Category Archives: important things to remember

comet NEOWISE

200719 comet NEOWISE
200719 comet NEOWISE

comet NEOWISE, as seen from approximately 47°18’16.5″N 121°06’07.4″W. the next time we’ll see it is in 6,700 years.

it was visible with the naked eye, but this photo was taken by my wife and her awesome camera which is controlled by her phone… the camera and the phone are separate objects, linked by bluetooth. she can make adjustments to the camera without actually touching the camera, which is essential when you’re talking about extended exposure times. this particular exposure was around 15 seconds…

also, the lack of having to develop the film and make prints before discovering how awesome (or shitty) the picture is, adds A LOT to the whole experience. 😉

god understands

while i was searching for rubber bands this afternoon — seriously, there used to be five local places i could go to purchase any imaginable art or office supply. now, there are three chain stores, and none of them carry bigger than #64 rubber bands, which are about two inches long when contracted, and expand to about 17 inches… and the next largest that i can find ANYWHERE, including online, are 12″ rubber bands which are too big! WHO STOLE MY ART SUPPLY STORES? 😠

but i digress…

while i was searching for rubber bands this afternoon, i had another idea for a bumper sticker that would cause some definite confusion. it would simply say:

GOD UNDERSTANDS

of course! God understands the motives of good people regardless of their religion, or lack thereof. God understands love, life, positiveness, auspiciousness, and everything good, without question.

but what about war, child molestation, political corruption, and that sort of thing? god surely doesn’t understand that!

what does “HE” do about it? nothing. god doesn’t have to do anything about it, because god understands the motives of the warriors, child molesters, corrupt politicians and those sorts of people. why should “HE” do anything about it? that’s not his job. his job is to understand.

most people don’t like to think about it, and would probably disagree vehemently, but God understands that, too, as evidenced by the fact that “HE” does nothing to change it.

truly, GOD UNDERSTANDS… 😉

ETA: i’m not sure whether this makes my idea better, or worse, but apparently GodUnderstands dot com is already taken by the American Bible Society, in collaboration with the Armed Services Ministry and Veteran Affairs (VA) chaplain consultants… that means that, if i make a bumper sticker, it could very easily be confused with something that already exists, and only gives half the message about which i was thinking. the fact that it’s already taken by “the enemy” (so to speak) makes the whole idea somewhat less appealing… 😐

blaine, 2015

in 2009 i uploaded a picture that was taken in 1981 of me and a bunch of guys juggling on the lawn in front of old main, at western:

jugglers

one of those guys, barry alexander, was a friend of mine who was also a jeweler, and made the silver Ritual Object that has been used in countless Ritual Vegetable Sacrifices by The Church of Tina Chopp throughout the intervening years.

on sunday, the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band played a concert at the Peace Arch in blaine. after the concert, as i was putting my instrument away, i was approached by barry alexander, who i haven’t seen in probably 35 years. this is what he looks like now:

150823 Barry Alexander, Blaine, WA

apparently, he knows a lot more about what’s going on with me than i do about him, because he knows about things like Hybrid Elephant, whereas what i know about him ceased to be updated when i lost contact with him, some time in the early 1980s…

peek tures

this is the latest incarnation of Operation Mindfuck:

140831 operation mindfuck

imagine you’re walking down the street in downtown seattle, pushing a baby carriage and probably thinking about going shopping at the pike place market. as you are crossing the street you encounter a strange guy going the other direction, who hands you this tiny envelope and then walks off…

THIS is Operation Mindfuck… 👿

within the next week or so, i AM going to manifest a typewriter, which i intend to use to write cryptic messages on the outside of the envelopes.

chirp

okay, this is probably supposed to say “crip”, but it’s my impression that it says “chirp”… woo… i’m really afraid of the illiterate gang-member-wannabe who imitates birds that lives in this remote “suburban” neighbourhood… woo… 😐

the front half towing the back half

this is a picture of a sign. the sign is a picture of the front half of a car towing away the back half of the car, right?

thought so…

Ebeneezer Squeezer The Second

Ebeneezer Q. Squeezer The Second — The Apprentice Holy Snake

frank lies in the sun

Frank Zappa enjoys a puddle of sunlight

so i went to bellingham yesterday…

so i went to bellingham yesterday. it has been a long time since i’ve been in belligham, and it has been even longer since i have seen the… crazy hippy freaks unique crowd that was there for kenyth’s 77th birthday party last night.

kenyth was my advisor when i first started college, and i started college during the latter part of the last century, but that comes later.

first, i drove through mt. vernon and saw many cow-fields adjacent to the nookachamps river that are going to be ripe for mushrooming in a few weeks, and, basically, i’ve decided that i’m going to take at least one weekend day and do exactly that… because mushrooms are my second favourite drug (the first is hashish, but that’s a separate story).

it took me about an hour longer than i thought it was going to, to get to bellingham, which still puzzles me somewhat. i went to ken & kamalla’s place, but nobody was home, so i then went to the madhouse, which is where i spent the night last night, and talked to darol and the lady who lives in the cabin (which was my space, 25 years ago) for a while, then i went out to wander until it was time for kenyth’s party.

the first place i went was the lake whatcom railroad trail, near where i used to live on valencia street, where i walked east (up hill) on the trail to this spot, where i found this:
old railroad bridge
it was somewhat strange back before everything got developed, but it is somewhat stranger now that it’s the only remaining evidence of a railroad line that used to go right through the middle of what is now a shopping mall and a fairly populated neighbourhood.

i then continued wandering east on the old railroad grade until i found a place that was built about the same time i lived there, which is a dam which funnels all of the water into a creek. a long time ago, shortly after the dam was first built, i used to go there and hide in the tube at the south end of the dam, and grafitti the inside of the tube. at one point, i even took a couple of sheets of plywood down there, so that i didn’t have to worry about getting soaked while i worked. i cleaned debris and gravel out of the tube at least twice, and i had a cozy, invisible little camp/hidey-hole there for a couple of years. now you can still get into the tube, but there’s a sizable pool at the bottom of it at this point, so you’d have to be a spry 20-something to get in there… i imagine that i could probably get in there now, but i imagine that if i wasn’t careful, i would get wet, and i didn’t want to do that yesterday, because it was threatening rain, and i didn’t have a change of clothes handy…

then i went down the tracks a little further, until i got to whatcom falls park, which is another place i used to live eons ago, when ezra was small. this is the place where the PHBFH lived, while i lived in the madhouse (when the PHBFH was living up to her acronym, which was about half of the time), when we went to vancouver BC to see the opera, when ezra was a tiny baby, and there were several old lady opera attenders who looked down their noses at us because we had a “babe-in-arms” at the opera, and everybody knows that babes-in-arms disrupt civilised things like opera… and they didn’t even notice when ezra went to sleep, shortly after the opening chorus, and slept all the way through, without making any noise at all. then, when we got home, very late at night, it was raining, so i parked the car while the PHBFH got out to open the door, so that we could avoid having ezra out in the rain for too long… except that the PHBFH wouldn’t open, or go anywhere close to the door, because it had a teensy little frog, smaller than the diameter of a dime, sitting on the door handle… 8)

then i went back to ken and kamalla’s place, where there was someone home this time, although it wasn’t kamalla, because she was apparently in california visiting her grandkids. i engaged in geek/music and/or music/geek talk with ken until it was time to go to kenyth’s party… which, coincidentally, was in the same dance studio where ezra took lessons from the time that he was 5 until he started at the pacific northwest ballet school, which used to be the nancy whyte studio, but is now called the “Presence Dance Studio”…

kenyth & francieas i said previously, kenyth was my advisor during the time that i was at fairhaven college, which was 1979 through 1984, and again, on and off, from 1986 to 1989. prior to my arrival at fairhaven, kenyth was actually the dean of the college, but by the time i got there, he was “just a professor”. his two “specialty” classes were “Introduction to Personal Philosophy 101” which was informally known as “the fly in the flybottle” or simply “the flybottle class”, and “Awareness Through The Body”. when i first started at fairhaven, you could take body awareness as many times as you wanted, but you could only take the flybottle class once… however, it had such a powerful effect on me that i actually took it twice (with kenyth’s approval) – although i never took body awareness at all (which is kind of a shame, now that i think about it).

