98th percentile. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry 🙂

I hardly have a big ole pile of privilege. I have debt like you wouldn’t believe, I’m surprised I can make my house payments, student loan payments and any other credit-type debt beyond that. I’m not on the winning end of any side. I’m barely hanging on, which I think is where most college graduates end up, particularly just out of the gates. I live in a neighborhood that is a hearty mix of black and white, since a lot of liberal democrats would take issue with race. We get along. There is no rampant hate.

I am not anti-choice. I want people to make the right decision. And, of course, our visions of that right decision can be what differ. So, who’s right? Should choice be limitless? Should any moral consequences be cast asunder because it doesn’t make us feel good to ponder consequences to our actions? I don’t believe I’m part of the problem, at all. I don’t believe anyone generally is part of the problem. Personally, I don’t think there should be any laws either favoring or disfavoring things like abortion on the books. I must be another fucked up excuse for a Republican.

I think, in a way, that socialized health care is an inevitablity. I think, though, that people should have the option. They should be given a choice; do I want to pay into a government-run health care organization, or do I want to pay into a private-run health care organization? I think they should be mutually exclusive, or perhaps one supplementing the other. But, people should individually have that choice.

But, hate is what drives so much of this. Hate on both sides. How the hell we survived the revolution as a nation is beyond me, much less a civil war. I want there to be more to life than hate.

Because, you know what? Christianity is all about love. People forget that, both agnostics and even Christians themselves; people on the left and the right. Christianity is not about dictating to people and finger-wagging…it’s all about living how God and Christ want us to live. Both sides, Democrat and Republican, need to remember that. And I don’t believe for one fraction of a second that Christ wanted us to do that to each other.

And I do hope that you don’t truly hate me because of my opinion. We’re all entitled to them. I just think that no one should dictate to anyone; we all have our conceptions of how things should be, of how people should act and what they should support and what support of something should or shouldn’t mean. But, in the end, it’s all trite. Love should be color blind, it should be gender blind. Life shouldn’t be all about worry, animosity and vitriol.

I wouldn’t dare dictate to anyone what to do with their bodies, minds or souls. I do, however, have the power of speech and therefore the ability to inform them that I believe that they’re misguided. That, in itself, is not evil…to me, anyway. It’s love.

Peace.

I’ve been converting video all day on my day off. Of course, I haven’t been sitting here watching it all day. But, two episodes of Galactica are now encoded to wmv from avi so that I can play it via Media Center on the XB 360. For some reason Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, neglected to give the XB 360 DivX or XviD decoding capability. Go figure 😛

But, I’ve been using Windows Media Encoder to change my video to suit the hunk of junk. It has taken all day to do three episodes of Galactica. I think the last will finally be done before bed, after which I have one more which will probably go a good bit of the day tomorrow.

It’s upscaling 608×336 vids to 1280×720. It’s doing a rather good job, me thinks. I’ve played part of two episodes and they look SD broadcast quality–which isn’t too stinkin’ bad, even on my 720p TV.

So, the Ruthie shall now be able to see the last 4 (and most important) episodes of the season 😀 w00t!