The church can kiss my.......!

I just read an article and it's struck a chord, so maybe I should just stop writing right now and calm down.... I think not.

Apparently the righteous forces at the Vatican have some problems with the new James Cameron creation "Avatar", with that nations media denouncing the work due to it's nature based overtones. According to Gods word on Earth (the Pope), it is wrong to worship nature. Fancy that. Paying proper homage to the one thing that creates life, that which gave you the spark, and that which can end you if it sees fit. I say it, but really from a personal standpoint I refer to 'it' as 'She'. The Mother is not something to be cast aside so lightly as the Pope would have us do, but something to be revered, and thanked for allowing us the days we live. It seems to me that the revealed word has destroyed more than the Mother's mysteries have given. But in my fury,I digress....

The Vatican has really got to get it's head out of Gods ass, and realize that Avatar is just a movie. A story designed to thrill, with intense imagery, and incredible special effects. It's not some devilish subversion designed to throw down the gauntlet before the church and take up arms in some unholy crusade. Just a movie.

If anything the Vatican should take it upon itself to leave Pagans alone. After all who are we hurting? Just because I like to sit under a tree and ponder the mystery and wonder of Nature, and what the Mother has offered me, does not make me evil. It does however seem to me that anyone who would willingly force their beliefs upon me, has some kind of evil taint. Maybe they should spend more time examining the world and how they fit in it, rather than going around telling people how wrong they are. I find it offensive to be able to read in the news how intolerance creeps into an institution which supposedly preaches peace, love, and unity for all mankind. But then again I was a Catholic before I was a Pagan, and it wasn't until of late that I had realized that I was happier being a tree-hugging, dirt-worshipping Pagan, rather than kneeling before an altar of deceit, bowing to a God who commands you to have no other God before him. Jealous much?

Now that was a rant. A short one, but a rant nonetheless......

Blessed Be.

Damned potato chips taste so good!

I got fat.

The holiday season hit, and I relaxed, ate some chips, had some cake, brownies, more chips, fudge, and on and on...... Oh throw in some Turkey while you're at it.

So I knew it was time for a change. My health is something that I need to retain while I can, because I really don't feel like becoming part of a large demographic (That wasn't meant to be a pun), so now I know change must occur. I made myself a new years resolution, or rather a promise, that I would curb the fast food quite a bit. I know McD's and the King are out to kill me, because I smile every time I willingly take their poison. But now that's all changed.

At one point in my life I would have said that any man who had a problem looking himself in the mirror was weak. That they needed a smack and a good yelling at for a half hour to make them see the light. Well now I look myself in the mirror and my gut sticks out, and I'm pissed. I spent a lot of years shoveling crap down my throat and kept thin because my metabolism was high. I gained some weight, and lost a bunch while on tour, but then came home and blossomed into the fine individual I am now. I'm bigger than I have ever been in my life, and most people would look and say that I'm not that big. Nuts to them. The measure I use to determine my largeness is not just my pants waist, or the scale, but something simpler. My shoes.

Huh?!? Shoes?!?!?!? What are you going on about Freeman??? Shoes. If you have a gut, try and sit down with your pants on and done up, and try and tie your shoes on your feet. It is NOT a pleasant feeling having your stomach crammed up into your chest, all the while you have to huff and puff to keep the blood flowing to your brain. In point and fact, it sucks. Other than having ones testicles slapped, it's quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable feeling one can experience. Now I experience it on a daily basis, and hate myself because of it. The thing that kicked me when I was down was being on a military exercise last weekend, and finding that I was exceedingly winded at the end of 3kms. If there's one thing that will make me change it has to be the level of anger I experience.

Now obviously I'm not a fitness guru, nor am I a motivational speaker. Heck some days it takes everything I have just to get out of bed in the morning, and my wife would testify that it takes significant effort just to get me to do something. I'm lazy and it shows. Now I'm fat and lazy, and it shows more so. So change is coming, otherwise I'll become a one man cheese burger apocalypse.

Current Weight = 219 = Not Happy

Time.....

New Year. New post. What to write about?......

I'm sitting at work listening to the song birds of the Celtic Woman troupe sing their catalogue, and their melodious tones are soothing. I think I need that sort of comfort in the new year. Looking across the lunch room at a newspaper my co-workers was holding up the headline read something like "Taliban Winning - Study Shows". An off-handed but sobering reminder that I had participated in a war that people believe we're losing. Maybe I should step back a bit, and think of happier things.

The space shuttle has only five more runs until she retires, and then we still have little wait until her replacement shows up. Somehow when I think of the new rocket coming in, it's like watching a mid-life crisis happening. You get rid of your wife, rough around the edges but had taken care of your kids, for a slim sweet looking little slip of a thing. Strange how that comparison seems to fit. It's a year for change, or at least it has great potential for change. Honestly though that can be said for any year. We change, the moment changes, our environment changes, and so on. What is life without change? Time is the one thing that changes yet seems never changing. We measure time, and watching the numbers count up (or in some cases down) we measure change, but time is the one constant in the universe that everything is beholden to. Humans and even animals and plants recognize time, if not on a technological and quantifiable level, then at least on a base level. Everything understands that there are cycles we must adhere to, even the stars themselves. What would it be like to master time? Somehow I think if we were ever to realize fully the nature of time, either we would evolve much more quickly, or our minds would burn out from the sheer gravity of the knowledge. Time is truth, and with time all things are possible. To master time, is to become a God of sorts. Imagine if we could master time.....

If there was the chance to be able to traverse time, to change it, to make decisions based on the knowledge you have now, what would it be? Would you travel back to rid the world of a maniacal dictator, or travel forward to see the future and what we've become? Would you use that power to make yourself more comfortable, or to try and help people? Would your hands be tired from meddling in the affairs of universe, or would your eyes be tired from observing the world?

What would you do if you could control time?