Thursday, November 25, 2010

Another Danger of a 6,000 year old Earth...

People think I'm crazy because I say there are dangers in believing that God made us by special creation 6,000 years ago; but here is a prime example of how belief in special creation costs OTHER people their lives.

If God created the races separately, then the people in this picture are not my kinfolk. I'm Caucasian, they're black. And she's not even Christian enough to be ashamed of her nakedness!

If we believed these people were family, they would not die this way.

I've often lamented on the dangers of a 6000 year old earth. I am usually referring to how our brain has evolved through the ages. According to neuroscience, we have a reptilian core in our brain. It's just like a crocodile brain almost, it's where get flight or fight, hatred, intense anger, lust and such "basic survival emotions". Basically, behavior one would find in a reptile.

Above and around that area of the brain, we have our mammal structures. The ones which make us care bout our offspring, long for a close bond with a mate, acceptance within our group and for family.

Added to, and on top of that, we have that 10% that we "use", that makes us human.... and I sometimes feel that it spends most of its time rationalizing the actions and thoughts of the other 90%. If we are not careful, the other 90% uses us.

I hadn't really thought about this danger of the 6,000 year old earth though. I'm grateful for the whole line of discussion on Facebook that followed the posting of this photo. These pictures and the discussion have made me realized an even greater danger in "Intelligent Design" musings. I can see nothing intelligent about designing people in such a way as to allow them to let their distant cousins starve to death. While we sit over here corn-fed an lazy.

Without accepting evolution, we can hate someone because they're not the same color, or religion. These poor people cease to be MY cousins, because they are not Christian, or white. With evolution, this woman becomes my KIN and her child my own extended family. These are MY PEOPLE TOO! Dammit.

And that makes it painful to my heart to let them perish. Once they are accepted within that mental wall that surrounds family, my own "heart goes out to them", as describe that biological reaction to harm to kin and self that causes our chest to tighten and our tears to flow.

If your belief system allows you to look at this picture, and not see your family dying for lack of food... question it; because it is murderous. That poor child is a distant niece or nephew
of EVERYONE, (it's so emaciated one cannot tell) . And collectively, his uncles and aunts have let him starve because they are too weak minded to make their governments behave properly and cast off antiquated beliefs and demand humanitarian reform from their religions.

The compassionate mind is very important. Fear, anger, jealousy are based on a self-centered attitude. By developing a sense of caring for others' well-being your heart automatically opens and that brings transparency, straightforwardness and honesty, which leads to friendship. We are social animals, and one individual's survival relies entirely on the rest of the community.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Danger of a 6000 year old Earth

I think that our 6000 year old earth is to blame for much of this mess. The world was once Officially Flat, the church eventually had to cede that point as science proved otherwise. Science has unequivocally demonstrated Evolution to be truth and that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, or so.

The religious minded will have to cede this point just like they had to abandon the Flat Earth, and Earth is the Center of the Universe theories.

Anyone who will take up their Bible and read it, starting at the beginning will find not a book of love and wisdom from a Good God, but a horrid, bloody history of a murderous bronze age tribe of people. It's a book filled with hundreds of cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Incest, murder, child-molestation.


God and Jesus both had nothing bad to say about Slavery, something you and I KNOW to be wrong.

The early church was a widely varied thing. Congregations and denominations ranged from the purely aesthetic to the orgiastic, both in the name of Christ.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church rose to power because Rome's military might had waned, and they needed a new way to control the people.

They stole Christianity, warped it's books to meet their ends, and exterminated those who wouldn't go along with them.

So effective were their techniques that few had the bravery to stand against them for over 1500 years. Martin Luther led the first great Evolution of Christianity.

I believe another one is happening now. People are beginning to read their bibles and see them for what they are. Repositories of ancient truths, wisdoms and atrocities, that have been edited for the purpose of controlling the masses.

With a 6000 year old Earth and Biblical understanding of human nature... the Devil makes you lust and do various selfish acts.

With a 13.7 billion year old Universe and a 4.3 billion year old Earth, we are descended of a long chain of animals. Our brain is the result of eons of evolution and posesses structures very similar to the brains of crocodiles, with structures on top of it not terribly dissimilar to those of rodents, birds and "lower" mammals. We have a slice on top that makes us aware, conscious and gives us free will, if we can realize that we only "use 10%" of it.

The trick is, that other 90% isn't just sitting there, it's the Devil. In it lies those base, reptilian desires of lust, hunger, rage and fear. In the mammal structures we have compassion, love, devotion and altruism. And in that 10%, we have reason, logic and morality.

I like to think of it as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Fear and Cowardice


Recently there has been great turmoil in our Nation over the unprecedented invasion of privacy going on in our nation's airports. Honest, law abiding citizens are being treated like criminals. Veterans being treated like drug dealers. Women with prosthetic breasts being forced to remove them, and prove they do not have explosives. Women in traditional garb being asked to violate their religious convictions. Children, screaming "don't touch me" while being touched in places I was told to tell the police if I were touched there when I was small.

And why are we enduring this?

Terrorists.

I ask myself, what is a terrorist? What do they do?

According to the Wikipedia: "Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.[1] No universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism currently exists.[2][3] Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for a religious, political or ideological goal, deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians), and are committed by non-government agencies."

By this definition, they have won. America is gripped in an irrational fear.

Many people are offended when I call this an irrational fear. Fear of nonpoisonous spiders, is irrational. Fear of non poisonous snakes is irrational. Fear of bridges, is, while a very unlikely way to die, does claim a life now and then. Every year, on average, 57 people are killed by lightening, yet our nation is not gripped in fear every time thunder claps. While some may suffer exaggerated levels of fear, most of us calmly seek an indoor location and proceed at a calm pace.

Worrying about whether or not the person next to you have a bomb in his underwear is a highly exaggerated fear. So far, no one has died this way. One man has suffered severe genital burns trying to set off an improvised munition, but no deaths. Ironically, he had no balls in the first place. A real man doesn't kill innocent people to make his statement. If he has a qualm with another man, he walks up to him, calls him out and they settle affairs like men. Cowards use terrorism. Cowards fear terrorism.

It was with considerable difficulty I managed to find a most disturbing mortality statistic. Innocent civilians killed by police officers due to mistaken identity, or negligence. I have only been able to find the number for this for the calendar year 1993. Apparently, no agency is tasked with compiling this statistic; or they simply do not publish them.

In 1993, 330 innocent, law abiding citizens were wrongfully slain by policemen. In that same year, 30 innocent, law abiding citizens were wrongfully slain by fellow, otherwise law abiding private gun owners. In 1993, there were four incidents of international terrorism that claimed 9 American lives. 9 per year is the statistical average over the last fifty years since the USA began meddling in middle-eastern political affairs via the CIA and the multinational oil corporations.

There were 770,000 policemen in 1993 and 80 million registered gun owners. If you do the math, that means you're 1200 times more likely to slain wrongfully by a cop than a lawful gun owner. Cops kill 11x more innocent Americans every year than civilians.

Cops kill 36.6 times as many Americans as Muslim terrorists.

Yet how many of us have irrational fear of policemen? How many of us think it would be preposterous to disarm our police forces; when in fact, we might be safer with individual citizens being armed than our policemen.

So I must ask you, should we really be invading the privacy rights of veterans, cancer survivors, children and law abiding Americans; because Muslim terrorists kill 9 people a year while our own police kill 330?

We must not let the terrorists win. Their goal is to force us to live in fear, until we give into their demands. We must address the real problems. Why are they here, what do they want?

They live in countries where religious fanatics run the government. They've only read one book, or books written about that one book. They can kill their wives if her ankle is seen by another man in public. A father can kill his daughter if she "dishonors" the family, and I cannot think of anything more dishonorable than that.

Poor, ignorant people grow up to be terrorists.

For what we've spent on full body scanners, and a decade of the war machine we could have changed those people's lives for the better. Just a couple of solar panels and some LED lights, a 24 volt well pump, and a way to move their sewage away from their houses and dispose of it in a sanitary way. The ability to grow their own food.

Instead, we are molesting them. Economic molestation. We're taking the oil from beneath their ancestral lands, giving their radical religious wingnut leaders a pittance of the money, and the rest of the profits are raked in by the CEO's and stockholders of the Oil companies.

