The Outhouse is Open for All

Let me get this right … I can put on a dress, start singing “Man, I Feel Like a Woman” by Shania Twain, and mosey on into the women’s bathroom anywhere in America? Wow, a pervert’s dream – thank you for that President Obama. I am so glad that was a top priority in our system of government in May. Quite frankly, I don’t care where anyone decides they need to go, truth be told a tree is good enough for me if the need ever arises. Perhaps my sister can speak to this more, but I’m sure Europeans must be laughing at us over this situation.

You know what the quickest solution is to this problem – simply designate certain bathrooms to be gender neutral. We have family bathrooms popping up all over the place, so why not simply enact some guidelines or legislation that all places with public bathrooms build, or designate an existing one, to be the one that serves them all? No, what we get instead is threats of withholding funds from schools, among other things. Brilliant! and way to go President Trum… I mean Obama. Thank God that there is nothing else going on in the world, that our elected leaders needed to focus on this issue with the utmost urgency. I feel so much safer now when I walk out of my front door knowing that I can take a dump in any bathroom that suits my fancy.

After all, it’s not like we have a presidential hopeful who put a classified government network at risk. Oh yeah, that’s right – it’s no big deal. Just used personal e-mail to send some work related stuff to colleagues’ work e-mail addresses. Yeah, it’s not like hackers use the EXACT SAME SCENARIO as a means to launch phishing scams designed to elicit personal or other sensitive information from users. And yet, this seems to be treated as no big deal.

When I worked for a tech company, the biggest problem we had on the internal network was user’s workstations being infected by spyware or other malware because user’s were fooled into opening a poisoned e-mail because they thought it was coming from a trusted source, even though it was coming from a non-network e-mail address. Heck there was one time where my fellow network administrator received an e-mail from what looked like one of my legitimate AOL e-mail addresses, and opened it up without a second thought, clicking the link that it contained. Needless to say that the e-mail did not originate from my e-mail address.

So here we have one of the potential future Presidents of the United States opening the doors to a secure and classified government network by getting her co-workers used to receiving e-mails from a non-network e-mail address. And she still feels like she did nothing in the wrong. This, if nothing else, is grounds for me to consider her completely unfit to lead our country at the top spot. The sheer idiocy of this is astounding, and the fact that Hilary Clinton is most likely going to be our next president is mind boggling.

I’m not one to go spouting off telling people how they should vote, simply because I am hardly any more educated than the next person, though it seems a lot more educated than most of the morons who simply refuse to participate in one of those nearly unique freedoms our government does provide us. But then again, people too stupid to make the time to ensure they act upon one of our rights of American Citizens probably shouldn’t be voting now that I think about it. Regardless, this upcoming presidential  election is the one that I have found the most difficult to decide upon my candidate of choice. At least that was the case until a co-worker of mine reminded me of one important part of the balloting process – the write-in vote.

So I am going to use this space to encourage everyone reading this to go out and exercise one of our basic rights of American citizens, and when you do so, instead of flipping a switch or pushing a button for one of the two party nominees, activate the little slide out box on the side of the ballot and write-in a candidate that will actually be good for America. My personal choice at the moment is going to be a toss up between Democrat Bernie Sanders, and Republican John Kasich. Either one, while not completely ideal, are certainly better by far than the presumptive nominees we will be stuck with come November. I hope that everyone out there will do the same. It’s long past time that we send a message that the current electoral process is failing the American people and it needs to be changed. I complained about the massive amount of money spent by campaigns in the last election. It’s about time that all that money be put to better use, and we finally need to act like a United States and reject the candidates that will ultimately fail us as a country.

Thank goodness I still have this Outhouse to hang around in to maintain my sanity - and it welcomes all people regardless of your "persuasion". Just make sure to get out and vote.

Flash

That day that I thought was coming a year ago has finally arrived. We had to say good-bye to Flash this morning. It was a moment I had been anticipating for a while, but the end came all too quickly and hurt just as much. Though he had some ailments, it wasn’t quite like what Willy had to go through in his final years. Overall, Flash had a good life and was probably the healthiest of all the cats I have had as companions. It was only his old age, and a slight blood pressure problem that was affecting his kidneys that really got him down these last few years. His hearing and sight certainly weren’t what they once were, but he always seemed to know when I was in the room. He was a cuddly lap cat until the end.