before i met kenyth, i was a child from bellevue, a place which is, like it’s new york namesake, an excellent place from which to escape. kenyth introduced me to the person i would eventually become. he did this by allowing me to be me, gently, uncritically and with a great deal of humour (as well as various other things), and by not requiring me to be anything which i was not. it didn’t take long for me to realise that i acutally am another person, one who is 180 degrees different from the person my parents wanted me to be (who was boring and had no life).

and i saw a whole bunch of crazy hippy freaks unique people whom i haven’t seen for quite some time. i saw: douglas drake and joni papp, who i saw at burning man in 2008; karl meyer and stephan freeman, who i see at the moisture festival every year; sally peyou, who i got email from last week, but haven’t actually seen since 2007; yoav and yael yanich, deirdre morgan, kathy veterane, darby freeman, lisa carderelli, dani cutler, jamie jedinak, and a lot of other people whose names i am already forgetting again… all of whom i haven’t seen in at least 20 years… i got email addresses for the people i’ve been thinking about, and wondering what ever happened to them…

i went to sleep, and woke up in the madhouse for the first time since 1989 and it felt so right… if i ever have the opportunity to move back to bellingham at any point in the future, you can bet that i’m going to jump on it in a second. 8)

kenyth's dance

so…

i expended A LOT of spoons last weekend, because it was the solstice festival, and snake suspenderz played both days, apart from the caravan on friday. i’ve uploaded a whole bunch of pictures, which i haven’t yet got all sorted out, so there’s very likely going to be more pictures uploaded eventually. of course, the fremont “solstice” festival actually didn’t occur on the solstice (something for which i’m sure our ancient ancestors would decry with loud voices), but that’s because us “modern” folks have to get up and go to work on monday… a tradition which, despite the fact that it recently included me, i have never been able to figure out…

but today is especially important, because it is also our 13th wedding anniversary, which means, traditionally, i’m supposed to give my sweetie lace – which would be nice and i’m sure she would appreciate it, but it’s also impractical and i’m not sure she’d ever use it for anything… the “modern traditional” gift is textiles, and we just got a new bed-spread recently (with zebra stripes), but i’m not sure what other textile items we actually need at this point – i’m sure clothes are on the list, but i’d really rather give my sweetie something more romantic than clothes…

and i’m more convinced than ever that the decision to get married was one of the smartest decisions i have ever made in my life, but that’s only because of the fact that i decided to get married to moe, and not someone else.

another week closer to the eschaton…

Obama: War is peacepickings are slim this week, because of our vacation. it doesn’t mean there was any less depravity and chaos in the world, but i took notice of less of it this week. i’m sure that next week will be back to normal.

Killer Cop Walks in Massachusetts Drug Raid Death – instead of going after real terrorists, this cop clown “accidentally” shot an otherwise innocent guy and gets a paid vacation…

Obama Starts Another Illegal War, Rangel Calls For Draft – on the eighth anniversary of bush’s illegal invasion of iraq… ironic, isn’t it, nobel-peace-prize-winner obama… 😐

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
     — Sen. Barack Obama, December 20, 2007

A Proposal For An All New Ten Commandments

yeah the old ones lost their magick so I thought I’d give you all some new ones…

#1 If you cannot respect the rights of others than you yourself shall be denied your rights.

#2 Shun all forms of social status and classes, these are mere illusions that attempt to justify ignoring the needs of society.

#3 If you make children, you are responsible for their health, education and happiness. If you take a person into your household or join a person in their household that has children of their own you are to accept full responsibility of their care as if they were your own.

#4 When you view someone as a burden to society, know this line of thinking is a much worse burden and more detrimental to society than poverty or handicap.

#5 When your religion, belief, ideology or personal opinion justifies violating the rights of others, know you are an enemy to the cooperative.

#6 Live a full and happy life, shun rewards and promises of heaven. Be sincere in you words, deeds and love. Make every day of your life the paradise you seek.

#7 Do not lose your individuality to fads and peer pressure. Your uniqueness is your contribution to society.

#8 Defend yourselves and your domains, but leave justice and punishment to the cooperative for none of us alone are God but all of us together are.

#9 If you cannot gaze upon the masses with civility then lower your gaze.

#10 Abide by these ten commandments and in so doing, Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law. Love is the law, love under will.

another week closer to the eschaton…

The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence – “Americans are not as violent as the most extremely violent cultures around the world, but we certainly are not as peaceful as the most peaceful societies. Unfortunately, our culture appears to be going towards increased social violence.” [Author James DeMeo, Ph.D.] points to the general failure of parents and sex-education programs to say much of anything positive about sexual pleasure, with the great emphasis upon “abstinence education”, as a major cause for the growing violence in our schools. “Our young people should be warmly romancing each other, dancing and singing together, making love and enjoying what should be the happiest time of their lives. Instead, we start our children off with a lot of hidden cruelty in the hospital birth, with incubator-isolation, denial of the mother’s breast, time-table feedings, circumcision and so forth. – no wonder we’re screwed up. all the more reason to scrap every vestige of what passes for society these days, and create something different.

The Oil BP Tried To Hide Has Been Discovered, In Thick Layers On the Sea Floor Over An Area of Several Thousand Square Miles – don’t fool yourself, it’s not over yet, by a long shot.

You Are A Terrorist – i’ve been saying that for years. now the gummint is actually catching up… 😐

Osama bin Dead A While – merry x-mas, the war on terror is over, whether they like it or not… but don’t let the gummint know, because they’re all set to whip up another fake osama video to scare us again…

US empire could collapse at any time – are you ready? this is a lot more “for real” than you might think: Missile defence FAIL: US ‘kill vehicle’ space weapon flunks test

Homeland Security Trolling We Won’t Fly Blog, Boy, 13, Busted For Illegal Marker Possession, TSA Too Busy Groping, Perving, Playing God To Notice Guns And Bombs, 10,000 Child Porn Images Found On TSA Worker’s Computer and Police Fatally Shoot Douglas Zerby For Holding Water Nozzle – what they are doing instead of searching for real terrorists… 😐

Plan to Turn Post Office Trucks Into Stasi Data Collection Nodes and Trash collectors to serve as eyes and ears in the street for police – because the police are too busy searching for terrorists people with water nozzles to kill… also, do you think that this just might be because of budget cuts, and/or because of the fact that they want to turn the country into an embodiment of the book 1984…?