So we can drive SUV's and musclecars that get less than 15mpg in some cases.

You'd be angry and hateful too, living in your dirt floored hut, scrabbling out a living in lands where your ancestors used to be able to survive, until the climate started to change because of pollution... oh wait, most Americans don't believe in Climate Change... but we do believe in 15mpg muscle cars, so we can feel sexy.

I'm not condoning terrorism, but just think about it.

What would Jesus do? Would he rip up and down the road in his hot car trying to impress young girls, or would he want us to make this right? And I have a funny feeling, if a TSA agent tried to check His scrotum for explosives, they might have to detain Him.

We are at a crossroads in history, and this BS that we as a People are having to endure over terrorism should not be driving us to be fearful cowards supporting the Backscatte Scanner industry and Big Oil industries.

Once upon a time we were the world's greatest economic power. We could have brought that power to bear on these nations, and helped them solve their poverty, and change their policy of religious ignorance. Now, thanks to our extreme level of corporate welfare and irresponsibility and warmongering political parties, we are very nearly reduced to a 3rd world nation and we are looking to China to bail us out.

And we're afraid of brown guys who may have explosives shoved up their wazoo, or wrapped around their testicles.

How rational is that?

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Don't touch my junk....


I'm genuinely ashamed of my Nation at times. While we still remain, from my biased point of view, the "best place to live" on earth, I no longer recognize the country I live in. It has changed from the "home of the free and the land of the brave" into "the home of the FEE and the land of the SLAVE".

Recently a genuine American Patriot stood up to being groped by airport security, and I have listened to news, and social network posts from people saying "Get used to it." "Ride a bus if you don't like it." "It's to make the airplanes safe" What will these people say when some terrorist decides to shove some plastic explosives up his wazoo? Anal probes for all? If some TSA person feels me up a little too much, I'll do my best to break his jaw. I was molested as a child, and I'll not stand for it again. When someone touches you down there, against your will, it's molestation.

They already lock the cockpit doors, and there have only been TWO incidences of people trying to blow up planes from the passenger compartment. We have one man who tried to use a shoe bomb, and another that burned is "junk" off with a groin bomb. Neither were successful, and were interfered with in one case by a CITIZEN. Not a policeman, not a law.. just an average Joe. A brave man, a Patriot, surrounded by cowards

Why in the hell are Free Americans being groped in order to fly?

On 9-11 we lost less than 4,000 people, 9 years ago.... We've since lost more than that in soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. We've taken 100's of thousands of lives Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan in retribution, most of them innocent, family people who's worst crime has been inheriting their parent's religion.

4,000 people in 9 years... let's put that into perspective with other causes of death in the USA.

Every year in America, appx 7,000 people die from complications with non steroidal pain relievers.... 9x7,000 is 56,000 people that have been killed by over the counter pain relievers....

Where is our War on Aspirn?

Each year 20,000 Americans are hurried on to their untimely ends by being too kinky for their own good.... listed as "sexual behaviors" on JAMA's statistics...That's 20Kx9yrs, that's 180,000 Americans who've fallen prey to being kinky...

Where's our War on Perverts? Why aren't they busting down people's doors saving them from their own depravity... they don't hesitate if you have some marijuana...

Adverse reactions to prescription drugs, that's the ones that our government approves of.... cause 32,000 deaths annually... 32Kx9yrs=288,000 Americans who've fallen prey to the greed of the Pharmaceutical Industry...

Where is our War on Big Pharmacy? Do we hold the FDA accountable, the pharmaceutical companies?

Alcohol claims 85,000 Americans annually... 85Kx9yrs=765,000 in the nine years since 9/11.

Where is our War on Alcohol... oh wait, we tried that, it failed miserably, caused rampant crime and increases in alcohol abuse... just like our War on Drugs is now... hmmmm guess Washington didn't learn it's lesson then either.

Obesity claims 365,000 Americans annually... 365,000x9- 3.2 million since 911.... and before they die, they live compromised lives often filled with anxiety, depression and handicap...

Where is our War on Fat?

Tobacco tops the list claiming 485,000 Americans EVERY year... 485,000x9= 4.35 million Americans suffered lingering deaths not terribly unlike the obese casualties, often with horrid lung complications, heart disease and the anxiety and stress that goes with it.....

Where is our War on Tobacco.....

It all just goes to prove that our various "wars" are nothing more than political gambits to gain political influence and to protect the profits of special interests.... safety of Americans is not on their agenda.

So why are we all being full body scanned or groped by federal employees? Will you stand idly by while your daughter or son is felt up by some potential pervert? Personally, I couldn't give a damn. I'm single and it'd be the most action I've seen in months... If it was a guy I might pop him one upside the head, or if it were a woman, I'd ask for her phone number and offer to take her out for dinner.... the reason we're having to be subjected to these unwarranted measures is plain and simple... Money. Thousands of multimillion dollar whole body scanners are being deployed, and we don't even know how safe they are. Stock prices for the companies that make them are through the roof..... and who has the money to invest in those things now.... the people who have private planes, who don't get x-rayed or groped....

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

On the Damned Human Race by Mark Twain


I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result...

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn't. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.

In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals...

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to...

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet's time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary's day... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.

In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally, a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable...

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.

Why people are all up in your business....


I really, really, REALLY wish someone had told me this stuff when I was 10...

Recent discoveries in the science of primatology have brought to question the age-old truth that the reason humans have such big brains was the discovery of language and tool use. They are speculating that our ancestral primate obsession with social status gave rise to the growth of the brain. But studies are showing that the bigger the brain, the more obsessed social rank the animal becomes. Whole regions of their brains are devoted to analyzing subtle movements, gestures and expressions, tones of voice, body language, pheromone detection and most importantly, all for the purpose of social rank recognition.

In stable primate groups, that is, where the alpha is established, is calm and assertive, and there is no "drama" happening over the alpha position, every monkey or ape in the troupe knows his or her rank. They literally take turns at the best food places in this order in some species!There are daily micro-struggles over this flea-picking order. And yes, how long who picks fleas off of whom, is in the equation!!!

We're no different, we just think we're special, and better than the other animals... so, this whole HUGE portion of our "unconscious" mind it agonizing, without stop over petty social dramas. If we don't get enough of it, we'll make some trouble, just to see how it settles out...

The trick to being a good human i think, is learning to know what's "wrong with us". Realizing that an unconscious monkey-brain lies down there below that rational, human slice on top. It's has an agenda, knowing where we stand in the pecking order. It's this part that wakes you up angry over who said what yesterday, at 3AM. It keeps you awake on FB all night just in case that special someone logs on... It's this part that is mean to the nerd, participates in gossip, bullies others, steals, cheats

And below that we have structures that are called "the reptilian core". Which in turn is driving the monkey and human brain with motives of it's own. Reproduction. Food. Warmth. Protection. It's this part that causes teen pregnancy, drunk driving spousal abuse....

Smoke too many cigarettes and you'll find out just how that part of your mind really is control! Or try to quit a Pepsi, or coffee habit. Shoot some heroine, or smoke some crack... you will find out what happens then you get your reptilian core hooked on a chemical it cannot produce. It makes you into a very ugly animal indeed.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

FNORDS

I was about to head out the door on my way to Nashville. HOLY SHIT I'm doing something spontaneous.... Anyway, I'm not normal, I admit it, I took a lawn dart to the brain at 5, so I have some brain damage I think...

I love to discuss politics. Religion. Philosophy. I routinely cause eye sprain amongst my FB friends with all my brain damaged rants. (eyes rolling) It's just me. I ain't right. I have several friends, some personal, some former teachers from my first life, as I think of it. Some I've just met along the way for no other reason that his mom had a hot FB picture, and then I got so see some of his mental ramblings... It's a chain of friend finding that was once impossible.

It makes for a very fast exchange of mental DNA if you will, a new evolutionary step in free thinking. We are on the verge of a new 21st Century Enlightenment I belive.

Back to my post. Fnords. I read an article today about how our brains grow new brain cells. In school I was taught that you had as many brain cells as you were born with, and from there on they died off. If you drank alcohol or smoked pot, or took drugs, even pain pills, you were killing them off faster than they would if you took care of them. Biblically, I was taught that my body was the temple of my mind, and if I wanted to have my mind when I was old I damn well better take care of it.

