First winter’s snowfall; Flakes falling from a dark sky; Morning: All is white.

The timing of this holiday is perfect. Coming near the end of the year, there are basically 11 months upon which to look back on. As my wife reminded me last weekend, a lot have happened this year. As a matter of fact, I think this has been the most eventful year of my life. Here are the things I have to be thankful for this year:

May: We both graduated from Cornell with excellent grades; I had two job offers and selected one in the last week of school.

The movie was great and a faithful adaptation of the play. There were only a few differences I didn’t like as much.

--------------- Warning: Spoiler ——————— A lot of the smaller singing parts were converted into speaking parts and that kinda ruined some parts for me. For example, when Angel saves Tom Collins and they sing, it’s a little more evident that they like each other. This isn’t really revealed until later. Also, some of the dialogue isn’t as effective when spoken when compared to singing.

Sarong Party Girl (SPG), who ironically does very little blogging about parties, wrote this hasty article, tackling an issue she talks about a lot - relativism and good & evil. The key point of her post, which has been a theme in some of her other posts is:

At the end, whatever we do, there will never be more good than evil, and good can never triumph, because from someone else’s point of view, what is good for you might not be good for him. We sympathize with the victors as history is written by them.

Rent comes out tomorrow! Ever since I saw the play in NYC I thought about what it would be like as a movie. Tomorrow I’ll get to find out and I’ll let you all know what I thought.

Mauricio replied to my post yesterday in order to placate my fears about his changing. (You can read it by clicking on comments below now that it’s been approved) In his post, he reminded me of why most of us blog (if our blogs are not simply parroting the news). We blog to sort out our feelings. We write what we would write in private in a journal or diary. But, unlike those devices, we put our lives out on display - really put our hearts on our sleaves. I know I’ve written some blog posts that we so slanted towards the way I was feeling that day, that they don’t represent the average me. They represent me happy/mad/sad/etc. I knew that in the back of my head and his comments just reminded me of the fact.

I just wanted to free flow some ideas today since there isn’t any one thing I wanted to blog about that I felt was worth justifying an entire post.

First up, I think I’ve seen these ads on VH1 or MTv when my wife is watching them (I don’t like anything on those channels) - Elexa - a new feminine sexual line of products by the makers of the Trojan condom. As they have just launched the brand, the commercials are nice and cryptic - of course the reason for that is because Madison Avenue wants you to be all curious so that you go and check out what’s up with this product. I had no idea what it was. Looking online, I see that it consists of freshinging cloths, a lube, and some condoms. I have no idea what the freshening cloth is, but from their description using “polite” words, I think it’s a quick way to clean up after sex without going to shower. An interesting idea, although as a married man in my own house - I’d rather just get in the shower. I could understand if you were having sex somewhere else and had to be discrete or something and couldn’t shower - then they’d be pretty useful.

I’m feeling really frustrated right now because, for the last week, I have felt that I had a picture idea or blog idea, but when I sit down to write or get my camera in hand, suddenly I can’t think of it. It’s right at the edge of my brain and I wish I could figure out what’s blocking the way or why I can’t just let it flow like usual. It’s especially unnerving when I read other blogs and see their thoughts flowing freely - easily translated from the firing of synapses to bits on a server somewhere.

Recently, all they’ve been talking about on NPR is the Intelligent Design debate. Basically, some people say that when students are taught evolution during biology, they should be informed that not everyone believes in evolution. Opponents say that religion has no place in a biology class. I agree; religion should be taught in a religious studies class. But what is so hard about saying the following:

Today we will learn about evolution. There are some people, including scientists, out there who do not believe in evolution and these are their reasons. Instead they believe that because of all above reasons, that the complexity of life must have been designed or aided by an intelligent super-being. However, the majority of scientists DO believe that evolution is a fact and here are their reasons for believing that evolution is true. In the end, there is no way to prove which is right so it is up to you to decide what you believe in. For the purposes of this biology class, we shall assume evolution to be true.

Although Sony still claims the right to use copy protections in their CDs, this BBC News story reported that they have abandoned the software I’ve been blogging about due to the fact that virus writers have written exploits for the software. And, in a one-two punch, Microsoft announced in THIS BBC News story that they have told their spyware program to treat Sony’s software as spyware! They will be removing it from their users’ computers. Again, this could all have been avoided if Sony had just let people copy their CDs to their computers. They bought it LEGALLY dagnabbit and if they want to put it on their computer or combine it with music from others CDs and create a custom mix CD then they should be able to do that.