The Blarg

All Time Low has a new album out! I’m ordering the sucker right now.

Go visit their Purevolume page to listen to a few new tracks. The first song, Dear Maria Count Me In, totally rocks. Give them a listen!

The previous post about homeless people got me thinking. We can all agree that it’s important to help out “the least of these,” and I decided that’s what I finally needed to do. We might disagree sometimes on how to help, but I know we all want to.

I’d like to share two great Christian organizations that I think will make great use of our donations. The first is Habitat for Humanity. You can read a little about what they do here. This is a great way to spread the love of Christ, give people a place to live, and it’s all done privately.

Another organization that directly relates to the last post is The Dream Center in downtown Los Angeles. Their mission is here. They can provide meaningful help to change people’s lives and show the love of Christ.

So however you give, do it with a humble heart.

I would like to argue that giving money to pan handlers in gas station parking lots and freeway off ramps is not a compassionate thing to do. I also believe that allowing homeless people to sleep and live in parks or other public places is not compassionate.

I also think that people who hand out money to these types of people are not helping, but making that person’s life worse. Whether out of guilt, misplaced compassion, or under the umbrella WWJD?, handing out money to pan handlers and allowing homeless people to sleep wherever they want is not compassionate at all. It might make the giver feel better, but their compassion is misplaced.

I’m ready for some backlash. The evil Mr. Blarg picking on the poor! However, if that’s all you’ve gleamed from my post, then you are wildly confused. I am picking on the people that give money, not the poor people.

Ready, set, discuss!

Is it helpful, Christ-like, or compassionate to give “donations” to poor and homeless people you meet on the street?

We got to hear the baby’s heart on Friday. Most Doctors describe the heart as making a “lub dub” sound, but they are wrong. It actually makes a “whoosh whoosh” sound! haha.

We don’t know the sex yet, not for another month or so. The doc was telling us that all the baby’s parts are formed, and the rest of the pregnancy is those parts growing and maturing to the point that the baby can live outside the womb.

Not to turn baby #1 into a discussion on abortion, but I think once you have children, and you see the process happening first hand, arguments for abortion seem so selfish. I’m not talking health of the mother or health of the baby abortions, but “I will be inconvenienced” abortions. You don’t look at the ultrasound and think “wow, someday that will be my baby.” Nope, it already is your baby. There’s no magical cutoff that lets you have a clean conscience.

Value life.

…or should I say JARED Nation!

Last night we watched Kid Nation, the reality tv whores that we are. Before I even get to the show itself, it’s worth watching solely for a kid named Jared.

He made the entire show worthwhile. He’s totally crazy, and everything he says is hilarious. Not to mention that if you visit his bio link, he says Clinton was dishonest. How hilarious is that?

As for the show itself, it’s entertaining. Some of the bickering made me feel like I was at work, but the interaction is interesting. I’m not sure the backlash is necessary, and that the parents are evil for subjecting their kids to this. I never hear complaints when parents put their kids in commercials and beauty pageants, etc.

I’ll wait for all the fall shows start to do a big TV post.

At least the Dodgers are going out in a blaze of suckiness.

I posted daily during the roadtrip, but you never got to see any pictures! We’ve ordered them and made an album, but in case you don’t come over to look at it, here are a few of my favorites.

This is somewhere near the Idaho/Wyoming border heading to the Grand Tetons. Beautiful hills covered in wheat!

This is at one of the lakes in the Grand Teton National Park.

This is at the West Thumb in Yellowstone, one of the many hot springs. I love the colors.

So I don’t break the frontpage of the Blarg, you have to click the link after this to see the rest.

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The TMobile commercial where the kids all get out their sidekicks and decide to meet at the market was on. They proceed to have a big race in the store amidst everyone else’s normal shopping.

I can’t stand this commercial. It’s annoying that they’re running around the store. I’d be pissed if I was one of the customers, or the store owner. There’s one scene where they knock over a stand of toilet paper. If it weren’t for that scene I wouldn’t mind as much. If they simply raced through the store and left it in the same condition, then it wouldn’t be so bad. But when they start screwing with the fictitious store it screws with human decency!

I have another pet peeve to rant about, and that’s the stupid commercials urging me to conserve energy. Don’t make me feel bad for using electricity that I’M paying for, only because the people that run this state are too stupid to build new electric plants. It’s against the law to build new nuclear power plants, while France makes billions of Euros exporting extra energy.

One specific commercial I’ve heard claims that if every person replaced 1 regular bulb with a fluorescent, it would take thousands of cars of the road. Whoa, hold on. If my light bulb were powered by a nuclear reactor, how the flip would using less energy have anything to do with carbon emissions? Are they assuming all our power is from burning coal?

I wish politicians would stop screaming that energy is evil. I’m tired of their crap.

Edit: New nuclear plants in development.