As a result, I rarely drank as a teen. After drinking some Purple Jesus, I once betrayed an entire group of my friends because I couldn't handle the collective pressure of being pasted AND lying.

I smoked weed once when I was 19, and just because it was in the balance of whether or not I was going to get laid.

I smoked it again once at a medieval combat war in Arizona. I had a motorcycle wreck at 9, and have no ankle in my left foot, you wouldn't know it if you saw me on the street. I refuse to be handicapped. However, my left ankle is fused at a fixed angle, and it's designed for walking on solid ground. At the beach I walk like a zombie.

This War, Estrella War 98, or something, (help me out SCA ppl). Arizona, 90 pounds of armor on me, was kinda hot. I was wielding a 9' spear and had two sword and shield men in front of me. The California team was outnumbered 3 to one as I remember.

We had 1200 men and women on the field that day. When the armies moved, the ground rumbled. I'm not kidding, it was intimidating if you have a vivid imagination, and could literally throw yourself back in time, and imagine the stakes were lethal and the loser would be decimated, raped and occupied. (I've been reading the Old Testament lately, that was commonplace in the first 5 books)

It was all sand. Me and my zombie foot. The lines met and we held for about 5 seconds before it descended into chaos. My unit of 3 found it'self faced with two spear men and two sword and shields. My confidence level was about 2 on a one to 10. And then suddenly, my brain ceased producing words. It fell silent.

I don't have great combat skills. I was a mediocre, but fun to be around heavy (armored fighter) and by then I had learned how to drink my ass off....

( shudder. there was this one time, at an SCA Event, and there was this Jalapeno liqueur and these people with a funny cigarette)

My 2nd joint my whole life and I was pre-drunk off my ass when they smoked me out. I left the van because they started getting a little more romantic in front of me than I was comfortable with. I remember, right before bed talking to someone, seated on one side of a picnic table. I closed my eyes, just a blink is seemed, and then there was an oak tree when I opened my eyes. I'd fallen off the picknic table, onto the ground, looking up into the tree canopy. "Whoa!" I thought, or said. I realized it was time to go to bed. And I woke up feeling great. My back didn't hurt, my foot wasn't bothering me, no hangover! What the hell!

Didn't dawn on me then that it was the weed.

Back to Arizona. I turned into some kind of rattan-fu maniac. I popped the spear man on the right with a thrust he wasn't expecting. He was expecting a timid poke to cause an opening. I had already seen the opening. I stepped full broadside between my two men. My side touched against their shields. My spear was about 4 feet longer due to the daring lunge. I flung my full faith on my shields, and they kept me unscathed.

The odds were even now. The whole thing is like a blur, and it would take a chapter just to draw it all out I wound up backed into a tree with only a sword and shield guy and one spear man. The others fell one by one, it was a dramatic experience. Kind of like my own little mini 300. I'll never forget thinking, whew, I'm still alive, when they blew the whistle because our flag went down.

And then I felt the pain. It hit like a sledge hammer dropped on the top of my left foot. I had just fought for my life, for 4 or 5 minutes, in SAND. My nemesis!

It took me half an hour to hobble back to camp, a trip that had taken only 5 minutes to walk to. In the end my comrades wound up hauling my spear an helm, and one stalwart chap hefted my arm over his shoulders and we hobbled into camp like something out of a Monte Python set after the shot. I proceeded to drink my pain away, but it wasn't working, and someone said to me, pssst, hey buddy you wanna try some pot, it's great for pain....

And it almost went away. But, I was able to ignore it and have a great time! I didn't get to participate in day two of the fighting, I could barely walk. That's when I had my vivid and hair raising imagination about Bible Days, and how it must have looked when the 12 tribes were descending upon yet another town God "gave" to them. How mighty God seemed to me that day. And at that time in my life, I was so embroiled in shit at home, I failed to appreciate it, or see the fnord in my Bible.

So what is a fnord? There were a series of freaky books written called the Illuminatus Trilogy And a kinda science fiction revolutionary pamphlet called Principia Discordia. It was Anarchy stuff, I didn't see the relevance of a lot of it at the time, but I didn't really understand metaphor yet either. In these books, there's a government conspiracy where children are brainwashed to not see the word "fnord" but rather than see it, they would suddenly be overcome with a sense of fear and anxiety. They would put the Fnords into newspapers, magazines and books but not in advertisements (or TV shows). Of course "fnord" wasn't the actual word, if I were typing the actual word, you'd leave this page feeling afraid and anxious, unless you were the Elite. They saw the fnords and weren't affected by them.

In the article about new nerve cell growth they said that in fact we have stem cells in our brains, and we grow new neurons all the time. Which means I could have been smoking pot all those years and having fun dammit!I only refrained because I didn't want to loose my brain cells!

mostly kidding.

I don't like to go to work high, or drive high, or be "stoned". Marijuana is the best medicine for my chronic (pun intended) pain that I have due to my fused ankle. Most modern pain pills are not only expensive, but they make you groggy, if you take enough to end the pain.

could easily get a prescription for anything I wanted. Lucky me, I'm allergic to opiates. Codine makes be break out in hives! I work. I can't be affected that way, and work, or drive. It's not safe to drive on pain pills, or work around dangerous equipment while taking pills. Just as dangerous as going to work high on weed, or alcohol.

However, to get an effective pain remediation with marijuana, one does not need to smoke enough to get high. In fact, getting high on pot really only lasts from 1 to 4 hours, depending on your tolerance levels and the potency of what you get. Since all the weed I've seen in the last 10 years comes in via Mexican suppliers, you never know what you're going to get for your ounce of weed. It's usually half stems and seeds, and the rest is poorly cured, moldy marijuana. You get ripped off 50% by volume usually, you can't smoke stems and seeds. However, the pain relieving effects last for several days, with a slow tapering off of effects. It takes me about 2 weeks before I have to start using ice packs and ibuprofen in the evenings. I won't work on pain meds, and I take as few asprin type junk as possible, because I want it to work when I take it, and I don't want my liver gone when I'm 50. I have been smoking weed since I met my current X wife. And most of it was relatively free of physical pain, don't get me started on the emotional pain, she's psycho.

I quit 3 weeks ago. I have begun a custody battle for my children and I need to test clean when the shit hits the fan. My children mean far more to me than my marijuana. I can deal with the pain to get them back. I may have to move to a medical marijuana state though. I don't want to work and HOLY JESUS my oldness is setting in on me. I have been stove up for two weeks. I feel 60. (coming from a 44 yr old that means something!)

Cleaning up today I found this tiny nugget of weed. I mean tiny. 3 weeks ago I would have scoffed. It would have had no effect as my tolerance was so high. I broke down and smoked some. Not even half of it. And my back feels fine. Is it psychosomatic, I don't know. I'll find out in a few days. And I'm going to pay particular attention to it, I'm curious to see how long it will be before I break down and take two more puffs. It's a science experiment.

I'm not worried about getting in trouble, even by Tennessee's Draconian Nazi Pot Laws, it wouldn't get me jail time it's so little.

So I sat down to check my FB and a friend of mine had commented on the Neurgenesis article. The article says that 3 things were shown to help grow brain cells. 1. Exercise, 2. Calorie Restriction, and 3. a chemical found in Turmeric.

My friend had replied, "I need to get some of that Curcumin", the chemical in turmeric.

I had had the same exact thought, but when I read it posted there, I realized that I had "fnorded" the exercise and the calorie-restriction parts. As if they weren't even an option. I wondered for a moment why that was....

I like junk food and I'm lazy!

My reading list has recently had a book on it called Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyen. It's basically the Science version of the first 5 books of the Bible. I highly recommend it, they have an enchanting writing style. It's simple to understand, and you'll feel better about yourself, your life, and the world when you get done.

My lower mind wants no part o the exercise, or cutting down on food.

With most things these days, my thoughts turned back to the Old Testament. And all those cities the Hebrews killed man woman and child (except the virgin girls, they were fond of them for some reason, they "let" them live)

How is it that we read the bible and then think, "God is Good". I mean, he commanded horrid atrocities....

My mind was on fnords and ancient human ancestors, pain, the Bible and neurogenesis. ( I don't have a girlfriend, ok) And I realized what purpose those horrid attrocities served in Judaism. They were the Fnords. We read over them, but shake them off in a fearful, anxious way thinking Oh, God's all grown up now, he doesn't do that anymore.... or will he if I don't behave?

