I wish I were somewhere else.

Walking with a limp because of exploded glass

2012-01-30T11:07:00.001-05:00

I sumbitted the following letter to consumeraffairs.com and the newly created Consumer Protection agency after I had first-hand proof that the internet myth of 'exploding pyrex' was a proven reality. I think at this point in my life, I'm so sick of coping with the tactics and efforts of the purveyors of products, their messages, and the overall insult to my own intelligence that I just don't give a literal fuck anymore that I'm ready to start speaking out to governing bodies about the conditions that normal everyday people are facing in this country on a daily basis.

C'mon, let's face it. People like Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Barack Obama aren't preparing their own food, cleaning their own toilets, or doing their own laundry today. So, clearly they haven't the faintest idea of what typical people like you and I are facing everyday.

The stupid things like I'm mentioning in the following submitted letter are just a miniscule percent of the frag mines that normal American citizens are facing on a daily basis thanks to the dangers of a globalized economy.

Let's just say that I'm okay. I've still got all of my limbs, both eyes, a fully functional respiratory system, and a working way of eliminating wastes from my God-given body. But, I can imagine that there are those that are less fortunate from the experiences that I've endured. Those with worse outcomes, they are who you should concern yourself with, and they are the subjects of the letters which I have written to the consumeraffairs.com and Consumer Protection Agency.

Things could have been a lot worse for me. I've got the burned lineoleum, scars, and photos to bear that out.
The following is a paste of the letter I sent to consumeraffairs.com.

(The letter was only edited mildly for the Consumer Protection Agency)

I was preparing dinner, a fillet of S'wai baked in the oven. I wrapped the fillet in tin foil and set it down in a pyrex casserole dish. I cooked it for about 22 minutes on 400 degrees. When I pulled out the dish and set it on the top of the stove, the dish exploded! Maybe, exploded is a bit drastic sounding, but let's just say it blew itself apart into shards all over the kitchen, otherwise a small explosion of the materials.

As a result, the bottom of my foot got burned and I got a couple of cuts on my legs. I wasn't wearing shoes since I was fairly certain that I wouldn't have anything to worry about cooking in my own kitchen.

Why the hell hasn't someone said that there should be some kind of warning label put onto these dishes bearing the PYREX trademark? It's utterly ridiculous that people are risking being maimed by their cookware in this day and age just because someone wants to save a few dollars on a cook pan.

Someone needs to bring a class action lawsuit against the makers of these damned things until they finally agree to put a big bright label on the cartons that reads, "The use of this product may lead to random explosions during food preparation. Thanks, have a good day."

Admittedly, I got off easy, but the burn on the bottom of my foot could have been a burn on my face, a burn on any other part of my body, or a shard of 400 degree glass in my eye. Someone should sift through the thousands of anecdotal accounts on the web and bring a class action lawsuit against these people who are still producing this volatile cookware. Geez, it sounds like such a joke! But it happens, I can attest to it! I can show you the photos of the injuries if necessary!

It's like a terrorist attack from the manufacturing industry every time that someone heats something made of this stuff up in the microwave.

I know that there are some differences in the materials, borosilicate glass vs. soda lime glass, well someone needs to make sure that there are different trademarks for these products so people aren't putting their lives in their hands when they are baking a lasagna!

Slightly injured but making it,

Mark k. McGehee

Distractions

2011-12-13T10:29:00.001-05:00

I'm distracted lately. I knew I would be, when I treated myself to Christmas with an Xbox360. Like for instance, right now. I'm making myself write this entry. I'm thinking very much about some virtual violence right about now. But, instead I'm trying to regain some sort of discipline to sit down and continue writing, instead of falling into a non-stop distraction. I guess it really is about self-discipline. Which, at times I tend to have a bit of, others not so much. But, I suppose that's everyone since all of us face similar temptations in this mad media-saturated century. Distractions are prevalanet.

This is an age of distraction, a golden age of man. An age set to implode upon, or be exploded by from unknown forces at any moment. However, it is apparent that we have had to recover from global catastrophes in the past. When mankind likely was at a comparable level of civilization, with a different set of distractions, but all of the same problems of human nature.

I began this blog a few years back to get myself writing on a regular basis. But, it's been greatly hit and miss, often at fulfilling that initial function since I've updated it so sporadic. Not sure whyy that is, just that I've been on a writing hiatus for a couple of years now. Not creating much of anything more than a random scribbling in a notebook I keep, or a scrap of a dream I might have woke up and wanted to remember.

I knew when I finally bought the Xbox360 that it would be another distraction for me on many levels from getting this piece of fiction I've been trying to finish. But, here I am today writing random rants in here. Trying to get warmed up so I can continue the story of Ken Phalanx.

Samuel Adams Salt n' Vinegar Garlic Ginger Chicken

2011-12-01T12:36:00.001-05:00

One of my hobbies, pet projects, or past times making up dishes from whatever is in the kitchen. This has been becoming something I've come to enjoy more and more lately. Dammit, another creative outlet.
Anyway, here's.......Tonight's chicken experiment.

6 oz. chicken breast coated with salt and vinegar potato chips, with Samuel Adams Boston Lager, garlic, ginger marinade.

Yes, it's yet another kitchen exploration this evening. Here's the proposed recipe.
1 6oz. Chicken breast
1/4 cup of Samuel Adams Boston Lager
3 cloves garlic diced up
1/4 teaspoon each
salt, ginger, black pepper

Dice up that garlic and thaw out the chicken breast.
(I usually buy a big tray of them and put them into the freezer in single portions for whenever I want them, usually the last me about three weeks, maybe more if there are other meats in the freezer. I just wrap them up in foil, they usually keep pretty well and the foil can be used to cover the marinade dish, hint)
Sprinkle all of that ginger, salt, and black pepper onto the chicken breast and throw it in a bowl.
Take all your diced up garlic, then sprinkle it onto the chicken breast.
Next, pour that beer over the chicken and let it set for a while in the fridge until you're ready to cook it, maybe two hours or so from when you've put it in the fridge, just so all of that spice gets absorbed into the chicken.

When it's finally stinking like a vampire's worst nightmare, pull out those Salt n' Vinegar potato chips, crunch them up and coat the chicken.

Pop it into a hot skillet, fry it up, and I'll have to wait to tell whether or not you should enjoy it or not. Since I haven't tried the finished product yet.
It might be another in my long list of failures, but it can't possibly be as bad as the bananna burger.
I tend to think it will taste pretty good. I can imagine what the flavor might be.

I'll be adding in some veggies, maybe brussels sprouts, some white northern beans, or a sweet potato, haven't decided that yet.

Two Centuries and Thirty-Five Years, and needing a change today.

2011-11-23T10:35:00.001-05:00

As an independent voter who has been following the circus that is the Republican nominee process, I've found that I really only like one member of that field, and it's Ron Paul. He's the most consistent of them who makes the most sense, and actually will answer a question that is posed to him directly. Unlike all of the other candidates for the Republican nomination, he doesn't stay with the party's talking points, and hasn't had some jaded past where he has groped someone in a car, hired a dubious groundskeeper, or become the definition for a mixture of lubricant and fecal matter. He doesn't have a spouse that runs a farcical treatment for homosexuals, nor has he brought a significant amount of baggage into this campaign from his previous political career. Granted, his ideals of an isolationist America that is concentrated on the rights of the States is rather 1776, but do we really need to maintain this corporate status quo that we've been living under for the last 20 years? I don't know if Ron Paul is really the answer that this country needs right now, but I know that none of the other field of candidates who have a snowballs chance in hell of unseating President Barak Obama are worthy of assuming that title from him.

We have been in the midst of a vile political climate for a while now, that would rather we just grant carte blance to Big Business no matter the cost to each of us who are struggling every day to maintain our own status quo of existence. The costs of our daily lives have increased as a result of our complacency, its harder to put a loaf of bread on our counters, or a carton of eggs in our fridges, and that's not to mention how much more difficult it is simply to get to whatever job we're lucky enough to have in this day and age. We simply can't carry on the way we've been going where we pander to a select group of companies and individuals who seem all to happy to deprive us of the very luxuries that they enjoy on a daily basis.

I've not written this as any encouragement to vote for Ron Paul, but he really is the only logical choice for a significant change in the ideology that has dragged this country down into the sewer that it is in today.

Further, Barak Obama has had a difficult mantle to assume. I will publicly grant that to him. He has faced hostile Republican Congress that has publicly proclaimed that they want him to be a one-term President. So, it has been difficult for his Presidency to really embrace the "Hope for Change" that his campaign sought in it's infancy. But, from my observation I've had to ask myself often, has he really done enough to face that conflict head-on like he should have as the head of the Executive branch of our government? He had ample opportunity to make those changes, and promulgate the HOPE that he gained the office of President, and each time in his presidency, he fell short. Perhaps he was captured between a rock and a hard place, perhaps he was limited by position, politic, or some lobbyist pledge. I don't know. Who the fuck am I to know this? But, through my own observations of his Presidency, it isn't until recently where he has taken advantage of his office to make the wave of hope that got him elected a reality have I seen any worth in my part in getting him elected to that post. If only he would have been working for typical Americans like myself over the four years he has enjoyed as President, I might not now be considering a replacement for his job as a voter in this democracy.

Honestly, I feel that it is well past time for change. We need a drastic renovation of this political system. That needs to begin with the removal from all corporate influence of any kind upon our government. I seriously doubt that any of the framers of the great document which we base our democracy upon had in mind that one day the government they envisioned would someday be tasked with regulating the fish in the seas, the life in a woman's womb, or the plants which grow upon the Earth. Provide for the common good, I don't see the US government providing for the common good for all of the equally created men(and women) upon this great continent any more in this system. Instead, it has become a business that makes cuts where the common good is concerned and allows businesses to put that common good at risk with water that is flammable.

We are well past 'Hoping for Change'. America is in a predicament now. It has reached a fever pitch that is set to explode, be shaken apart through fracking related earthquakes, or to be pepper-sprayed in the face of it's freedoms. It's well past time that we awake from our complacency and make some drastic alterations in our systematic disregard for the freedoms that we embraced as a nation 235 years ago.

The sad casualty of captalism

2011-11-17T11:15:00.001-05:00

I was at Wal-Mart early this morning. And, like most times when I go there, I found myself stricken with the realization that there are 40 checkout lines, and only 3 that are operational with a long line in each of those three lines.
For a logic problem, this has two solutions.

A. Either staff more cashiers
B. Decrease the number of checkout stations.

Yet, there is apparently no logic at work in the reality of the situation. There may be only one time of the year when it is feasible for Wal-Mart to actually have all 40 of those checkout stations staffed, and even during that time period, they don't have all of them staffed. There's no reason for them to. since they have a Wal-Mart on the other side of town with the same 37 empty checkout lanes.
None of this makes sense in the grand scheme of things. But, this is the world we are living in today. Wal-mart has likely consumed untold millions of tons of steel to create those same 37 empty checkout lanes at all of their 8500 stores(wikipedia) across the world. That is a tremendous waste of resources when you really start to consider it. You could likely build an entire town from the materials which they've sank into those unused checkout lanes.

It's a sickening waste of materials.

These are the things that I think about while I'm waiting to give them my hard-earned money in a line of my fellow humans. Granted, I could go to another grocer, but much like everyone else I do like to save a few dollars here and there, and Wal-Mart happens to have these enormous packages of chicken breast that will feed me for nearly two weeks for 12 bucks. So, yes...I am biting the hand that is feeding me, literally, it's my right.

This doesn't change the issue at hand, why squander resources on unused checkout lanes, or produce products that only last two months, or put every single item in it's own fucking bag when there are countries on this Earth that can't even feed, house, or clothe themselves. This is a huge problem, and it makes absolutely no sense.

If Wal-Mart isn't going to pay someone to stand at each one of those checkout lanes when they are open for business, then they need to get rid of them and use those materials for something that will benefit mankind, instead of consuming those materials for the most useless artifact of our capitalist society, the empty checkout lane.

Yet, this isn't even the dagger that pierces me square in the gut. They've taken the extra step to provide a self-checkout option. I've actually used those in the past, and I always leave with some twinge of guilt that I'm stealing from the store. But, aside from that, THOSE ARE ALWAYS CLOSED and there are typically at least 10 of the damned things, again with using up vital resources that could build someone a house, a car, a desk, or a brace for the back that capitalism has shattered through it's grinding gears.

Honestly though, this is just a prime example of the extensive waste of resources that is at work in this modern world. Packaging is an enormous consumption of materials, especially when the packages are packaged, repackaged, and then packaged again in some other way such as a box full of your bagged groceries, or a vase of flowers inside of a bag that has been put inside of a box. This isn't even touching on the multitudinous oceans of useless plastic objects that are generated for one-time use then cast away into the ocean to be diffused by the Earth for a thousand years, yes straws, ketchup packs, and all of those stupid little things we all use every day that we just throw away.

Case in point, Taco Bell sauce packs. Yeah, I like the sauce. I use a lot of sauce on my food from there. The sauce is one of the prime ingredients to me that makes their food at the remotest palatable. Suddenly, on a visit to Taco Bell over the summer, I noticed that their sauce pack contained significantly less sauce in it. So, my train of thought gets on the subject of resource consumption.
Does it cost more for them to put more sauce in the package?
Does it cost less for them to use more of the plastic packages, and put less sauce in the packages?
Why the fuck won't they just fill the goddamned packages up all the way, and use fewer of these fucking sauce packs??

Well, it has to be an issue of cost at the end of the day for THEM. But, in the grander scheme of things, IF they have determined that it's a lowered cost for them to add LESS sauce to their packages and instead consume more petroleum to produce more plastic packages for less sauce, THEN these practices are driving up the cost of all of our petroleum based products.

The worst part of the thing is that it's probably a smarter idea for them to just have a huge tank of the stuff delivered to their 5800 locations in the United States, and just ask customers if they want sauce on their tacos when they make the damned things, instead of wrestling with this conundrum that they've obviously been presented related to their sauce packages.

Sauce packs and checkout lanes, think about it. Think about all of the other tremendously useless items that this planet is generating on a daily basis that are just cast away, consumed, and left to decay over thousands of years.

The iFrack coming soon.

2011-11-15T09:24:00.000-05:00

I've either become more cynical as I've aged, or stupid people have multiplied across the globe, into positions of power, and have promulgated their numbers onto the highways of America. They are apparently allowed to drive now! God help us all.

Case in point. Here in this town of Cleveland, there is an intersection that contains a monument in the center, two one way streets going each direction, and a road bisecting the one-way streets behind the monument. Well, I'm approaching that intersection to cross the one-way streets and on my way to the apartment when I find someone who has chosen to pause for a length of time directly in my way of ingress. I don't know what they were doing, there were no cars coming, but yet they persisted in their immobility, until after a minute they simply drive out of the way and cease their blockage of all of the traffic at the intersection. I don't know what the heck they were doing, whey they paused in the middle of the road to block up all of the traffic, but thankfully some glimmer of reason entered their mind to trigger their self-removal from the intersection in question.

I don't know if it's that ignorance has propagated itself, or has been bred into the bulk of humanity, but it seems to be on the rise. Common sense, has become uncommon. Politeness has attempted to replace common sense on the highways with great frustration to people who happen to retain some modicum of common sense and knowledge of traffic regulations. As a polite person myself, I won't just up and stop for someone to get out of an intersection if there's no traffic behind me because I know that would confuse the shit out of me if someone did that to me. And this sort of thing happens often to me on the road.

It's not just drivers either, pedestrians, at least the college age variety that I'm coming into contact with lately as a driver are apparently cluelessly hanging out on sidewalks near intersections where drivers find themselves often. They're checking emails, or carrying on inane conversations that are probably better suited to some commissary, public park, or ladies' room in a dormitory. Don't stand on the side of the road chit-chatting, get the fuck out of the road so the rest of society can get on with their business and don't have to pause to determine if they may accidentally squish your eyeballs out of your head as their SUV runs you down at the four-way.