I got home as normal yesterday, and ironically, had to call the vet to make an appointment for both Flash and Hershey for their annual exams. I was prompted to do so a bit earlier than I had originally planned since it seemed that neither of the cats had been eating as much as they normally did, something I attributed the on-going renovation we have going on in the house this past week. But otherwise everything seemed normal, until the evening when it was clear that Flash was not acting as his normal geriatric self. He was much more lethargic and his normally over the top loud meowing was reduced to a raspy whisper. Flash was close to 20 years old, which even for a cat is a pretty long time. Over the course of the last 5-6 years, his age was starting to show as he just wasn’t as active as he used to be, and the arthritis in his hind quarters started to limit his mobility, as did his decreasing eyesight. During that time, there was more than one occasion that I thought he would need a trip to the vet and it would be the last one he would make, but time and again he shook off whatever has gotten him down and was back to his normal self in a few days.

He joined the family in 2001 or 2002, after I decided I needed a companion for Willy and one that wasn’t as skittish around strangers as Willy had been. I originally was looking for a kitten again, but upon seeing Flash at the store, realized he was the one who needed to come home. His favorite position was spread-eagled on the flat top of the cat tree, and that was my first sight of him in the store. It was just so unusual to me to see a cat do that, I knew he would be the perfect fit for the family. His exact birth date is unknown, as he was picked up as a stray, but he was around two years older than Willy at the time, so was basically an adult cat.

                            Flash resting peacefully in the final minutes we had left together

I think the biggest scare we had with Flash came in August of 2008. One day, in the afternoon or early evening, a typical day as any other, I thought I heard a thump or a bang while I was sitting in the living room. Not something really unusual as there always seemed to be something or someone thumping every now and again in the house, so I really didn’t do much to investigate. It wasn’t until later, when dinner time for the cats rolled around that I noticed something was amiss – Flash hadn’t come running along with Willy for their eats. A quick search of the upstairs turned up nothing. Somehow, it seemed Flash had disappeared. Even checking their usual hiding spots didn’t reveal our feline friend. It wasn’t until a second check of the upstairs that I noticed the one window screen on the side of the house was slightly ajar. Flash loved to sit in the windows during the summer time, and it appeared that this time, he must have leaned too much against the screen and it gave way, sending him plummeting 20-odd feet down to the ground. It was then I realized what that thumping sound from a few hours previous must have been – the screen giving way. However, upon checking the perimeter of the house, he was nowhere in sight.

This prompted a desperate search around the neighborhood for Flash that lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. Naturally, this occurred on the evening before I was to begin night classes for my computer training and certification course. We eventually found him wandering the neighbor’s back yard, but he was obviously scared and any time I approached, he took off running. A one point he got under the fence that separated the yard from the junk yard of sorts of the businesses that are situated behind our property. Another hour or so of trying to corral him between tractor trailer bins and huge orb weaving spider webs yielded failure once more as Flash took off running, and we lost track of him. It was at that point, heading back to the house that I lost it, fearing I would never see him again. He must have had a guardian angel that night, though, because as we headed down our small dead end street, Shannon saw Flash waiting by the back door. I went in the front, so he wouldn’t get scared off again, while Shannon kept an eye on him outside, and he leapt into the house as soon as I opened up the back door.

I knew in my gut that last night was Flash’s final night at home, even though I was hoping he would prove me wrong one more time. It just wasn’t meant to be, this time he just wasn’t getting better, and this morning I knew the inevitable had come. When put in perspective, 15 years doesn’t seem like a long time in the grand scheme of things, but when you consider that 15 years is more than a third of my entire life, it really brings home how much a part of my life Flash and Willy have been, and how much I still miss Willy, and how much I am going to miss Flash for a long time to come. Willy loved to sleep on my chest as a kitten at night, and Flash loved to cuddle up on my lap in the living room chair at any point during the day. 15 years was far too short a time.

Flash’s Pictures

A Leap In Time

Who would have thought that this once in a lifetime opportunity would present itself?*

*I guess I should say once every four years opportunity, my bad.**

**Well, actually, I guess it isn’t even once every four years. Good old Julius Caesar’s simple method has been altered slightly for the Gregorian Calendar (yeah, that’s the one we’re using now). There’s an actual formula for creating this very special day:

1)      The year needs to be divisible by 4. (Simple enough right, been doing it for ages), but …

2)      If the year is divisible by 100, it is NOT a Leap Year (OK then, but wasn’t 2000 AD a Leap Year?)

