…[I]n this life, when something goes wrong, you should always look for a way to hold yourself responsible, even if you’re not the principal bad actor. Why? So you can beat yourself up and feel bad? No, because if you can think of things you could have done to prevent the problem, you will remember to do those things in similar situations in the future, and because you will generally have a better attitude toward your responsibilities. Responsibility implies control. Find the thing you did wrong, and you will find something you can do right in the future.

- Steve H. (Hog On Ice)

I hate how commercial Christmas has become.

That’s something that most of us hear quite often around this time of year, and since I’m a Christian, it’s natural to assume that I say it because I feel the commercialism somehow belittles the miracle of Christ’s birth, but that’s not it at all.

I don’t care much for Christmas. As a rule, I tend to think that I should celebrate Christ’s birth, life, and death in little ways every day of my life. Christmas and Easter symbolize important things, but the celebrations just ring hollow to me, as people tend to act as though celebrating these holidays is somehow important to our faith. Truthfully, I can’t remember any Scripture that tells us to celebrate Christ’s birth or resurrection in any way other than to live by his Commandments. No, my problem with Christmas commercialism is completely selfish. When America goes through her yearly insanity as we prepare for the Christmas season, it disrupts my shopping habits.

I’m a big, everyday consumer. I like to buy DVDs, comics, video games, and various other shiny things that catch my eye on a regular basis. When Christmas comes, I don’t buy more stuff, I just put of some of the stuff I’ll buy for me, and buy for other people instead. The problem is, everyone else does buy more stuff, and they buy a lot of it. I have to put up with traffic, rude shoppers, and empty shelves for more than a month, not only during the lead-up to Christmas, but also in the aftermath, as people return unwanted, broken, or badly fitting gifts.

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this is a fairly minor complaint, but it’s still annoying when I go to the mall after work and find myself faced with an army of teenagers and empty shelves in FYE. It’s too bad Amazon doesn’t have an “instant shipping” button. That’d make my impulse shopping much easier.

If God did not intend for us to eat animals, then why did he make them out of meat?

- John Cleese

[E]xcept for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

- Sarah Vowell

Bad people are punished by society’s law. And good people are punished by Murphy’s Law.

- Georgia “George” Lass (Dead Like Me)