If I have to assign blame for the rise of ignorance in society, I'll have to set that blame squarely on our technology and marketing machine. Lately, I'm finding my intelligence assailed on a regular basis anytime that I'm exposed to advertising. I think I've brought this up before, well I'm on it again. Back off Mr. Faceinyouriphonebooktuber standing at the crosswalk not communicating whether or not you're about to step off into traffic, you're part of the problem, you media consumer! But, I can't totally lay the blame on you. You've been subjugated to something larger, this consumer culture that we seem to have been completely subjugated. For any sort of proof, turn on a television for an hour, and you'll find the most pointless information being broadcast in large quantities by news organizations, advertisers, infomercial producers, and even some television programmers. All of which want you to give them money for some dumb product that you don't need, really. You could probably do without that smartphone, heck it might even make you smarter to not have it. You might have to actually use your brain to remember where you parked your car.

All that I'm really saying is that we've apparently reached our level of incompetence as denizens of this planet. The 'Peter Principle' we haz it.

Think about the lack of common sense behind 'hydraulic fracturing' or 'fracking' if you want to call it that. What a terrible concept! Who's the lamebrain who conceived that it was a smart idea to open up fractures deep in the planet with water, when the whole planet is made up of floating plates of crust surrounded by mostly water. It's a recipe for disaster, and I hope that the human race comes out of it's mental cloud and realizes that soon. Especially, since the consequences involve earthquakes, polluted waters, and humongous sinkholes forming.

I think when you really get down to what has caused this collapse in the general gregariousness of humanity is money. There is some wisdom in that old saying, "Money is the root of all evil."
Everything has become at its' core related to generating a profit at any cost, regardless to whomever the stakeholders in whatever project it happens to be, and how much profit that project can generate for the shareholders.

Faceless corporations have been happy for so long to supply mankind's wants, needs, desires, and fetishes, it's long overdue that humanity recaptures some smidgen of self-reliance and starts to think for itself again before time runs out and we're all killed in the crosswalks.

The warm up.

2011-11-10T10:34:00.003-05:00

The warm up.

I've been working on some writing projects lately, and yes I've been using this format to get my fingers to cooperate and my mind to quiet down a bit so I can concentrate on this annoying habit that I've developed over these years. This drive to create things! What! Why are you naysaying, just sit in your tower already.
So, yeah...there it is I've admitted to you that I have some literary aspirations beyond just giving you the mundane rundown of my bowel movements, or the fluffy bunny slippers that I saw at Target, or whatever dish I might have eaten at some random restaurant. I want to sell something that I've written so maybe I can afford to upgrade the rattletrap aging automobile that I'm using to lug my girth to work.
Maybe I'll succeed, maybe I won't. If I don't, I've only myself to blame. The main obstacles to that success are all around me and they are prevalent for us all today, this very vehicle that you're observing my madness through, it is one of the chief distractions in this modern era since it contains multitudious distractions, video, audio, chatter, shopping, gossip, sloth, sins, sex, and all of the numerosity that goes along with the human condition today.

Yeah, I made up that word, 'numerosity'. So what...I can do that, so can you try it sometime.\

Addendum:

I didn't actually make up the word 'numerosity'. I can't speak for everyone, but for years I used to write in a journal every night before bed. I fell out of that habit. Geez, I need to get back to that. But, what I was about to say before I so rudely interrupted myself was that I tend to dredge up some words that have languished in the depths of my vocabulary vault unexpectedly at times and have to stop to consider if they're actual words or not. That might sound weird, maybe.

Sure, I could just edit the above post to obfuscate my gregarious use of an existing word and then claim it as an original creation of my own, but instead I will elucidate at length for the sheer audacity of annoying you, the gentle reader.

Anyhoo....just wanted to clear that up before you're off telling people that you know the guy who came up with the word 'numerosity'. I'm not going to define it for you. Get a dictionary, or try this go to Google search and paste this in there "define:numerosity" and you'll get yourself defined there for your wordporn pleasure.

Any way you want it, that's the way you need it.

2011-11-04T15:44:00.000-04:00

We've been trapped in the mid-1980's for the last 20 years, have you noticed?

When's the last time you turned on a "Classic" rock station and haven't heard some ridiculous ballad from that time-period? Yes, Steve Perry you insidious little twat, I'm looking at you and Journey right about now. Why have you endured, and why do you continue to assault the airwaves with your caterwauling and petulant balladry?

Well, I guess you're not going to tell me so I'm going to have to just go my own separate way and take these chains that bind me. I think that you're still around because you're serving a purpose. You're keeping the rest of our Budweiser swilling, wrestling digesting, infomercial culture enslaved to an idyllic little time in this odd little American History where stereotypes have thrived, the drug culture was pariah, and the aristocracy wiped it's ass with gold leaf toilet paper.

Yes, Sherry, It's true, you're motoring to a new age of observation. You are stuck in an Orwellian time-slip of monumental proportions. Those sweet dreams where someone is watching you are all true from the pill you've dissolved on your tongue.

I think that we're entering a period in the history of this American experiment where we are being confronted with the problems of this system of religious freedoms. America has finally reached the hodgepodge of what the rest of the world really is, and those same Pilgrims which initially hit Plymouth Rock don't like what it's turned into. There's a ruling class that seems to be embracing that Puritanical mindset from the pre-cannibal colonies of early America. Instead, today we are eating ourselves slowly, digesting parts that we want but can't have with bitter pills, delusions of our self-grandiosity, and our utter return to feudalism more surreptitiously damaging than that of the Dark Ages.

We've allowed ourselves to be enslaved to ideals, concepts, brands, and chemicals, instead of what works for humankind, our own artifice is consuming us. It is a new age of cannibalism.

It's no wonder that films depicting zombies , the end of days, and anti-heroes are so topically popular. All of those escapes are what we fear and secretly hope for. We're exposed to rampant corruption daily by our media outlets who point to the failures of our long extant political and economic ideals, our entertainments leave us empty and devoid of true contact, our foods are poisoned, and our chosen leaders collude to cloud their motives for our control.

This is the system we deserve for our complacency.

All of our perceived, or prescribed history has lead us to this moment in time. Each of us has been fed a story through our shared timelines and we arrive at this moment today on our little blue orb. Governments across this planet are in shambles, economies are faltering, and there is a general dissatisfaction with the status quo regardless of race, social strata, religion, or creed.

If the current situation with the Occupy movement has accomplished anything, it has been to expose those in power who have motives for maintaining the stereotypical system of control which has been in motion for the last 30 years at least.

This Earth has endured assaults from space, dinosaur defecation, and the pollution of plastics from pole to pole. It's doubtful that this current epoch of human history will be the last, or is even the first, but unless we chose our next steps wisely we are likely doomed to diminish as the prevalent life-form on this piece of rock until we rise through the centuries to a new era in our simian history.

Daily you're fed a storyline of want and need. You need this product to do that. You want that product to do this. There's some void in your existence that will be filled if you just would invest in this little box that lets you escape into a fantasy. You've allowed yourself to be deluded with space, time, paint that will cover your bald spot or make you look younger, or perhaps it was a knife that will cut through the fabric of reality itself because the edge is Japanese steel and never dulls when you are cutting through the nails in your 87% recycled fiber sheet rock. Everything has a cost, and you'll wind up paying for those things at least twice over what their actual value is all for the satisfaction of someone far removed from your daily existence.

You're too complicated. Get over yourself. Simplify your life and pay some attention to what you're doing to this tiny little piece of dirt in this transient part of the galaxy.

Who knows how much longer you can hang on before you're bitch-slapped by the Creator back into the Pre-Cambrian?

Now, how the hell did I get from JOURNEY to this?

I'm not exactly certain. But, it goes something like this.

Take those chains that bind you, Sherry and stop fighting that feeling because it is the year 2525 and man does love a woman. but sweet dreams are made of this and that is a reflex when all you want is your kiss.

I've often wondered why the music of the 80s has endured on radio for so long. It wasn't until I began to study advertising and marketing that I really started to form a concrete answer. The music of that era was purely human and fit into a stereotypical mold that could be used to shape our collective reality.

If you don't want to accept that, think of JC Penny and their corruption of Mr. Blue Sky by ELO, or Ritz Crackers and how they've chosen to bastardize the classic Modern English song "Melt with You" to sell you buttery bleached-flour crackers.

This is not a new phenomenon.

Since the dawn of advertising, and capitalism, a clandestine group of mankind has been shaping your perceptions, shaving away your inhibitions, encasing your vulnerabilities in a thin sheen of desire so that you will conform to their worldview.
So, step in line there. Whip out that credit card at 19.99% interest with a 331/3% annual percentage rate and pay up. It's time to cover that tab and leave the bar, because there's an intoxicated world out there for you to get out in and sober up.

Pantomiming a bazooka

2011-10-20T11:47:00.003-04:00

I'm starting this off lately with nothing in mind but a bunch of concepts that are happening all at once in my old noggin pan. I have some weird thought processes, a lot of multi-tasking going on up there with the breathing, the peristalsis, and this maddening array of conflicting concepts that are being juggled by a mime on a unicycle.

Someday I'm going to pantomime a bazooka and knock that guy off that unicycle.

Anyway, I like to watch shows on television. Big show watcher over here, right here, I'm talking about me, pay attention.

But, what I am coming to be loathe of is the rampancy of the personal appeal in advertising, especially in late night television. I wind up in front of a television on a somewhat inconsisent basis around 3 Am EDT, and I have to tell you there's some crazy stuff on cable that time of the morning in this day and age. Luckily, you've still got the options of terrific networks like AMC, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and others that repeat some of their best programming in the dead of night. But, and I mean it's a big one, the downfall of all of that glorious distraction is the torturous and intelligence assaulting advertisements that you have to suffer through an hour of television.

Sometimes, in that hour I'm asking myself who the target of some of this drivel really is, because it's not me. And, I can truly say that because the bulk of the advertising that is confronting me is the direct appeal.

By 'direct appeal', I mean advertising that tries to befriend you and start asking all sorts of personal questions right up in your bleary eyed starving little face. "Do you want to make more money?" "Are you suffering from psoriasis?" "Does your urine sometimes fail to come out when you've spent an hour on the toilet?" "Have you been injured by poultry evisceration equipment?"

All of the idiot statments that are being made in advertising today are what has killed a formerly magnectic segment of American culture. It's no wonder that more people would rather DV-R, streeam, download, share, or steal their programming.

The direct appeal is easy, it's traditional, and it immediately engages you in the message. But, the chief problem with all of advertising is whether or not it's going to connect with someone who will give them a return on the expenses invested in trying to get you to hire them because you got boils from your face cream.

Having been a very avid television watcher for decades now, as well as being cursed with highly acute observational skills, I can usually tell whether or not a commercial is directed at me. And lately, I don't find that any of it is directed towards me at all, and that's frustrating, because if I don't want to buy your crap, hire you, or vote for you, then shut up and let me watch my show.

I'm not eating that. You eat it.

2011-10-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

Do you know what we need on this planet? More of yesterday. Geologically speaking, and by that I mean that a stalagtitite had barely formed an inch of limestone we had this remarkable system where people grew food, someone took the product of that growth and made something delicious from it, and then some other jackass came along and gave them a buck-fifty for something locally grown that was tasty, and everyone had a great time. But, today Heartburn, Inc is manufacturing your food from a cow that was grown in a lab in Bumfuck, Egypt Antarctica and shipped in fetal form to a lab in Idaho and then later formed into a patty so it could be put into a pretty pink package and then you bought it and zapped it in your electron vibrator and threw it on a plate.

You tell me what sounds better?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I tend to do better when I consume something that isn't in a box with some doofus's logo on it. I like my food in a bag, or in as little packaging as possible. And, my stomach will corroborate this if you want to interview it yourself to confirm that.

Case in point, I've paid pretty close attention to when and where I've eaten and how my body has reacted to what I've put into it and anything from Krystal's is not allowed anymore. Which is sad, because I actually enjoy consuming those slimy-tenth of a centimeter thick beef patties on thick slabs of steamy bread. But, that ecstasy lasts only for a moment, because afterward I'm cursing this manufactured food industry that we apparently embrace in this spur of the moment world we've launched ourselves into when we sat foot on the moon and planted our Ronald McDonald flag.

Anytime that I eat those burgers, I get some violent heartburn and I doubt that I'm the only person on this misshapen ball of rocks and water that responds this way. I don't know if it's age, or a change in their manufacturing practice, or it's something that is symptomatic of this whole industry of fast food that has laid waste to my digestive system, but I simply suffer more than I enjoy consuming fast food from that particular establishment nowadays.

I write this only as a response in recently learning that they are expanding their reach into the fast food market, as well as a sort of plea to their organization that they try to focus on making foods that I(along with all of my brothers and sisters in heartburn) can consume and enjoy free of whatever additives that they've stretched out their materials with to make it possible for them to increase their market share of the American consumer's digestive malaise. Seriously, I eat a lot of different foods. I'm pretty freaking omniviorous, and not a picky eater. So I have to ask you, Krystal, what are you doing now to your food that you weren't doing in the past couple of years that have caused me to regret ever hearing of your little tasty square grease laden burgers that are so perfect after a night of alcoholic debauchery? You must have added something, or neglected including something that has lead to this sort of reaction from one of your previously ravenous consumers.

I don't think that it's just Krystals that is guilty of stretching out materials with fillers and chemically treated substances which likely shouldn't be consumed by human beings, but Krystals happens to be what is on my mind at this moment. Actually, it's most anything that is in a package that I have had a problem with lately, boxes specifically. Pre-prepared foods that contain a laundry-list of hard to pronounce chemicals that have no place in a human digestive tract, yes you Budget Gourmet, Stouffers, Digorno, and you too Marie Callendar, all of you do nothing but cause me to have heartburn. After I've eaten your food, I have to go and have an antacid. So, over time I've learned that it's just not worth it to subscribe to your version of fast food in a pretty box that I can prepare in minutes in my microwave, screw you and your antacid producing parent companies too. I'll just eat this potato right here, and maybe that broccoli over there, those Brussels sprouts in the bag are okay, oh and give me that frozen chicken despite that you've eviscerated it while it still lives...I don't care it's tasty.

The long and short of it is. I'm not subscribing to this fast food bullshit anymore because I simply don't enjoy this system of propping up the chemicals that you've added to my foods that cause me to regret consuming it. I've learned through careful observations of my reactions that some of what you're putting in front of me are detrimental, you can keep that crap. You eat it, you buy the antacids. I'm not playing your game anymore when my own body has made it clear that there is something that you're doing that isn't good for me.

So, Krystals, Marie Callendar, Mr. DiGorno, and all of you other food manufacturing bitches, I'm publicly making it known that there won't be any more of your chemically treated pre-packed non-foods consumed by this apple-pie gobbler any more.

And dammit, I don't care what kind of package you put it in, I'm not gonna eat it.

Planned obsolescence and the aging automobile

2011-10-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

I got nothin right now. Okay, maybe as soon as I start to think about it, maybe there is something. It's my jeep and it's mystery malaise that mechanics can't seem to diagnose. I bought this car a few years back for $700 bucks. A 1987 Jeep Wagoneer Limited. Yeah, it's almost an antique if you consider an antique is anything that is 25 years old, it's coming up on it's quarter century mark with nearly 225,000 original miles on it. Someone took some decent care of it, and apparently didn't take it on any cross country excursions. I found it on Craigslist about three years ago and it has been an adventure learning about all of the idiosyncracies that go along with having an elderly car that just happens to be a Jeep. I've wrestled with getting rid of it numerous times, swearing that I'm not pumping anymore money into keeping it on the road, but for some reason, be it economy, the wont of not having a car payment, or just plain stubbornness I keep fixing little idiotic things that will prolong it's already long lifespan. So far, I've put a new starter on it, new driver's side seat belt, replaced the sway bar (that's a length of metal that keeps the body going the same direction as the wheels), new battery, new radio, new tires, as well as a lot of basic things that old-timey cars just need to get along on the road today.

I guess I've always believed in keeping things, as opposed to throwing things away that aren't worth keeping. I think that comes from having parents that were born in post-Great Depression America. My folks have always been packrats, and I guess I've inherited some of that mindset to a point. While, I'm not loading up my home with a lot of things that I don't need, I still will try to fix what I've got when it breaks as opposed to going out and buying something that has a pre-programmed failure date, which most things these days have. A great many things can actually be repaired beyond their usefulness, and cars happen to be one of those things if you're willing to take the time to investigate what can be done to them to keep them running, that old Jeep is a prime example.

