Category Archives: Month of Thanks

Cows, or more specifically, Rib-Eye Steaks. Sure, there’s the other delicious cuts of beef and there’s leather, so they are very useful animals to us all around, but really the rib-eye is what I’m most thankful for.

Moo.

Video Games. I started with text-based Adventure and a Star Trek game that my dad had at work where different letters represented different ships and have enjoyed them since 198-whatever and have continued spending too many hours playing and enjoying them. But only PC games, because console games are for losers.

Bread, and bread products. Bad for you? Quite possibly. Delicious? Always. Plus it makes sandwich making easier.

Other cultures. Great as America and Western Civilization is, I’m glad that other people look at the world in different ways. It would be a boring planet if everyone was American. This way we get different stories, art, ways of thinking and looking at things. It gives traveling a purpose.

Dr. Pepper. The greatest drink ever. That is all.

Hackers, crackers and pirates. Thank you for providing us with endless entertainment, programs and utilities in unapproved manners. Thanks for the cool things I can do to my phone, computers and other technology because you’re willing to take the time to take something apart, figure out how it works and put it back together slightly differently.

The iPhone. It’s popularized the change in the way we deal with the internet, information and personal technology. And all for the better. I’ve gotten so used to being able to pull the internet out of my pocket, I don’t ever want to go back to the old days.

Cars. Man, it would stink having to walk everywhere. Everything would take forever.

I’m thankful for books. I love books.

I love that through them I can experience things that are impossible. I love knowing things and learning things and without books what is possible would be severely limited. Without books my life would be darker, more ignorant and just plain worse. I am thankful that paper was invented and is dirt cheap to make, that Gutenberg invented the printing press, that tens of thousands of people write things down and sell/give them to me.

Today thing to be thankful for: Caffeine. It makes me a better person. Especially in the mornings.

Idea shamelessly stolen from John Scalzi.

Last night we had a presentation from a girl who went to Swaziland, where AIDS has so decimated the country they expect the entire country to not exist soon. They have no economy to speak of, live in abject poverty, and have no hope for the future.

Swaziland has the highest HIV infection rate in the world (26% of all adults; more in other reports) and also the lowest life expectancy at 32 years, which is 6 years lower than the next lowest average of Angola.

I am thankful for hope. Thankful that I live in a country that has a decent, if not quite as good as it has been lately, economy. I have a job and if, God forbid, something should happen to it, I don’t doubt that I can get another job of some sort. I don’t have to live in a dirt and grass house with no electricity, running water, or sanitation, eating whatever I happen to be able to scratch out of the ground. Billions of people in this world right now live with nothing and no hope of a better future.

Despite the current protests to the contrary, there is hope for the future in America. So much hope that we can’t even begin fathom what being poor is really like. We can’t begin to fathom what a real health care crisis, like an entire generation dying of AIDS, is really like.

Thank you, Lord.