Who Is the FBI Really Trying to Entrap? – muslims? people with water nozzles? more likely it’s poor, underpriveledged black and brown people who can’t fight back effectively on their own…

Probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium found in drinking water of 31 U.S. cities – this is one of the reasons i only drink artesian well water, and have for the past 25 years… that, and beer… 8)

UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info – so…

Wikileaks and the Definition of Terrorism – TL.DR: what wikileaks is doing cannot be defined as terrorism except, maybe, to the political elite in washington who are making all the fuss about it. WikiLeaks cables: BP suffered blowout on Azerbaijan gas platform – wow, wikileaks and the gulf oil spill… is this the work of a terrorist organisation?

also, the latest, futile attempt to make wikileaks go away, Feds Seek Computer Firewall to Block WikiLeaks ‘Pollution’ and Pentagon bars own journalists from reading Wikileaks – you would think that they’d have heard of the streisand effect by now…

Broadband firms urged to block sex websites to protect children – yeah, like that’s really gonna happen… maybe they could ban spam, too, while they’re at it… 😐 seriously, i think that any proposed legislation that is being put in place “to protect the children” should be banned on principle. the fact is, proposed “legislation” that can’t find any other reason than “to protect the children” has been proven, in the past, to be distinctly deficient in doing anything other than confusing people, violating someone’s civil rights or lining the politicians’ pockets… and usually a combination of all three…

Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science – there’s some static running around because Faux News is disputing the report from last week that said that watching Faux News makes people stupid, and, at the same time, muddying the climate change waters with false information… not only that, but rupert murdoch’s companies have been on the forefront of the “war against christmas” game, and yet his Holiday Message was just that… why does rupert murdoch hate jesus?

Your right to protest in under threat – britain is being brought under the thumb of the rich politicians, and america is next.

Judge finds ‘increasing’ difficulty in seating marijuana juries – this is related to that post from last week, except that it’s a little more to the point: jury nullification is becoming a widely-enough-known phenomenon that courts won’t seat people on a jury if they have said that they know about it as an option, and when enough people have to be passed over to get an ignorant enough jury to actually be able to convict someone for possession of a miniscule quantity of cannabis, the courts have to look for “other alternatives”…

Your Apps Are Watching You – this is one of the primary reasons i don’t use a “smart” phone. i like my phones dumb and subservient, which is exactly what they’re supposed to be…

Is a BSOD on a bus … a BuSOD? – giggle…

aha! … ‽ … !!

the unauthorised “authorisation dialogue” dialogue went away. i didn’t change anything locally (i did use NoScript to automatically block flash, but that was after i noticed that it was gone), or on the blog, which means that somebody must have noticed that something was wrong at the twitter end of things.

i’m not exactly sure how to approach this subject, but since i already have the reputation of being a little weird, i’ll start with an explanation of where i’m coming from:

POINT 1) for some time now, i’ve been under the distinct impression that my view of “reality” differs pretty significantly from just about everyone else’s view of reality. the most recent example of that is this public display, sponsored by a musem in california, which contained a tapestry house from a hindu family, that contained a swastika. the museum got complaints from the general public, so they posted a sign that basically said “this is an ancient hindu symbol, not the relatively recent nazi symbol that everyone seems to think it is, and we’re not going to remove it, thank you”, and even went so far as to get the local rabbi to say that he didn’t object to it, because it was a hindu symbol, and not a nazi symbol, but the museum continued to get complaints from people who were probably not even born when the swastika was actually used as a nazi symbol, and the museum finally caved in and removed the tapestry. when i pointed this out to a friend, he said “people are dumb”, but i think it’s more than that. philip k. dick said “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” and that’s the kind of shift in reality that i am seeing here: i “believe” that reality is one way, most of the rest of the world “believes” that reality is something completely different, and people who i would expect to not only know the difference, but who are supposedly expert in teaching dumb people how to be smart, actually go along with the “dumb” people and remove something that is decidedly not nazi, simply because these “dumb” people thought it was.

what⁈⁉

but it goes back a lot further than that. i pretty regularly find myself totally at a loss to determine why someone who was faced with an eminently apparent and logical choice to do one thing, deliberately and blatantly chose to do the exact opposite, and was cheered by society for doing so.

POINT 2) ever since i first started learning about spirituality, i’ve heard one basic message from every single bona fide spiritual teacher i’ve ever met (there are a number of scam artists who people think are spiritual teachers that don’t teach this message, and they’re not the ones i’m talking about), which is that you don’t “pretend” to to something, you don’t “try” to do something. it’s like yoda said: you either do, or do not. there is no “try”. you don’t “pretend” to be an artist, or an engineer, or a truck driver: you either are, or you’re not. in the same way, you don’t “pretend” to be enlightened: you either are, or you’re not. and (a very important point to remember) nobody can say conclusively whether a person is, or is not enlightened: they generally have to rely on what the person claims for themselves. my experience, in general, is that you don’t often get people going around saying that they’re enlightened, and in general, i would be extremely suspicious of anybody who was doing so (so don’t expect me to make a big thing out of this), but you have to start somewhere, and this as good a time as any (rabbi hillel said that).

POINT 3) for a long time (upwards of 35 years now) i have been learning a lot about spirituality and have developed what i believe to be a unique path. i’m not interested in finding other people who agree with me spiritually, much as i’m not particularly interested in what people think of me when i walk into home depot wearing a kilt, a pink long sleeve shirt, and a fez (and, believe me, there were definitely some eyes cast askance in my direction when it happened, but at the time i was totally oblivious to everything except the project that i was working on). i’m firmly convinced that the path i have discovered is exactly the right path for me, in spite of the fact that, when it comes to explaining that path, many have come to the conclusion that i am totally crazy. i don’t let opinions like that dissuade me from pursuing that path, however, and so far (again, for me) i haven’t been wrong.

POINT 4) i experienced what i can only describe as a “shaktipat” moment (specifically, तीव्रमध्यशक्तिपात tīvra-madhya-śaktipāta) while i was driving in the car this afternoon. i was thinking about the fact that my perception of “reality” appears to be so skewed and i realised that either there is something “wrong” with society, or something “wrong” with me. as i find no compelling reason to think i’m crazy, seeing as how my perceptions tend to be more “what people should do” than what they, themselves, do, i was forced to this conclusion:

i get the distinct impression that i am “enlightened”.

!

this was such a profound revelation to me that, in spite of the fact that, during the time when i was experiencing shaktipat, traffic in my lane (and only my lane) suddenly went from 65 miles per hour to a dead stop in two seconds, and the guy behind me layed on his horn when we didn’t move forwards quickly enough to suit him, i was really enjoying myself, turned up the radio (which was playing classical music) and laughed out loud.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

there is a famous zen saying, which goes: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

what i take this to mean is, that it doesn’t matter whether or not you have enlightenment. you get no special powers or priveledges from being enlightened: it is a purely spiritual experience, and can only be appreciated on a spiritual level. anything having to do with my body, or my physical surroundings will not be affected by my enlightenment in the least, and very likely nobody else will notice…

but the way i perceive “reality” will be drastically altered forever.

instead of wondering why society is so screwed up, and why i’m so different, i have an entirely different view: one where it’s okay for people to do screwed up things that don’t affect me, because people are going to do screwed up things whether i am here or not. of course, i will do my part to make sure that people don’t do screwed up things, and to help people see the screwed-up-ness of what they have been doing, if they ask, but if they don’t, i won’t worry about it.

you don’t have to be a monk to be enlightened: Shyama Charan Lahiri was an enlightened householder, and one of his main messages was that anyone could become enlightened. i feel it is quite an honour to follow in the footsteps of Lahiri Mahasaya, which i have been doing for 25 years…

my impression, based on the behaviour of people i suspect to be enlightened, i would guess that i will develop ways to “trick” people into doing things that i know will be more beneficial to them than the things they were going to do, but my guess is that it will take a while and i’ll probably face abject failure more than once before i get the knack of it.

i’ll probably get frustrated and angry about injustice, but i got frustrated and angry before i was enlightened: before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. nothing has changed on the physical level.