They were the fnords of the Old Testament. Only they weren't hidden, ignored words, they were whole chapters of atrocities. But we ignore them, and fnord them out, just like exercise and calorie restriction.

Marijuana Prohibition is a fnord. Someone could tell on you! You could get caught driving home with it from your guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a mexican... since we can't grow our own, or we'll go to jail and lose everything... another Fnord. And it's not just a fnord for the smokers, the cops could bust down your door. They make mistakes. Every year innocent Americans are shot in their homes by botched drug busts. And if that isn't Fnord enough for you, there's crime in the streets and Columbian cartels too and Taliban, and they can't keep the pedophiles in jail for all the potheads, so watch your children, FNORDS!!!

Have a nice day. I'm headed off to Nashville. To go to
12th and porter lounge, wherever in the hell that is!

Back from the show and I had a blast. I even got to play camera man for my main act, Greta Gaines (total hottie! but married of course) . Met some fun people an listened to some awesome music.... good times.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

they're all around us!

heart broken by someone who doesn't seem to give a shit?
got a kid that lives off you, as if they deserve to be kept up?
got a friend that is an eternal, unemployable mooch?

You just may know an undiagnosed Narcissist.

I urge everyone to watch these videos. Chances are you know someone who is an undiagnosed Narcissist. They think they're the shit, they don't seek diagnosis. They don't know they have the disorder, they think it's normal and everyone else is meat who isn't like them.


Recent events in my life have led me to look into Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I feel a need to share this information, as I feel that the vast majority of us are suffering on this planet because there is a sizable chunk of our population that are undiagnosed Narcissists.

I really only started looking into this stuff because I have concerns about my kids. But I suddenly think we all might need to watch this.

Surely there are may of you who have long term emotional scars from brushes with this type of person, or it may even be possible that you may have it! I am seriously going have myself checked. It runs too deep in my family and I see it all around me.

Here is what I mean. You are stuck in traffic. It's 4 lanes deep. At a point a head of you, the 4th lane vanishes. There is a sign which says "Merge Left" in symbol.

A normal person will thoughtfully merge with the traffic to the left.

A psychopathic narcissist will race ahead and cut in at the last possible moment, and hurl insults at anyone who tries to impede them.

I may be a form of narcissist that I have yet to hear about. Chad help me out here! I will sit in that right lane, right down to the bitter end... and only just exceed the speed of the cars to my left. I don't give a rats ass what the people behind me think.

They are the reason that all those thousands to the left are stuck going bumper to bumper for 45 minutes over 4 miles. Try my tactic sometime. You will notice that the traffic jam will have dramatically improved by the time you merge.

And when you do merge, you have no problem whatsoever, the people on the left let you in happily.

Don't let the narcissists bully you any more. Claim the outside lane for the sane people, we deserve to get home just as soon as those psychos on the right.


here's the first link I found that set me off: boring but effective

Narcissistic Personality Disorder pt 1

here are the professionally produced feature links:

Sam Vaknin Analyzes Barack Obama (part 1) on youtbe
I, Psychopath - Sam Vaknin


Frankly, after watching these shows, I am shocked.

My mom has it. Undiagnosed, but in my opinion it would explain a lot.
My Father had most of the criteria.
My Ex Wife seems to have it.

I fear that the only two things standing between me and having this full on were two childhood accidents. The first involved a lawn dart which struck me right between the hemispheres of my brain, where ones Self Awareness, Philosophy and Religion sit. Amazingly, I have always had difficulty reading and writing in first person. One summer when I was 15, I wanted to learn how to touch type. I put a finger chart on my bedroom wall, and I wrote a novel, in first person, and it was so incredibly difficult for me to do it. I can't describe my difficulty with writing fiction in first person. Metaphorically, it's akin to typing with work gloves on.

I was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of nine. It left me without an ankle and cut my adult height from a physician estimated 6'5" to 6'7" to 5"9". It did leave me with a malpractice annuity that seems to have served as a Narcissist Magnet my entire life.

However, absent these two events in specific, I can't help but wonder if I too may have been a full blown Narcissist. Heck, I may be, I haven't finished researching this. I may have a form of it I have yet to hear about.

I urge everyone to watch these videos. Chances are you know someone who is an undiagnosed Narcissist. They think they're the shit, they don't seek diagnosis. They don't know they have the disorder, they think it's normal and everyone else is meat who isn't like them.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Drug "Cartel Suspected in deaths of 72 illegal immigrants

I’m sitting here reading the news today, and I come across this gem. I am so disgusted with my country’s Drug War these days. As a youth I took on the views I was expected to about drug users. Whatever happens to them, they deserve, right?

Putting aside the fact that we’re allowing the government to terrorize, murder and economically ruin our own neighbors and family. What about the immigrants families. So may people are dying over our country’s failed drug policy it is turning into a hidden holocaust.

Can you imagine your husband, brother, wife, sister, son or daughter trying to sneak into America to get a job, so they can send money home and end the suffering for your family. Only to find out, that instead, they were thrown, alive, into an abandoned mine?

The next time you see something in the news about the Drug War, or read about one of your neighbors losing their lives over being busted and having their car confiscated, or their home and loss of employment, possibly the Right to Vote. Imagine one of your loved ones, barely alive, bones broken, lying atop dozens of other broken dying and dead people. Knowing what their ultimate fate would be. Imagine for ten minutes the last person down the hole, the softest landing, was your most loved one…. I dare you. It probably took that person DAYS to die. And you think Christ suffered?

How do those people go to sleep at night, thinking about that?Their relatives are dead, over our war on Vices. And now I wonder, how do we go to sleep at night, while our neighbors, and people we do not even know are paying this price.

We look down our noses and condemn ancient cultures for human sacrifice, just as we do drug users. Yet we send our sons and daughters off to war over oil. We allow countless thousands to be sacrificed in the name of the Drug War every year.

Everyone needs to take a critical look at our nation’s drug policy and our own personal views. There must be a better way.

How many people do you know who have fallen prey to this money grabbing machine called the Drug War? Every drunk driving death is a victim of our nation’s failed drug policy. Every tobacco death is another example of failed drug policy and our nation’s knuckling under to corporate money and not serving the interests of it’s people. Every thug who falls in the street, or loses his employment and voting future is another human sacrifice.

Stop human sacrifice over failed government policy!

We need to write our representatives, hand write and postal mail, not email. Pour your heart out, give your honest opinion, tell the stories of the people you know who have fallen, or been sacrificed. Better yet, make an appointment, and go speak to them.

In my youth I thought drug prohibition was the right thing. Now that I have learned about the Prohibition of Alcohol and how it caused our modern gang problem as we know it. Now that I have lived through 30 years of the Drug War I see it was nothing but a political device to cause money to flow to pork projects and more importantly, win elections.

When Marijuana was made illegal in 1937 with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act. It was over the protest of many clear thinking American who knew the outcome of Prohibition, Al Capones and Mafias. They knew the prohibition of Alcohol caused more harm than Alcohol. The LaGuardia Committee Report on Marihuana in 1944 was commissioned by the Mayor of New York who was against it. It concluded that the prohibition of the drug, was far more detrimental to society than the drug itself.

Nixon’s Drug war started off with a bang, and a special commission to show how justified the Drug War was. But the report showed quite the opposite, it was unjustified. Unfortunately, the war had already begun and the report was covered up.

We cannot stop the illegal drug trade. It has never been stopped, anywhere. Even in countries where the penalty for possession is death, there is a drug problem. There is a drug problem in prisons. If you can’t keep drugs out of prisons, how in the hell can you control it in the public venue?

I AM NOT SAYING MAKE DRUGS LEGAL. But addiction is not a criminal problem, it is a medical problem. Giving drugs the same status as tobacco and alcohol does not mean people can work or drive under the influence. These things are ALREADY illegal.

I know these three things though.

We must decriminalize it, and as soon as possible. The day people can grow their own, and sell and give it to their neighbors and friends is the day there is no longer any reason for people to have crime syndicates to supply the drug habit machine.

(Imagine the boost to the economy! all those billions not going back to the Cartels but instead into buying new stuff, and paying off credit cards)

It must be regulated and kept out of the hands of minors. It is currently easier for our youngsters to get marijuana and hard drugs and illicit pharmaceuticals than it is for them to get beer or cigarettes.

