For your viewing pleasure, I give you "Apocalypse Pony"

Ahhh, jokes that rely on one's birth being sometime after 1981, and one's familiarity with the story of the Endtimes, are hilarious.

I'm fat? And Lance is gay.

While there have been a number of blog postings here at Missing Lunchbox in the recent past, I realize that there has been a dearth of posts about my personal life. I could just say that in light of the current world events, discussing my personal trials and tribulations would seem inappropriate. But nah, really it’s just that life has been going pretty smoothly. In the near future I may post about my “trials and tribulations” with finding a new church—once I find a new church.

But, let me tell you about this: We had a “health fair” today at work. You know, one of those things where you get all your vitals checked so you can see just how amazing it is that you’re still breathing, while having ungodly fit people tell you to stop eating cookies and go with cauliflower. Well, my blood pressure, glucose level, cholesterol, and skin health were all excellent (go me!). However, according to one of those lovely little BMI machines, I’m overweight.

OVERWEIGHT? Are you kidding me, please, look at me:

Yeah, total lard ass right there.
Geez, how do I fit through my door in the morning?

To her credit, the girl at the BMI station did warn me to take the results “with a grain of salt” as they are not always accurate. Um, ya think?


Oh, and in completely non-Warren news, Lance Bass of N*Sync fame came out of the closet today.



Congrats, Lance, on being added to the out and proud list…and for having a freaking hot boyfriend (and we're talking hott).

Funny, yet true...

HAHA


(By the way, who else is glad that Americans no longer have to pay the State Dept. $3000 to be evacuated from Lebanon?

And who else is mystified as to why we're going to wait a week to send Condoleezza to the region for some diplomacy? Looks like we’re going to wait for Israel to decimate Lebanon, kill untold number of civilians, ignore international condemnations, fracture itself from the rest of civilized world, and royally piss off the Arab community, all in the name of toppling Hezbollah, BEFORE we intervene. Sounds like a great idea, huh?)

Let's take a break with Beyoncé...

Beyonce "DeJa Vu"

Right now seems like a pretty good time to forget about the world’s troubles, sit back and enjoy the R&B siren du jour’s newest summer hit...

World Unhinged?

So, let’s review:

1.Iran is spitting in the face of geopolitical pressure by continuing it’s progression towards nuclear power. While they report to having only the purest of intentions (i.e. nuclear power plants for energy), the more likely objective of possessing WMD is as transparent as it is scary.

2.North Korea is firing rockets like it is freaking New Year’s Eve, except this event is less celebratory and more self-aggrandizing. And while these rockets spend more time falling haphazardly from the sky than they do actually working, they are certainly much better rockets than the ones North Korea didn’t have six years ago. While there is no way North Korea will be able to strike the US mainland any time soon, I’d be quite nervous if I were in South Korea or Japan right now.

3.And, good ol' Israel seems to want to bomb Lebanon into extinction. Don’t get me wrong, when two of its soldiers are kidnapped by Hezbollah, Israel has every right to respond forcefully; but Israel’s response is completely disproportionate to the crime. To put into perspective, the bombing of Beirut is reminiscent of the U.S. attack against Afghanistan, but that was in response to the September 11th attacks—that response was proportionate.

This over-the-top response is clearly not just about the two Israel soldiers; it is also about Israel not sitting idly by while its neighbors call for the death of Israel. This is about a people who believe that God chose this land for his people to settle and live, and the Israelis are not about to disobey God’s wishes. This is about a people who escaped slavery, wandered the desert, saw their temple burned (twice), spent about 1800 years in diaspora, were vilified for causing the death of Jesus, and then were systemically tortured, killed, and almost eradicated by the Nazis. I think that in the end, the bombing of Lebanon is Israel declaring that they “ain’t taking shit from anyone anymore”.

The problem is that a good chunk of the Arab world still wants to give them shit. These particular Arabs sees the presence of Israel, and all western influence in the Middle East, as an affront to Muslim sovereignty and dominion over the Middle East. But, the problem is even more basic than that: Israel is bombing Lebanon, with whom Syria and Iran are aligned. Hell, the entire region will be aligned with Lebanon if this bombing campaign continues much longer. And so here goes Israel and Hezbollah, about to plunge the Middle East into chaos unimaginable.

Can we call this a powderkeg? Sure. The perfect strom? Maybe. World War III? Well, that’d require at least two world powers facing each other from opposing sides (and I fear that an Iranian/North Korean alliance equates to one world power).

Now, can the current volatile state of the world be blamed solely on George W. Bush? Certainly not; the roots of this problem stretch back…well, centuries if you want to get technical. However, it still remains that U.S. military attention and force is bogged down in a quagmire caused by a misguided attempt to find WMD that we had no proof existed before the war, and found did not exist once we got there, while getting the added bonus of toppling a dictator whose strength and influence barely existed outside his nation’s border. The fact that we are "bogged down" presents the question: if diplomacy doesn’t work, does the U.S. have the ability to have a viable or realistic method to bring these three abovementioned situations under control?

In addition, as we all know, there a number of world issues that could benefit from the attention of the most powerful and richest nation in the world: the ozone layer is gradually become little more than an ozone screen, the US gulf coast seems to be just as unprepared for this hurricane season as it was for the last one; the starving and genocide in the Sudan continues unabated; and the might of the US military may soon be needed to bring two rouge nation-states in line while at the same time extinguishing the volatile Israeli/Lebanonese situation. However, the United States has no choice but to continue to commit itself to being the buttress holding up the wobbly Iraqi government—for an undetermined length of time I might add.

And somehow, despite the fact that the world is flirting with coming completely unhinged, I remain strangely optimistic that humanity will make it through. Perhaps this is because, from WWI to WWII, from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, from the Cold War to India/Pakistan, it still hasn’t happen.

Here’s hoping that our luck doesn’t run out.

In remembrance

Because I fear that we're beginning to forget...

progress

I met a guy through a friend over the weekend. This guy, who is gay, and I had fun hanging out with our mutual friend Jon, but I didn't think much of it...until this IM conversation:

[his IM name]: fyi i thought you were damn cute
[his IM name]: *blush*

Hey, it's progress, I'll take it. And although he lives in Winston-Salem NC, there was the exchanging of cell numbers, so we'll see...