other than that, i don’t know how being enlightened will affect me, because i have never been enlightened before. if anything interesting comes up, i’ll be sure to clue you in. 8)

we are all equal versus i’m better than you

i was driving home this afternoon when i had a realisation: this society is screwed up, mentally, and it comes from the fact that there are two very powerful, but entirely opposite messages being propagated from a very early age. one message is that everyone is equal: things like the constitution, the bill of rights and even the pledge of allegiance emphasise the fact that nobody is better than anybody else, and that all of us are just human beings. the other message is that there are some people who are better than other people. this was driven home to me by a bumper sticker i saw on the back of the car in front of me that said “Cougar Pride” and had the name of some elementary school on it.

of course, what it said to me is that the students of whatever elementary school it was are indoctrinated to believe that their school is better than the other schools in the area. it was intended, most likely, to elicit pride in the school’s sports teams, but it clearly was intended to represent the entire “cougar” population, regardless of whether or not they were on a sports team. and it obviously doesn’t matter to anyone that the population is being indoctrinated, because i’ve seen exactly the same message on bumper stickers for every school that has thought about it in the slightest degree.

i see things like this all the time: “our sports team is better than yours”, or “our city is better than yours”, or “our religion is better than yours” — but we’re all equal, all just human beings, nobody is “better” than anybody else.

society is going to continue to be screwed up until we start teaching our children consistent messages and stop being contradictory.

from my sketchbook

the only way we can worship anything other than God is when we worship something that is a result of some occurance outside of our bodies. we are created in the image of God and we are given life by God and God dwells within us. when we worship something that is not within oujr own bodies, we worship the creation and not the creator. when we worship something within our bodies that is a direct result of occurances outside of our bodies, we worship our creation, but not God’s creation. our creation has been called the “ego” – that part of our personality that is a direct result of society. it is that part of our personality that wants us to think that we created ourselves. it is that which is spoken of in Isaiah 47.10 “for thou hast trusted in thy wickedness: Thou hast said none seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath perverted thee; and thou hast said in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.”

the ego is that part of our mind that “thinks” and “knows” from learning, and is ignorant of reality outside of itsself. the God that lives within us is that part of our personality and thinks and knows from intuition or inspiration. its true source is cosmic learning, the accumulated experiences of the creator, which lives in all of us at the same time. this is what is spoken of in Philippians 2.5-6 “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” the “mind” spoken of is the mind of the cosmic creator. Jesus, himself, didn’t have a personality of “Jesus,” because he was totally the Personality of the Divine Creator – so much so that he had the abilities of the Creator as well. John 5.30 “I receive not honor from men.” if we worship Jesus, we worship the body, and not the Mind of the Creator which lives within the body. this is the meaning of the crucifixion: Jesus’ body was just a vehicle for the mind of God, which lives forever, with or without a body. as Jesus said: “Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17.21)

things you learn from r. crumb…

so i recently broke down and purchased R. Crumb’s monumental project, The Book of Genesis, and i was flipping through it appreciating the elaborate artwork, when i came across this:

this is an illustration of a story i had located many years ago, and then promply forgot, but this is actually a better way of looking at it, and illustrates my point even better than i could have previously.

namely, what is this ancient biblical patriarch doing worshipping a shiva lingam?!?

i’ve wondered about this for a long time, and now that i have an actual illustration of it, it will be easier to ask unsuspecting “christians” why this founder of “christianity” felt it was okay to worship the way those “godless heathens” do…

i want to do something with this…

some time ago i collected this information, with the intent of doing something creative with it eventually. so far (10 years or so) it hasn’t happened, so for now, here it is. maybe this will motivate me to do something with it sooner than i would otherwise.

C # D # E F # G # A # B
0 16.35 17.32 18.35 19.45 20.60 21.83 23.13 24.50 25.96 27.50 29.14 30.87
1 32.70 34.65 36.71 38.89 41.20 43.65 46.25 48.99 51.91 55.0 58.27 61.38
2 65.41 69.30 73.42 77.78 82.41 87.31 92.50 97.99 103.83 110.0 116.54 123.47
3 130.81 138.59 146.83 155.56 164.81 174.61 185.0 196.0 207.65 220.0 233.08 246.94
4 261.63 277.18 293.66 311.13 329.63 349.23 369.99 392.0 415.30 440.0 466.16 493.88
5 523.25 554.37 589.33 622.25 659.26 698.46 739.99 783.99 830.61 880.0 932.33 987.77
6 1046.5 1108.7 1174.7 1244.5 1318.5 1396.6 1480.0 1568.0 1661.2 1760.0 1864.7 1975.5
7 2093.0 2217.5 2349.3 2489.0 2637.0 2793.8 2960.0 3136.0 3322.4 3520.0 3729.3 3951.1
8 4186.0 4434.9 4698.6 4978.0 5274.0 5587.7 5919.9 6271.9 6644.9 7040.0 7458.6 7902.1

bug – and not a true bug, either.

flying bug
possibly a female Libellula Plathemis lydia (Common Whitetail Skimmer), or Libellula pulchella (Twelve-spotted Skimmer), but i’m not sure…

ETA 100611: according to an entomologist who specialises in odonata, it’s actually a Libellula pulchella (twelve-spotted skimmer). here is another photo of pulchella, which doesn’t have the white spots on the wings, and does have yellow spots on the back of the eyes, though, so i’m still not completely convinced.

announcing the end of “christianity” as you know it

US team creates first ’synthetic life’ – along with that important step that came on my birthday, eight years ago, when scientists fabricated an entirely viable polio virus, we’ve taken another important step in clarifying the fact that “christianity” is wrong.

wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG, WRONG!!!

i wonder how long it will be until the “christians” take notice?

Continue reading announcing the end of “christianity” as you know it

Indian gentleman makes ass of Professor P.Z. Meyers

some of this story suffers from being written by a person (or people) whose native language is not english, but still, there’s enough scientific and journalistic integrity to make me severely wonder what ol’ P.Z. would make of it:

ETA: apparently he would do it differently… oh well, i guess i couldn’t have expected a lot more.

Miracle man survives without food for 70 years

Ahmedabad, Apr 26: Survival of a Hindu ascetic, claimed to be not taking food or water and not passing stool or urine for over 70 years, has baffled the medical fraternity and now defence experts are studying about the miracle man to emulate the practice for soldiers1.

Experts of Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS), in collaboration with the doctors of the city-based Sterling Hospital, have launched an observational study of the 81-year-old Prahladbhai Jani alias ‘Mataji’2, who is living in a cave in the temple town of Ambaji in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district.

The round the clock study from April 22 to May 7 will cover all aspects of physiology and biochemistry. The saint is kept in isolation at a special ward in the hospital and even mediapersons were kept out of bounds.

Talking to mediapersons at the hospital, Dr Sudhir Shah, a neurologist, and Dr Ila Wazgan of DIPAS said the main aim of the project is to study how a human being can survive without consuming food or water and not passing stool or urine for so long.

Dr Shah, who had conducted a similar study on the saint in 2003, said ‘There are incidents of prolonged fastings in our country. But they have been taking some water. In the case of Jani, he is not taking any food or water. What is medically more important and baffling is the fact that he is not passing stool or urine’.

The saint has informed the doctors that he has rare ‘Kundalini’ power (serpentine energy), a Yogic feat.3

Explaining the rationale behind the study, Dr Wazgan said ”If we can find out the reason or unveil the mystery behind Mr Jani’s survival without food and water, the study may help in working out strategies in managing calamaty-struck people, soldiers deployed at extremely hostile terrains like high altitude mountains and places with the scarcity of water and food”.