The truth is, I secretly love the thing, and I've like to see it restored to mint condition. Perhaps someday, it will be. But at the moment, the objective is to get it roadworthy to the point where I have enough faith in it that it's not going to kill me. And, that brings me to my current crossroads with this particular 1987 Cherokee XJ with a trim package. Back in March, I had to have the 'lateral sway bar' replaced. Remember, I just told you that keeps the body and the frame(where the wheels are attached) going in the same direction? Well, about that. You see, before I had it fixed I was confronting death most every time I was driving it and going about 35 miles an hour. If I happened to strike a bump in the road, as there are many because as a nation, we don't seem to give a crap about the roads, the thing would start shaking violently and force me to begin a braking maneuver that usually lead me toward the curbside of the road much to chagrin of fellow drivers who happened to have the misfortune of being behind me at the moment. Then, after the car slowed to a speed that was acceptable to the elderly vehicle, it would finally stop all that foolish shaking, and then obligingly decide to carry me forth to whatever destination I had chosen. Typically, nothing too far away, because I valued my continued existence and had the foreknowledge that there was something terrifically wrong with the Jeep. Well, I got that repaired, and for 7 months I was free to explore other little projects that could ultimately force my ancient chariot continued servitude. Until, finally the violent jostling and life threatening liquefaction of wheel against road made a reappearance about three weeks previous to today, and again Friday morning of last week with a vicious vengefulness. Maybe this thing has just had enough, I don't know.

But, while I still continue to value my life and still am trapped within a limited economy where a car payment is extremely undesirable, I've pursued the possibility of prolonging it's life once again. With a return to the shop which performed the previous work related to the current problem, past invoice in hand, the mechanics are exploring the problem, and are yet stumped to find a solution. They must be stumped since they are open to expanding their knowledge of the problem at hand based upon information I've provided. Through my own research into this issue, I've come upon a specific term, "Death Wobble". Yes, it sounds rather horrifying doesn't it? It is.

I've been in a death wobble, and it will scare the feces out of your sphincter. Not that I actually soiled myself mind you, but if I had been a lesser man, or happened to have consumed large quantities of watermelon, Mexican food, chili, or other such repast I may not be relating this so objectively at the moment.

And all of this rambling brings me to this moment right here. It's after a night of pouring over financial transactions, listening to an audiobook of "Pagan Babies" by Elmore Leonard, and dropping by the mechanics with my Dad that I tell you this.

I'm glad that I didn't die on Friday morning behind the wheel of my old Jeep.

Because, from here on, this can play out a variety of ways. I get completely fed up with that POS and have it compressed into a coffee table-sized piece of scrap metal, the mechanics say "oh, it was this bolt here that we forgot to tighten", or they find a family of gremlins that had moved into the wheel-well, or they tell me that they haven't been able to discover what the problem is and I have to hire a Catholic priest to exorcise that demon from the film The Exorcist from the axle, or I just pick the car back up from the mechanics pay for whatever labor was expended, and go on to die at a later unknown date behind the wheel from this undiagnosed problem on my way to do something completely random.

I guess any of those things are possible. Okay, not the gremlins because that's just silly.

But, if I do die. Please, don't let some marketing executive cite my death as a reason for planned obsolescence because that will anger me greatly and I will probably go all Paranormal Activity on your ass in the afterlife.

Does brain taste like chicken?

2011-10-14T12:04:00.001-04:00

Well, I've finally determined that chicken in the crockpot just isn't for me. However, through my catastrophic realization, I have discovered an amazing thing that I am finding rather tasty at the moment. The twice cooked crockpot bake method for chicken. Yes, I just made that up.

During last weeks excursion to the meat section, I happened upon a package of chicken thighs that were on sale for $2.89. I thought to myself, I can eat on that for days. I will toss it into the crock pot along with some vegetables and whatever else is laying around in the kitchen that will fit into this puzzle. Then, I'll just freeze whatever is left, and eat it when I want. And, that is what I did.

Although, I found that the soggy crock pot chicken wasn't desirable at all. In fact, the chickenfat imbued chicken that was just about to slide off it's luscious little bones, wasn't at all tasty. Instead, it made me feel a bit nauseous after I had a piece of it. Go figure, it's chicken with baked in chickenfat that has no place to go except into the chicken over and over and over again until it is the the most moist disaster you've ever tried to stab with a fork.

I have been re-cooking the crock pot chicken, until the skin is crispy again. Now, it has the texture and taste of fried chicken. Which is likely going to kill me after the next bite since it is wallowing off of the bone. Yes, I make myself laugh sometimes with dumb things that I say. Why not?

So, I've managed to turn 10 chicken thighs for $2.89 into 5 meals through just random resourcefulness and trial and error. But, trust me there have been some enormous failures. For instance, don't ever so long as you are drawing breath ever think for a moment that banana will mix well with hamburger. It doesn't. Okay, maybe the dehydrated chips could, no that's just silly. I won't try that ever again, it was terrible.

Anyway. Real things I suppose that are going on beyond these kitchen explorations in thrift cooking..

I'm about 18,000 words into a story. The strange thing is that I'm keeping with it. The whole writing process is about one part mystical and 99 parts routine. I know I'm not alone when I say that things just pop into my head. That's everyone. We've all got a spark of inspiration within us. But not all of us are going to take the time to sit down every day and put that spark into a series of coherent paragraphs. Especially, since some of us don't have enough fingers, or have spikes through our foreheads, the language center is damaged, or you simply don't care to bother because you think it will be too dull, or your paragraphs won't be complete, or you can't spell. But, the truth is, that with a little practice and routine, you can get that inspiration down onto paper.

Maybe it's not a story. Maybe it's a sonnet, a song, or some free verse. Whatever it is, it resides in all of us. Maybe some more than others, but it's there in everyone.

That was a tangent and a half, now back to this chicken. I accidentally went a minute over the time that I arbitrarily decided to cook it for. I don't a kitchen timer, and I get distracted. Screw you, it's my kitchen. But, had I not cooked it that extra minute, it would have been the single most amazing piece or fried chicken ever to have been fried on this Earth or any Earth in all of the realities.

That single piece of chicken thigh would have been a fixed point in time for all of you other Doctor Who fans out there. As I am devouring it, I'm destryong to time-space contiuum. Sorry, but it has to be done.

In closing, Value is key in this point in history. But, creativity is King. If at this time you are not resourceful, can't think on your feet, are failing to make some kind of plan, or are failing to load up the shotguns, then you are doomed to become a brain-eating zombie.

Long time no C.

2011-09-23T14:29:00.000-04:00

Y'know it occurs to me lately that political debates by one-sided media organizations with agendas are not worthwile ways of metering who will be a good leader. In fact, it is a terrible concept. Last night, I watched a large segment of the Republican debate for the nomination for the party candidate on Fox News, co-sponsored by Google. All of that in itself is a mouthful and I'm still sorting out the intracracies of the conflagration of associations there, but regardless. The primary purpose of discussion is the format of a political debate where these unknowns are asked a series of questions that journalists, pundits, Mr. Joe America, or the candidates themselves have somehow triggered by their revelations in our interconnected world. It's a terrible format, foremost for the undecided masses and then for the candidates themselves.

The undecided masses, and they are huge. That's the whole purpose of the debate, to elucidate, clarify, and all together draw all of those who don't have a clue who is the best choice to lead the free world into the next four year period via a system of arbitrary questions that attack talking points designed by media gatekeepers.

It's a terrible system because there is no constraint for the potential President to actually 'answer' a question posed to them. Instead, through a subset of doublespeak that routes any definitive answer off on a patriotic tangent answers to questions all assume an amorphous grey cast, and none of the clarity of who is a worthwile candidate is actually given.

Perhaps it is a good idea that there are a series of debates in this format. However, why are high-schoolers held to a standard of rules, time limits, and scoring when they are forced to debate. Shouldn't our potential leaders be held to those same microscopic standards of efficacy? Instead we give these unknowns the liberties of money, ease of explanation, and luxury of obfuscation to curry the favor of our mass of indecision.

We stand on a precipice where the inactions of the individual have lead us to a crux of consciousness. The rights of man over his own body are at issue in this United States of America. It is under attack from the corporations which we turn to for convenience, healing, transportation, nutrition, and many of our other body needs. Our medicines come with the price of side effect, our food with the cost of chemistry, and our choices governed by constraints consigned by detached bureaucrats. We have fallen far from our once great ideals of equality, of brotherhood, and righteousness. As a nation, we have allowed this fall and welcomed it in a haze of gadgetry, ease, and dilution of perception by our chosen masters of programming and propaganda. We have turned to a complacent mass of bibulous gelatin, instead of the fire-hardened sword that our forbears paid for with all of their sweat and blood.

If we are not conscious of the trials of the past, and the diminishing boundaries of our liberties in the present, we are doomed to a dour and diminished future where our bodies are not our own, our minds are the properties of corporations, and our spirits are the dictates of dogma designed to direct our daily lives to a digital subjugation of will.

Put down your iPod, your iPad, Kindle, Android, and PC; Turn off the television, tear out the cable, the phone, and the Yahoo. The world of our fathers is floundering amidst this haze of convenience with costs unseen, the lives of our children being mortgaged for percents and derivative goals of detached bankers. Where has the wisdom of our age gone?

Coincidence barking

2011-03-04T11:44:00.000-05:00

Well, it's happened again. An odd random brush with the infinite. So, I'm working third shift lately, okay? My days and nights are all screwed up. So, who's business is it if I'm having a beer at 8:45 in the morning after work but my own right? And, who really cares if I have another beer after that one, and maybe one more around 11 am? But all of that is purely incidental.

In my little corner of the world, I'm fortunate enough to have a neighbor across the street that has 8, or maybe 9 little barking dogs. I don't know if she has a puppy mill, or is raising them for food, but they definitely make some noise.

So now you know where I'm at and what I'm up against every day. It's not glamorous, but it's what I fight with when I'm trying to get a little sleep in the morning in this neighborhood. It's a cacophony out there when all 9 of those little dogs get the other neighbors larger dogs going over some nonsense passerby, or someone coming outside of their apartment. Never mind the guy who is trying to sleep.

Anyway, I'm there in my apartment around 11 am on my third and final beer, finally wound down from a long night of tedious work, and having alread suffered through one 15 minute barkfest. So, I'm being loudly proclaiming in my apartment, "Oh yes! More barking!" and such nonsense.

When suddenly, I get this loud rapping on my door from someone unknown. I know that none of my immediate neighbors are here, so my "joyous exclamations of barking dogs" hasn't directly offended anyone who really matters.
It turns out to be three unknown people filling up my entire peephole, ragged, pestilent ridden, and unkempt, I still open my door to them to find out exactly what it is that they happen to be knocking so loudly upon my door about.

"We're from the New Life Bible College and we were wondering if you needed any prayer?" They said to me nervously and inexperienced.

I was taken aback at first with their very presence after I'd already been so sarcastic in praising more of the barking from my neighbors dogs that now I have these people asking if I needed prayer at my door.

I said, "No, I think I'm okay today." Mostly wanting to get rid of them so I could return to painting a drawing that I had done earlier. They said okay, and wondered away somewhat beaten. But, almost with an afterthought, still jarred from their audacity to knock so forcefully on my door coupled with the barking dogs across the street I opened up my door to them again and told them, "If you want to say a prayer to shut up these barking dogs, that would be awesome."

One of them said to me, "It's probably because so many of us are walking around in the neighborhood today."

But, after a couple of minutes the dogs stopped barking.

You can interpret this a number of ways of course. You can say, "Oh wow, an answered prayer!" Or, you could just chalk it up to a pure series of coincidence. Further still is the fact that all of the New Lifers got out of the sensor range of the offending yapping dogs at long last.

Marvelling at My Media Mailin' of the Mighty Mjolnir

2011-02-28T09:33:00.001-05:00

Special Edition #2, I hardly knew ye.

So, I sold some of my comics, about 40 issues of The Mighty Thor on eBay. I learned several lessons from this particular transaction. First and foremost, I will never sell a group of comics at once again. I really lost my perceptual ass on these comics, and only netted about 22 bucks for all of them. Secondly, and this is the most frustrating, the post office doesn't consider comic books for the media mail rate because they are 'not educational' and 'contain advertising'. After a rather involved conversation with the postal supervisor who admitted that without comics he wouldn't have developed an interest in reading, and whether to refer to them instead of 'comic books', but rather 'kids magazines' that this particular parcel could be shipped media mail instead of regular or priority mail.
How incredibly ridiculous I felt defending a piece of 'media' in the face of a bureaucratic policy change to save a few dollars where the USPS can. I know that they're up against the wall, in the face of all of the competition for delivery dollars, but seriously! Comic books are printed matter, and educational in some respects, and well, it's just silly. If you're going to split hairs and say that 'media' has to be 'educational' before you can ship it at this lesser rate, then for the sake of all that is natural and good in this world, call it something else instead of 'media mail'.

It did feel good when they finally saw my point however. But, in the future, 'comic books' are 'kids magazines', remember this if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

In the crevasse

2011-02-24T19:55:00.000-05:00

Write through this. That's what they say. But, what do you do when you're so unfocused on anything else other than what is staring you right in the face 24 hours a day. You wake up, it's there. You go to sleep, it's there. You dream, it's there in your nightmare. Does it require a revolver to set the times right. A sleek cool barrel of a gun to quieten the maelstrom of mind. Doubtful it's worth all of that. But, time is a killer. Time will eventually kill all of this, this madness, this hurt, this doubt, and this confusion of soul.
I should know better. I know to walk along the straight and narrow path, but at times, the venues off to the side are so enticing and desirable. It's worth it to explore them occasionally, but typically I find that they lead only to heartache. I'm having a hard time climbing back up on that ridge that runs along the hillside, it's a steep slope I've toppled from and I'll be damned if I can climb back up there. There's too much stuff down in this ravine, too many sharp rocks and too many little flowers that I just want to pick and hold onto forever.
It all happens when you're least expecting it. Whether you're inebriated, not paying attention, or on track for something else, suddenly you've fallen into a ravine and you're struggling to climb back up to the path you were on before you got yourself down in a mess. Sooner or later, you find a way out of it, usually with a great amount of difficulty. Usually, you're scarred up from climbing back up that hillside, all gashes and bleeding, scars that won't be healing up for a long time. I guess it's better than you fall off the path sometimes, better that you are knocked outside your comfort zone just to see what things could be like if you find a nice ravine that you can just live inside of forever. Maybe there's a little cabin down there with a nice warm fire that you don't ever want to leave. Or maybe, just maybe you topple down into a ravine and you're able to climb out of it unscathed and stand beside another who has fallen themselves and knows a bit about picking yourself up and dusting off and moving on down that path further until the next time some rock in the path dislodges and you fall into the unknown.

All good and bad things.

2011-02-21T02:14:00.001-05:00

This too shall pass. It's sometimes the only thing that can bring us any comfort, knowing that the rough patches in this existence are transient and will be over after the passage of time. All of those patches however are what wear us down, smooth out the rough edges of our humanity, giving way to some perfect creature which lurks just below the surface waiting to walk forward into the sunlight.

Graveyard shift in the cube farm

2011-02-17T05:15:00.000-05:00

There's a strange noise in here. I think it's ghosts shaking pencil cups in someone's cubicle on the other side of the office. This place, it's strange at night. A host of odd noises, click-clack of the HVAC, a stray 3 am fax, and the occasional uncategoriazible disturbance from some former worker likely murdered in their cubicle from a remote voodoo ritual.

The cup-shaking seems to get closer, then retreats.

I come in at night, and say 'Hello' just to make sure that no one's in the office. I never know if someone's working late, it's seldom. However, one night when the parking lot was totally empty and I arrived, I swear someone said 'Good Morning', back to me.

"We don't go into Cubicle 3 anymore. Not since June 2003. That was when Mary Jo got the collections call from the hoodoo guru. Yep, suddenly she was havin' fits in there, all foamin' up at the mouth, and her eyes wild. Then, she just dropped dead in her cube and cockroaches came out of her ears. It's been roped off for years, don't go near it, don't borrow a pencil, or touch the stapler.."

It's a good thing that Cubicle 3 has been disassembled now and moved up into the attic. God only knows what else is in that attic. Likely, a repository for uncollectable debtors, at least their bones all dry like chalk in little urns marked with their account numbers.

It is creepy here some nights in this ancient department store converted to a cubicle farm. I still remember coming here when I was young. Just over there was the shoe department, there was glasswares, linens, and menswear on this side, over to the right was the womenswear. Lots of history locked up in this place, thousands of people passed through here and they've left a lot of impressions on the place.