3)      Ah hah! #2 only comes into effect if the year is not divisible by 400. If it is, like Y2K was, then it goes back to being a Leap Year!

Now that we got all the technical stuff out of the way, what does that mean? Well, it just means that Y2.1K (2100 AD) will not be a Leap Year, so we’ll have to keep that in mind 84 years from now. It also means that had I been born on February 29^th, which would mean either 1968 or 1972, I would only be 11 or 12 years old right now. I seem to recall an ancient Little Rascals episode that mentioned this very quirk when Froggy indicated that he had been born on a Leap Day and was only 3 or 4 years old, technically speaking.

So little February, the shortest month of the year, gets a little longer this year. Now why is February the shortest month? Well, that gets back to our good friend Julius, and his successor, Augustus and something about having their named months be no shorter than any other month in the calendar and the fact that the Roman calendar actually didn’t track months during the winter – making it a three season only calendar.

Let me get back now to that opportunity I mentioned. A thought occurred to me that I can use this occasion to make a special 4 year time capsule every time February 29^th rolls around (except, of course for the future exception mentioned above). The last Leap Day was on a Wednesday in 2012, and I have been thinking back to what things were like way back then …

I was in the midst of my Tech Support job, feeling very stressed and still wondering if I had made the right career move. Little did I know on this day back then, that our wonderful US government would facilitate a change in just over a year from that point, ultimately to my relief and mental health. It shouldn’t go without being mentioned that in the previous Leap Year of 2008, I was contemplating a change in careers to go into the Tech Industy.

Of course we had the big topic of discussion being the end of the world come December of 2012, and naturally Hollywood capitalizing on the prediction. As it was, the end of the Mayan Great Cycle came and went without any real fanfare. Though I do still wish that Atlantis has sprung up from the depths of the ice in the middle of Antarctica to take over society and chastise the human race for the atrocities we seem intent on committing against Mother Nature, and each other.

We had the Summer Olympics take place in London and the closing ceremonies that highlighted significant British accomplishments, traditions, and staples pretty much snub the best one of all – Doctor Who. It also was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, so I guess things weren’t all bad over there.

In world news, we had the Arab Spring going on, as well as the attack on the US embassy that killed American Ambassador Stevens. The worst power outage in world history occurred in India, and Hurricane Sandy marched into New Jersey and devastated the Northeastern seaboard enough to actually postpone Halloween for a week.

Now, what’s going on in 2016?

Well, on the International front, we’ve got this year’s Summer Olympics hosted by Brazil this coming August in the midst of the Zika Virus outbreak. We’re talking about the terrorist organization ISIS and the fear of lone wolf and small independent cells making attacks on US soil and elsewhere.

We’ve got the next Presidential election coming up with Donald Trump of all people leading the Republican Party candidates. On the flip side we have Hillary Clinton making a bid to be the first woman President and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side. So, in essence, no matter what happens, the US is really going to be screwed for the next four years. It’s not the fact that we have the real potential for a woman President, but the fact we don’t have a good choice of one to actually be able to vote for in November. Looks like I’ll be voting for the perennial Ficus Tree this year.

We’ve had a pretty wacky winter – with almost summer like temperatures for this past Christmas, followed by our first big blizzard in January, then back to spring-like weather these past two weekends, with a big Nor’easter the middle of this past week, which thankfully dropped rain on us instead of snow. As much as I like those big storms, having to dig out before going to work was not something I was looking forward to this past week, if it came to pass.

On a more personal note, things have come almost full circle on the career front as I am back in retail, but in a much better position so to speak that is much less stressful and has better hours than previously. While I can’t always say that I enjoy having to go to work, I can say that I finally don’t dread it as much as I have in a long, long time. We’re also expecting a new nephew on Shannon’s side of the family this year, by the name of Finnegan.

Instead of a one child family, we are now a two child family. The oldest is now a 5^th grader going on 6^th – instead of the 1^st  going on 2^nd she was four years ago. Obviously, this year is the year to look forward to our trips to Hershey Park and Dutch Wonderland as the toddler will be almost 2 years old this summer and much more able to enjoy the experience, not to mention this coming Christmas season. We still have the (older) labradoodle still acting like he’s a puppy, but with more frequent naps. Willy’s been gone almost a year now, and we still miss him a lot, but Flash is still hanging in there somehow, and Hershey is the troublemaker of the household. Buddy the turtle is still Buddy the turtle even though we have since learned that Buddy is a girl.