Considering the interest taken by DIPAS, some new parameters have been added to the study, Dr Shah said.

An interesting fact ascertained by doctors is that Mr Jani’s brain is as efficient as that of a 25-year old young man though he is aged 81. There are no signs of aging. Even today he can climb a seven storey building without any exhaustion, said Dr Shah.

The saint has shown evidences of formation of urine, which seems to be reabsorbed from his bladder wall. However, at present the medicos do not have any scientific explanation for the same but help of senior scientists and medical personnel of the country is being taken for the same.

A series of investigations are being carried out on Mr Jani according to a pre-determined protocol and additional tests are carried out as per suggestions of the team.

”If everything is ok with Jani, the study on his condition will continue for ten or 15 days. The defence wing wants to understand what is the structure of Mr Jani’s body, what is special about it, because of which he can survive normally. Whether the same can be replicated in other’s body, is the main question. If the answer is yes, it could be useful for soldiers and astrologers’4, added Dr Wazgan.

As per the details provided by Mr Jani’s followers, at the age of seven years, he left home in search of spiritual unfoldment. At the age of eleven years he was blessed by a goddess. He claims that since that blessing, he has gained his sustenance from nectar that filters down through a hole in his palate5, and has not passed urine or stools since then.

Mr Jani had explained to his followers, ”I get the elixir of life from the hole in my palate, which enables me to go without food and water”. Almost daily Mr Jani enters a state of Samadhi characterised by extreme bliss and enormous light and strength. He says that he has never experienced medical problems. He says that he did not speak for a period of forty-five years.

A Video of Prahladbhai Jani is also available, for those of you who might be skeptical.


1: the problem is that for soldiers to actually achieve the state that Mr. Jani has achieved, they would have to give up being soldiers.

2: the name “mataji” means “respected mother”… ?

3: Obsolete A specialised skill or profession. trust Indian journalists to use obsolete English…

4: “and astrologers“… ??

5: i learned about this while i was going through the preparation for my 2nd Kriya initiation, but i didn’t give it much thought at the time…

are you smarter than a fifth grader?

this is another "advantage" to having a google alert for the term "swastika": i got up this morning and discovered a whole bunch of new articles, which included the following honeys.

College prof: Christian crosses like swastikasStudent: ‘I felt humiliated and that my spirituality was being demeaned’ – oh, boo hoo, you’re “not allowed” to make your religious emblem in a class where my religious emblem is banned as a matter of course, regardless of what you believe it means. now, maybe, you get the idea of what it must be like to have a religious symbol discriminated against because of stupidity!!

along the same lines, there is STILL IN PURSUIT OF THE DREAM, which is the story of writer who was originally scheduled to read from her book at a public library, and was then un-invited, because some person – not associated with the library – discovered that her book contained the images of “werewolves, vampires, and the swastika”. she invokes ray bradbury’s Farenheit 451, and i would tend to agree with her. this is definitely censorship based on an image in a book, and nothing less.

especially when you consider that high school students are being taught this stuff. there really should be no reason, apart from america’s bizarre aversion to the swastika, why people should raise anywhere near as much of a fuss about it.

HOW CAN A SYMBOL BE GUILTY FOR THE ACTS OF A MADMAN?!?

but the one that really got to me, the one that makes me believe that we may actually have hope for a saner, less swastika-obsessed future, is the letter to the editor regarding an incident in which "I 卍 OBAMA" was carved into a massachusetts golf course last weekend, which was written by A SIXTH GRADER entitled Swastika predates use by Nazis. if a sixth grader has the requisite knowledge to correct a newspaper article, what does that say about the person who wrote that article? i’ll answer that, so that there will be no doubt in your mind what i am striving for here: it says that the person who wrote the article is either uneducated, or deliberately trying to pull the wool over our eyes. either way, it doesn’t say much about their integrity. we deserve better than that from our public news sources, and if it takes a sixth grader to set the record straight, then it’s time we took a closer look at who we are allowing to report our news.

the more you obsess about nazis and swastikas, the longer it will be until we disassociate nazis and swastikas! the way to get over the nazi thing is to have it be okay for people to use the 卍 symbol, and the 卐 symbol in ways that are not connected with nazis! it’s exactly the same thing your mother tells you after you skin your knee as a kid: the more you think about it, the longer it will be until it goes away. if the general world consensus is that we sould continue to think about nazis every time someone says 卐, then there are a lot of hindus, buddhists, native americans – and jews – who are going to be out a significant amount of their cultural history.

for more swastika pleasure, i invite you to peruse Sun Wheel – The Ancient Swastika and start thinking about something other than nazis for a change…

thanks.

Continue reading are you smarter than a fifth grader?

the war on xmas

the closer we get to xmas, the more i am feeling like a jew at a nazi rally, and i am aware of the irony of such a statement a lot more accutely than those of you who may be shocked at the reference.

what i would really like, is to magically transport myself to somewhere where they don’t celebrate xmas for the month of december – and possibly the months of november and january as well – just to get away from the hype that is going on. the commercialism and the politics of the holiday are really starting to get to me, and i still have 10 days until it’s over for another year.

it’s not that i don’t celebrate xmas, and it’s not even that i don’t believe in the “christ” and “god” that are behind the current incarnation of the holiday so much (although that’s another part of the story). what is really disturbing to me is the combination of not being able to turn on the television or the radio without hearing either commercials for products that i know won’t work (like Windows 7), or seeing news reports of people complaining because the greeter at walmart said something, or didn’t say something that was offensive to them… or not… 😐

i was brought up in a family that celebrated the commercial aspects of xmas. we didn’t even have a regular church service that we went to that was on a day other than sunday, and the church services that we went to all the time were pretty ecuminical and inclusive of traditions and cultures that were not specifically “christian”, so when i grew up and learned that some people believed that xmas was for stuff other than getting loads of toys and candy, i didn’t quite understand, but i didn’t really notice that much when the checker at the grocery store wished me a “merry xmas”. as i developed more of a relationship with sanatanadharma (which is what “hinduism” is really called) i started noticing the discontinuity a lot more: the “peace on earth and good will toward men” compared to the war, hunger and poverty that exist in the world, the constant fighting between catholics and protestants, the constant fighting between the christians and the non-christians, and the growing furor over “the war on xmas” came much more to the forefront, and i find it quite distressing.

things like the reference to a woman who compared santa to a swastika take on a meaning that is not immediately obvious to people who believe the swastika is an evil symbol, for example. i can see how santa is a lot like a swastika, and i wouldn’t mind seeing both of them in more common usage, but if there’s going to be an uproar over whether or not to have a swastika in a public display, then there certainly should be just as much uproar over whether or not to have a public holiday that celebrates santa – even if santa is not the "reason for the season".

and, for that matter, if you think about it a little more than most "christians" have, jeezis himself is not the “reason for the season” either. people celebrated the winter solstice for a long time before jeezis showed up, and it’s really only been within the past 200 to 500 years that we’ve had anything at all like what is currently celebrated as xmas, so all of those "war on xmas" fanatics really don’t have a leg to stand on in the first place. but in general, i think that the hindus and jews and buddhists and muslims and animists and even athiests have gone out of their way to accommodate all of the fanatics who insist that they are to be greeted with the phrase "merry xmas" instead of the more ecuminical "happy holidays" in fact, the only reason we have been as accommodating as we have been is because the "christians" are a majority of our population and if we weren’t so willing to give up what we believe in order to make peace, most "christians" wouldn’t have the slightest problem killing us!

what would jesus do, indeed?

