The Sharpened Pixel

My portfolio website is finally off the ground over at www.sharpenedpixel.com . There will be updates in the next few days. For now take a look and enjoy!

Stay Classy Pat Robertson

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/pat-robertson-denounces-islam-not-re

So here's Pat, stirring up shit again. Denouncing Islam which, last time I checked, has over 1 billion adherent's is not going to make the cause of Christianity any stronger. In fact Pat, quite frankly I think you can only make all Christians and it's followers look worse.

To denounce Islam is absolutely absurd. As someone who, gasp, has lived an work among people of the Islamic faith, I can tell you honestly, they are just as good, just as crazy, and no less human than any of the rest of us in the west, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Athiest.

I know a lot of this is happening in light of the Fort Hood shooting. My brother is stationed there. His wife and kids are there, it worries me too. I feel sick for the families affected, the father's being put into early graves and the tragedy of it all.

I feel sorry for Nidal Hasan as well. Just one poor bastard stuck in the middle of socio-religious ideologies at war. As surely as we have made Islam into our "hated enemy" they have repaid in kind.

Now ask yourselves dear Christians, when shall we learn to learn to turn the other cheek? To give kindness to any that would aid us? To do what is right by people, even if they would harm us? When will stop making the same mistakes, and see these people only as our enemy, instead of humans, no different or worse, simply choosing to walk a different path?

Stateside and the Titanic

Well you few faithful followers, and random fans of alliteration, looks like a big chapter of my life is coming to a close. India is, and will always be, an amazing place, incredible sights, incredible people, but alas, the bell has sounded, and it beacons me back to the place I call home. Cross the world again, cross the great polar north and the light of the infinite day, cross the continents, to the homeland, to the familiar, and finally, across the mountains, once again, home.

If you really travel, really let go, you can really take in so much, see so much, expand yourself so much. I can't think of anything worse than for a man to never leave the comforts of the hearth. You don't know who you are really, deep down, until the juxtaposition is almost a part of you too.

But there is a danger in that. What if you never really liked who you were to begin with? What if in that mirror of yourself you see only an empty vessel, an object of derision. What if you only see what you were as incomplete, or obsolete? If you smash that image, I think you almost become a phantom. Not what you were, but no longer able to truly be anything else. You become lost, a man without an identity, a soul without a home.

I have seen the sunrise on the flip side enough times. Bathed in the water, eaten the food. Lived, loved, learned and taught. I hope the footprints on the foreign shore don't wash away to soon. But if you follow them long enough, you will see the way that points me back, back to my roots, back to my personal insanity, back to my family, back to the cradle of the mountains and the place I call home.