Enough.

How offensive. Michaelangelo, you have made me feel I don't belong here. Please cover this with a tarp, too.

“Our Heavenly Father,” the prayer begins, “grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful.” It goes on for a few more lines before concluding with “Amen.”

For Jessica, who was baptized in the Catholic Church but said she stopped believing in God at age 10, the prayer was an affront. “It seemed like it was saying, every time I saw it, ‘You don’t belong here,’ ” she said the other night during an interview at a Starbucks here.

Since the ruling, the prayer has been covered with a tarp. The school board has indicated it will announce a decision on an appeal next month.

Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer, NY Times, 26 Jan 2012

I have many atheist or agnostic friends. There was a period of my life where that was my thinking, too. But even then, sincere religious expression never offended me. When I drove by the Sikh temple on my apartment complex’s street, I never felt alienated. If I saw a prayer for healing on a friend’s Facebook feed, I may have thought “and see a doctor, of course,” but it never offended me.

I’m the diplomatic sort. Always have been. It actually causes me pain when people fight. I don’t like it.

But this trend, of late, is actually starting to piss me off. I fully recognize that we are not a Christian nation, in the sense that Iran is an Islamic nation. But to act like the faiths of most of the founders of this country, and of almost every major thinker in our nation’s history, is some weird, alien, offensive, freedom-threatening philosophy is beyond silly.

Yes, terrible things have been done in the name of religion. Faith has often been the tool of government. But that does not make religion in general, or Judaism and Christianity in particular, the problem.

Most of our American ancestors were taught to read by the church. The abolitionist movement was a church movement. The civil rights movement was a church movement. Sure, there were people saying the Bible or God told them differently on those issues, and they were what we contemporary Christians call “wrong.” :)

This phoney, pseudo-liberal nonsense that says “every culture and expression is fine except the majority’s” has got to be recognized for the bullshit that it is. Atheism is fine. I have no problem with an ethical atheist. But I do not agree that freedom of religion also means freedom from ever seeing religious sentiments in public. This newer brand of hyper-sensitive, highly intollerant phoney progressivism needs to stop being coddled and start being called out for the nonsense it is. Not by threatening kids who stand up for their ideals, like Jessica, but by teaching them, in exactly the same way we teach kids to tolerate other races and genders and cultures, to do the most liberal thing of all — tolerate the majority culture of their own country.

Top 3 Reasons He or She Doesn’t Want to Marry You

Why your boyfriend doesn’t want to marry you

He is inundated with anti-marriage messages in exactly the proportion that you are inundated with messages saying you’re not sexy.. Let’s face it — the only happy marriage ad he’s seen is for old men who need boner medication.

You are a bitch 25% of the time. (Think about it.)

Batman: Arkham City, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim each cost $60 — the same price as taking you to a modest dinner. Three of these will deliver 100+ hours of entertainment each and 0 hours of complaining.

Why your girlfriend doesn’t want to marry you

She is inundated with anti-marriage messages in exactly the proportion that you are inundated with messages saying you’re insufficiently rich, muscular, or hairy. Let’s face it — the only happy marriage ad she’s seen is for old women with sleep number beds.

You are a dick 75% of the time: when you wake up, when you get home from work, and when you’re asleep (you both snore and fart — what a charming combination).

NetFlix is $10 a month, and ice cream and popcorn don’t smell as bad as beer bottles and chicken wings when left on the coffee table overnight.

Oh, Jebus.

You thought I was miffed about calling a computer system sensei.

Check out what another division of our company, overseas, is calling their three levels of consultants:

1. Warrior
2. Ninja
3. Jedi

I shit thee not.

Do grown men run companies, or are all CEOs 14 year old boys at heart? Because if I were 14, I’d think being a warrior, ninja, or jedi who consulted a computerized sensei would be freaking awesome. As a grown man, in reference to my professional life, I’d be… what’s the word? Nonplussed? No, too soft. Embarrassed? Well, obviously. Defamed. Now, there’s a word you don’t use daily.

Besides, I’d rather be Batman.

p.s. My wife has decided that the fact that I care, in itself, proves I’m an even bigger geek.

I’ve grown accustomed to your grill

This sticker, which I placed to highlight a dent someone recently added to my beast, has been admired by many a teen. It's an icon you find in the Gears of War games, when there's a prize nearby ("cog-tags," i.e. dog tags, from a fallen soldier).

I used to say I got attached to people, not to things. It sounded mature, other-worldly Zen Buddhist, give-to-Caesar Christian, and it placated me. The truth was, I got attached to things, too, and losing them hurt.

I went to three elementary schools and two high schools. During my four years in college, my parents moved to three different states. When you play that game where you imagine your bedroom as a child, I cannot participate. I just can’t.

After my divorce, I decided to commit suicide. I acted it out every month. I “lost” this or that. I threw something away, in disgust. I gave something away, because it was nice, because I wanted someone else to have it, because nice things did not belong in my life.

It wasn’t enough.

I compulsively changed phone services, email services, banks, watches, apartments. Everything with my name on it felt wrong. Sure, in the beginning I was avoiding creditors. I settled with most of mine, but there were many trying to get money out of my ex, and I just got tired of it. But even after all that settled down, things just felt wrong. Most things. Every thing.

Earlier this year I bought a Ford POS. I couldn’t afford to deal with what was needed for the Chevy, and instead of financing something else I could barely afford, I just took most of a paycheck and bought a 15 year old car for cash from a deputy sheriff in Denton County. He and his wife needed the money to go to a family reunion in Montana. I had driven about a dozen other cars in the last week. It seemed better than all of those. There was nothing obviously wrong with it.

Over the course of the next six months, I replaced things, cleaned things, learned things. I argued with mechanics who wanted to charge too much for work that I now understood. With the help of a friend, I did a lot of it in my own back yard. I made mistakes. I did things twice. I got gasoline in my eye, cuts on my knuckles, aches in my shoulders from crawling around on concrete. That fucker became mine.

Recently my mom came into some money. She offered to add $2,000 to whatever I could sell the car for, just to get rid of it, and buy something more reliable. It was a generous offer, and it would be a rational thing to accept it.

I am not yet rational.

That car is mine. I understand it. It is old and beastly, but it’s my horse, and I do not want to put it down.

The Dark Knight Rises (spoiler)

Just watched the preview. Familiar with the character, mythos, and Christopher Nolan’s work. I say, instead of getting his back broken by Bane (as in the 90s comic), Batman is going to be killed by Bane, and a new Batman will take his place: probably the cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Nolan’s clearly a student of mythology, and I don’t think the title “Rises” means Christian Bale’s incarnation of the Dark Knight gets back up.

We’ll see.