It SHOULD be taxed and regulated to help pay for the social harms it causes. Let’s be honest, there is a dark side to all drugs and addiction, even our beloved ganga.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Hatred

Hatred is caused by neurochemical secretions of the brain. While a person is harboring hateful mental conditions, the brain is unable to achieve the proper neurochemical balance to achieve Love, Happiness, or any other positive, lasting emotion.

Hatred is the ultimate enemy of happiness and it must not be given any toe-hold within the mind, exept in the rare case of genuine Evil acts. There is nothing wrong with hating evil things.

This is why nations, races and organized religions use evil=hatred to control their populations.

Teach the people to hate or view homosexuality as evil and birth control immoral, and you have more tithe. Especially if you're willing to wait many generations.

Teach the people to hate another religious group or believe them to be evil, and you can make good people do bad things.

Teach people to hate or view as evil/lesser someone of a different race, and they will take everything and enslave them without remorse.

Teach someone to hate everything American, and they'll murder innocent people in the name of Allah and feel justified.

Teach someone that being filthy rich while there are starving and poor amongst us is not evil, and they will be billionaires while people who are their 6th and 7th cousins perish for lack of a good role model, education, health care, food, and shelter from the elements.

Friday, July 2, 2010

inner wealth cannot be stolen

I saw a video clip on facebook from the Dalai Lama. 1:40, watch it if you have the time, great motivational message!



This message is the same message I believe Jesus brought to the people, and probably similar to the prophets of all the religions. Love thy neighbor as thyself. I mean, who can deny the wisdom of this video, and most of the sayings of our ancient holy men. This video is using a language that we understand, and he is putting his words together in a way that modern humans can understand clearly what is being said. He has a rare gift for it, "interpreting the words of God". :) (thank you for this video, and for crafting these sentences to be so clearly understandable)

Our ancient holy men were trying to send similar messages. They made wise philosophies, taught them, and then some people wrote them down. And then some people who want rank and privilege take the stories and change them a little and suddenly there are droves of easy jobs for the Faithful down at the church house and a tax is levied upon the believer to support them.

We all need the wisdom and kindness of this message within us, but we must turn a critical eye to our Holy Books and understand that there were once lazy, greedy men who wanted easy jobs. Today that type of person sits around oval tables and wear fancy clothes, and make decisions that cause oil volcanoes in the Gulf of Mexico. Or they sit in comfortable chairs while their people kill those people over imaginary lines in the sand, or failed political policy.

The traditions caused by these first Multinational Corporations have huge ripples throughout our societies, just like science can still hear echoes of the Big Bang in the static noise of the universe. This echo of religion will be with us for a long time. It will come and go and with each ripple it will steadily grow calmer.

I don't have any answers to these things, and I stand firmly astride the Battle of Belief. I have gone from True Believer to Atheist during most of my life, but not too long ago I lost my new religion, Atheism. I listened to a podcast with Carl Sagan's wife, Ann Druyen, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and someone else I can't recall... but at one point Ann laughs and says, "you know, Carl thought Atheists were kinda silly..." and the next few lines literally changed my opinion of Agnostics, and converted me. Until then I had always seen an Agnostic as a fence sitter, unwilling to make a decision. When in fact, Atheism makes a leap of Faith, just like Belief does, in it's conclusion that there is no God.

Basically, in a nutshell it boils down to this. Until we have been to every corner of the Universe, and looked behind every speck of dust to make sure he's not hiding there watching, who's to say. While I do not believe in a Personal God, watching my every move and a running total of my good deeds v. my bad deeds, I do not have any suggestion whatsoever as to where all the stuff came from that the Universe is made of.

Where did all the stuff come from? Why do atomic particles obey so many laws of science and why does Gravity work? Many of our Founding Father's, in America, were Deists. Their belief in "God" was in a god of science and math who made the universe and then set it free. For many Deists the religion of a Personal God, was a tool for taxing and controlling the People. It was a cruder, less effective form of Government that had once ruled most of the world.

For all I know, when we do look behind that one speck of dust, and notice something isn't obeying the Laws and find Him sitting there watching, and waiting for us to find him....

Thursday, June 24, 2010

End the Drug War

Why am I against the Drug War? All the closet stoner accusations, denials etc aside, my biggest complaint is that is accomplishes only one thing. It employs lots of law enforcement, and with them, generates lots of revenues via fines. It is funded by taxpayers.

It feeds on taxpayers to sustain itself, and it preys on taxpayers. There are over 20 million (end-users, not dealers), Americans who have been imprisoned over this controversial flower. They have criminal records. Millions have lost their homes, land, cars, jobs, and even their LIVES. Over this flower, and who should, and should not smoke it.

When Nixon assigned a special commission to study his Drug War idea, they told him the most dangerous thing about marijuana was the prohibition of it.

By prohibiting it, crime was bound to come in, and get worse as time went on. In 1944 the The La Guardia Committee refuted all of the government's "Reefer Madness" points, and spoke out against the dangers of prohibition of intoxicating substances. They were barely a decade out from the violence and insanity of alcohol prohibition and knew full well what would happen.

If it were unknown to science, and discovered in the rainforest today, we would marvel at it and immediately begin trying to figure out it's patentable biomedical secrets. We have inherited this War, and everyone is scared to death of this political hot potato.

Plain and simple. They lied about what it's effects are. It is REAL medicine. It's time for all the BS to go away, and for the American people to stop being prey animals for the prison industrial complex.

Tax and regulate like alcohol and tobacco. It's harder for teens to get beer and cigarettes than it is weed. There are laws against public intoxication. Flower, pill or alcohol, an experienced cop can tell.

It has removed millions of potential working Americans from the roles of the employable, by giving them felony records, for nonviolent crimes. For things that probably shouldn't be illegal in the first place. More people have died on our border with Mexico than we have suffered American Casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War combined. No one cares.

Just pretend like you don't know anything, and don't get caught. Repeat what the Official Doctrine is, the truth be damned.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Endurance

I have worked outdoors, year round, for most of the last ten years. From drenched in sweat to clothes layered 7 deep and standing in snow. It's a very humbling experience to so up close and personal with the weather, being out in the elements nearly all day, just so others can sit back and be warm/cool.

Now that's not lame attempt to gain pity, it's just given as defining the perspective from which this post comes. I have an understanding of "suffering" that is quite unlike the vast majority of the rest of "you people". :) I can "feel hot" I have nerves just for doing that, they report their data to my brain. I feel hot. I sweat, so long as I keep water flowing, I can operate until I been to feel overly hot. For me I begin to notice I feel sunburned, not possible in the attic, but I don't care what I'm doing, even if its just one more screw. I go out, I drink water, I lay down and I wait until do not feel hot anymore.

It's all biomechanical function that will be required of someone else if I am not up to the task. Where most people go wrong is they have learned that sweating is suffering. So when the water begins to bead up on their skin, they also simultaneously fire up their Drama and Suffering subroutines. I've learned to smile and be happy I wasn't born 30,000 years ago, I get to go home at night and take a cool/warm shower and enjoy some comfort! And I sweat. In air conditioner duct fabrication you get cut, it's just part of business. One could possibly wear gloves, but the speed loss and frustration of fumbling with small screws will try any but the softest of hands. I just scrub them clean with soap and a nail brush and apply antibiotics. I'm learning to avoid stitches... they're expensive.

I remember once, this woman walks outside, complaining about how she's been suffering all night and couldn't sleep, her house was up to 76 the night before and had been climbing nearly one degree an hour!... And I believe the heat index was 110 or something like that. The unit was on the sunny side of the house on a windless day after an early afternoon shower. I was drenched with sweat before I even set my tools down next to the air conditioner. I don't mean drenched the way most of the world understands this to mean. I can take off my shirt and wring sweat out like it was dipped in a bucket of water. One thing I can do, and do well, is sweat. I can load up a cotton T-shirt in 15minutes if it's over 95. And for the most part, it doesn't phase me. So long as some bonehead doesn't come along and kick start my Drama Subroutine with some lame attempt at Heat Humor. I grew up southern, in a trailer park... there was no internet, no game consoles, and parents still had dominion of the television set, and mom was addicted to All My Children, which, ironically meant for an hour or two every day, her real kids were a nuisance! Every good child molester learns the favorite soaps of the kid's moms, trust me on this one. If the dishwasher guy starts asking when you're watching your favorite TV shows... get a broom and a knife and chase him out of the house... do not ever let this guy babysit for you.