One thing we are certainly looking forward to is finally getting some work done on the house in March. We can’t wait to gut and redo the downstairs bathroom as well as get a new kitchen floor. We’re adding some electrical to the basement, which I am still trying to clean up and declutter from the sump pump system we had put in back in November. Perhaps by the time the next Time Capsule entry rolls around in 2020, I’ll have it all done.

Of course, we can’t end this entry without mentioning it being the Year of Star Wars. Even though Episode 7 debuted a couple of months ago, it very much sets the course for 2016 and beyond. Boo and I are looking forward to the first Anthology prequel coming out at the end of this year which tells the tale of the events immediately preceding Episode 4. And of course, we have Episode 8 coming out in May of 2017.

All in all, it looks like 2016 will continue to bring a lot of changes and interesting things to look forward to in the months to come. I actually can’t wait until 2020 to look back at this entry and see how things have changed in the intervening 4 years and see what I’ll be writing about then.

National Hanging in the Outhouse Day

That wonderful time of year again. It kicks off with the car and furniture commercials – usually featuring good ole George Washington and Honest Abe Lincoln. Oh how incessant for a couple of weeks, those wonderful sales commercials pushing for the new sofa or pickup. Then, just when you think it’s over – oh joy! – it’s the after President’s Day Weekend sale, because, you know, the sales event was such a big success we just couldn’t let it end now!

Oh God, the banality of it all. Nothing makes me want to buy a car or armchair less than these annual traditions of sales pitches. The same goes for WaWa and the damnable summer of Hoagie Fest we have to suffer through, and the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week promos – which usually start a good two months before the damn week arrives.

But that’s only a drop in the bucket compared with what every year brings to us nowadays. It seems that it wasn’t all that long ago that we only had to tolerate a handful of those made-up “holidays” – you know the ones that are really only there to keep the greeting card people employed. Not that I think they are all bad people – in fact there are some very creative ones I have come across over the years. The thing that really irks me are the “holidays” that help boost those sales. It really kicks off with the one that is impending as I write this – the oh so wonderful Valentine’s Day. That day where we are supposed to celebrate the one special person in your life – unless you are single, in which case it is a glaring reminder of rejection and loneliness. What a bunch of friggin’ nonsense.

Personally speaking, I think every day should be a day where couples should celebrate, support, and appreciate each other. I don’t need somebody trying to sell a greeting card with a heart on it that this one day is more important than any other day. Same goes for all those other “Special” days, like Secretary’s Day, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, Third Cousin Twice Remove on Your Half-Step-Brother’s Side day. What a bunch of bull. No day is any different other day – be it one of these days, a birthday, or what have you. Dinner still needs to be cooked. The Cat still needs to be fed. The Dog shit still needs to be picked up from the yard. Whether I do it on one of these days, or just a “normal” day is pretty much irrelevant. Same thing with Birthdays. I don’t think it is possible for me to care any less about the anniversary of my birth. It’s not like I did anything special on that day – it was pretty much out of my control – just another random day out of 365. If anything should be celebrated it should be God and my parents for bringing about the event – and God gets his day every Sunday.

You know what day I find special? The day where I don’t have to go to work and can just sit on the couch and vegetate … I mean mediate on the meaning of Life for the whole damn day. Now that’s something worth celebrating. Now what’s really gotten to be completely asinine are all these “National Days” that seem to be the vogue thing – National Ice Cream day, National Cookie Day, National Peanut Butter day, and so on and so forth. Pretty much every damn day of the year is a National Celebrate this thing day. It’s gets to the point where it just becomes pointless. You know why days like Christmas, Easter, Saint Patty’s Day, and the like are special? Because they are celebrated once a year. To have a National whatever day every day pretty much makes celebrating anything one step above banality. Again, I don’t need a day in which Ice Cream is more special – frigg, I’ll eat ice cream every damn day and enjoy it the first time just as much as the 365^th time. I don’t need some day in July to feel that it is more special or worth celebrating more than any other day of the year.

You know who and/or what should get their holidays and National Celebratory days? Those who have helped mankind advance in a positive manner; those who have found cures for disease and those who are still working diligently on finding cures for those afflictions that still ail us. I mean hell, Columbus gets a special day, and all he did was take the long way to the orient until he bumped into a bit of land. Frigg, it’s not like he was even the first to reach the Americas for crying out loud. How about Marie Curie, Jonas Salk, or Edward Jenner? Where the hell are their days?