5:22 AM

2011-02-16T05:22:00.000-05:00

Out of touch, adrift in the middle of the night.
The silent parking lot, darkened storefronts, and quiet stone of trodden sidewalk.
Noontime will be all aflutter, like bees in a hive.

The distances between me and you
Separate by degrees, minute-hands, calendar years, a decade plus.
The distances between my heart and yours
Nanometers of spirt, space between the electrons snug in a nucleus.

Lost in this web of non-connectedness
pondering the next steps toward a future
plodding through rocky trails, landmines, and obstacle courses.
Looking for the light, the sunny grove, avoiding the shadow and pitfalls.

A pair of birds sitting on the nightlines
singing out before the moon is bisected by wires
one bird flies, one birdsong continues

A rock in the path

2011-02-09T09:33:00.001-05:00

Benton Mackaye Trail

It begins as a lark. You just meet. You find out about this person. Then it winds up as something more. You've not figured out yet, just what it is. That comes later, afterward, when it transforms to it's next state.

The amorphous feeling of infatuation is intoxicating. It's strike can be deadly and leave you in recovery for years to come. Be warned of it, it can lead you down a road from which you may never return.

At least without the help of professionals.

I have fallen, and gotten up. I dust myself off, and move along down this path when I stumble upon a rock unseen. The trail is lovely and filled with wonders. Flowers scent the air and butterflies tumble to alight softly, pause, then vanish in a flutter of wings. The stream, background noise gurgling Doppler effect, changing slightly in the depths of your hearing as you travel past.

What miracles lie ahead beyond the ridge, terrors of overturned rock trapped in geological process, or other slithering hidden magic. Traveling the path ahead is rigorous climbing, the loose gravel shuffling underfoot.

Step lightly, and tread softly with patience for the summit is in reach.

The Wolf is always at the Door

2011-02-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

Nothing makes sense at times, but there's always the simplicity of bliss.

We move through this life, doing our best to find some ultimate happiness. If we are lucky, we find some transient bliss that will carry us through the long spans of time when there is none. We have it within us to live within memories for our entire lives, sometimes this can be a benefit, but others it is a handicap.

The bliss, when we find it can be transformative and comforting, bringing us back to life from the long slumber we fall into in response to the pitfalls of daily living. Schedules, responsibilities, and the mundane business of making in this world today all have worn us thin to bare threads, financially and spiritually. Today, we are even more in ill-repose to our blissful lives, we are desensitized by media, our attentions impacted by technology, and our hearts hardened by the constant stream of bad news blaring from every open port.

But, there is a richness in the undercurrent of living which bliss can bring to us. Whether it is the comfort of friendship, the caress of a lover, or the sanctity of a marriage, all of us are craving completion whether we will admit to it or not. Some try to fill the voids with work and personal accomplishments, eventually, they find themselves alone with a wealth and richness of the self, but lacking the simple bliss that another person can bring to their lives. This world is better when it is shared with another, I can vouch for that.

If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail. The wolf is always at the door. -- from "New York Minute" by Don Henley.

Llife cycle of the December mosquito

2010-12-07T04:14:00.000-05:00

This is a very rare species of mosquito. Seldom seen, it shows up usually in homes in the earlier parts of winter and late autumn. The mosquito begins life typically the same as other species of mosquitoes, until the eventual disruption of their habitat by dumping out collected water in flower pots where they breed. These mosquitoes are abnormally slow moving, likely due to lowered temperatures. Typically their lifecycle ends by a vicious swat against a wall with a magazine, newspaper, or in desperate instances a bare hand.

I started wondering why I was ocasionally seeing a mosquito langourously roving about my apartment. When, to my surprise I found they were breeding in my houseplants, recenly moved inside ahead of the impending frost. I had to end them in their larval state, flipping about in the standing water, their rarity, and their last gasp of summer's bliss.

Tomorrow is your yesterday today.

2010-11-24T06:13:00.002-05:00

Lately, finding it quite difficult to tell what day it is. I've switched to nights, and when I fall asleep and wake up, it's effectively the same day, but it seems like tomorrow to me. Despite the fact that I'm sleeping through the most active parts of the day, I still feel like I have more time. Trying to get myself back into the writing habit, so maybe I'll be updating this little corner of the internet more often with excerpts of wisdom from the antipodes of my mind.

Profits

2010-09-02T17:37:00.001-04:00

You know, it's dumb if we have the capabilities of utilizing alternate energies, why aren't we? It's way past time that we drop the whole 'profits' argument and make all of this about something much bigger.

Laquinta, Larieka, la, la, de, doo, be doo

2010-08-31T09:35:00.001-04:00

Sorry folks, but we have a strict code when it comes to pronounciation, grammatical use, and diction. Don't be sitting there thinking to yourself when you're naming your kids and trying your best to combine your names together that you can simply ignore some of the basic rules of pronunciation.

Otherwise, you're damming your child to a lifetime of confusion.

All of this ridiculousness is coming from my daily interactions with individuals with non-traditional names, you know, like Bud, Charlie, Cindy, Wilma, or Earnestine. All those are earthy names and you can hang your hat on those. But today, we're getting a plethora of ridiculous names which don't make any sense whatsover, ie. "Sparkle Titsworth" or "Peanuts Huckabone".

Who would subject their offspring to such a life that must be endured, and not lived?

This message brought to you by the foundation for a brighter tomorrow.

Creative anchor

2010-08-26T09:42:00.001-04:00

I have too many projects in my mind. I think I have ADD. I get all of these ideas, I want to do them all at once, but in the process of starting on one of them, I get another idea that I start on. My end result?

A ton of unfinished projects.

Reflections on terrible meals

2010-08-21T14:37:00.001-04:00

I have a terrible habit of giving second chances. Today, for instance, I visited a local chinese eatery, Kim-San. It had to have been one of the worst meals that I've ever had. I'm fairly certain that it was microwaved, the broccoli was not fresh, it was rubbery, the chicken was chewy and not firm, and well I'm paying for it now with indigestion. I knew from previous experience that there food was subpar, but that was several years ago, so yes....still their food is subpar.

It still can't compare to the worst lasagne that I have ever had. That, was courtesy of my ex-wife. It was her recipe to not cook the lasagne noodles prior to building the lasagne and baking it. It was so bad, and rock-hard. At least, it didn't give me indigestion, since it was inedible.

What is this LIfe thing?

2010-06-21T22:10:00.000-04:00

What the fuck is this Life thing all about anyway?

Some people are all "Hey, you should get a life." But, those people that are being told to get a life probably already have one, that some passive-agressive schmuck is judging their life against yours.

If I were Andy Rooney, you could hear me saying, " Life, what the fuck is it really about."

We're on this rock a good 80 years, if we are lucky. Yeah, for certain in that space of time we are going to make a few mistakes.

I know I've made my share of them, and I continue to make them, much likely judged by this posting. As well as my current need to critique my need for posting a retractionary cautionism. You're right, that is not a word.

Despite these idiosyncracies. This abberancy of genetics, heredity, ancestry, and astrology I am but a human being and prone to make many mistakes.

I think often, should I take back some of those mistakes which I fell have played such a large factor in determining my present state of questionable-being. I come to a split resoloution, and I'm able to see both outcomes in crystal clarity, and usually at the penultimate interpretation of my own myraid facetiousness, I come to the conclusion that it's better to have made the mistakes, and benefitted from them.

Whether the benefit is a specific person in your life, a house that you might not have gotten, a child, or some other product of a road perhaps not-taken; without mistakes we do not advance ourselves spiritually or mentally.

With my own hindsights, I can see choices which I made that had specific outcomes. While, many of those choices have come to very undesirable outcomes, others have brought me great joys. So, while it's entirely feasible, we are all the products of our mistakes, it does serve the spirit to revisit some of those past mistakes, and find our own peace with where we are as a result.

So, I suppose I could close this up with the central notion that we're really the product of our mistakes. We all have things we'd rather not have done, places we'd rather not have gone, or any patchwork of adverbs and ennuendo, but really if we wouldn't have been to all of those places. We would have never have got this this, the illustrious now.

Try not to screw anything else up today.

The Gulf between us

2010-06-02T23:38:00.001-04:00

It's becoming increasingly more difficult for me to understand why with all of the prowess of technology we have as a planet, that we can't stop this gushing oil in the Gulf. And it could leak until December?

Way to go and pollute the entire planet's oceans!

We have put people on the moon. created technologies that 50 years ago would seem magical, made tremendous advances in medicine, and we've managed to engineer systems to kill ourselves through chemistry. But, we can't stop a leak 5000ft below sea-level? If BP and the US Government can't marshall the forces to stop this, then it starts to become a global issue.

I am wondering if the oil, as it combines with the sea water will be absorbed into the water cycle and rained back as acid rain?

I think that unless something drastic is done in how this situation is being handled, that we will be dooming ourselves.
I shudder to think of the pale blue waters of the gulf suddenly turned to dingy brackish black water streaked with chemicals and devoid of any life.

The potter's wheel

2010-06-01T22:29:00.001-04:00

I sometimes wonder what the point of all of the questioning is. Are all of these questions, all of these hardships and universals truths just fodder for the grindstone? Do they just wear off all of these hard edges in my imperfect foms? Sometimes, I think that I look forward to a day when I'm finally made smooth in this potter's wheel, when all of the ridges and rough edges in my character are smoothed out and I am finally made a perfect being. Then, I wonder if that day will ever come. If that ultimate perfection will ever come to fruition. Will the smoothness of the spirit ever be made physical?

Oh, this imperfect clay. Tossed by the winds of Man on this wheel spun 'round and only You understand it's wobble.

You're not wrong.

2010-04-19T21:42:00.002-04:00

When you think you might be wrong, but then someone proves you so indelibly right. You're not wrong.

The only reason that I even make a point to mention this is that I've just been proven so undeniably wrong that it practically just kills me. But with all things, if you're right, and if you're right without question than just live your life knowing it no matter the cost.

Because, it is what is meant to be. It's what is practical. Just accept it, and go on. Because, it's only going to be your issue.

No one else is going to give a shit about it.

So in the end, you'll only hurt yourself unless you just make yourself happy.

How are you doing?

2010-04-09T17:03:00.001-04:00

There's nothing more fulfilling than being asked this question repeatedly during a day. The worst part of it is, no one really is interested in hearing the answer, and we're all bound to the conventions of knowing that no one is really interested in telling the asker how the asked is 'really' doing.

So why do it? It's empty. It doesnt' mean anything. Let's just all agree, that we are all doing shitty, and stop asking each other empty questions that we're really not concerned with knowing.

It will be much more efficient.

iSimplify

2010-04-08T23:55:00.000-04:00

I sometimes think that we are rapidly reaching the limits of our ability to consume the technologies we have produced.
(See Peter Principal )
I have been finding lately that I am on an information overload. Especially, by the end of the day, when I've either consumed a bajillioin bytes of information through my brain.Maybe, it's age beginning to catch up with my brain. It's more than likely, fatigue setting in.

Despite that, society has enabled this, technology overload and has even responded with the stop gap measures until society as a whole will respond, economically, politically, and intellectually. Perhaps, the best response to the gap in technical know-how and user confidence, is by creating a Corporate Help Desk America.

We're all certainly familiar with the help desk, technical support lines, inter-office tech support, and generally the whole 'geek' culture. But, the culture, beyond being supremely annoying. Has, in itself handicapped humanity to the point of invalidity. When, you must enlist a team of individuals to answer a call for help where the answer is to turn off a printer, wait 15 seconds, and turn it back on so that a meaningless report can be produced. There is a problem.

Walden seems a long way away from where we are today, in this age and time. The Earth is fit to pop with humankind covering all of the nooks and crannies of the planet. Almost weekly, we're finding new species on the globe which we've never seen. The reach of man, the breadth of mankind has spread to cover the globe in even the most imaginably remote locations.

Our knowledge as a race has increased exponentially, the technology we have now, would seem magical 50 years ago. A mere 100 years ago, we were an agrairian society. The food systems currently in place today, would be unheard of.

In your neigborhood, at your grocers, you could go down and get a freshly ground up piece of beef from 1 cow which you could then take home and prepare in whichever fashion you preferred. However, today you can't go to your local grocer and get a fresh piece of meat from 1 animal. Instead, you get a piece of meat that is frozen in another part of the country and sent to your local grocery store. Sure, there are some lucky enough to have a good source of fresh meat!

The Butchershop is a good example of how drastically things have changed and how completely out of touch we are with our very basic needs for sustenance. To live along with the land, to live off the land you gain an intimate knowledge of where your food is coming from. Whether you are growing it, or killing it, you are well aware that it is fresh and untainted by the hands of man. As recently as 50 years ago, you could go to a local butcher and get a fresh piece of meat to take home and cook up. Last week, when I bought "fresh" meat It was frozen.

Plus, the fish I bought was from India. A fact which I didn't immediately notice at the grocer's.

Along with technology's development and creating the systems to get the worlds food out to the masses, we're running aground on the shore of this uncharted island.

The incompentence of mankind. We're getting to the threshold of society where the inability of the animal Man is being challenged to process, create, use, digest, consume, and reprocess more of his world, his resources, and his mentality every day.
Our society has gotten complex, evolving on a momenty by moment basis, and covered from every angle by a commentator with a very important sounding name.

I can't speak for anyone else.

But, it seems that it's time to simplify things.

Span

2010-04-06T23:49:00.001-04:00

My Shortened attentio

Overly Positive People

2010-03-29T10:50:00.001-04:00

I'm not down with OPP.

I'm not the most negative person, sure I can be pretty cynical at times, but the customer service field seems to be inundated with OPP. Most of their 'positivity' comes across as dripping little acidic knives of falsity. It drives me crazy.

When I hear someone going to great lengths to sound positive, so much so that it sounds forced and fake, it makes me want to jam a fork in my head.

So, sure, be positive. But, foremost, be real about it.

Do you want to give us a call back?

2010-03-22T14:39:00.001-04:00

No, I want you to resolve my issue right this moment. I don't have time to be calling you back, playing grab-ass with you over the phone. If you can fix this, then get me someone on this phone, right this instant that I can speak with that can drop everything that they are doing, put aside all of their personal baggage, and kiss my ass to solve my problem.

Pacific Shrimp Tacos

2010-03-18T14:32:00.001-04:00

I find it very hard to believe that Taco Bell is going to be selling shrimp tacos. This can't possibly end well. I'm probably not going to be one of the hordes of shrimp-starved citizens eating shrimp from Taco Bell.

I guess that the mere possibility that anyone can develop an allergic reaction to shellfish is just not enough of a risk to prevent them from attempting to sell this in their outlets. But onward, and upward.

Agony of modern living

2010-03-15T13:52:00.001-04:00

The greatest struggle that most any of us face daily is to keep our self-importance in check. I tend to believe that we live in an era where we are all about the Self. I think that this has blossomed to a point where there's no room left in our perceptions of anyone around us. This is measurable in how many people you can count daily chit-chatting away on their cell phones in one of the most communal of places, the highway.
Those people drive me crazy. The not paying attention, the slow and inattentive driving, and the total lack of respect for anyone else on the road.
I wonder sometimes, are these the same people though, who are in the bakery, standing in front of me, speaking very loudly to someone about matters most discreet? Likely.
Yes, this is definitely an age of wonder. Mostly, I wonder how a lot of people are able to wake up in the morning and put their shoes on. Those same people; how to they get through the day and manage to not get hit by a bus.
We have managed to make a life of convenience for everyone that wants it. Gadgets to find your car when you park it 50 feet away from getting your diapers for Little Timmy; alarms to tell you when to flatulate, and whole centers devoted to answering your ignorant questions at the press of a few buttons.

Dire times ahead when self-reliance is needed.

They May be hungry but..their spirits are full

2010-03-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

I doubt that any of us are hungry enough to have snail mucus. Sometimes, in this life, we think, okay that's the craziest thing I've hear, and then something else comes along.

True believers, yes. It is the apocalypse.

Hard to believe, and I'm certain even harder to swallow. But, there is a very old African religion which holds fast to the curative properties of snail mucus. Particularly, a snail that is known to carry the 'rat lungworm' parasite. This is a particularly nasty little parasite, which can kill you if it's left to run rampant throughout your mammalian bodies.

