You may have read/heard lately about the new black - the darkest material every created, so far.

Here I present to you - the new black. Enjoy!

By popular demand, here are 10 posts you have likely not seen, especially if you’re a new subscriber to this blog. When syndicating, I think my setup is configured only to go back 10 posts…so if you’re subscribing from fresh, you’re missing out on a veritable cornucopia of interesting topics from the last 2+ years…

So here are a few things you might want to read and catch up on…

1. Homeless Recycling, Parts 1 & 2
2. Weddings
3. The Gay Agenda
4. Crazy Pills (and dreams about Britney Spears)
5. Migraines
6. Just My 2 Cents
7. Personality Disorders
8. Music Makes a People Come Together
9. Paula Poundstone and Christmas Ham
10. Luxury SUV’s

Enjoy…perhaps you’ll learn a little something interesting about Heath that you never knew you wanted to know before :-).

In celebration of Blog Action Day, thousands of blogs around the world have chosen to write about the environment. The topic is open, as long as you discuss ways that we can protect the precious planet we live on. Here is my submission.

When David and I got home the other day, we noticed a back of plumbing parts hanging on the front door. Apparently the plumbing fairy had stopped by the house with his bag of goodies - and I hadn’t even put an 0-ring under my pillow the night before…

Inside the bag we found two sink aerators, a new shower head, and a big blue plastic bag that sort of looked like a hot water bag you might use if you weren’t feeling well…or if you were constipated perhaps. But I digress.

Opening up the bag we discovered an assortment of inexpensive (and incompatible) goodies. We had the two faucet aerators that I just mentioned, one for the kitchen sink and one for the bathroom sink. Unfortunately, they did not fit. Apparently we have non-standard faucets, even though they are relatively brand new and from Home Depot. Is it wrong for me to assume that Home Depot would carry products with standard fittings?

So as we tried to save the environment in Sacramento, the score started out in the negative. Aerators - useless.

On to the shower head. Miraculously, the shower head fit just perfectly. It has settings for massage, and normal, and because it’s a water saver, it actually gives us more force in the smaller amount of water it sends out -so we don’t even notice that it’s low-flow. This one is a win, score one for the shower-head. Plus, it’s a very good brand - Niagara. That stands for waterfall, so you know it’s going to be good.

Next up, the toilet tank bank. I don’t know why they call it a bank, but the front of the bag says “deposit and save water and money”. I’m not sure if they wanted us to put pennies or water into the bag, but we opted for water, even though the pennies would be put to better use sitting in our toilet tank than at any retail store.

The big blue bag is now full of water and hanging inside the toilet tank, reducing the amount of water in each flush. Another win for the City of Sacramento Department of Utilities. (a quick update - David actually removed the bag after a few flushes because it kept getting caught inside the tank - note, if you have a relatively thin watertank on your toilet, this product wont’ work for you)

Toilet Tank Bank - useless.

If every person in the neighborhood actually uses some of these products, it should go a long way in reducing water consumption in our area - and I am all for it. My part of town isn’t metered at this point, so these products won’t save us any money on our utility bill, but they will help save our environment and provide more water to those who need it (and pay for it).

Although Pharyngula didn’t spread his seed my direction, I’m a fan of meme’s, so let’s see where this takes us…here are the instructions.

The Pharyngula mutating genre meme

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

• You can leave them exactly as is.
• You can delete any one question.
• You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.
• You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”.

You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

1. The best personal-magic-power novel in SF/Fantasy is…
   The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony.
2. The best romantic movie in foreign films is…
   Amelie.
3. The best sexy song in rock is…
   Heartbreaker, by Blondie.

And now I throw the gauntlet to a few folks:

1. Barbarism Begins at Home
2. Tall Freak
3. X Marks the Spot
4. Tommy Marx Random Matters

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First, let’s make some wild and crazy assumptions for the purpose of this post:

1. Everyone has something called a “soul”

2. It’s a tangible thing that can be prayed for, stolen, and sold.

3. There is no such thing as separation of Church and State in America (you don’t really have to assume this, it’s nearly fact).

Second, let’s have a definition. What does The Book have to say about a soul:

Pronunciation: ’sOl
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English soule, from Old English sAwol;
1 : the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life
2 : the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe

So now to the root of my concern. Could you sue someone who prays for your soul without your permission? Why am I asking this question? Because several years ago I was the recipient of religious based harassment at work, and the offending party and their spouse took it upon themselves to “engage” the holy spirit on my behalf. Specifically they said:

“Holy Spirit we pray for God to transform this lost soul”

Capitalization is their’s, not mine. After they called upon this alleged holy spirit, they consulted their own book to find interesting quotes to help me out. Here are some that they came up with.

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom - Proverbs 11:1-3

The fear of the LORD teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor - Proverbs 15:32-34

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves - Philippians 2:2-4

To slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men - Titus 3:1-3

Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” - 1 Peter 5:4-6

Interesting words indeed (and is it just me or isn’t that just SO old testament (except for one)), and I’m sure they live their lives in full deference to what their god wants and expects them to do. But back to my question.

So they have taken it upon themselves (with a little help from above) to pray for my “lost soul”, and even further, to ask their god to actually “transform” my soul. I’m sorry, but I think that’s crossing the line. It’s one insulting thing to pray for a soul that isn’t your own, but to try to transform it is bordering on assault. Keep your hands off my soul, I say. How would you like me to come into your body and change some things around?

What’s that, a spleen? I don’t think you need that any more, let’s transform that into a bird bath. Is that a heart? Oh please, it would look so much better transformed into a box of Altoids. Who wouldn’t want to be curiously minty on the inside?

But can I sue?

Can I take them to court and charge them with assault on my soul? Our Christian country would never argue that there’s no such thing as a soul, which means that if it’s my property, something that is unique to me, then if they try to manhandle it then I have a right to protect it. Obviously, I don’t want to assault them in return (but could I claim self-defense?), so what choice do I have but to join our litigious based society and sue them, and the holy spirit, and god?

If I lived in Romania, for example, I couldn’t because according to the court - “…the defendant is neither an individual nor a company, and is not subject to a civil court of law’s jurisdiction“. There was also another minor problem because - “God doesn’t have a residence where the Prosecutor’s Office can send a subpoena“.

This presents a few issues - with that whole trinity thing I’d have to name all three components in my lawsuit, and nowhere in their prayers did they mention that Jesus was helping out (although I might be able to take the corporate path since apparently, he’s incorporated now). And if the prosecutor can’t find a P.O.Box for LOG, then would I have to try him in absentia?

I did find an interesting comment to a post about the Romanian case: “Imagine how many people would start believing in God if you were able to sue him.” I’d take that a step farther to say, imagine how many people would join the class-action lawsuit against god for all their woes?

As I can find no legal basis (or restriction for that matter) for a lawsuit and assault charge against someone who prays for the transformation of my soul, I put it to you, the blog reading public…what do you think?

(and I’m secretly hoping that pharyngula will weigh in here)

Once again, I was playing around with StumbleUpon, and wound up at the National Geographic Forces of Nature page. On this site you can not only learn a lot about volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, but you can actually use their flash tool to try and create your own hurricane.

I would up creating a rather devastating one just by randomly selecting options (Warm ocean, high humidity, low pressure). Look out!!