Now, if there’s any day that I can actually get behind, that would be May 26^th. That day is Cosmos Day, and that’s one of those “lesser” holidays that I can actually get behind. So until then, you can take all those other holidays and stuff ‘em. I’ve wasted enough time today – gotta go get the pooper scooper and get back to work.

The Snowy Shade of Winter

When I started this blog, it was partly on the inspiration of reading my sister’s blogs, but I was also planning on using it as my outlet to comment upon the current events that get me irritated or put a smile on my face. However, it seems that more often than not, it became a way to reflect on the past and to talk about things remembered. This time however, I can talk about that bit of fun from last weekend – the Great Blizzard of 2016 aka Jonas, or something or other.

I look forward to times like that during the winter like I look forward to vacation during the summer. Snowstorms make the winter more interesting and breaks up the mundane of the daily grind. There’s something quiet and calming about snowfall that seems to turn down the noise of the rest of the outside world. Even shoveling isn’t that big of a deal – when it can be done at one’s own pace without having to worry about doing anything else that day. It is quite annoying to have to shovel out with the purpose of going to work instead of the purpose of making a nice sliding hill in the driveway.

This season has been quite unusual as we had the record-breaking warmth for Christmas. Now we are in the icy grip of winter, or at least we were before the blizzard. As fun as the big snows are when they come, it seems a habit of the climate here in Pennsy that as soon as it’s over, the warmer weather flows right in and melts all the fun away. Within the first couple of days after it was all over, we must have lost at least seven or eight inches to melting. Easy come, easy go I guess. There was that one year, though, a few years back where we had a few storms almost back to back, so that made things really interesting for a couple of weeks.

While it’s nice and all to have that break from the grind, it often makes me wonder how other people who live in areas where snowfall like this isn’t out of the ordinary look at us in the Tri-state area. Two to three feet of snow in one fell swoop is one thing, but it seems that our region gets paralyzed if there is anything more than a couple of inches. Sometimes it borders on the ridiculous. However, one of the things that really irks me is that constant nagging by state and local officials and the news stations about staying inside and off the roadways if it is not absolutely necessary to be traveling. To me, if it’s that damn important, then they need to be shutting things down and making sure a state of emergency is just that – only emergency personnel are allowed out on the roads. For God’s sake, year of year of these storms and none of them have realized that certain businesses are simply not going to close, and as such force their employees out into the mess unless they are forced to close. If everyone is so concerned about safety and such (even as those very businesses claim to be), then just shut them down, otherwise it’s just so much asinine lip service. There is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, that is so important that it can’t wait a day or two to go pick up at the store – especially when we have far enough advance notice of these storms nowadays.

One of things I did find amusing however, in the headshaking way, are those questions inevitable asked by reporters when the unusual weather is a topic of newsworthy discussion. It usually goes along the lines of “what do you think about this (insert unusual weather event).” I’m not sure the reason for it, but it seems they want some type of “hype” reaction from the people of whom the question is asked. Once in a while, they’ll get that person like me who has no problem with the weather as it is unfolding, yet the reporter acts incredulous that the interviewee is not affronted by the non-conformity.

Wild weather has always been fun for me. Sometimes I think I missed my calling as a meteorologist. Like those winter blizzards, those summer thunderstorms bring one of those tiny thrills every time they roll around. I can recall a few that were preceded by some really neat cloud formations. A really cool sight to see are those rolling thundercells out West. It’s pretty cool to be standing out one some plain somewhere watching a huge thunderstorm some 20 miles away glide by in all its anvil shaped glory. So it was nice for Jonas to grace us with his presence for a day so we could watch the ebb and flow of the snowfall and continue to be amused by the local news stations and government officials. Time to look forward to the next one, hopefully sooner rather than later – and again on my weekend off.

It Begins All Over Again

And so another Christmas has come and gone in virtually a blink of an eye. It really hits home when the time comes to click the last date on the annual Jackie Lawson digital advent calendars that Mom sends us every year. It’s sad that the daily surprise is over until next December. Day after day, a new scene or activity to do while counting down those days to the big moment. Every once in a while, catching the odd Christmas show on TV, and the month full of all those tunes and songs that we are more than familiar with, yet still seem refreshing this time of year. Even though this year has been a bit warmer than most, and thus another year (among many) that we did not have a white Christmas, it’s all those other things that really make the season for me.