Yet, in the name of religion and to cure yourself, here, drink the juice from this giant snail.

But really, is this any different from any of the ritualistic dimension of other religions?

Yes, as a matter of fact,

Everyone is hungry

2010-03-05T15:03:00.001-05:00

New ideas are needed! Apply to your local film bureau to get your newest idea in production! If you don't, you're going to be responsible for a massive spate of remakes, and will have to endure years of rehashing!

Day 101: Food is getting more and more scarce

2010-03-05T00:47:00.001-05:00

Things have definitely gotten crazy. The food system is collapsing; We're lucky that some of the franchise restaurants are still operating, you have to love the global economy and some of it's foresight to make it possible to preserve an all beef patty, made up of the meat from a thousand of it's same kind. We were set for another month, and then we might not see a cheeseburger for who knows when.

There's still a ton of food available, but how long it's going to last I don't know.

Day 100 in the upside-down.

2010-03-03T21:06:00.001-05:00

It's 100 days since this asteroid hit. HOLY Shit i WISH I was anywhere but in this. I'm amazed that the internet is even working, that this place is still even here. But, now the hours are all wrong, days and nights. I haven't been sleeping worth a shit. I'll try to post again, if the batteries still work in this thing. The wireless is all that is working.

Work

2010-02-23T08:34:00.001-05:00

I have to say, my work. I'm no longer a fan of it.

I quit!

2010-01-04T20:41:00.003-05:00

I've been tobacco-free for forty days now. No dipping, spitless tobacco, snuff, Snus, chew, chaw, or whatever else the hell you want to call it. I didn't use any sort of medication. I didn't take "That Pill" or the 'patches', nor did I chew 'The Gum." I actually have utilized a lot of willpower this time. Not to mention, "The Flu."

I caught that 'bug' that was going around before Thanksgiving 2009. It was a tough one to kick, down in my lungs, and pretty hard to breathe without coughing. And, as I lay there, on my death bed, I started thinking to myself how I'm probably responsible for part of the difficulty I was having in kicking the cold. So thus, that little glimmer of "I should quit smoking" arose in me. The night after Thanksgiving, I smoked the last cigarette that I had in the house, and haven't smoked another since.

With this tobacco thing currently kicked, for over a month now! I've started working on this other idea for me to quit, fast food cheeseburgers.

Yeah, I said that..."I want to quit fast food cheeseburgers." I didn't say, I'm quitting cheeseburgers. What I mean is this, I don't know where that meat came from in that delicious cheeseburger, or for that matter...how many cows are in that piece of meat!

I suppose to clarify, I watched a pretty amazing documentary the other day, "Food Inc." that re-introduces the viewer to the mass-production mechanization that is our modern food marvel. So, one realization I walked away from the film with was that in most every cheeseburger you get from any fast food restaurant will have fragments of beef from at least 1,000 different cattle.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to devour only one animal at a time.

I think there are surely more things left to quit.

The Smirker

2009-12-21T16:45:00.001-05:00

Wherever there is obfuscation, confoundment, or confuzzalation, the Smirker will be there to add to the confusion.

Firefox fix for right click

2009-11-07T14:18:00.000-05:00

I had this problem in the last several days when I did an update of CCcleaner. Somehow, the Yahoo Toolbar for firefox got installed, and I could no longer use the context menus in Firefox.

If you simply go in and uninstall the Yahoo Toolbar from the add-ons in Firefox, this will go away.

At least it did for me!

This facade of congeniality

2009-10-13T16:03:00.001-04:00

How much longer can I go on before I drop this veil and just rip off the head of the next person that I speak with? My stomach is turning at the saccharine tone in my voice; I just don't know when it's going to happen, but sooner or later, I'm going to rip into one of these callers and spew their remote innards all over the inside of my imagination.

Cubicle Neighbors

2009-10-02T14:37:00.001-04:00

I'm in a box. There are annoying people surrounding me. There are annoying people calling me.

I need a sledgehammer and a handgun.

This is bullshit.

I doubt that mankind was ever meant to sit still in a freaking box all day.

We're Doomed, I tell ya....doomed.

2009-10-01T15:20:00.001-04:00

Having worked in IT long enough to realize that it sucks balls, I've evolved a couple of realizations about the whole of humanity as it currently stands. We are a bunch of lazy-asses. Why think for yourself when there's a handy toll-free number that you can call up and pose the dumbest questions that 5 seconds of logical thought on your own could give you the answers you're seeking.
But no, it's not the case...we're lazy. I'll just call this number, and let someone else do my thinking for me!

What a great concept!

Eventually, our society is going to be splintered into two groups. The intelligent people who can think for themselves, and then the hordes of lackadaisical slack-jaws with the barrage of helplessness.

I'm sure that this phenomena has pervaded almost ever strata of our society. So thusly, we're doomed.

How are you doing?

2009-08-21T19:58:00.003-04:00

Let's face it, it is one of the most annoying questions in all of the English language. It's way overused, especially in IT, Customer Service, Sales, and other public related occupations. In a day, I quickly lose track of the mindless small talk that ensues as a result of being asked this pointless question. Do you 'really' want to know how I'm doing? Ask me again, I'll punch you in the face. I'm so utterly tired of hearing, "Hey! How are you!" That I could quite literally slit my own throat.
Why is it that our societal response to getting things done in this information rich-age is to kick off the request for action with 'How are you?" Is it polite? Is it congenial? No, it's neither, it's insidious, it's irritating, and it's incredibly inefficient.
As an IT worker, I'd much rather just be given the details of the request, leave me the sanctity of small talk for the girls at the grocery store, or some random person that I meet along the road. If you want me to fix your printer, for godsake, don't ask me how I'm doing because I'd much rather tell you how much I'd like to take your printer out in the parking lot and break it with a sledgehammer.

You bastards!

2009-08-19T21:54:00.001-04:00

This is completely ridiculous! I was just writing a blog in this handy little Google gadget, and the page refreshed and all that post gone forever.

Yes, Kenny is dead.

Coughing excessively in public

2009-08-18T16:59:00.001-04:00

Why is it that some people who are afflicted with a hacking cough, do nothing to silence it themselves?
All day, in the office, it's from about three cubes over. It's freaking echoing throughout the entire office.

I'm about to go buy the guy some cough drops, cough syrup, and a bottle of whiskey just to shut 'em up.

This is getting ridiculous.

Life in this hell

2009-08-13T21:54:00.001-04:00

"Hello, can I help you?" I drone into the phone.

"Who is 'dis?"

"It's support, who's this?"

Dead air.

"Oh well."

10-Watt.

2009-05-16T17:42:00.003-04:00

It's been months, maybe a year or more since I've been in the practice of daily writing. Why come here to expound on all things keeping me busy though? No reason at all, truly though. I'm in a lot of contact with working Americans, and I have to say there are some dim bulbs out there in America. The dim are no color, no race, no creed; they are an amorphous mass of zombies pervading our society today.
Can the dim bulbs ever get charged enough to be useful in society? Maybe, maybe not...who knows.

So; I sit and stare into the void. Waiting, for that next phone call. Holding my breath hoping that the dim bulbs of America don't call me into action.

Seriously though, haven't we as a society lost our common sense?

Welcome to inevitibility.

2008-01-03T03:12:00.000-05:00

There's a football-sized piece of rock hurtling toward the planet Mars as I sit here and write this little paragraph. It's hard to imagine, but there are groups of people, scientists mind you, that are creaming their shorts in hope that it is going to strike the Red Planet. Yet, it sort of scares the crap out of me.
Here we are on this lush little blue marble, revolving around our little average star, pondering the bigger questions of existence when at any moment we could be snuffed out of existence by one of these rocks from space. It's really high time that it happened. If you put any faith at all in probability, chance, luck, or have any awareness of the vastness of the Universe you might think that any minute, one of the 916 KNOWN near Earth objects that NASA is monitoring might simply drift out of its orbit and smash into our idyllic little corner of the galaxy.

But wait, 916 KNOWN NEAR EARTH OBJECTS??? That's not even a grain of salt in comparison with all of the matter that is in the universe. There could be billions, and billions of these objects on a collision course with our planet at this moment that we haven't yet detected.

It's inevitable that it will happen.

If this rock, 2007 WD5, does hit Mars then it should serve as a warning and a wake-up call to us. It was only a few years ago, a nanosecond of cosmic time that the Shoemaker-Levy comet collided with Jupiter.

So, figure it out....Jupiter, Mars....and Earth is next.

916 KNOWN OBJECTS.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/

Technology, Freedom, & Choices

2007-12-21T02:46:00.001-05:00

Have you ever stopped to consider, where will technology really ever stop?

I was just reading about a terrible crime which sounds like it was inspired by a video game. I'm not going to rant about video games, because I love playing them. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I sat here and denigrated video games for the detriment they do versus their positive aspects. Apparently, somewhere in middle America, two late adolescents beat a young girl to death demonstrating martial arts from a video game on her.

I've read before that the adolescent brain hasn't fully developed into a fully functional decision making machine yet. So, the question is, where does the fault of the parent end and the fault of the perpetrator in such a crime begin. The establishment has chosen to lay the blame at the foot of the perpetrators, rather the adolescents, who beat the 7-year old to death. But, what blame should be placed upon the guardians of those adolescents? They are not of legal age, they were drinking, and apparently unattended by someone who could check their behavior.

I, much like you, was a teenager once. I know I made my share of terrible descisions. Heck, I made some terrible decisions even into my adult life. Yet, I always had the tools necessary to made good choices where another person's life, personal belongings, close personal ties, and basically where the "Ten Commandments" are concerned. But, in the case above, it makes you wonder who was really responsible for the outcome of this terrible situation.

You have the creator of the video game. But, blaming them is the wrong choice. Video games offer a great diversion to people who need an occasional escape. They're an artistic form created by exceptionally talented people. In some ways, no different than some of the more risque painters of the Renaissance era whose works were contrary to the social mores of the day.

You have the kids. They had very limited decision making skills. Their concepts of the durability of the human body is likely marred by their experiences with video games, movies, television, and their chance exposure to a well-informed health class in the educational system. Kids these days are surrounded by images of indestructibles. Figures who take damage after damage and prevail, characters who die and are immediately reborn, digitized moments of imagined lives with unlimited immortality.

Then, there are the guardians. Who was responsible to see that these adolescents, more so, that the seven-year old girl was being protected. Those guardians, who put that Pandora's Box of technology into the hands of the brains that were still forming, minds whose basic framework for decision-making was still being connected.

At one point in life, you start to see the wisdom behind some of the choices that the establishment makes to protect the population as a whole.

Our freedoms we experience are fleeting, while technology is expanding. If the balance soon does not reveal itself, if we don't take the responsibility for our freedoms, technology will eventually outstrip those freedoms. We shackle ourselves to machines daily, whether it is a television, a computer, a video game system, an mp3 player, or a cell phone, our interconnected, over-stimulated world hasn't got the ability any longer to make the basic choices to exist.

That seems to be a huge problem looming on the horizon for the human race.

Read the story about the Teens here..

Flotsam and jetsam

2007-12-04T01:54:00.000-05:00

I've closed yet another chapter in this myriad of experience called life. Yet another move to a new location. It's a much smaller place that required me to look at all of the flotsam that I've accumulated in the last 5 years. It's something that all of us should do at one time or another. I mean, every day you acquire some new possession, whether it's something as simple as a piece of mail, a card, a CD, a stick of deodorant, or an iPod. The constant barrage of capitalism is sometimes overwhelming and you have to consider whether you really need 'more stuff'.
Things I had to get rid of included a dining room table, a telescope, a pile of my kids toys that he's either too big to play with or simply doesn't need anymore, clothes, books, belts, and some old chairs. There's probably a lot of things that I've left out, but I imagine that the things I've neglected to include were likely just meaningless junk that I really had no use for.

"There's going to be a lot of things in this world that you're going to have no use for. But when you get blue, and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothing like a campfire and a can of beans." --Tom Waits "The Black Rider"

It seems we are truly unique among the creatures of this planet. We acquire more pointless baggage than any other organism on the planet. We're the only thing on this rock that actually 'hoards' other animals. It's puzzling when you consider it. It begs the question of 'Why?".

I'm constantly drawn back to a statment from the film "Fight Club" and I know it's from other places as well.

"The things you own, eventually own you."

It's so true, because you acquire so much that you have a hard time letting it go. Soon, it becomes you, your width, your breadth, the encapsulation of your human experience. One day, when you're gone, all that is left is a pile of possessions that those you once loved and love you have to find new homes, new uses, or to ascribe new meanings to.

I know this fear intimately, for I am the child of individuals who are reaching their final days. They have acquired significant material wealth and I, along with my brother, will be responsible for discovering a means for their material that they leave behind when they depart this consciousness.

Do the things that they own, own them? Yes, in a manner of speaking, for they are tied so closely to the items that they have acquired that they can not move easily throughout their home. Is there value, yes, there are many things of value in the great stores of history they have acquired. But, to whom does it provide worth? No one at the moment.

I've encouraged them to dispose of as much of the flotsam that they have acquired so they can enjoy themselves in these latter years, but they are happy owning and being owned by their acquisitions. Yet, I have great trepidation for the future for what is to come when my parents are no longer around to own these things they have acquired. I fear that so much of it will mean too much to me and my brother. Will we have the strength and piece of mind to part with so many items that our parents devoted themselves to acquiring? Will the allure of assuming ownership of all of their material overcome our individual lack of material? It remains to be seen. I hope that it is many years to the resolution of the questions I have about what will become of that, yet it is likely nearer than I wish.

Meanwhile, here I am in a smaller apartment, basically 2 rooms, a closet, and a bathroom, with a meager kitchen. But, it is enough for a single man with few attachments.

Living with chaos theory.

2007-09-11T22:48:00.000-04:00

I'm just making it up as I go along. Isn't that what most of are doing on this tiny blue planet today? We make those connections which later might be hurtful, helpful, or they simply fade away. It's all about cultivation for longevity with friendships, or any other of the connections we make. Whether those connections are business or personal.

The choices we sometimes make, as we are making things up are the mortar and pestle which grind us up into new creatures. The trials by fire, recombinations, and general discombobulations that don't make sense. The random thoughts like this one about the trout and upstream swimming.

What's the point of all of it? If we're just making this stuff up. Are we handed a script, or do we write our own lines. Even the few of us who do plan out their lives, are usually dismayed when they discover that their plans have been revised.

Maybe life is the embodiment of chaos theory. Those few quiet moments we find to ourselves, the tiny windows of order.

"Do Unto Others."

2007-06-15T17:19:00.000-04:00

The golden rule. We should all try to live by it. But, what does it really mean?
"Do unto others, as you'd have them do unto you."

Does the inverse of that rule apply? If someone is crude or rude, do you have the right to be crude to them in exchange? I feel that it does. The scientists and mathematicians have long postulated that all forces have their inverse. If a rock is still and another rock strikes it, then it will move in response. There are billions of correllations in nature which prove the concept of reciprocation. Yet, in our ordinary daily lives, do our actions have their reciprocations in positive and negative consequence. I feel that they do.

What do you think?

Is it escalation to be crude to someone in return who has proven themselves to be crude to you? Or does another of the Christian precepts come into play, that of turning the other cheek? Isn't it a contradiction which sets the devout follower of these rules to be beaten down by life on a constant basis. Shouldn't there be a response for crudity, and rude behavior which is enacted by man upon man?

