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.

Dalai Lama

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.

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?

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....

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.

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.