i keep feeling like i am totally alone in a society of people who would have no problem killing me if they happened to find out that i don’t believe the way they do, but at the same time, i feel compelled to inform these ignoramuses that they aren’t the only ones on the planet, and that other people – people who believe differently than they do – have just as much right to exist as they do, and what jesus would really do is get along with everyone… which is supposed to be "The Christmas Message" anyway.

damn!

i have recently discovered that i have been ripped off by two different companies since december. the first one was the host servicie that i was so excited about a few months ago, 1&1 internet, who, i have since discovered, earned an "F" from the Better Business Bureau for “Number of complaints filed against business, Failure to respond to complaints filed against business, Number of complaints filed against business that were unresolved and Overall complaint history with BBB”. they “bait-and-switched” me into a contract for hosting services that ended up costing 12 times more than i would have agreed to, and then, in spite of the fact that their headquarters is in germany, they claimed to not understand when i told them that 4/10 didn’t mean the 10th of april, it meant the 4th of october…

the second company is Pipeline Data Processing, otherwise known as SecurePay, which also has an "F" from the BBB, has a reputation for holding funds, and charging you for things after you’ve already cancelled your account – like they did with me. and they said that it was all in the contract i signed, but i never signed a contract. the contract they sent me when i complained about the $300 withdrawal had a scan of my signature that could have been off a check or something… but i NEVER signed a contract. i was actually lead to believe that there wasn’t going to be any long-term contract.

the thing that pisses me off so much, though, is the fact that i would have learned about these rip-offs simply by typing the name of the company and the word “complaints” into google. instead, i figured that it was okay because the people sounded sincere, and signed up with both of them, and got ripped off. i am not immune to the very big stupid… 😡

i’m going to have to close my business account and open another one, because of pipeline data processing’s propensity for random charges well after my contract was cancelled, i’ve already got an investigation going at the bank, and the pipeline representative recommended that we file a police report for fraud, because they weren’t going to look into it otherwise.

The Shit Box™!!

The Shit Box
The Shit Box
The Shit Box™ has arrived, and it is truely awesome. at this point, they’re $25 for pre-orders, and they’re already an indespensible item for camping, travelling and the Oregon Country Fair – no more long lines at the porta-pottys in the morning! i can poop when i want to, in the privacy of my own campsite, and dispose of the “evidence” in the food waste bin without a second thought. it would also be good for Burning Man, but i’m not looking for conveniences for a festival that i will never attend again, so i’ll pretend that i didn’t even mention it.

God is real, despite what the athiests think

my ear

i subscribe to this blog, pharyngula, which is written by professor p. z. meyers. he is a prominent evolutionary biologist and athiest whose rantings about “christianity” and the anti-scientific are the primary reasons why i read his stuff, although i freely acknowledge that the only reason i find him amusing and not childishly disgusting is because he’s not making fun of me, and i have no doubt that he would make fun of me if he knew that i exist. nevertheless, his rants about chiropractors and acupuncturists have gotten to me on several occasions, and i was going to ask my acupuncturist about it when i saw him today, but before i even remembered to bring it up, he mentioned something that convinces me even more that amusing as p. z. meyers is, he doesn’t come close to knowing everything, and about “mystical” stuff he is hopelessly clueless and will likely remain so for the rest of his life.

nervous system in the ear

what he brought up is the fact that i have been expanding my right earlobe for the past year and a half (i actually stopped about 6 months ago because my wife doesn’t like it). he’s been studying auricular acupuncture recently, and has noticed that a lot of people self-treat with piercings and modifications without realising it. he then showed me this page from his auricular therapy manual. i may agree with p. z. meyers about the perils of “christianity” and “intelligent design”, but this, if nothing else, convinces me that there are a lot of things that science knows about and dismisses as unproven, that are just as real as things that you can hold in your hand. clarke’s law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

diary of a tired agarbatthiwallah

FSM today. it was actually a pretty good day. it started out at 5:30 with dog breakfasts in the car, but i discovered that the FSM offers a $5 discount for early membership renewal, and they were offering 2-for-1-for-$30 spaces – to encourage vendors to brave the cold, damp, limited-daylight early-january freeze – even though i could only use one space anyway, instead of making -$5, i actually came out ahead $10 today (which means that i made $75, if my convoluted math is confusing you). not only that but i had the priveledge of explaining the real meaning of the swastika to three different people, i had one guy from tibet express utter amazement when i told him that despite the fact that i know an awful lot about it, i have never actually been to india, i learned teegan’s name (finally), and i gave her some incense, and i brought tears of joy to a person’s eyes when i said that, in my opinion, Jesus and Ganesha are the same thing. i took the doggies with me, and they went for a walk up and down the canal after the market was over, and they’re asleep(!) at this point. i’m probably going to feed the cats, grab a bite (and not much more than that) and go to bed myself… i forgot how dreadfully early 5:30 in the morning is. 8P

all in all, i would say that it was an entirely positive and uplifting day. i need more days like this.

wow…

i was just thinking about it today, and in terms of relationships, i am fairly close to some really famous people. i had breakfast with R. Buckminster Fuller when i was in high school (and he is still one of the people whom i aspire to be like), and Joseph P. Faddlefum, who was on the edge of the circle that timothy leary was in the center of, was my first college advisor and still remains a good friend, but i also know, for example, two people who know the president-elect in some way or another: one of my friends went to occidental college, and was in several discussion groups with him, and the other got a personal, printed invitation to the inauguration (although, at this point, i don’t know why). i’ve rubbed shoulders with people like artis the spoonman, baby gramps, hacki (the famous german clown), fyodor karamazov, and rev. chumleigh, although i get the impression that the first two would probably not remember my name if it came right down to it (even though i’ve appeared on the same stage, at the same time as both of them for 5 years in a row, now). and that’s not to mention the fact that my wife is the “Nuclear FOB” (which stands for “Friends Of the Bobs”), having been a fan for about 20 years or so, and the fact that i personally know matthew bob and amy bob. i know St. Fred, the inventor (among other things) of the exploder control that took microsoft by surprise when they had just released their supposedly “more secure” platform for browser plugins (which was really OLE in a shiny new package), and i worked for a couple of years with the son of Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

i’m not that famous, and i’m not sure i want to be, but i guess i’m just as happy being in the background of all these famous people, even if nobody else notices.

in other news, i’ve decided to move my personal web site to it’s own domain (and away from drizzle), so i’ve registered puggry duckling dot com (which isn’t there yet). i’ll move my pages over to there and place a server-push to the new domain… probably tomorrow. who knows how long the server-push is going to remain there, considering that drizzle updates their DNS tables manually whenever they feel like it… 8/

new years’ rant

okay, over at Unreasonable Faith there’s a discussion going on which started out with the guy giving believers “your chance to convince us atheists there is a God. Pitch your best case for why we should believe in a deity”. i normally agree with atheists a lot more than i do with “christians”, but i couldn’t resist, especially since mine is a somewhat unique position (which i will explain more fully in a minute) to which few, if any, other people subscribe – which is just fine with me.

although, as i said, i tend to agree with athiests a lot more than i do with most “believers”, ultimately, i am a “believer” myself, and everything that i have experienced to this day only drives home to me that my way of thinking is the correct one for me, if for no other person. i know that a God exists, and that He (for lack of a better term) has three defining characteristics: the God that i worship is infinite, unchanging and eternal. ultimately, the God in Whom i beleve can be described as existing beyond “normal logic” because of the fact that in order to meet the criteria of being infinite, unchanging and eternal, God would have to be able to do what seem to us like impossible things, for example being in multiple places at the same time, or being both right and wrong, or both black and white, at the same time, without having to worry about whether or not one thing conflicts with the other. if what you call “god” is unable to exhibit these three qualities then, to me you are not referring to the God that i know to exist.

i realise that this puts me in the category of “mystics” (some might say “crazy people”, i’ll deal with them in a minute) who say that God exists beyond normal understanding, and without some sort of “mystical experience” you’ll never understand what i am talking about, but i’m not the only one to believe this way, and from what i’ve been able to see, the ones who believed the way i do had significant hardships, but were a great deal happier overall than people who went along with the herd, whether athiest or “christian”.

i look at my life as depicted in this story, called When the Waters Changed

Once upon a time, Khidr, the Teacher of Moses, called upon mankind with a warning. At a certain date, he said, all the water in the world which had not been specially horded, would disappear. It would then be renewed, with different water which, when consumed, would drive men mad.