The Peter Principal

2007-04-18T17:49:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else think that we are reaching our level of incompetence as stated in the "Peter Principal" as a society? Our media organizations leap to sensational and unproven facts for their reports, creating hysteria in the population by passing along unfounded and shady details without full revelations. The governments of the world are being led by figures no more qualified to flip a hamburger, and still in possession of teenage 'I'm infallible' pride. The commoner on the streets doesn't seem to even really put a stake in the world around them, much like a teenager. Are we as a society at the stage where we should be, or are we beginning to collapse under the enormous wealth of knowledge that we've gained in the last 100 years?
I'm a watcher of world and national events. I try to figure out where I fit into those things, and where me and those I care about are going to be as a result of things happening in the world. I've got to say, I'm really not feeling good about the state of the world at this point in history. There seems to be some major changes on the horizon for humanity on this little blue planet, and they don't seem to be good changes.
Take the US Government for instance, there's a showdown between the three branches of government occurring right now. It's a remarkable thing to see the government in action, but it sheds more light upon the incompetence of the person which was 'allegedly' elected by the masses. Two branches of government want a designated time of withdrawal from a conflict which one branch of government seems to want to continue indefinitely. Our George W. Bush wants to continue pouring money and the blood of soldiers into a conflict which was exacerbated by his cowboy tactics and still chooses not to relent when presented with logic. Should the citizenry of the U.S. sit idly by while he ursurps the delicate balance between the three branches of U.S. Government created by the founding fathers a short 200 years ago? My money is on, yes they will. People in the country are so complacent and unwilling to speak out for fear of reprisals. The patriotism of the ordinary American is impotent, there's undercurrents of disgust, but no real call to action which could accomplish the goals of good governance and regaining the reputation which America had in the world nearly 8 years ago now. This President has done more governing by fear than any other President within my 34 year lifetime, and that is in my mind incompetent. This President has overstepped his station in so many ways throughout his time in office, while it might not seem to be incompetent, it's certainly not following the guidelines of his office. Think about all of the 700+ signing statements which he has attached to bills which he has signed, more than any other president in American history.

Ok, I've ranted enough about the government.

Worry about yourself?

2007-01-21T23:40:00.000-05:00

Why is everyone so worried about being 'cool' or accepted by the masses? Who really gives a crap? In the end, it's just you. You've got to wake up everyday, regardless if you wake up with anyone else, there's no one else there in your head. Well, unless you happen to be one of the few with a couple of extras up there between your ears. I guess what I'm really getting at is, why's it so important to each of us to be loved and accepted by either those we know or those we don't know? When it's really only us that we should really be worrying about. It's just you that can stomach you every day, so take care of yourselves and look out for each of you out there.

Roast Beast

2006-12-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

He broke away from them, from all of them. The reasons were unknown to them, but he knew best. It was in the depths of the mild winter that it became apparent that all of the life that he thought he'd known was nothing but a waste. He was alone, it seemed everyone in his life meant little to him anymore, and nothing in life seemed to matter greatly other than finishing up school, regardless of what anyone else thought or said, that was one thing which was going to come to fruition.

It was on December 24th, Christmas Eve 2006 that he made the final breaks with family and friends. A bag packed and the car gassed it was time to leave the small town forever and to never look back. No glances over shoulders, or furtive wondering over the reflections in rearview mirrors, leaving was imminent and ever-present. Lunch had gone poorly, in fact, the whole holiday season had gone terribly. The people who he thought he knew, turned out to be strangers. The sense of self which had been built into him through his 34 years had been shattered by a few months worth of disappointments and a few moments of confrontation. Suddenly; there at rock-bottom, new life and light began to burn.

Ramblin around

2006-12-12T23:22:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else wonder sometimes, What am I doing here? I get the feeling, quite often that there's something I should be doing; like the nagging feeling that you're forgetting something when you're leaving the house. Or maybe that's just me.
I get those feelings like I'm forgetting something pretty often, and usually it's because I have I find out later when I figure out what it is that I've forgotten. It's usually something as silly as my cup of coffee in the morning or a piece of mail. Although, where does that 'nagging feeling' come from? Is it rooted deeply in this treadmill existence that we're all living? Are we such creatures of habit that any change in our surroundings confuses us?

Things happen in all our lives which upset the norm, and this is usually a great thing for growth. Whether or not we know it, there's some force driving all of our lives. Call it God, call it Universe, call it whatever but whether or not we've got free-will, there's too much that you can pick up if you just tune into what the Universe has to say for there not to be something out there, somewhere else.

Simple Things

2006-11-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I get the impression that as a race we spend a lot of time deceiving ourselves into believing things. Whether it's something about who we think we are or what we believe, we all spend time telling ourselves things to find some meager piece of mind to get us through the day. It's really an exercise in futility and it doesn't do anything except upset the rest of the people in our lives which are affected by the fantasies which we construct to make ourselves feel better about who we think we are.

I'm tired of being an ant and going through the motions of living with my head down. I don't know about the rest of you out there, but isn't it about time to open up to the rest of what there is on this planet outside of yourself? I spend a lot of time observing other people, and I have to say most everyone seems to be so into themselves and unconscious of anyone around them.

Try this out, next time you're standing in line at the grocery store, department store, market, or whatever. Take a few moments to watch how people interact with the cashier. Only a few will converse with them, a select few will show genuine interest in them as more than a money changer. Then when it's your turn, strike up a conversation, smile at them, show some genuine interest in their situation. It's a simple thing.

Who Knows, maybe there isn't....

2006-11-05T20:19:00.000-05:00

Lately, odd forces have been at work in me, propelling me towards action. We look so often in our lives for moments of inaction, for 'down-time' those few stolen moments that we choose to share with our solitary selves. But, then at other times...there are moments when the Universe tells us we must seek the opposite. We are driven to seek out something other than ourself. Something which is a compliment to who we perceive ourselves to be.

Tomorrow, I have to take care of some personal business which has been a detriment to what Maslow would call my 'self-actualization'. This is a situation which has been on-going for over a year now and it's really been something which has given me a signifcant amount of pause in descisions which I've made or directions I've chosen to go. But, now that I'm staring it in the face, I'm forced to wonder why I've allowed this thing to hold me back in such a way?
The importance which I personally placed upon this event, this problem in my own life has ruled me, and I've allowed it to unable to do anything other than to wait.

Now, that I've waited all this time, I'm still grappling with the feeling of dread which comes with finally meeting the situation face to face. I know that I'm going to be fine no matter what happens with the situation, I know that after a few more hours of waiting that this too will pass much the same as anything else we face in our daily existence. But, this has been such a detrimental thing to me over the past year and a half that I've grown to put such limitations on myself and to cease the seeking which I'd previously been a part of.

I think that in the larger picture, that we choose to put the brakes on our own lives from time to time. It's a necessity, we have to pause to take stock of things, sometimes, those brakes that we choose are our own, and sometimes it's the Universe which determines that we need to look around and see where we are in our lives.

Who knows? Maybe there isn't a vein of stars calling out my name..
No glow, up above our heads..
Nothing there to see you down on your knees..

I like to think that there's something up there, something outside ourselves that we spend time in communication with. A force, whether it's God, the Universe, Jesus, Buddah, Confucius, Mohammed, Allah, or some other Diety which I've neglected to name that each of us communicates with for our direction. Perhaps it's just some higher part of ourselves, maybe the Superego, our center of reason that we ask for how to handle the hurdles in our lives from when we see them approaching to the moment when we finally must lift our leg and surpass them.

The big analogy.

2006-10-04T23:12:00.000-04:00

The yin/yang is a familiar Chinese symbol. I thought of it today when I saw an artist rendition of a black hole which some astronomers believe to exist at the center of many galaxies, our own included. The yin/yang essentially means that when a force reaches it's greatest intensity, it's zenith, that it already contains the seed of it's opposite. What if, these black holes at the center of galaxies are the embodiment of that familiar symbol. A universe filled with matter imploding upon itself in a hole of imperceptibility.
If it does absorb all light, energy, matter, and all of the things which our human intellect can perceive of, then where does that indestructible and interchangeable mass and energy dissipate to? Does it pass to another state of dualism hinted at in the yin/yang, being and nothingness? The Universe and not the Universe?
We're a dualistic being, our minds ponder, reality/dreams; light/dark; good/evil; male/female; life/death and millions of other analgous concepts. We build religions around these same concepts as they rule the living of our lives. The image of the black hole today brought those questions above to my mind based on the same concept of the Yin/Yang.

A funny thing happened on the way

2006-08-22T00:30:00.000-04:00

A funny thing happened to me recently, I replaced my car. Perhaps that doesn't sound all that 'funny', but I'm not referring to comical. You see, I had been driving a car with no air conditioning in the hottest part of the year, tires which were about to blow, an appetite for oil unsurpassed, and generally just a piece of crap. I bought that car for $400 dollars when I filed for bankruptcy, and I drove it for over a year. Before that, the car was languishing in the country. It belonged to a young couple in a lesser developed part of the area. Needless to say, it was in disrepair when I got it and disrepair when I got rid of it.
Anyway, I was plotting how to replace the crumbling silver 1990 Mazda-MX6, the life waning from it daily. But yet, up until now, for over a year that piece of shit car got me back and forth to work and even some play. The day before I found what I would late call my new car, I'd received the 'blank check' which would free me from one situation and bind me into a financial commitment. Mind you, after driving that car for all of that time, I was ready to do something to get out of it.

So, I'm leaving for work and I've got all my stuff. I notice I've laid out the 'blank check' and I get it, except I can't get it and I drop it. This plays out a few more moments until I finally grab it. Well after I get in my car and down the road, I notice that it's acting really bad. It's making a new chugging noise that I'd not heard it making before, so I pull over and give it some oil. I get back in, and finally after getting further down the road I realize that my car isn't going to make it. So, at that moment I decide to turn around.

The place where I turned around was at the bottom of a long incline, and to cut this short, my car didn't make it up the hill. I coasted over into the median and came to a stop there on the incline up the hill. Luckily, there was a turn out not too far down from where I stopped at. I coasted down the median backward and into the turn out and came to a nice stop facing in sort of a more right direction.

All the while, there I am with my car that I'm trying to get rid of, that I hate, and it dies within walking distance of the dealerships.

It makes me wonder if that chain of events would have played out this way if I hadn't taken the financing packet with me. Would the car have died anyway?

I'm actually glad that it did, and I'm glad things happened the way that they did.

What if?

2006-08-09T21:03:00.000-04:00

If the spaces between all of our electrons quarks and muons are composed of an infinite amount of space...then our crux in the cosmos is the frontline of destructions between matter and energy. Each and every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the correlations throughout all our perceptive abilities supports this, but can we extend it to the unseen world around us in each of our moments of waking. All of the negative reactions you have to the world, sooner or later have their equal and opposite positive reaction.
Our conscious is a product of the destruction and emergence of energies, a static flux where there is a constant flow of equal and opposite energies, a nexus where there is a neutral chage, a singular non-polar gateway between.

What if we are the singular, organic cellular part of a large living organism. The Universe, God, Allah, Buddah, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva, are particles of that, organic thought processes of some larger consciousness. I know, that's been explored through science fiction films as a hackeneyed theme, but what if?

i hope that someone gets my

2006-05-02T23:09:00.000-04:00

Just start writing, eventually someone will read it. Maybe the right person will read it, the audience of your communication. Perhaps, it's someone far away that you're in love with. Maybe, by chance she'll see and understand that all those moments stolen actually were building a bond that trancended distances and time. Perhaps, that person feels those same feelings and perhaps they're thinking the same things at the moment you're writing your rant.

I wish I were somewhere in a calm place, near...dear. Breathe, inhale slowly, and taste the moment. Across the gulf, your wild hair hanging about in rivulets, those dark pools lose me within. These moments, stolen as they are leave more fulfillment and lasting joy. We ride those winds and wild waves, across the rift of wires and the electronic chasm, the tremors of life, swimming in the sea, staring into the sands and shorelines....floating in the fields high above the treelines. I laugh with you in silence, as the sun casts a glimmer upon the depths of darkened pools, and then memories..

I awoke, and thought for a moment.

But, it was just a dream.

Still, the night travels remained through the waking day.

Blank

2006-03-26T22:58:00.000-05:00

The blank page offers us opportunities to clear out some of the cobwebs which have found their way into the corners of our minds, draped across the panes of our views, and crowded over the unentered passageways of our thoughts. i

Just a blip..

2006-03-20T01:07:00.000-05:00

Wouldn't it be remarkable to have spent your entire life in anonymity where no one ever knew your name publicly until you've passed on. Then, upon your passing anyone who drives by the funeral home sees your name there in flashing ten-inch tall letters. For a brief moment, drivers would read your name and wonder about you, who you were, what accomplishments you made in your lifetime, did you have friends, family, were you loved, what you did while you were here. Then, as quickly as your name faded in a blink of electricity the drivers musings would turn to their own safety, their own lives, loves, happinesses, and heartaches. As the last spark of electricity faded from the bulbs that illumined your notoriety for that moment, suddenly you'd be forgotten by people who never knew you.
In this life we're given a few chances to make good on living, much of it happens in fits and starts after a fashion. Though, eventually many of us get something going for ourselves that puts food in our bellies, a roof over our heads, a companion that gives us joy, and maybe some affiliations that provide a modicum of identidy to our meager turnings. Yet, what of those multitudes out there who are living this life in complete anonymity. Those millions of unknowns who if only a moment flash onto our radar and then, disappear

Chatroom B.S. 101

2006-03-09T23:55:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I really question the values that many people wandering the planet these days embrace. You can get a strong sense of large swaths of the population if you spend any time in a chatroom. Granted there are a lot of great people that frequent them, but the freaks and wastes seem to be outnumbering those people lately. Perhaps, it's just me.
I just wonder sometimes, how people who come into a chatroom and deride the other people in there with racial slurs, curses, and hateful comments would actually conduct themselves that way in a public forum. Would the same sexual innuendo, racial hatred, homophobia, misogyny, harassment, and general baser conduct played out in chatrooms fly the same in the real world? If people want to get in a public forum and act this way, why not actually do it then, in the real world? Why bother hiding their true faces behind a flat screen and a 12pt bold font? Might it be that they're afraid to get out there in the world and really let the objects of their angst know how they really feel? Are they afraid that they may be pummeled, drug behind speeding automobiles, or hung from trees if they really began spouting off their vehement hateful remarks in mixed company in the real world?
Then, why do it online? Cowardice, or boredom.

You'd think that as a group of people, that we'd spend all that time trying to figure things out. But, all that energy is wasted on completely useless things. And yet, still it goes on and on.

Oh well....if you can't beat them, join them nicely.

Just another brick.

2006-02-28T19:57:00.000-05:00

This world is made of walls, and each of us are but a brick within it. Yes, I was listening to Pink Floyd...get off my back already will ya?
What I wanted to say was that, whatever wall it is, everyone makes up an integral part of it. It might be a wall of solitude, a wall of silence, or a wall of joy...but everyone's got a part to play in this movie show, day in and day out.
I'm not sure what wall I'm a brick in yet. I'm still trying to find that cobble hole where I fit into, especially lately. I think i'm just laying there waiting for someone to pick me up and throw me through a window with a message tied around my waist. Maybe I don't fit into a wall, Maybe I'm one of those bricks that's a part of one of those sidewalk sculptures or a simple cobblestone whose getting run over every day by a train.
I guess all of us need to find where we fit in this crazy mixed up world.

Random

2006-02-25T04:36:00.000-05:00

We can never truly know what it's like inside someone else's skin. We can sympathize, empathize, proselytize, and pretend to be wise about the subject all we desire, but it's an impossibility to truly know what another person is thinking or feeling.

Just a random thought at nearly 5 A.M.

Reasons, Causes, Effects, and Affects

2006-01-23T00:34:00.000-05:00

In life we're forced to make choices and live with those consequences. Some of them follow us throughout our lives, and in our moments of solitude they come back to us and we revisit our actions. Did I do the right thing? Why didn't I do this? I could have done that, or this, or the other. Well, we do those things that we do in our lives for reasons that aren't readily known to us at the time. Later, the purposes become clear when we get to where we're going.
Some of our mistakes or bad momentary choices can put us on the path to our greatest of joys. I've made a few bad choices in my life, just like anyone else on this planet. But, I can't really say that I truly regret those choices. Had I not made some of them, there's a strong possibility that I would have never started this blog and I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I'd never have gone on to produce some of the work that I've done as a part of my courses at Art Institute, or written some of the things that I've written in the past. I might never have met some of the people which I've met and come to count as friends if not for some of those choices that I made.
Life truly, is what you make of it. If you make a mess of it in the meantime, it'll work out in the long run. It might not be clear to you now, but in time...as you're walking through that darkest forest...eventually you'll find that sunny clearing where you'll be able to get your bearings and choose another path into a more gorgeous part of the forest.
It's been a strange trip for me. I've made a lot of bad choices in the past, but they've gotten me to a point, and brought me along the path that I needed to be on. I'm sure that those same things that you've done will do the same for you.

Sooner, or later.....you'll see.

