Pagans High on Chocolate

Easter has come and gone, but the celebration goes on. Today I rejoiced by eating 4 chocolate eggs, enough jelly beans to cause me to drool and stain my height-of-fashion maternity shirt, and 3 chocolate gold coins. For breakfast. Then there was the lunch debacle with the eggs themselves. Boiled eggs crushed up on toast equals Nirvana. Later, in an attempt to avoid any further nonsense with the Easter chocolate that definitely does not belong to me, "we" decided to make brownies and get rid of it all, which of course resulted in heart palpitations (for me) and complete and utter pandemonium (for 3-year-old) due to an excess of cocaine. I mean chocolate. Same thing.
Aside from the complete breakdown of willpower and common sense parenting I experienced today, I'm feeling a little smug with respect to my epiphany regarding Christian holidays. Yes, it is uniquely my epiphany and was in no way influenced by alternative religion websites or articles because I am so informed about pre-Christ pagan rituals. Whatever. Anyway, I'm smug about the fact that I took 10 minutes out of my day on Saturday to Google "Easter bunny pagan". This led to my discovery of the "borrowing" of pagan dates of celebration (centered around winter solstice and vernal equinox, to be specific) and rituals by early Christian clergy in order to make Christian holidays and milestones more palatable (sorry, lapse in grammar there - don't care enough to edit, though). I relayed some of these discoveries of mine to the poor, uniformed woman across the street, both of us relishing in my enlightenment. She may have mentioned something about a little-known text (The DaVinci Code - something like that. Poor woman needs to get out more. DaVinci was from an entirely different country!), but she was clearly awestruck by what I stumbled on to. I think I'll write a book. I might wait until my heart stops beating wildly from another trip the brownie pan.

In our computer room, directly above my monitor, hangs a big elementary-school wall map of the world, circa 1970 (we got it at City Liquidators in Portland - a sweet place for old school paraphenelia and everything else ever made by humans). This map, in contrast to every other I've seen, places Africa in the center of the world, with all the rest of us emanating from that continent. As cartographers and geographists are most likely scientists, what can be the reason for the millions of jingoistic maps scattered around our country? Looking at my map, it's so much easier to see that the world was once just a blob of land, and the global shift caused by [insert a big geological word here] resulted in the dispersion of the continents as we now know them. My map also better demonstrates how the migration of our species must have occurred. Conclusion: modern cartographers are creationists, or, most likely, Texans.
On a slightly less attacking note, I see that our map is not hung exactly straight. Now that I've noticed this I will never look at this map again. We'll just have to move. Oh the joys of OCD.

Real World

I sent this letter to the editor this morning. I actually looked things up and verified them. Then I even used spell checker and Fleischer brought up fleshman. Um, I believe fleshman may actually not be a word, so at some point someone added it to my speller. Under what circumstances would you write fleshman? Something else to ponder...
To the Editor:
In the spirit of Sunshine Week, I'd like to shed a little light on the details regarding the 'Blog War', as reported in The Missoulian March 12. Blogs (shortened from web logs, or online opinion forums) are the 21st century's take on editorials, and the fact that anyone can be a blogger without formal journalism training or press credentials makes the admission of a blogger to White House press briefings a noteworthy event. However, comparing Garrett Graff, the subject of the article and a liberal pundit writing for Mediabistro.com, to Jeff Gannon is laughable.
Jeff Gannon, as reported by the Washington Post online, Salon.com, sourcewatch.org, and others, is the pseudonym of James Guckert (how do you get FBI clearance using a fake name?), an individual with a 2-day training course in journalism under his belt, who recently advertised himself as a male escort and posed nude on several gay websites. This man was allowed into the White House working for Talon News Service, a GOP activist website. Gannon/Guckert's questions were typically softballs lobbed to Pres. Bush or press secretary Fleischer loaded with criticism of Democrats. He has since quit his work with Talon.
Comparing Graff, an executive editor of the Harvard Crimson to Gannon/Guckert, an ex-male prostitute with a $50 journalism diploma, is a stretch. Both are newsworthy individuals, but it's like comparing Al Franken to John Holmes. Their "news" should fall in different sections of the newspaper.
Love and buds and stuff,
Me

Moo-zack

Four cows, lowing to the sounds of Enya. That's what pre-natal pilates was like tonight. On the way I was rollin' in my 5.0, getting crunk with Big Boi and Andre 3000. I bounce into the pilates room, grab my please-ignore-the-suspicious-odors pilates mat and settle into the only position in the room that doesn't force me to look at 7 angles of my large self in the none-too-kind pilates mirrors. Next to the BO lady.
When I was a freshman in college, at that point newly brainwashed into calling myself a freshperson, I admit to having bought an Enya cassette (ha! cassette! what the hell is that?) because my ultimate frisbee-playing freshman (oops - person) counselor was listening to it on his walkman (ha! walkman! what the hell is that?) in the dining hall early one Sunday morning. The only early Sunday morning I ever experienced in college, come to think of it.
But now, even in the deep breathing semi-hypnotic state of pre-natal pilates, it occurred to me that Enya sounds like a grown woman trying to make spooky campfire noises accompanied by a cheap synthesizer. It's either that or some kind of soft-porn soundtrack. So I started to laugh to myself. And laughing during pilates is a bad idea. I had the choice of either farting or peeing my pants, as I am completely unable to control either one of those muscle groups while I'm seated and stable, let alone hunched over looking through my armpit with my ass in the air.
Luckily I had arrived late, so I had to set up next to the stinky hippie in the unitard, so the smell of pee and gas was hopefully overwhelmed by her natural aura.
I blame it all on Enya.