When they come out with their cold drink joking about how hot it is, and how busy you must be, What it really means is, "why aren't you hurrying? My house is a sweltering 78 degrees" One can tell when the people are more concerned about how long it will take the service elf to fix the Magic Cold Thingy, than how busy he is or how long his work hours are... They're the ones that bring you a glass of ice water ...

and arrive with an umbrella to give you shade. I wanted to propose to that woman, but she was 73!. She'd been mowing her yard when I arrived and after I got started she went to get ice waters for the two of us. II wound up driving away smiling and shaking my head and wishing I was 30yrs older. Acted like she was offended when I offered to finish mowing the yard! It was pretend acting, but still, what a trooper! When I'm 73 I hope to be half as healthy and good natured.

So back to sweating. I listened to this audio course once that was about biological anthropology. It was like 34, thirty minute lectures, and so interesting I did not even play City of Heroes for nearly two weeks. (those who know me are rubbing their foreheads, as their eyebrows achieved Maximum Height Cramps). One of the conclusions that hung with me the strongest was SWEAT. God bless it! If He made me, I indeed am grateful for my sweat. According to the audio series though, we evolved the ability to sweat, and our very primitive ancestors didn't have to be very smart at all really, just clever enough to learn how to follow animals by their tracks, and carry water in skins or containers. The nuts and bolts of it are simple, large animals with furry pelts do not sweat. In the heat of the day, if a human being harasses an animal, preventing it from getting water, the animal will run until it falls down, it will die within 15 minutes. Not even a sharp stick or rock required. It's called Endurance hunting. I have used this understanding of my sweat to see my work in a more humbling way than I know how to explain. In a way, I guess, I'm proud that I sweat, or that I am cold sometimes. I never have to feel like I didn't earn my pay!


Last night when I sat down to wait for laundry to finish, I hit the BBC channel and it's a show about... my favorite thing, SWEAT and it's a bit about the bushmen of the Kalahari desert. They still hunt this way.

This short documentary clip is the exact bit I saw last night, I found it on YouTube



Summed up: guy chases big animal, guy sweats and drinks water from canteen, guy keeps animal from drinking water, animal runs, animal falls down and dies, no need to even stab with a sharp stick or bleed it to death with a sharp rock.

This is really the "evolutionary" advantage that has made us what we are today. Sweat. Food got easy after sweat. So when I find myself in an attic during the summer blowing insulation for people who earn sick money in Nashville.... I sweat, and I am content to be a good sweater, and rather than get tangled up with my Drama Subroutine and mix up a batch of Suffering, I pay very close attention to my body, and how long I'm in the heat, and how much water I drink. (apologies to my Xwife for suffering through the occasional hateful text message before I learned better)

Drama kills people in this line of work. So be proud of your sweat! Don't feel like your suffering just because you're body is having to do what it does best! DRink water. Endure. It's what Our People do. We sweat.

It's the ones that don't sweat anymore you need to watch out for... they've become better than what they are.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

The Unseen Hand of God

I've lost my religion these days, but my fall from grace wasn't led by anger or a desire to be immoral, it was through study and understanding, and I am now more of a biblical scholar than I ever was during the height of my True Belief. I no longer see religion as a magical gift to His Special Creation, nor as an organization of people whose primary benefit is to not have a real job, because they can con enough people into giving them money every week. I see that it is a little of both, and a lot of what's in between.

Religion gives some people a calmness and peace that an Unbeliever cannot comprehend. But for most people, it only does this sometimes. At other times it "prevents us from having fun". Most of the religious men my age, that I know, would have been more promiscuous, been a "player", when they were younger, if they knew life was going to turn out the way it did.

As an agnostic, whose walked the gamut of Christianity, I find that notion a bit abhorrent. Dishonorable. If I had it to do over, I probably would not even have had sex until I was 20, and I would have kept all notions of marriage out of my head as nonsense until after college!

I didn't understand how in control of my thoughts and behavior my primitive mind was. Most people do not.

But this morning I added another positive of God. While there may be a few downsides to the notion of God, religious wars and intolerance. The Unseen Hand of God moves us daily, even the Agnostic and the Atheist.

Scientists have observed for the first time, the self-assembly of "buckyballs". (geodesic dome houses are buckyballs) When they work with new nano-graphite materials they self-assemble into a variety of shapes depending on what gas they're cooking them in, or what temperature...

They were doing an experiment to make some buckyballs, and they got to see them forming up out of the "graphene substrate" a sheet of graphene, nanoscale graphite. And it just zips itself up! It's rather astonishing. The buckyball is the most stable graphene structure so it just kinda "happens". They don't fully understand why.

While I was watching it, I had the notion "It's as if the hand of God is assembling them before our very eyes." And it dawned on me, God's greatest power, where knowledge is concerned. Irregardless of whether or not He exists in reality, simply using the metaphor "As if the Hand of God assembled them" is enough to inspire great minds, Believer and UnBelierver alike, to look closer, to try to understand the mystery.

Throughout the last several thousand years God and Science have been at odds with one another, in a rather bloody and uncooth game of "crossing the line". Religion draws a line, "The Earth is Flat!" and back then, crossing that line could get you killed. "The Sun revolves around the Earth," Many people died to move this line for us, and today we all take it for granted that the Earth indeed moves about the Sun. And God is still with us, and the Heavens did not fall, and the Gates of Hell did not open up.

He's zipping up buckyballs before our very eyes and showing us a Universe larger than we can imagine, and probably chock full of life. And yet, we still fight over whose Book is True and invisible lines in the sand.

Monday, June 7, 2010

belief

a friend of mine posted on FB

"Do People Really Care? I mean Really????...or do they just TALK THE TALK? Are People REALLY there if you have No Food? If you need your Electric Bill Paid? Need Diapers...or Formula? Or do People turn their heads and look the other way....Are You Really Selfless? or Selfish? Honest to God...I really do wonder..."

and it put a smile on my face because it's a question that often times plagues me while I'm worming around under someone's house installing air conditioning duct and chasing off spiders and dodging various kinds of poo. I have had a most unusual religious evolution and as a result, my understanding of the Bible is nothing short of Hersey of the worst kind. But it makes my world make sense to me.

I believe that all religions come and go, shrink and expand, fade and bloom because they have messages within them that speak to us. They help us make sense of this crazy world. They explain deep truths that help us survive and be better than the rest of the animals. They are very very dear to us, and most of us inherit ours from our parents.

Today we have a division between Americans, and indeed, some other parts of the world are involved deeply in very closely related issues. There are the religious conservatives who insist that the Earth is 6000 years old and it was created by the Hand of God as the special place for his only True People and it's (insert religious group here) going to heaven and everyone else is wrong. Then we have the Ancient Universers who embrace the Big Bang and scientific method.

We have everything in between and a whole bunch who don't give a dang.

So what's the truth of it? How much genuine personal thought have you put into it? Utilizing your own critical mind? Not relying on the testimony and instruction of others which has convinced you of your current belief? Using the information you have, and rendering your own opinion....

The archeological evidence is monumental. The fossil record is astonishingly measurable and predictable. DNA evidence is clearing up the amazing accuracy of Charle's Darwin's understanding of genetic heredity and species differentiation. Carbon Dating Deniers simply do not understand the math and theory involved. There is no doubt that it's not "accurate" every scientist realizes that today's measurements are subject to change if new information comes to light. But carbon dating is only off by a few percent. The believer though, cannot allow change. Or can they.

Galileo was forced to recant his teachings that the Sun was the center of the Solar System and that the official Church teaching of an Earth Centric Universe was the God's Honest Truth. He lived out his last years under house arrest and not allowed to teach. His books were banned until the late 1800's. He was lucky.

Giordano Bruno was a contemporary of Copernicus, he was one of the Great Minds of our planet and was burned at the stake and all of his writings were banned and possession of them was punishable by death.

the list of reasons for burning him were:

* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
* Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
* Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
* Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
* Dealing in magics and divination.
* Denying the Virginity of Mary.


burned at the stake, alive, and books banned!

