Many of you might be aware that I quit my job a little over two months ago to persue a life of leisure.

There are many reasons why I finally walked away from my job of five years, but they really aren’t important to anyone other than myself. The big thing that a lot of you who come in contact with me on a regular basis is that I feel like a new human being.

No more stress over factors that irked me to no end that I had no control over; no more false senses of urgency; no more working insane hours. It’s like heaven!

I gotta tell you, for the first month all I really did was sit around and watch the games of the World Cup. Sure, I cleaned the house like a madman just because I didn’t know what else to do with my idle time, but I got to see almost every game live. That’s a big first for me.

Then, when The Cup ended, I had to start thinking a little more long term. I took a little bit of time to finalize some projects that I had been freelancing on prior to quitting, but, with all this extra time, that happened really quickly.

I finally caught up on my five week backlog of comic books. Believe me, for my insane habit, five weeks is a crap load of books.

I got to play a video game for two days straight. I know that’s horribly hedonistic, but it was pretty damn awesome for me.

I bleached my hair and finally got my right lobe pierced to match the left one that had been pierced for the past twenty years (it’s the little things that working for “The Man” make you really appreciate).

I slowed way down on my smoking (I’m not going to say I’ve quit until I haven’t had a single smoke for three months and I’m not doing that hot towards that goal these days), and I started to aggressively attack a “Couch-to-5K” program. If all goes as planned, I start week four day one tomorrow morning.

This lack of day-to-day responsibility has got me feeling more centered than I have felt in a very long time. I’m less grumpy, anxious, sleepy (and other dwarfs as well) and I actually feel more healthy (except for the blasted summer cold I’m nursing right now).

And, because I can’t stay idle for too long, a friend and I have started a company to book Dallas-area bands (visit ManhandlerBooking.comfor more details). This will help me turn my habit/fascination with live music into a productive endeavor without having to expose anyone to my horrible horrible musical skills. I mean it. There’s a reason I do the vocal parts of Rock Band while squeezle is out of the house. There are just a few people who have been exposed to my dabbling in karaoke who are still alive to tell the tale. It’s just badness.

Unfortunately, the one thing I really intended to do over the past two months, but really haven’t gotten around to is write. I’ve been so lax with this blog that I probably need to get in here and scrub off a goodly layer of dust and mold before proceeding.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got more to say and I’m hoping you folks are still willing to read it. I can’t promise any of it will be heady or substantive, but it will, at the very least, give you a little brain break for part of your day.

To quote something a very wise man said upon being woken on the couch: “My mind is a sewer, and I live in a cardboard box.”

P.S. For all of you worried about that mouse up there at the top of my post, don’t worry. He’s suspended in a PFC solution, so he’s just fine.

I’d like to preface this entry with a disclaimer. If you are at all religious and/or are offended easily, you’d better stop reading right here.

Are they gone yet? OK, I’ll proceed.

This weekend I had the very fortunate opportunity to attend the wedding of two friends. It was a lovely small service in a quaint wedding chapel and that got me to thinking (uh-oh).

As a rule, I tend to steer clear of Christian-oriented locales. I was going to write that I steer clear of religious-oriented locales, but that’s just too inclusive. As a general rule, religions other than Christianity don’t try to cram their doctrine down my throat. Never once have I been proselytized to by a Muslim or Jew (except for that wacky Jew for Jesus a few years ago, but they are an entirely different kind of animal entirely), and I actually know quite a few Muslims and Jews.

Anyway, sitting in this chapel waiting for the show to kick off, I was struck by something that actually tickled my funny bone: the universal symbol of Christianity is a device of execution.

I understand that over the past couple of millennia the meaning of the cross has been turned around to a symbolic representation of redemption, etc., and I’m just fine with that, but that doesn’t change the fact that it took Constantine I to abolish it’s use as a method of execution in 337 AD. That’s a full 300 years after it was used on Jesus. Scarily enough, that date is one of the few things that has stuck with me from the formal courses in “Christian History” I took almost ten years ago.

At this point you are probably trying to figure out how I derived humor from my observation of a cross in a wedding chapel on a Saturday morning. Fine, I’ll get to my punchline.

If the time/technology for the events of the New Testament had been shifted by two thousand years or so, it is entirely feasible that the symbol at the altars of Christian churches could be a gas chamber gurney or even the electric chair. That’s what I found funny.

Can you imagine baroquely jewelled and gilded “old sparkys” adorning sacred space. How many people between 0 AD and 337 AD found the cross as repulsive?

These are the things that humor me. Oh, and for all of you who didn’t heed my disclaimer, yes, I do indeed know that I’m going to burn in your “Hell,” but I’ll keep a seat warm for you.