12.24.2011

Merry Christmas Eve :)

"...he hoped the people saw him in the church because he was a cripple,

and it might be pleasant for them to remember upon Christmas Day

who made lame beggars walk and blind men see."

<3

:)

12.21.2011

santa, baby


{borrowed from emily.
i almost died laughing when i read this.  #5 is my favorite.}


Scientific Inquiry into Santa Claus:

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least
once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even
nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - - - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion - Remember kids, the moment you stop believing in Santa is the moment you start getting clothes for Christmas.

12.18.2011

some thoughts on beauty:

a woman's beauty is never really external.

--my mama

***

if you're not chasing one fantasy, you're chasing another.  if it's not your body, it's your bank account, and if it's not your bank account, it's your resume or your nose or your boobs or your car or the perfect marriage or the perfect vacation or the perfect child.  for two decades, i believed that if i could just get this one thing under control, then the whole of my life would magically bloom like a perfect, lush flower.  but to my great dismay, i realized my life was still my life, and i was still myself, just in smaller pants.

...there is no magic number that can make you feel safe or protected or confident.

i became confident the cheap way, at first, by Zone-dieting myself down to a cuter butt and into smaller pants.  but after awhile, i found that the cheap stuff wasn't going to do it anymore, and i needed the real thing, the ever-elusive thing:
peace.

peace with the way i was made, with the self i was given, with the way life is unfolding around me, but more specifically, with the way it is unfolding in my arms and my legs and my mouth and my eyes.

{--shauna niequst; cold tangerines: carrying my own weight}

***


I find it easy to find beauty in many things.  The sun filtering through the leaves.  The dimples on my little girl.  The deep brown eyes of my boy.  The chubby knees of my baby boy.  The strong shoulders of my husband.

But in me?  I struggle.

And I wonder, why is this such a struggle for me?

As I contemplate that answer, I think that a lot of it has to do with who I have given authority in deciding what is beautiful in me.