I won't take you into the detail of the Flat Earth and the Round Earth, I know we all remember that one, and how most people thought it was flat, and then things changed, and it wasn't Heresy anymore, and now we all know better.

Problem is, no one wants to live in that "embarrassing generation" that has to come to grips with the transition.

Who among us believes the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth? Seriously.

the earth simply cannot be 6000 years old. I'm not exactly certain, but from the proposed 14.3 billion year old theory, our sun has gone through a number of gathering up and getting hot phases, explosions and reformations, it's in it's 5th life cycles according to current understanding. It takes 4 life cycles for the heart of the star to make iron from the hydrogen present at the Beginning. Each rebirth creates heavier elements in the inner heart of the star. (or is it 5 rebirths, someone will set me straight.)

without Iron you wouldn't have red blood.

And before you get all defensive, look at how much they got right, without having a telescope or math with arabic numerals! "In the beginning the universe was void and without form" "And he said let there be light, the there was light." Most of the creation myth could be loosely construed as a mythilogical account of human kind's movement out of the lost paradise of the Rift Valley in Africa, which is most likely the origin of the Garden of Eden myth. It's the birthplace of our ancestors. It went away due to Climate Change. The various species were scattered to the corners of the earth just like the Tower of Babel myth explains to us.

But you see, my Book of Genesis only needs two verses. In the beginning there was the Void, and God said let there be light.

How much more Amazing is a God who simply had to make some stuff and let it happen. The scientific evidence is stacking up deeper every day that throughout this vast universe, everywhere the conditions are right, and the big rocks don't destroy, there is likely life. We live in a shake and bake universe, and to me, that's more amazing than 7 days and the Hand of God. The Universe seems to be governed from one end to the other by mathematics and predictable attractions. We're only now finding out that all visible matter only makes up about 15% of what's out there! 85% of the universe is invisible to us because it's made so differently than we are, we can't interact with it!!!

Maybe God is over there trying to talk to us? Until we look I guess I'm going to have to remain without an opinion.

Carl Sagan felt that Atheists were a little bit silly, in that their disbelief in God was just as much a Leap of Faith as Belief in God. Until every corner of the universe has been uncovered, and there is no white beaded old man glad that we finally found him, I'm not going to form any Belief on the matter. To do so is to convince yourself that the Improvable is True. I worry this could upset one's entire cognitive function. This enforcement of a contrary belief system between the obvious and measurable and the accepted and invisible.

nature is my religion and my tiny humble place in the Universe has brought me a spiritual understanding of Life I cannot really explain well.

This isn't Creation vs. Evolution, reds vs. blues, or myth v. history. And when it comes to belief systems, it is our nature to be aggressively defensive, for our belief systems have served our forebears well enough to get us this far, to change it would be foolhardy! But the Earth stopped being flat, and the Sun stopped revolving around the Earth.

The Earth will eventually stop being 6000 years old. It's just a matter of which generation is strong enough to shoulder the embarrassment of waiting so long to challenge what our ancestors have demanded we believe, or die

My "studies" have been informal, I'm no one of importance or education. My recipe for wisdom has been very unconventional. I've read some book and have some audio books about biology, anthropology, philosophy, Early Christianity, and the Origins of Satan, and some Buddhism and shallow reading on half a dozen other belief systems, a psychology text book and a half, blah blay... and a whole lot of internal, dramatic turmoil and hard knocks... slowly add the ingredients while alternately stirring and beating, but do not allow it to rest, for 44 years. And then you'll have my understanding of things! We all have a different recipe. The more recipes you know, the better cook you become.

Our "modern" understanding of God is really very insulting to my understanding of God. If there is a God in my Universe, all he had to do was clap his hands and walk away. Instead of getting angry when Genesis is accepted as myth, understand that a myth is not just fiction. Myth is something far more elegant and magical. Myth is telling a truth, with a fiction. Because some moral and philosophical concepts are hard to understand when presented as dry words to an unprepared mind.

So a myth is utilized to convey a truth. My favorite example is the part of the Bible where Jesus sends his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee while he remains behind to pray. He will catch up later. The weather is bad, and the boat is making no progress. Jesus walks on the water and saves them.

If you see the Bible as a history. Then that's exactly just what happened. Jesus walked on the dang water, and it proves he's the Son of God, and you should worship him and thank him for dying on the cross...

But what do you learn from this teaching, viewing it as a history. To fear/love Jesus' Dad, toe the line or else and you'll get into heaven. And by the way, pay your tithe and never mind what your kids are telling you we are doing to them, Satan is making them lie to you...."

If you take it as myth, you get the following from it. If you can embrace these teachings that Jesus has brought you, love your neighbor as yourself, give up your worldly belongings and help the poor and needy. Forgive your brother 70x7... etc Then you too, will be able to cross the stormy seas of life as though you're walking on dry land. No longer with the giant waves of emotional agony, and demonic lusts rule you! You will be able to take it all in stride and with gladness in your heart, just as if you were guaranteed eternal life in paradise. Amen.

I'm getting a little sarcastic, lol. I lost the original version of this in a tragic cut and paste indecent. I don't want to talk about it.

We need to erase this division between us. Is whose version of How the Universe began really so important that we must kill one another, or just judge and be hateful to one another? Dont' we have greater issues at hand that everyone needs solved, believe and unbeliever alike? For example, giant rocks from space. There's a real threat to all of us that makes gay marriage and abortion insignificant. But look at the anger and wasted time and money we spend on these things compared to protecting ourselves from what's Out There. We all know big rocks fall on the earth, and may kill us all, but whose book is True is more important to us?


Like my friend said. "Do people really care?" and for the most part, until one evolves mentally to understand the suffering of his neighbor, and not allow them to suffer if they can help it, then the answer is no.

I listened to this one audio book about Gnosticism. Certain early Christians believed that "Christ" represented the "noble character within". And if you think about it, until there is a Second Coming of "noble character within" It is going to be Hell, here, on Earth. And no matter how hard we pray, it won't happen until each one of us steps up to the plate.

I think the real reason the Jesus story spoke to so many people during it's rise to the mainstream, was that Jesus was an ordinary Joe. He was a construction worker. He really really believed in his religion, he had the balls to speak out, he was probably the first one to sell his belongings and help the poor. I have come to suspect that his public ministry began when he finished spending all his own fortune helping the poor and healing the sick.

If Jesus came into a quarrelsome house, and he spoke with the people, and instructed them in proper family interaction, he healed them, in fact, given the limitations of the language and the predominance of religion in their world view, there was only one way to explain the process of helping someone get over their anger problem was "casting out a demon of anger" it was viewed as a healing to teach someone to calm their troubled mind and get on with their life! He was a folk hero, a philanthropist who really believed in his God, and they killed him. They killed him because they didn't want the status quo upset The framed him, and killed him slow and horrible in front of God and everybody, over greed and power. And his only crime was his beliefs.

That pisses me off, even as an Agnostic! It makes me want to change my life, help people, be more like Jesus. He is a good role model, even if you don't believe.

But now we must come back to the Book. Much of it is myth now, and no longer history. How do we come to grips with this shaking of our belief system? Can society survive it? Will it ruin religion, will God die?

All I can say is, people have been predicting Armageddon every other year since Christ died. Christ himself expected the end to happen within 50 or so years of his death. When the Earth stopped being round, did religion perish? When the Sun stopped revolving around the Earth, did Chaos strike and Anarchy rule? No. But when these were all the politcal rage, those were the fears and concerns.

Just like today.

My prediction is that all but a few will be comfortable with a 14.3 billion year old Universe before too much longer. We will be educated that this 6000 year old Earth is a recent phenomenon and America's current romance with it was born out of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. During the 1800s and the Enlightenment, you would have been embarrassed to believe in creationism if you were having a talk in a restaurant. But the tides of reason change and often they're powered by emotion and greed.

And as for God and the Bible. I predict it will always be a Best Seller, and that it He will continue to speak to people and help them attain wisdom and humanly grace for countless centuries to come.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Happy birthday to me!

44. If you had asked me when I was 16 if I would be alive when I was 44, I probably wouldn't even be able to imagine life beyond the nuclear holocaust we all just knew was about to happen at any moment between the USSR and the USA, or the AIDS epidemic was going to kill all but the chaste... Yet here I am. Alive and fairly well all things considered. But it's just another workday amongst decades just like it, nothing at all like it used to be. Hell, if it weren't for the automatic reminder on Facebook I think only two people would have remembered! But I'm not complaining, I'm something of a recluse and to expect more would be unfair to all the otherwise great people around me, that I just don't spend enough time with to get invited to their birthdays!

