Colonic health...

I was reading about fecal transplants over breakfast. Yeah, yeah, good breakfast reading.

Being a person whose life was once almost destroyed by candidiasis (no exaggeration), this seems to me like a Very Good Thing, to be able to readjust the bacteria within us. Seems to me this would be easier than the usual methods of colon cleansing.

But more: I have read, and don't recall where, that it is theorized that one reason for weight gain, maybe even a primary reason, is an imbalance of intestinal bacteria. Presumably if we could have fecal transplants, this would be adjustable, and it would be easy to keep ourselves at a healthy weight.

Riddles in the Dark...

I just watched this: the trailer to the coming Peter Jackson movie, The Hobbit.

Aiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

It made me cry a little. And I never even liked The Hobbit, or Bilbo Baggins, either. Now I love him. Oh my goodness. Peter Jackson and Martin Freeman between them have done the impossible.

Maybe I'll call myself an Eckartist...

I got this article about the unpopularity of atheists from auriaephiala.

Makes me think we should do some image-building. Or something. You know, showing the sweet cuddliness of us atheists.

I sometimes wonder when I stopped calling myself a pantheist and started calling myself an atheist. My religious views haven't changed in the least. It's semantics. It's a matter of who I wanted to be associated with. After reading the views of other pantheists online and deciding they didn't quite get it, I was less inclined to call myself that.

I could call myself a pagan, but it's the same sort of problem: pagans tend to be organized - at least then ones I know are - and when I approached them with an interest, they said I would have to learn about paganism. I shied away. Sounds like catechism. Sounds like learning their religion instead of celebrating my own, in good company.

So where does that leave me? Like Philippa Somerville, uninvited, unwanted, unwelcome as ever. And in a group voted the most likely to steal a wallet. But still warm and cuddly.

Honest.

The Shortest Day

the Shortest Day
By Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

>br>

Kermit and Miss Piggy...

On Dec. 11 I went to see the new movie The Muppets with fairestcat and didn't find time to write about it.

Good movie.

Now, I don't have the background with The Muppets that some of you do. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen The Muppets on TV. It didn't exist when I was young, old codger than I am, but one can't help knowing about the Muppets. And one of my favourite songs is Tom Smith's A Boy and His Frog. On the other hand, I was always a little uncomfortable with sexual stereotypes in it.

It wasn't clever, but it had a lot of heart, and I love musicals, and I love Kermit. I probably missed a few of the jokes a real Muppet fan would have got, but I got enough of them.

It seemed odd to see The Muppets as a Disney thing, though.

Crusaders: Thy Kingdom Come...

Last week I was shopping in Canadian Tire with Sheila. It's amazing what Canadian Tire sells now: not just hardware but frozen food and video games. One of the video games caught my eye: Crusders: Thy Kingdom Come. A Crusader-themed game? Of course it attracted my attention. Gorgeous. It was cheap, too. I read the package carefully but wasn't sure I had the right equipment to read it. Would I need Playstation or something? I know nothing about games.

I mentioned it this evening to Pim, who is very into video games. In three minutes she found a place online where I could buy it for $3.99. We weren't sure I could play it, but it seemed worth the gamble.

Now I have it downloaded on my computer. It looks gorgeous. I can't look too much, or I'll be playing with it all night. It seems to work just fine.