Defeating the Distances

2006-01-18T00:33:00.000-05:00

What connects people across the great divides? Technologies have given us the power to 'defeat the distances' between worlds and hearts. While our bundles of wires and glass windows on the world aren't a substitute for the closeness of a warm embrace, the warmth comes from our knowledge that out there, at the other end of a phone line, a keyboard, a screen, or microphone cable is a good friend, a companion, a family member, or some as yet unknown love which will one day walk with us through grassy fields.
Life, and living truly is what we choose to make of it. We can be happy or sad about our situations of distance, but we shouldn't ever give up that one day, all we've hoped for, all our dreams will come true. For, if we stop dreaming a part of our soul will die, you never give up chasing after what you're dreaming of in this life.

Many have thrown their arms into the air, and given up in fear of succeeding at finally capturing the butterfly which eludes them in their waking life. For any of our hopes and desires to be made real in this world, we have to take those risks needed to make them come about. Little that is great in life, is easy to accomplish. Whether it's a job, a love, a life, a career, a relationship, or climbing a mountain. We have to find those parts of ourselves, which are holding us back from our ultimate realities, deal with them on a firsthand basis, conquer them, and make our dreams a reality.

The distances which divide us, are small when we consider the gulf which dwells within ourselves at times.

Harmonies and dissonance

2006-01-15T16:05:00.000-05:00

The great dualities of human existence govern our lives every day. We're born alone, and effectively we die alone. Is there a god, is
there not a god. We love, we hate, we're cold, we're hot, and the list goes on and on. Our nature is a dual nature. Within each of us, there are polar extremes to our existence. We are body, and spirit. We are mind, and heart. It's enescapable. The greatest trial of our lives is to find a balance between these two extremes of our conscious states. Finding this middle ground, and living within it, is something which mankind has sought from the first moments of sentience.
So, why is it when someone says that they've lost the love of their life can they not right themselves quickly? Would they be so distraught if they had lost the hate of their lives? Would they feel so empty if they could never experience true cold in their lives? Why is it that love has such the effect upon human beings that it is the penultimate governance of our consciousness? Is it that love is the most imporant part of us? Is our nature made for love, is it built from love, so much so that we are drawn to seek it in other beings?
I was recently in a chatroom where there was someone there who had lost the love of their life. You could hear the pain and sorrow in their voice, in the words that they spoke of this person. Is this how we combat those primordial feelings of being born alone, that we seek out the perfect compliment to our lives in the embodiment of another human being to fight off the fears of ever having to face that terror and loneliness again?
In our world, we are closer together than we have ever been as a race. We are connected in ways that we have never been. It's likely that at some point in the future we will be connected ever closer to one another as a race, will this need for companionship continue to rule our lives in that time when we can feel and touch from across the wide sea? My guess is yes, it's deep in our nature to seek out the comfort of another warm body on cold nights.

Ceasing Inactions

2006-01-04T01:50:00.000-05:00

We spend a lot of time stopping ourselves. Censoring our own actions for the good of others, or for the self-satisfaction of saving ourselves from feeling like a fool for some reason or other. I think that's it's past time that everyone just puts their guards down and finally admits to the world, how they really feel about things. I don't mean that there should be some outpouring of built up angst, who would want that? That stuff is better held back for the sake of everyone, especially the self. Those negative feelings are probably best not expressed, maybe I'm just dancing around something that I don't want to admit. Maybe it's something that I've felt for a couple of years about someone and I don't want to tell her. Even though, I've this feeling that tugs at me, and calls to me that she feels something too. So, why not just go for broke, just put it all out there and say hey! Well, it's just not that easy when you've managed to build a great friendship with a person. You have to take things carefully, managing each of the progressions with all the intent of a four-star general.
But, that's not really living is it? Isn't life supposed to be a spontaneous thing which happens in those moments between our breaths? Are we supposed to take the 'bull' by the horns and go for broke in each moment that we're given to live on this rock?
I suppose that with everything, there is a medium which we have to be painfully aware of. Our mediums are different, because our grounds are so different. The levels we choose for ourselves are so different that the levels which we meet with others upon, but life is short. If we don't go for the things we want from life, then it could pass us by.
That would be sad wouldn't it, if our greatest opportunities just passed by us. Those great loves, the successes which we would miss, the parts of the world which we would miss seeing, and the people who would forever remain only a thought across the miles.
This is not the time for introspective meandering, this is finally the time for action. No more handwringing and soft-stepping, we must make our own destinies, fulfil our own dreams, and blaze our own trails. Our leaders have forsaken us for currency, so should we forsake them for our own currents.

'Tis time to paddle against the current.
We shall lay in might stores for the coming storm.
Our grainaries shall burst under their own weight
and our bellies shall be full with the zest we find in our lives.
This is our season to shine, and we shall be the brightest of stars

This is truly the time to put aside all our longings, all our shortcomings, and all of our self-pronounced doubts. We are at the crux of a mighty war for our very souls, and it is truly the domain of each of us that we take the charge to treat one another with the dignity which we so desperately desire for ourselves.

Your body like a searchlight
my poverty revealed,
I would like to try your charity
until you cry, "Now you must try my greed."
And everything depends upon
how near you sleep to me

---Leonard Cohen "Take this longing"

Golden Rules

2005-12-11T23:34:00.000-05:00

Why is it that human relationships are such a jumble? Is it that there's just some humongous obstacle between each of us? I have to say, my set of relationships haven't been that bad, at least when I've been lucky enough to find rational people to have relationships/friendships with. Why can't people just follow that golden rule?

Do unto others, as you'd have them do unto you.

That pretty well sums up the entire scope of a perfect utopian existence. Why's it so hard to follow that simple rule? Why can't everyone simply just stop and say, 'Wait a minute, if I act this way then I'm giving this person to act that way towards me.' It seems like such a simple act, like a logical progression to relating to anyone else on this planet. Yet, every day we are faced with the same set of bullshit from the other people in our lives where this simple axiom isn't follwed.

Sure, each of us, likely don't follow the rule to the letter either. But, we know we should. Or do we?

Would it be such a trial to live our daily lives in reciprocation for the kindnesses which were enacted upon us, as well as the evils? After all, the inverse of the axiom is true.

You are free to do unto others, as they have done unto you.

It has to be, the original rule, while the spirit of it likely communicates to us that we should be just and kind to others still grants the opposite within it.

I guess, if you take the golden rule and the laws of karmic retribution together as a belief system, then you're likely to do okay in this world.

Do unto others, as they do unto you, but beware. Your actions will come back to you tenfold.

Said another way, If you make an ass out of your neighbor, it's likely you'll be the one eating hay for the rest of your life.

Time, Time, Time

2005-11-30T00:06:00.000-05:00

Why am I not sleeping?

Lately, the days haven't been composed of enough time. 2005 has been like a vapor. It hardly seems to have begun and now we are at the end of it. Perhaps time is accelerating, or my perception of it is growing, or maybe it's decreasing.

Is it that as we age our ability to sense time changes?

Rusted brandy in a diamond glass
everything is made from dreams
time is made from honey slow and sweet
only the fools know what it means
temptation, temptation, temptation

Jokes stored in jars

2005-11-29T00:28:00.000-05:00

The funny things in life are best hinted at. At times, they are painfully obvious and it takes a great strength of will to avoid pointing them out to a potential victim. At others, depending on the situation it's perfectly fine to plunge that razor witticism directly into an unsuspecting neck. Those situations are myriad and they depend upon the involved parties. You have to admit though, it does take a strength of will to pass on one of those instances and put it away for the future. To simply bide your time until the proper moment comes along to spring it once more. By then, you've evolved the perfect delivery and point of entry to deliver it in the harshest way. Or, you'll choose to laugh about it to yourself for a while and treasure that little snippet for yourself. You sort of just put it up on a shelf, in a little jar in your mind. Sometimes taking it down and opening up the jar, smelling it to see if it's still fresh, then recapping it, and placing it back on the shelf.

A few cryptic words of advice for anyone thinking about it, acting acting like it, considering it, desiring it, planning it, scheming on it, or plotting to get married.

First, what's the big hurry?

Second, if you're going to do it don't go about telling your former spouses. Just do it, why do they really need to know, or why do they even care?

Third, don't go about telling your former spouses after you've told them once before and it didn't happen.

So, let's recap.

If you have the opportunity to say something hurtful to someone, sometimes you should do it, other times you shouldn't.

After someone divorces you, they probably did it for a good reason and don't really care if you are getting married again. The fact is, they are probably hoping you will so that you'll have better things to do than take all your angst out on them. Further, you should learn your lesson after the first time you tell them that you are about to marry someone and it doesn't happen. If you don't learn that lesson, you're bound to be the butt of countless jokes stored in jars on shelves for many years.

You might not get laughed at to your face, but there will likely be a lot of laughter and pity behind your back.

Nation of Idiots

2005-11-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

We are a nation of slathering masses salivating at the moment when the delicacies of capitalism are revealed to us. We lose simple coordination if we don't get the products we need, soiling our clothing and our floors.
Advertisers paint the people in commercials to be stumbling and bumbling dolts. Consider the current commercial for the return of the McRib sandwich. The commercial is centered in a dry cleaner where a long line of customers are continuing to arrive with shirts and blouses stained with McRib sauce. The commercial cautions us to leave our good shirts at home. Are we really this moronic and incapable of having a meal without spilling or dripping foodstuffs upon our clothing? McDonald's marketing would like us to think that we are. I wonder, of you out there, how many fit into this psychographic niche. These fast food diners who can't seem to avoid staining their clothing.
Another good example is the campaign from Hardee's(Carl's Famous Star in the west.
Their campaign claims, 'Without us, some guys would starve.' Now, I've eaten at Hardee's on several occasions, but I don't feel like I would starve without them. I'm a guy and I'm perfectly capable of seeing to my needs for sustenance without the need of driving to their restaurant. A prime example of their target audience is depicted in the commercial that features an early morning thirtysomething who has foolishly allowed his coffeemaker to run over into the floor. The voiceover is painting a picture of his ability(and other of these guys who would perish) get a promotion, juggle three girlfriends, etc, but this 'breakfast' it's mystical and there's no way that one of these guys can actually manage to feed himself in the morning.

Are we really this nation of idiots?

And where is our portion control gene?

Perception

2005-10-30T23:59:00.000-05:00

When we peel back the thin gossamer of our perceptions, what is it that we see there staring back at us? What is truth? Is the truth what we can see? Is it what we can touch, smell, or hear? Is it just that the truth, the reality is what is happening between our ears, inside the synaptic junctions flashing at light speed in our brains as we struggle to understand.
I think that I've hit bottom sometimes, and I feel that I can't string a few words together to describe a feeling or a thought. I write something most every day, whether it's a scribble in a notebook, a post in a blog, or something for my courses. But the words which I can attach to things, they seem to be coming slower lately, more labored, and perhaps with more difficulty. Perhaps it's the onset of old age at 33, or maybe it's an excessive imbibe of alcohol from time to time, who knows...it could be some bad hamburger, the ozone, the cleaners, or any environmental, physical, psychosomatic factor. All I know is that there are spaces, where the efforts to describe a thought, or a feeling, are growing more difficult. My perceptions of life, perhaps, are changing.
I think that at times, I try to stop thinking, to dwell in an empty-ignorant haze, just so I don't have to deal with some events which surround me. Maybe it's time to come back and pour all of that crap out. Maybe I should pull back the thick layer of gauze that I've covered over my perceptions of late, step back out of the shadows, and let the sun warm my face again.

Right Brain

2005-10-25T18:28:00.000-04:00

Happiness is the qualification of your efforts by the right side of your brain.

Maybe I've been thinking about the dual nature of humanity lately. There's a creative side and an analytical side, so why wouldn't our greatest moments of happiness come from those moments when both sides of our brain are in complete agreement?

Left Brain

2005-10-25T00:08:00.000-04:00

Where the heck does the day go? There you are working away on something, totally absorbed in it, and then suddenly it's 10 pm. Isn't the conscious mind a remarkable thing? How our perceptions fool us with linear time; making one moment of dread last forever as bliss passes in a wink.
I guess that's what is meant by, ignorance is bliss. Whether it's the ignorance that comes from being absorbed in the moment, or the ignorance born from unknowing. When the trappings of our analytical mind are prevented from intrusion upon coloring our realities we are left to our creative interpretations of what we see before us. How the sun sets in the evening, how the daisies grow in summer, and how the birds fly south in the winter. The mundane becomes remarkable without the harshness of reason.
The absence of creative spark, of inspiration, and joy leaves us longing. Inside of everyone there is a piece of the universe that is connected on some level to a world which is much larger than we can ever know. Those gossamer threads that run between hearts, connecting the far away together, and the close even closer; find purchase in words. Those threads are woven into tapestries, invisible, only to the unseeking. Those who never seek, shall never find, their anylitical minds forever dominating their view with shades of black and white.

Spiders on a Screen

2005-10-23T15:11:00.000-04:00

I wonder what it's like sometimes to be a spider perched on the screen of a porch and suddenly you're brutally flipped away from an unknown force into a somewhat familiar environment of grass. It must be a sudden shock for that moment of time, though to the spider who likely doesn't have the same concept of time it must be an eternity to be falling toward the ground and to suddely be buffeted by blades of grass. I suppose that those same things happen to us in our own lives. We fall into our own complacency with how our lives are, the routines of our daily lives and then from nowhere a force comes into our perceptions and hurls us headlong into a new perception. At that moment we're given the choice to seek out new paths, new routes to success, new modes of being, and new horizons...or we can simply die there in the grass.
Yes, I've changed the perceptions of a few spiders in my time. It's a hobby of mine. When I see them on my screen porch, like a mischevious child I decide that I'm going to flip them off the screen. It's the closest that I come to affecting the lives of any other beings on this planet in the short term at least. I suppose you can make a correlation between the parent/child role also. Will you be a parent who supports the child like the blades of grass, or that which flips your child maliciously from the screen which they've climbed for so long to reach a perch upon? But, deeper still...there are other correlations which can be made. God, The Universe, The Prime Mover, Shiva, Allah, Buddah, or whatever you call the Supreme Being is essentially that same sort of mindset which I've expressed here.
We climb all our lives to reach a zenith, a precipice where we can look over into the abyss and see what we've been striving for our entire lives. When, at the moment of our greatest revery, after we've stalked our prey for so long, in a moment...everything changes and we're forced to start anew. It could be a death, the destruction of our homes, a divorce, a marriage, or some other major change in our own specific paradigms. Regardless, it happens to everyone, shall we just give up and die there in the grass...or seek out other screens, other points of superiority, and other vistas for our dreaming?

One more thing

2005-10-18T01:29:00.000-04:00

We the people, in order to form a more perfect union have deemed it necessary to place unexperienced people in the highest positions of government. Sure, it's old news, but it's still irritating. Why is it that there seems to be a scourge loose where you don't need to know anything, but you do need to know someone?
Harriet Miers and Mike Brown spring to mind, they seem to embody that old phrase. Whatever happened to having hard work recognized and earning a position? Isn't that what it's about?

There are scary things happening in the world, but they're going to happen and we're powerless to stop them. Powerless that is, unless we choose to take steps to stop them.

I could go on about this, but I've got a country to run, I just got promoted.

My next _ will be a ___

2005-10-18T01:06:00.000-04:00

This whole game of life, sometimes it really kicks you square in the teeth. Somedays your up on the top of the game, and then next there you are stuck in the proverbial Monopoly jail with the bloody thimble. I guess that everything has it's purpose in our lives. Each of these silly incidents that happen to us are supposed to teach us a lesson, give some guidance, direct our path a bit through the maelstrom that our lives gradually degrade into, but c'mon. After you've already learned the lesson, when is the teacher going to step outside for a smoke break?
I'm not going to get into the particulars of what the lesson that I've learned is, or which one I'm studying another chapter of, but needless to say it's not a pretty lesson to learn. I shut down sometimes, I guess everyone does. You just get to a point where you've got all these things plugged into the wall, you're running full power, the blender is slinging crap all over the place, the television is blaring, the radio is playing some terrible ballad from the 80's, and in the middle of it all the washing machine is bouncing all over the living room.
What I'm getting at is, marriages sometimes end, and the obviously end for a myriad of reasons. But you would think that two people could find some way of getting along afterward, some uneasy silences that reach a peaceful settling of the dust. Although, there are instances, perhaps many of them where it's an impossibility for the people to get along. Such is life, such is the game, stalemate.
It's difficult to vent and not just spell out the reasons for why or what is at the root of the problem, but it's cathartic to approach it from another vantage point. One where you're describing it to yourself, but where anyone else looking into your life would be puzzled and wonder, what the heck?