But as this day has progressed, I've thought about birthdays and remembrances in a different perspectives. My X, who has custody of my kids and gets a substantial check, and has nearly every Friday off from work, not only didn't remember it was my birthday, offer to let me have a Friday to go be a grown up on but she's out with her new boyfriend, and will retire to her new cabin on a lake next to one of Tennessee's most beautiful landmarks (that I pay for with child support)for yet another romantic Friday night with boyfriend #11 since she met me, on her unending search for Mr. Romantical Superman...

But who is really missing out on what's important in life? I mean really, I'm about to head off to have supper with my daughters, the two most important people I'll ever know.

And I've had an epiphany of sorts, that sort of changed my whole perspective on life. My girls play softball, and they were wanting to get on the all-star team, so I had to explain to them that only the girls who have "their head in the game" will make it to the all-star team. And it dawned on me that my biggest challenge in life is that I do not have my "head in the game". Regardless of how fair life has turned out up until the very next second of your life, if you properly apply your mental abilities and physical abilities and "get your head in the game" tomorrow will be better, or at the very least, you'll have your eyes on the road again, and sooner or later, things will get better. But only if you keep your head in the game.

It's the damn drama of life that keeps most people's head's out of their games. As if any one of us has a "new problem" that hasn't been survived by who knows how many tens of thousands or millions of human beings before us? But we're born with built in mechanisms that monitor all interactions for fairness, and we're prone to be selfish, self-serving critters, without purposeful effort to the contrary. So drama happens to us and we loose the will to keep our heads in the game.

But that's not the end of the story, it's just the end of a chapter. Each one of us finds ourselves given the chance every day to stop. Just say no to Drama! Once a person frees themselves of all the emotional surges of a Drama reduced lifestyle then even a difficult life becomes bearable. If this isn't true, then why have all the poor people of the 3rd world nations not committed suicide by now? They understand something we've become too important to pay attention to.

And it dawns on me, that it's not your birthday that's important, so much as your Awakening day. What day was it that you woke up from a dramatic life ruled by the stormy seas of runaway emotions? That's the day we should go out and celebrate every year!

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Double Standards

This week the District of Columbia's City Council made medical marijuana legal. As I read the article, I was stuck by the sad irony of my congresswoman going to DC, to "serve" Tennesseans, with employees who are under the influence of marijuana, attending social functions with people who use medical marijuana, eating dinner with them, and possibly even being with them in the same room, while they blaze up their medicine... meanwhile, back home, their constituents are being arrested, imprisoned, beat, shot, killed, economically ruined and raped, and marked for a life of substandard employment, for smoking marijuana.

The deepness, and injustice of this irony is just beyond sad.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Modifications to my Family Tree

So, I'm sitting here reading the latest on Physorg.com (nerd news without much bias). They're decoding the Neanderthal genome from ancient bone samples, and it appears there may have been some succesful inter-species hanky-panky goin on... various populations in the near east and europe seem to have from 1 to 4% of their DNA in common with what were once thought to be a distant relative that could never be related to us...

But, if we think about it for a moment. Humans being what we are, and doing what we do. What would have happened if we ran into a culture that was less advanced than ours? History is pretty clear really. We'd "trade" with them and give them stuff that is worthless in our culture, but rare beyond wonder in theirs. We'd take their land and resources, enslave them, and as some livestock to this very moment could testify if they could talk, ancient humans would have used neanderthals as sex slaves. I mean, we all know what ppl do with their critters even today! Let's be serious for a moment. No matter how unattractive they may have been, the DNA materials would have encountered one another, and if they were capable of combining, they would.


Uglier, prettier, stronger, weaker? Smarter?
Perhaps the offspring were sterile?
Perhaps they rarely survived birth?
Perhaps they were revered and treated like nobility?
Killed on sight elsewhere?

Who knows, but the possibilities are endless and it makes one look at certain portions of Genesis from a different light, if you look at the book metaphorically instead of as seeing it as a historical document. Suddenly Lot's fear of being killed by whoever found him, when there were supposed to only be 4 people so far, and he killed one, leaving just his mom and dad.... and then he "met his wife and knew her"....

I don't know, but I do know this. I'm real curious to see what happens when they actually begin to understand mankind's actual DNA-printed family tree. I can't help but wonder if maybe the different races of mankind, are the differences left when colony of humans met a "lesser species", and absorbed it into their own genetic pool?

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Why do we say mean things to people we love?

i think the reason we do these hurtful things is rather biological. I do not intend to step on anyone's religious toes, but have embrace evolution theory, and it just meant I had to roll back the clock as to when the universe began, not who created it.... that said, and roll with it, pretend the theory of an 4 billion year old earth could exist... (an attempt to dodge theological debate entirely)

We're primates All social primates are obsessed with their social position in the troupe. It is important to us for the rest of the troupe to respect us, etc.

as I understand it, we are programmed for love at a level so deep in the ancient core of our mammal brain that it is a mystical and thrilling experience. It's better than drugs when it's good.

But it is indeed like a drug. It will distract you from reality. It will make you blind to the truth. It can alienate you from your true friends. And it can lock on to the worst possible potential mate and for all the wrong reasons.

I say be very careful who you uncap the love potion with and take a drink, because it has a 6month plus withdrawal period, and some members of our species are like those birds that mate for life, once our love program locks on to one person, it never lets go (conversely, some people can brazenly change partners at the drop of their pants!)

Funny how people are

I do heat and air conditioning work for a living. It's not for everyone, I can tell you that. I probably wouldn't do it if I weren't brain damaged! I often find myself crawling under a mobile home on the lookout for brown recluses, black widows, snakes of various varieties, raccoons, armadillos, possums, cats dogs, all those types of poo and anything people consume or excrete as well.

Mike Rowe's got nothin on me.

Anyway, we install air conditioners in pre-existing houses and new construction as well, and service them. Our demographic ranges from millionaires to nearly indigent people that my honorable to a fault boss often takes a loss on his bill trying not to make them worse off than when we arrived for the bill. He runs such a tight ship that he hasn't made more than 25K in a year since I've known him, and he does $250,000 in business on most of those years. He's a good man. Our nation would be a better place if they had half his sense of honor.

It's funny how a millionaire will build a fence to hide his new air conditioner, and the pensioner's gather around theirs and brag on their neighbor's new units. It's odd how the people who "live like animals" will pay you in cash and you want to cut them a break, and how the millionaires complain for the same bill and pay by check, late.

It's funny to me how few people know how an air conditioner works! It's a magic box in the back yard that they either do not want the neighbors to know they have, or it can be a prized possession.

It's funny to me how people who are "educated" and earn ten times an hour what an air conditioner tech makes, and then piss and moan when you hand them a bill or fixing their air conditioner that is less than they earn in a day. (the parts really are very expensive, the "wholesalers" charge outrageous margins on made in china parts. If you live in a big city, and your fan capacitor burns out, the capacior costs less than 6 dollars. But it's made in china, for probably $.05 each, and then shipped around the world and sold or 10,000% markups, with three times the failure rate of a US made GE capacitor. If your computer circuit board goes out you'll pay $300 for something that could be made out of stuff from radio shack, by mexicans who earn a quarter an hour and probably costs $10 to manufacture and ship to the wholesaler. It's marked up $290, and then the technician has to add on the customary 30% plus the service charge and the labor..... and who does the work, I mean the real work. The people who's hands actually touch the product. The people earning the 10,000% markups have manicured hands and mansions, and the rest of us get thumpped a crumb.

Funny how people who don't get their hands dirty, spend 99% of their entire lives inside an air conditioned space earning $100 of dollars an hour, expect the guy outside sweating to repair their air conditioner to work for minimum wage... and hurry up because it's up to 80% inside.

Funny which of those two groups are the "celebrated" ones.

I take my hat off to the guy who picks up my garbage every Tuesday and Thursday!

"And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

I take my hat off to the garbage man. He has moved a mountain. From my front yard, one garbage can at a time.

But I have to pay the Doctor $1500 to put 5 stitches in my finger?