Only one man listened to the meaning of this advice. He collected water and went to a secure place where he stored it, and waited for the water to change its character.

On the appointed date, the streams stopped running, the wells went dry, and the man who had listened, seeing this happening, went to his retreat and drank his preserved water.

When he saw, from his security, the waterfalls again beginning to flow, this man descended among the other sons of men. He found that they were thinking and talking in an entirely different way from before; yet they seemed to have no memory of having changed, or being warned that it would happen. When he tried to talk to them, he realised that they thought that he was mad, and they showed hostility or compassion, not understanding.

At first he drank none of the new water, but went back to his concealment, to draw on his supplies, every day. Finally, however, he took the decision to drink the new water because he could not bear the loneliness of living, behaving and thinking in a different way from everyone else. He drank the new water, and became like the rest. Then he forgot all about his own store of special water, and his fellows began to look upon him as a madman who had miraculously been restored to sanity.

eventually, i’ll run out of my special store of water, and be forced to drink the water everyone else is drinking. then, presumably, i will give up thinking like a crazy person and start thinking like everyone else.

if that happens, please kill me.

happy new year.

happy VEWPRF

i-love-satan.jpg

in the past, i’ve tried to go along with whatever holiday might be celebrated around me whether i “believed in it” or not, however in the past few years it’s gotten to the point where i’ve taken a long, hard look at the traditions, the history, and the meaning of several Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festivals (VEWPRFs) and tried as much as possible to separate myself from them, primarily because of the fact that i don’t “believe in them” in any conventional sense, and to me, the people that really do believe in them, particularly “christians” really make me wonder about the future of the human race. i’ve had the chance to go “caroling” with a bunch of other brass players, and while i appreciate the music very much, and would really like to get together with a bunch of people who all appreciate the music, and can play it well, i decided not to go – and not entirely because of the fact that “the weather outside was frightful” (although that was about ⅔ of the reason). the weather is also the reason we won’t be spending xmas (one of the VEWPRFs i was talking about) with the inlaws in portland this year – although we probably will be spending new years day with them (’cause i have the gig where i’m paid the most amount of money i have ever been paid for something EVER on new years eve – i’m being paid $100 an hour for an hour’s performance with snake suspenderz), and while it won’t exactly be the same as xmas with them, it will still very likely have the same history and meaning. with my in-laws particularly, i have learned that it’s a lot easier if i keep my mouth shut, because, if nothing else, they give good presents and don’t expect an awful lot other than to see that my wife is healthy and happy, which she seems to be taking care of all by herself.

dont-fuck-with-santa-claus.jpg

and when you look at xmas, from it’s beginnings all the way to today, you discover that it’s basically one lie after another with no apologies or attempts to hide them: jesus, if he ever even really existed, was more than likely born in the spring, and the fact that his birthday is celebrated when it is, is primarily because of the fact that the “christian” church took over pagan solstice celebrations of one kind or another, and in the process of making it basically illegal to have any other kind of celebration, at the same time it started pushing it’s own version of VEWPRF as a “legal substitute” so that the (formerly) pagan worshippers – who still continue to this day – wouldn’t rise up and overthrow their oppressors. and at this late date, there’s less of “jesus’ birth” and more commercialism and “santa claus”, to the point where jesus – the supposed “reason for the season” (which, in reality, can more be attributed to axial tilt than the birth of a supposed “saviour”) – is almost forgotten, even by supposed “christians” for whom this should be a time to remember their saviour. and that brings up the discussion: “saved from what?” saved from sin? who created sin? if it was God, then didn’t he have some reason for creating it? shouldn’t He expect us to sin, if He created it to begin with? if it wasn’t, then why do we have to be saved from it? how is jesus any more likely to save me than norm, down the street, or myself, for that matter? if it weren’t for the fact that i have experienced “the indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (which is nothing at all like the “christian” people would have you believe), i would deny that such a thing exists, simply because of the fact that the way the “christians” describe it is totally absurd. if it weren’t forced on them when they were children and unable to see how the adults were lying to them, “christianity” would have completely vanished ages ago.

and as far as my experience of the “indwelling of the Holy Spirit”, which happened many years ago (although it continues to this day), i am aware of the fact that it’s such a profound, personal experience, that any attempt i make to describe what it was like will sound equally absurd. i’m okay with that, and don’t blame you if you think i’m crazy, but like i said, it was so much different from what the “christians” say that comparing the two is a difficult thing. my impression is that “christians” only have about a quarter of the story, and instead of being inspired to learn about the ever expansive THING that they call God, they’ve decided that that’s all you ever need, and are afraid of anything that stretches beyond their comfort zone.

so, along with everything else, my views about both Christmas and xmas (similar to the difference between Christians and “christians”, for those of you who are keeping score) are skewed enough that celebrating it myself is kind of out of the question, despite my general tendency to celebrate whatever holiday “most of us” are celebrating. so you’ll pardon me while i wish everyone a happy VEWPRF and go off and hide somewhere until february so i don’t have to listen to another round of “Jingle Bell Rock”. 8/

I AM A TERRORIST IN SPITE OF THE GOVERNMENT! (and you should be too, if you know what’s good for you)

this is not supposed to happen: Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

not here. not in MY country. not in the country founded on this document with these enumerated rights and this declaration of independence from state-mandated tyrrany signed by these men.

it’s time for action: it’s time to either leave the country, or start fomenting revolution or – preferrably – both. yes, the government has “changed”, but in spite of everything that has been said apparently it’s still just business as usual, and nobody seems to be taking the slightest bit of notice as the government is snatched away from “we the people” in bits and pieces right before our eyes!

the police and sherrifs are supposed to handle law enforcement. the national guard is supposed to handle civic emergency response. the military is for fighting wars. deploying the military on united states soil is declaring war against the inhabitants of that land.

That’s us, citizens.

and yes, i know they SAY it’s to bolster security against terrorism and national emergencies. just like the patriot act and FISA and no-fly lists were supposed to do. and yet, everyday citizens are being prosecuted or restricted based on discoveries from these “protective” mandates for non-terrorism or treasonous activity.

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not a guidebook.

welcome to the U. S. S. A.

