Good morning sunshine! Europe likes to rock the free breakfast included with the hotel and I try and get down there in time whenever I remember and face the morning choice between greasy eggy meaty world and fruity crunchy yogurt world. Strange how once I pattern with one, the conversion is tough to the other though I always feel better when I follow the tree-hugger option.

And I ran back up to my room really quick to find

which made me ponder the fluid malleable nature of religious beliefs. So in my analytical sarcastic way, lets take a gander in that direction. First, we few amongst us have not played that game where all the kids get in a circle and you whisper something in the ear of the next person. Then, by the time that something makes it around the circle it has been embellished and altered to the point where it has little if anything to do with the original words. We know this, we can show this, this is not in question and is readily demonstratable indicating that humans in general tend not to be very good carriers of accurate information. Now have a story pass from ear to ear and hand to pen for thousands of years. What are the odds that it bears much resemblance to the original? What are the odds that over time various entities have injected bits of self serving spin? Hmmm. Just a thought to consider and in a reversal, I have heard that the red jolly Santa we have today was an invention of Coco Cola corporation. Being the curious roadie I am, I decided to take a quick look and found that to be at least debatable and Santa may be a bit more authentic in that his current form was most likely created by a greeting card company. I feel much better now.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/santa.asp

And check out this cool place that Santa's people built

I wonder what this piratey looking guy has to say

I enjoy the contrasts in life. They seem to illuminate the betwixt and unbeknownst to me, candidly Scotty took this picture of two humans focused on what currently was of importance to them. Each immersed in separate realities yet separated by just a few feet.

Uh oh, it's getting late, better head over to the rock show. When we have really long bus drives, they bring in a 'double driver' for each bus. That way they can tag team and take turns driving to get us to our next city. Well, I would like you to meet bus 2's double driver and temporary pirate

We call him Nasty B'stard. Why do we call him that you may well ask? Well, not really sure, we just do.

The contemplating changing my name to the sound of pirate saying 'Aaargh,'

Dave Rat