It’s really not all that surprising how fast Christmas sneaks up on us when days are filled to the brim with activity, be it work or taking care of things around the house. Heck, I’ve been in the process of writing this since before my last entry, and only just now can finally find a few moments of piece to get something written down before heading off to bed before another day of the usual grind begins again. It's hard to fathom that it has now been just over a year that I started this blog. Today, though, the finality of the end of the holiday crunch is more poignant as the last song of the final Christmas collection came to the end. For me, I think it’s the music above all else that brings the most joy for the season. Most likely it stems back to those days of youth of listening to those classics on those big vinyl records while laying about the living room during that final week of school, anticipating a week of freedom and playing with all the new toys that Santa stashed under the tree.

It’s a tradition that I’ve had to carry over now that I have a family of my own. Except this time, its music on an USB stick in place of cassette tapes in the car, and watching a slideshow of family pictures play their way across the TV screen thanks to the old desktop computer hiding behind the screen as the tunes provide the inspirational backdrop from its hard drive. At least that’s something that I can still seem to have time to enjoy, even those days of having an actual holiday vacation are long since gone. The one good thing about the current traditions that I never really got to experience as a kid, though, is having “multiple Christmases” throughout the week. It makes it nice for the kids that now they can experience the gift giving and opening on more than one occasion as the extended families make their rounds during the week. It helps to make the holiday last a little bit longer.

But today the end is nigh. Most of the decorations and lights have been tucked away for the next eleven months or so – except for those that seem to magically appear a week later after we think we’ve finally gotten them all. It’s just the music that has been left playing during those trips to and from work, and running the errands. But now, it’s time to put that to rest until November 24^th, when the cycle begins all over again. There was the one year a few years back where I was determined to play Christmas music at least once a month. That only lasted until March, though, when I just couldn’t bring myself to keep it going – perhaps something deep inside me wanted to make sure the special feeling of hearing it wasn’t diminished when the proper time for listening came again. But there was that one time, about 15 years ago or so when I left up the tabletop mini-tree up and decorated all year. It made for a great nightlight the 13 months it was up, but also became a very difficult to clean dust magnet, so that was a feat that was not repeated.

One thing that seems to have not been repeated over recent holidays was the so-called War on Christmas. A decade ago, that seemed to be the only thing you heard about every year. Now though, it appears that the need to be offended by the 25^th of December has become a thing of the past. The irony of that whole situation never ceased to amuse, and annoy, me. It was inevitable that at some point following Thanksgiving, someone would become offended and cry about the intolerance of wishing society to have a Merry Christmas. I wonder if anyone else ever saw that irony of those shouting about the intolerance of Christmas were they, themselves being just as intolerant. I never felt the need to be offended by Christmas or any other holiday that is celebrated in the world even if I don’t celebrate them myself. I never felt the need to be offended by someone wanting to me to have a Happy Chanukah, a Merry Kwanza, a Great Boxing Day, or whatever holiday it happens to be. If you celebrate it, and want to wish me to have a happy whatever-the-heck-it-is, then go for it and a happy one right back at you. Why that should offend anyone is beyond my comprehension.

I am not an overly religious person, heck, I have barely been religious at all in my memory, but even I can accept the reality of the situation and understand the “reason for the season.” I may not necessarily subscribe to all the events that are believed to have occurred a couple millennia ago, but to me that does not lessen the fact that whatever happened, it was powerful enough to last all those centuries and bring us our traditions of today. I can say that I do believe in God, but perhaps not in the way that others do. In all reality, if you think of “God” (or whatever deity or deities that mankind has believed in at one time or another) in its base form – as the creator of life on Earth, then most absolutely God must exist, because here we are. Whether that life was created out of the clay of the Earth, or via the simple and complex mechanics of evolution, the Creator of Life is there and continues to be there every day, as life continues to exist and evolve. Whether God is some all powerful mysterious force or the Laws of Physics as we currently understand them, I don’t think there’s anything worthy of offense regardless of which end of the spectrum you find yourself. All in all, I think that’s the one thing I have been eternally thankful for over the last couple of years – all that asinine silliness about having to be offended by traditions that bring joy to millions across the world seems to have been realized for just that.

So I’ll end this by saying that regardless of what you celebrate, and what you believe, I hope 2016 is a great year for everyone and I hope that, despite those that would destroy society, this year brings us all a little closer together and we can celebrate our differences instead of being offended by them.