Interesting tidbits for the day

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It's been a long couple of weeks. I've gone from 30 pills a day to treat my pain and all the side effects down to one pill. I tried going without the steriods, but couldn't manage the pain at all; it seems to be holding steady at 5 mg. That's my excuse for not blogging regularly. But I've been reading others' blogs. Here's a few interesting bits I've come across today.

Check out Angela Hunt's blog today about Lexical-Gustatory synaesthesia. You'll have to read it to make sense of it.

Michelle Malkin has given me another reason to consider homeschooling my kids. There are so many books out there that teachers aren't even aware of the content before assigning them to kids. My son read the His Dark Materials series by Phillip Pullman in 8th grade. (I'm not providing a link to the book, because it's that bad). Teachers just give the kids a list of all the books they can read to get credit for book reports. The kids take a computerized test based on the book, and the teacher gets the grade from the computer. The teacher doesn't even have to be familiar with the book!

Never Ceese by Susan Dent is the Christian Fiction Bloggers Alliance book of the week. It's a fantastic read that brings vampires and werewolves into Christian fiction in an intriguing way. Her writing style is fantastic; she just teases with information a little at a time while writing these powerful characters with rich backstories. I'm not quite finished with it yet, so I'll save the rest of the review until I'm done.

We watched Click Sunday night with Doogie. I'm not a big Adam Sandler fan (his Lunchlady song has got to be one of the most obnoxious things ever written), so I usually try to avoid his movies, but the promos for this one really looked interesting. The theme is terrific: we only get one chance to live our lives, so we'd better get to it. There are even some Christians themes. What gets me is that the movie was so filled with profanity and sexual themes, that it was hard to see the real message. It was painful to watch certain scenes with my 15 year old son in the same room, but we can to an interesting conclusion at the end of the movie. Maybe movies with themes like this need to be coated with filth in order for today's generation to watch them. If the movie had been released without the dirty elements (i.e. Adam Sandler), no one under the age of 50 would watch it. So does the strong theme excuse the profanity?

Once more the left leaving mainstream media tries to blame all of the ills of the world on George Bush and his policies on Iraq. In the latest Time magazine, there's an article about the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and how crime, especially murders, has escalated in the last year. The writer links the hike in crime to the loss of federal monies to the War in Iraq. The frustrating part about the story: the writer makes his case.

Here's an unusual story for this time of year. All too often we hear about city's banning religous symbols from public Christmas displays. Chicago went way over the top with their ban on The Nativity Story. Here's something that will bring back a bit of your Christmas spirit. Germany and Austria are banning displays of Santa Claus saying that he detracts from the true reason for the season. I think they could be accused of going a bit over the top themselves.

Here's a cute video Jess made last year for Christmas. Check it out! And to bring back memories and make you laugh today, go here.

Have a great weekend!