices start to drop... (either that or we took over all the oil fields in the middle east by force, either way is fine by me)

-I can drive my car again!

-Gas drops so low that I can drive my car AND buy STUFF when I get there!

-the companies start making money again!

-the companies can afford to HIRE people again!

-about this time the world ends.

-0-0-0-


See? when you let a simple person like me figure it out...it becomes simple...don't you think that timeline is simple? I know you do.

Of course this just means that the greed that has implanted itself at the top of economic development and big business will have to stay in the closet for a few months...ok, so alot of few months, like a couple of years, what ever. Sadly, I doubt this will happen because greed has a hard enough time not showing up for thrity seconds in big business, much less a few years...

I'm sure the president of Sunoco is like "I'm Lossing so much money! Look, I'm making what we made five years ago when people could have their cars and drive them too!"

God forbid any one look back to when gas was a dollar a gallon and realize the people who owned the oil were still WAAAY richer than the people who bought the oil.

God forbid any of the WAAAY richer people say "Wow...I can live off 100,000 dollars a year instead of like 1.6 million (which I'm sure is an understatement)

Its funny, because when people have so much money they become so scared to live off of less...but they don't even know what to do with all the money they have in the first place!!

The Rooster:: minor invasive surgery.

AH!!! My baby has a leak! (exaust leak that is) so now I get to take the driver side header off and do some stud threading and fancy wrench work to get it fixed. GRR. stupid BBK manifold...why must you do this to me!?

For you who don't know what the heck i'm talking about...don't even worry about it. lol, PEACE!

(short blog to make up for the really long blog earlier.)

Warning :: Political Rant

America has selected our next president. Personally I think he was the wrong choice, do I think John McCain would do a better job? Simply put, No. I voted for John McCain because of his stance on certain issues, the major issue being right to life vs. right to choice. When Barrack Obama said that answering the question of when life begins was “Above his pay grade” He lost all chance of me voting for him because he has supported Partial birth abortions, if it is above his pay grade to choose when life begins than he should not have voted either way on partial birth abortion. I will not get into the life issue right now though.
I have heard people say that Obama is the antichrist…I can tell you that I don’t think he is. But I do think he has the ability to steer the United States into a very bad direction.
First I’ll talk about his views on the military.
He wants to bring our troops home quickly. Great, I say get them home as soon as practically possible. Problem:: if you remove all US activity from Iraq and the new government isn’t capable of standing up for itself Al Quida will regain control and we will have some serious trouble to deal with.
I don’t know that what we did when we invaded Iraq was called for, some times I think we need to stop sticking our nose in other peoples business. But I know that removing Sudam Husain from power was Good, removing Al Quida from power was Good.
Leaving that country to fend for itself if it is not ready to, would not only be Bad, but it would be Wrong. I don’t care if it was G. W. Bush who put us there, if Barack Obama lets that country fall apart then it will be his fault, NOT Bush’s. At least Bush refused cut and run from his mistake. What we are doing in Iraq right not basically comes down to owning up to our mistake. Barack Obama (and others) want to act like we can swipe it under the rug. This will hurt us greatly.
Last on the Military issue is this:: I don’t think he has any idea of how the Military works or what it stands for. “Don’t give some one who doesn’t know how to shoot a gun the key to the worlds biggest guns.”
Secondly I want to talk about his views on foreign policy.
He has said that he will talk with world leader that we have not talked to.
America used to stand up to terror like Popeye with a can of Spinach. There are very few pages in the “How to deal with Terrorists” Handbook, page one :: “DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS” page two:: “SEE PAGE ONE” page three:: “Up hold freedom and JUSTICE…and the American way.”
But this isn’t just about Terrorists, its about all the leaders out there who don’t uphold freedom and justice.
The other “western” countries don’t seem to have some of the problems we do when it comes to terrorists. I don‘t know of to many countries that hate, lets say, France. But that is because these countries focus on America because for so long America has stood as the symbol of the “western” world, and recently it is because we have refused to back down from our beliefs.
America is the country that has been big and bad enough to stand up and say, “That’s it.” We stood up and told Communism to stuff it, even when it meant ending up bloody and bruised. When Terrorists demand the US Government pay for hostages, the NAVY Seals suit up and make payments in shipments of lead, “from gun barrel with love”. We were GI Joe, we keep the bad guys in check so others don’t have to and some times, every now and again, we are Superman, when nobody else can get the job done.
America may have a bad reputation, but if I learned anything in school its that standing up for what is Good and Right often gives you a bad reputation. For a long time America was the star jock and the guy who did what was right…it was the American dream. I think about playing cops and robbers… “You’ll never take me alive copper, bang!” there was no negotiating, there was the Good guy and the Bad guy.
Now we are starting to act like every body else. We are putting away the old beliefs. We are putting away American Pride. We are losing jobs because “Proudly Made In America” doesn’t mean as much to us as it used to. We want to make friends with every body. We want to talk with every body. Even Jesus didn’t talk with all the people all the time. Some times you just have to tip the tables over and say “That’s it.”
But I’ve ranted enough.
All I can do is hope and pray that Barack Obama turns out to be a good president. I pray that he does half as much good as he says he will, (although not necessarily the “good” that he says he will do) I pray that he does change what needs to be changed and he leaves what needs to be left. I pray that he wakes up every morning refreshed and goes to sleep every night with out worry. I pray that no harm comes to him or his family while he is in office. I pray that no disasters strike his term in office. I pray that he will be good for America. And I pray that others will support him in this same way.
I could not support him at the polls because he does not stand for what I stand for, but I can and will support him this way, because he is the next president of the United States of America.

The One and Only

so, I thought about starting another blog to blog about "serious" stuff and not just post pics about cars and my photo stuff. It was tempting. But then I realized that that would be dumb, why do I need two different blogs? You don't have two different Chucks walking around, one to be serious and one to talk about other stuff. Its just one of me.

I relize that we have this idea that serious stuff and funny stuff don't go together for some reason. Why is it that what we do for fun and what we do for "serious" reasons are so easy to seperate? But we do it all the time, we are one person at work, one person at school, and a totally different person at home. And then one day all those selfs have to collide, and that gets weird fast.

So this will be the only Blog, so if I follow this up with pictures of me burning out in my car (most likely) then you will just have to deal with that cause thats who I am. Peace.

A post about guy stuff...namely, a car.

This is not the Rooster...that is saved for later (when I get a Card reader for my Cannon)

But I would have no problems with this car being mine...haha, yeah...right...that can't even happen in my dreams. enjoy.

I hung a u-turn and parked on the wrong side of the street to take pictures of this car...people must have figured I was crazy...standing in the middle of the street taking pictures of a car...I'm a car guy, so sue me...

and so the blogging begins.

Well, this is the first thing in theRooster Gallery...More to Come.

PS: Thanks a freaking lot Jenna...Gr.