Anyway, it's been a while since I've posted anything here. Hell, it's been a while since I've written much of anything that wasn't related to schoolwork. I started all of this blithering so I'd sit down and write in a forum that was new, something to jog the writing juices, give myself a forum for free-writing, but lately..I feel those introspective tugs. I think I've really been avoiding confronting some things, just because they irritate me so much. But, things aren't going away are they? They'll remain there, festering until you grab them out and shake them up in the light of day.

Again, I'm wishing that I was somewhere else. Far away from this point in life, in another part of the globe, in another time all together. Eventually, it's going to happen where I'm happy in the moment again. It only takes a moment for our rhythms to be upset and we're plunged headlong into madness, off kilter, spinning out of control, but it takes time for us to find that comforting pattern of routine to embrace us and silence the living that swirls around us all.

Wake Up From This

2005-09-07T23:09:00.000-04:00

How do we know which are the right answers to our questions? What are the crossroads when each of our descisions are myriad? I've had so many things swirlling around me for so long, I just don't know what the right answer is for me anymore. Life, in all it's splendor is pretty damned confusing at times. I guess it's really up to each of us to determine which is our best path. That's the only answer that I've really been able to come up with for myself. I've picked and chosen which are my best paths, what course of action is the best for me to pursure, and which choice will lead to better choices. I've shirked the dead ends which are presented, worried incessantly about the possibilities, and become overly concerned about the future of current descisions. But, it's really all good. I mean, I'm still alive, I still have the memories I've managed to salvage from the last large life change which I endured, and I'm not neck deep in toxic sludge like a million of our neighbors.
Again, let me take a few minutes to contemplate the scope of what's happened in New Orleans. I went to New Orleans once. I went there alone and had an unfavorable experience. It's a tough city, the people are rude as hell. It's not a family environment, at least for outsiders or tourists. But, the people there have a reputation for warmth and joy. Who knows, perhaps it was me. But, there is a smell when you went to the city. It's a smell of piss. A smell of desperation.
Aside from any personal feelings that any of us have about the city and it's aura. It's horrific that the people of New Orleans would be cast into the mold which they've been given. Uprooted from their homes and cast out into America. The open arms of their fellow citizens waiting for them with offers of comfort and future. Yet, there's a great sadness which follows them, which will follow them always. They've lost their homes, their belongings, every last scrap of what they've experienced. Every Tangible Scrap.
The people of New Orleans, no longer have the first movie stub they collected when they had their first kiss at the movie theatre. They don't have the photos of their children when they lost their first tooth. They don't have anything which we take for granted every day when we wake up in our comfortable dry beds each morning.
Just take a moment to consider, losing everything. Everything which you own personally, everything that you have in your bedroom or your house, all of the useless bits of flotsam and jetsam which you've held onto for all your years. All of it suddenly and permanently GONE.
Perhaps all of us should take away a lesson here. It's not a new lesson, it's something which has been said time and time again. Live simply, so that others may simply live. We've all got a wealth of junk in our lives which we don't need. Some homes have 3 televisions, how many times a day do you watch each of those three televisions? A lot of us have clothes that we don't wear, are you ever going to wear them? Many of us receive gifts which we'll never use and we hold on to them, why?

I guess it's time that each of us should wake up and do something for our fellow man. Our government has left us to our own devices in this country. We're no longer a nation 'by the governed'. This nation is run as a business. We are the employees of USA, Inc. The board of directors meet in their boardroom and we hear the minutes of the meeting, but our input is relagated to a suggestion box which has little effect on the outcome. It's well past time that we take back this country and our rights as citizens.

No longer does the rest of the world look at us and see beauty, now the rest of the world looks at us and they see sadness they see an enslaved mass, servants to tyrants in red, white, and blue.

Doesn't Remind Me

2005-08-29T23:29:00.001-04:00

You could if you wanted to.

There's so much power in those words. They mean many things, depending on when and where they are said. We can do anything if we set our minds to it, though....the spirit is willing, the flesh may be weak. We can if we want to...make ourselves better people, be more tolerant to each other, love more, laugh more, look to the stars more, and dream more. We can do many things if we want to. When those 'wants' become perceived needs, that's when we'll act.

We want so many things that our wants have lead many of us to bankruptcy, debt management, and worse. Yet, where will it end? Where will we take responsibilty for our 'want's and rein them in?

Sure, there are things that I want...it's a normal response. When we see something shiny, no matter if it's inside of a gourd, we want to grab it and never let it go.

This post doesn't remind me of what I want.

Sweeten this bitter taste

2005-08-23T23:34:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, I wonder. What's all the good in this thing? Why bother with all of it, what's the use? You know the questions. We all ask them from time to time, mostly when we've been confronted with some aspect of consciousness which just throws our little world a bit off kilter. But, after a few moments of despair, most of the time we all come back to our reality in our cushy little dreamworlds and plop back down on our thrones of apathy. Maybe we should ask more often, why we're here. Maybe we need to be upset more. Maybe I'm just being negative.

Anyway, it's not a bad life. We cling to our visions of what we feel our life should be, no matter what anyone tells us. We make our own paths, brick by brick with every good or bad choice. Those bricks can carry us away, or wall us in.

It's in the magic of the moment where memories meld into history. We'll remember all those passages, where we knelt to pick ourselves up one day, each forlorn breath of despair when we felt lost.

Someday, as we close our histories, the memories will return to haunt us. Will they be pleasantly welcomed....or sadly reflected? Shall all our losses return, our winnings grow cynical, and our triumphs merely failings? Or, shall the smallest of our joys grow into our greatest happinesses, enduring through all our years, fulfilling our days and nights bringing peace from our miseries.

Each brick has a price, we buy them with our choices. They are cast in the kiln of our hearts set in place with the grit within us...

Mysteries

2005-08-19T18:59:00.000-04:00

They always say, 'When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." Well, really they say a lot of things, but for right now this particular axiom is in my mind. I'd just like to say that I've been given a lot of very sour lemons, but through time and perserverance I've been able to make some very sweet lemonade.
I think that it's one of the key things which we should be able to learn from our lives, no matter what life throws at us, there is a purpose behind all of it. Whether we can't, or won't, see it in the moment. Somewhere down the line, there is a rhyme, a reason, and definitely a rhythm which life bestows upon us through the sour times.
It's funny, since I started this blog, I've become a much more reserved writer. More intent on communicating a message than an emotion, and more cautious of my reader, that's you whomever you happen to be at this moment. But, all in all, I've not changed my mode of relating to the world. I've determined over many years of trial and error that it's best to go with the flow and take what life gives you. Staying with the current and remaining rooted in the rocky undertow, has resulted in the best of outcomes for me through these years.
Who knows where I'll go, what I'll see, who I'll meet, what I'll learn....right now it's a mystery. But, Thank God for that.
We all need mystery in our lives. It gives us a reason to go on, a purpose by which to measure our existence, and a cause to die for. Without our own little mysteries, we wouldn't be much more than snails occasionally exiting our shells to leave a slimy trace behind us of where we've been.

Consumer Revoloution

2005-08-18T23:54:00.000-04:00

Lately, I've been getting very fed up with the hit that my wallet is taking every time I decide to turn the ignition on my car.

No amount of trying to save gas by getting out of the car, or walking, or riding my bike is going ot change the fact that

we are living in a society where Big Business is lining it's pockets with the hungry stomachs of children, the tattered clothes of parents,

and the empty wallets of you and me. It's about time that we, as an oppressed population raise up and send a message to

the corporations, legislators, and tyrants which are in control of the prices of gasoline, milk, clothing, food etc. etc. etc.

Sure, people are pissed off about the prices of gas. I'd wager that everyone hears it at least once a day. A collegue or a friend mentions that they just filled up their car and it cost them so much money, they're mad about it, they feel cheated, and they feel like they're supporting someone else other than themselves. The truth of the matter is, we're captive as consumers, how can we get to our jobs, take our kids to school, or get to the grocery store to feed ourselves and our kids without purchasing gas to put in our cars? They've got us by the throat, but we just seem to be apathetic enough to just smile as they tighten the leash a bit more.

It's well past time that we do something as consumers. Over the last 10 years, we've taken massive hits to our wallets, to our jobs, and to our national image. Through wars, escalating trade deficits, and improprieties of corporations the cost of living in the US has increased dramatically. I know that the current administration in this country is responsible for a great deal of the situation which we are in, think about it, we've sat by and witnessed this administration, just recently, pass a huge energy bill that offers Big Business so many tax breaks, while they continue to reap huge profits from you and me.

Is this really a nation for the governed, or has it become a nation for the governing? We've allowed more and more taxes to be levied upon us, sat by and watched prices escalate, and escalate at a phenomenal rate, and as a populace, we've done nothing but sit idly by and allow it to happen.

How much longer is this to go on? Isn't it about time that we do something? Organize as consumers?

Where's our spirit as a nation of free men and women?

Outside Sales

2005-07-13T18:25:00.000-04:00

Sales is a tough cookie to crumble. For a person who's never done outside sales before, there is a lot of information to remember and to disseminate. I'm quickly finding that confidence is one of the most valuable tools for a salesperson to possess. Which, I have to admit, I thought I had a lot of it, but the past couple of days the confidence that I do have has truly been shaken.
I'm working with someone who's truly a salesperson. And, an honest salesperson which I've also found from dealing with salespeople in the past is truly a commodity in short supply. He's a very knowledgeable person, lots of experience, not just sales experience, but true life experience. Which, I think is one of the most important things that we can bring to anything that we really do that we wish to do well.
I've not had a job before which has challenged me as much as outside sales has. But, it's exactly what I need to grow beyond this point where I'm at in my personal life. It is challenging yes, but it's not beyond what I can accomplish. Not at all.
It is the exact challenge which I need to rouse me up to be a better communicator. I've always felt that I was a very good at written communications, but verbally, I think that I've allowed some of my confidence level to intrude into my abilities there. I am enjoying this challenge, and I do feel that it's forcing me to grow beyond my bounds.
Today I've learned a few valuable lessons. One of them being that I'm not as direct or assertive as I should be. I had that pointed out to me, and it was a bit of a wake up call for me. It's funny that I know how to write in the active voice, but I'm passive in my speaking voice. So, this new immeditate challenge to me is to learn to speak in the same voice that I write with. I know how to write the active voice. I'm going to call you. I'm going to do this. I'm calling to confirm our appointment. But, in my speaking voice it's always been. Do you mind if I call you? Do you mind if I do this? I was wondering if you were still available for our appointment?

Yes, it's really time that I took charge of this thing.

Magic Carpets & Muddy Fields

2005-07-11T07:23:00.000-04:00

Sometimes we find that the rug we walk upon becomes slippery, almost as if it is to fly. We coast upon the ground beneath our feet, lighter than air, greeting the difficulties in life in passing.
While other times, we are face down in a muck of despair, struggling to escape the turmoil that life has seen fit to hoist upon us. Yet, the duality of living is inescapable, find the middle ground to walk upon, It's certainty and solidity will keep you upon the path.

Don't stray too far into the air, or too deep into the muck.

Garden of Consciousness

2005-07-10T03:08:00.000-04:00

There are visions I have of places from time to time. Natural places which for reasons unknown I've recorded in my mind. Just flashes which I visit in my mind sometimes. I'm not sure why they are there, or even if I've actually been to them, it may be a side road I've driven down or a trail I've hiked, a ditch I've seen as I've sped along the highway, or a hillside that my mind's eye has imprinted into memory. I find them calming, peaceful, and serene, though I when I have these moments of recall I also have an uncertainty about these places. Did I see them as a child? Or are they places that I've yet to see? Perhaps they are just memories of places which I've been. You see, I lost some of my memory from childhood as a result of choking. I went into a period of unconsciousness for about a week. I was on the precipice of needing to relearn the basic functioning such as walking and the alphabet, and much of what we take for granted as rudimentary existence. So, I'm left to wonder sometimes if these places which I recall are from childhood memories which are stored deep within my memories, locked in some box, which hold a key to some part of my soul.
I think that within each of us, we are all trying to solve a part of a puzzle. We are the parts of a cosmic equation which the Creator has placed a part of this puzzle within. Who knows...perhaps these moments of bliss which I visit in my memory are my own parts of the cosmic puzzle for which I'm working out the solutions. Perhaps they are past memory, or perhaps they are future memory. My own ephemera of the mental landscape, the flashes which I have which mean something to me for only a moment of passing, will....until the next time remain relagated to the depths of my consciousness.

Patience and Contemplation

2005-07-10T02:42:00.000-04:00

Time is made from honey, slow and sweet. And, only the fools know what it means...

We're a very impatient lot, on the whole. The human animal, always rushing from point A to point B, never allowing a modicum of time for quiet contemplation. Well, most people at least. But, I've found that patience and contemplation, yield their own rewards.

Patience in friendships, leads to life long friends who you'll be able to depend upon.

Contemplation, gives you an inner strength to cope with all of the tribulation to which life subjects the spirt.

Now, both of these are intertwined. It takes a lot of patience to contemplate anything, most problems in living don't have simple clear cut answers at which we can arrive at simply by filling a box with a lead pencil. Much of the splendor of living is making the errors and learning from those errors, seeing where our failings were, growing, and moving along to the next crisis, similar to a constant state of rebirth.....

"each passing moment, is another opportunity to turn it all around."

With patience and contemplation, we can find our places in the world, reach our truest potentials, and evolve our selves beyond our immaturity of living to gain wisdoms for our future error.

We should have patience with ourselves, and even moreso with our fellows while on this Earth. I feel that if we seek patient contemplation of our own life, than we should more easily find it in others and for others.

Wave

2005-07-08T06:50:00.000-04:00

I wonder sometimes. Can you feel me thinking of you in tender moments of solitude?
I wonder sometimes, if you know the depths beneath this surface.
If the connections across the great divide are functioning
If the thoughts sent travel at the speed of spirit?
I wonder sometimes about the world and the distances between points
I ponder thoughts of packing, travel, jumping trains, boats, planes
and car rides alongside you.
I wonder if the madness in my spirit will overtake me,
and those tender moments of solitude will turn to tender moments shared.

The life unlived

2005-07-06T19:10:00.000-04:00

A life unlived, the dream is released. I let it go, and move along to brighter horizons. Mystics and soothsayers have divined these passings with the throwing of bones, tossing of cards, and the readings of the stars. Simply put, some things in our conscious existence just aren't to be. We follow a part of our paths down until they reach a cul de sac, then we are left with the questions of settling in the dead end, or turning our pale tiny canoe around and rowing against the stream until we see a brighter horizon. It's the beauty of living that makes us go on most of the time, while we err, sometimes on the side of hope, we still realize that our path in life is the one that matters. Finding our way through this maelstrom that is our consciousness perception of reality is our lot in life, which ever compass we choose, be it religion, intuition, or reason will typically guide us to where we feel we should be, at least for a time until the upset of living jostles our tiny canoe and the ripples force us to reconsider.

Cracking the shell..

2005-07-05T23:02:00.000-04:00

I'm stepping outside my comfort zone. It's the only way to grow beyond these bounds, the constraints that I've allowed to be placed upon me for far too long. I think that it's necessary for us all to find a way to get out of our comfort zones occasionally. A couple years back, I'd read an excerpt of something that was rumoured to have been written by Kurt Vonnegut, but then it was revealed to have been some sort of hoax; regardless the piece called....'Wear Sunscreen' is chocked full of hit and run wisdom. One of the things that's stuck with me from it was:

Do one thing every day that scares you.

I think that we all get very complacent with our living, and just do the things that we know we're expert at, or that we find we've a special affinity for excellence in, but those things don't make us grow. They just show what we're capable of, but not what we can reach.

Are we all just happy to live within the shell of our own makings and not to explode that shell and explore the world around us, cracking open the chrysalis, spreading our wings and floating off on the warm winds blowing?

I have to say that I feel that I'm in a period of growth right now. I'm being forced to learn some new skills, as well as choosing to learn some new ones on my own. I have a very strong sense of freedom and growth, and confidence. I may fail, I may succeed, but I think I'll be richer for the journey.