MONDAY MORNING!

This is me trying to fool myself into being awake.

This morning I jump onto facebook and the first thing that catches my eye is one of my old roommate's status updates. She had just got diagnosed with a virus that reallllly sucks but is not life threatening--it's like the common cold except reallllly painful. Anyways her update says "blank knows he will heal me" I don't mean to be harsh this morning but faith healing *REALLY* *REALLY* irks me. Prayer doesn't heal shit. Rest, relaxation and doctors heal you. Now I'm sure my former roommate is going to the doctor and all that good stuff--and this is certainly now a rip on her--BUT it brings me to a point that I would like to rant a bit about.

So there's this church out in Oregon they are called the followers of christ and they really believe in faith healing; so much to the point of NOT checking their children into a hospital after a car accident. Instead they would take their injured children home and pray over them. 10 years ago after a series of preventable deathes of children in the congregation Oregon lifted the religious exemption laws that used to be in place to protect these neglectful and irresponsible parents, and this past year marked the first death in 9 years as a result of faith healing (a 15 month baby girl nonetheless) and the first to be charged with manslaughter as a result of faith healing.

Humans were given/evolved brains for a reason--to use them. Darwin's survival of the fittess prescribes that these faith healers should eventually be "weeded" out of the gene pool by their own inept ability to survive. I think the horrible thing is it is their children who are suffering the most from it. Children who are taught that this is the right way aren't even given a chance to rebel. They are defenseless! Only if they are spotted suffering of a treatable disease or dead from a treatable ailment do the neglectful parents get "in trouble." I ask how do we punish people who don't seek proper health care for their children and trust in something that isn't...scientifically proved to heal their children? I mean if they themselves don't want to seek health care for a sickness and would rather pray about it--that's their life that they are taking and that's their responsiblility.
People can drive me nuts sometimes.

I just watched the movie Stardust for the 2nd and 3rd time this weekend. I remember watching it the first time and being stunned--just because the story is delightful and the perfomance given by Robert Deniro is remarkably charming. And it's giggly funny. The whole idea of the movie as quoted from the creator of the graphic novel Neil Gaimen was to create an "adult fairy tale." Which I feel was acheived, and like shrek (although not as laugh out loud funny, but more romantically inclined) it's a movie that can be easily enjoyed by kids and adults alike.