So I received a letter from a friend the other day, and only just today got around to reading it. She's quite aware of my religious/moral beliefs, and she suggested that, given that our country (the US) is so rampantly Christian, or at least theistic, that I go elsewhere. But part of what I love about this country is that I can live here, even as an atheist, even as a minority. Sure, the Sheep will criticize me and will harass me, but there's nothing they can legally do. In a lot of ways, America really pisses me off, but this country really rocks. For now at least. Where we'll be in 10 years, who can say. (Hell, who can say where we'll be in just a few years with Mr.-Let's-Be-Bigots Bush in office.) But I can dig this country. In theory, it really rocks. (Then again, in theory, Christianity's not that bad.)

Today, Fox News ran a segment about some comments Tom Cruise made. Supposedly he was bashing the US on a few legitimate points, and he commented that he would never raise his child in America. I can understand a few people getting riled up over his comments: we currently live in an era of pop-patriotism, and as we all know, people become passionate about anything in pop culture. But the issue on Fox News was not, as it should have been, whether Cruise's points were legitimate. It was whether he was a traitor. And get this: they were serious. And get this: some people vehemently claimed that yes, he was. Excuse me, but aren't we protected by the first amendment? Or in the current Bush Fan Club climate, does that mean that we can express what we want, provided we don't bash the US? I see the fact that this even came up as an attack on personal freedom, and personally, I'm scared shitless.

During all of high school I couldn't wait for summer to start, and once it did, I never wanted it to end. Now that I'm in college, used to living away from home, I've decided that summer just sucks. While I love my family dearly, I simply can't tolerate spending so much time with them and having so little privacy. Add to that the fact that I have no social life whatsoever at the moment, and the fact that my job is boring as all Hell, and the fact that I have to get up at 6 every day, and the fact that I'm broke so I couldn't even go do anything if I had time, and the fact that I'm more listless with each passing day, and the fact that I'm a whiner, and I'm just ready for school to start again. Granted, life is infinitely better than it could be. It's just such a nasty contrast from the school year that it seems perfectly miserable.

So that's my encouraging thought for the day.