Continue reading I AM A TERRORIST IN SPITE OF THE GOVERNMENT! (and you should be too, if you know what’s good for you)

amis nah yeb stomb

yesterday i was supposed to go to marysville to pick up the business cards for MIVC from troy the printer. i was supposed to pick them up at noon, and i figured that saturday northbound would take me about an hour. at 10:30 – half an hour before i was supposed to leave – i get a call from troy, asking me when i was planning on being there, and when i told him noon, he said that he had neglected to get the business cards actually printed, and asked me if i could come tomorrow – which is today. of course that left me with nothing to do, but i said okay, because if i had picked them up yesterday he would have printed them, but he would have slip-sheeted them before cutting (so that the wet ink doesn’t offset on to the back of the card above it) and i would have had to un-slip-sheet them which is a tedious project that i would sooner not have to do anyway.

so, anyway, i spent yesterday processing photos of my inventory (which will eventually be visible on the Hybrid Elephant web site). about 9:00 pm i got a call from Howlin’ Hobbit who wanted to know what i was doing tomorrow morning. i told him that i was planning on going to marysville, but hobbit tempted me with busking at the Ballard Sunday Market, which sounded good enough to me that i changed my plans for going to marysville from morning until afternoon. i also packed three empty 5-gallon water bottles, because since i was going to marysville, swamp creek was right on the way, and i figured that way i could kill three birds with one stone.

i’m glad i did. i showed up in ballard at 9:30 am, and by 1:00 pm i was $50 richer. we played two extended sets, and made $150 between the three of us. sketch was, sadly, not present for some unknown reason – but in this case that was okay, because it was more money for the rest of us. also, i ran into fred, for the first time in several years, and mentioned that i would be interested in setting up a musical instrument repair shop with him, and he said he would call me. for a brief time there were two different trombones busking at the ballard market, a fact which i find to be somewhat unusual.

after we vacated the market, i went to swamp creek and filled my water bottles, went up to marysville and picked up cards from troy (it’s quite a drive, but he’s the only printer i know who is willing to do printing for me in exchange for computer technical support) and made it home by 4:00. i feel accomplished. if only every day could contain such accomplishment.

HA!

There Probably Is has a rotating text header that says, among other things:

Think For Yourself!
Christians have always offered people opportunity to explore for themselves. We want to give you an opportunity to think for yourself. What’s missing from life when you take God out of the picture?

this is the same web site which belongs to the guy who claims to be a “spiritual leader” of a community, who has, so far, completely ignored my honest query to him.

this is exactly why i’m so frustrated with “christian” behaviour. i exist, despite your efforts to ignore me, and i won’t go away any faster if you pretend i don’t.

in other news, it’s all their fault: much to the chagrin of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, McDonald’s has patented the making of a sandwich.

VALIDATION!

if i needed more, here is yet more confirmation that hinduism is correct path for me, regardless of what the “christians” have to say about it: i emailed Rev. Evan Cockshaw, who is the genius behind "There Probably Is" and asked him why he hasn’t posted my "testimony” yet", and guess what?

he ignored me. of course…

it seems pretty typical for “christians” to ignore someone if they’re not immediately willing to accept the dreck they’re swimming in. on the other hand, as i’ve said before, the hindu teachers i have met – even the bogus ones – have taken delight in answering questions that would appear to be blasphemous to the normal “christian” mind. and even the bogus hindu teachers i’ve experienced are more entertaining than about 99% of the “christians” i have experienced.

also Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’

Continue reading VALIDATION!

hungary harrison “christian”

that’s where some guy ordered incense from today – budapest, hungary. he ordered $4.25 worth of incense, so i have to add $50 shipping for $4.25 worth of incense.

personally, i think he should know that it would be cheaper (and probably better quality) to buy it closer to home, but i think the problem is that internet makes normal people stupid. i have many examples of this: regan fraser, brendan fraser‘s brother, was my housemate at one point about 15 years ago, and when he found out that i worked with internet, he begged me to get involved in this scheme that he had to rip people off by accessing their bank accounts over internet. or the client that i currently have who is convinced that his virus protection program “is tired” of notifying him that he has a virus – he’s convinced that he’s got a virus, even though three different virus scanners have given him a clean bill of health…

someone turned me on to a whole pile of information about my great-great-great-grandfather and his descendants that are a part of my family, but not directly related to me. apparently such people include William Henry Harrison along with several other william henry harrisons (I through V, i think).

i submitted the following to There Probably Is dot com, and i really hope they actually post it, but i get the impression that they won’t.

Brief Biography
I am a Hindu Christian Dervish Buddhist Thelemic Tinite Antichrist Anarchist Tuba-Playing ? (??? – Canis nyctereutes procyonoides) with a Brain Injury.

Submit your story
I believe in God because … i was raised by parents who were largely agnostic. They may have had some religion, but if they did, they kept it to themselves. I attended a Unitarian church when I was small, but the classes I took were more along creative lines than religious ones, and I grew up thinking of “church” as more of a social club than a place for worship.

Then, when I was first starting college, I encountered people who claimed to be “christian” but were more like parrots than people in terms of what they told me about “christianity”. They couldn’t give me a good enough reason to believe, apart from pie-in-the-sky promises to which nobody in their right mind would pay attention.

I took a class called “Introduction to Personal Philosophy” which everybody informally called “The Fly In The Fly-Bottle” or just “the fly-bottle class” in which there was an assignment that caused me to change my mind. The assignment was “for a certain, set period of time (I chose a month), act as though there is an all-powerful God and see how your life changes.” As soon as I believed that there was a God, I was able to see Him everywhere, although He (and I use the term advisedly) was not what the “christians” said He was like at all. For one thing, He wasn’t always a “He” – sometimes She was a thought, or feeling, or a smell. I quickly learned that when coincidences happen – for example, I went for an entire week where the price of everything I bought ended with 84 cents – that is God communicating with me in a way that I didn’t immediately understand. Everywhere I looked, and everywhere I look to this day, I see God essentially “peering out” from behind everything, saying “Here I am!” There is no question that I have of God that He has not answered, and He guides my every step.

His name is Ganesha.

i guess i’m disappointed with them for discriminating against me, but at the same time, what did i expect from a “christian” web site?

grumpy shit

in spite of the fact that a lot of things have been happening recently, i haven’t felt motivated to post much, because… well… what difference does it make anyway? by way of an example, there’s this article from Key64, The End is Near (Don’t Sleep on This Shit!), which is another way to describe the doom-and-gloom future i have been anticipating considering the mix of environment and politics that we’ve chosen to go with, and also has a good chance of becoming reality, since those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it…

not that i think it would make an awful lot of difference these days, but we do have an alternative, although i admit that there’s a slim chance that we’ll actually pull it off, because it would require everyone to use their brains for something other than a spacer to keep their ears apart, which is not very likely.

Continue reading grumpy shit

music

moe is in new orleans, being honoured for being elected president of SVBT. whee! 8)

i, on the other hand, am playing for the white center festival (i don’t remember what it’s called) with a friend of a friend, named thaddeus, who is also someone who knows Rev. Chumleigh. i’m finding that, despite my injury and all of the difficulties that i’ve had surrounding it for the past few years, it hasn’t detracted from my spreading reputation as the outstanding musician who comes in at more or less the last minute and saves the show, and this is yet another example: i was contacted by thaddeus before fair, had the music delivered to me during fair (and most of it i’ve played before anyway), and rehearsed with the “rest of the band” today – and by the “rest of the band” i mean thaddeus, who is playing trombone, baritone, guitar, ukelele and other stuff, a drummer named andrew, and a “ringer” keyboard player (who is blind and knows every song ever written) named julie (i think vickie – brain injury)… and the festival is tomorrow and sunday… and i’m getting paid for it.

so i’ll be busy enough that i won’t even notice moe’s absence until she returns on monday.

OCF 08 – a retrospective

milestonei left home for OCF at 6:30 am on wednesday. my first stop was the fred meyer’s in puyallup, which i got to before they opened, so i had to wait outside for 10 minutes or so until they got around to unlocking the doors. i got water, but neglected to get bug spray, a fact which i would intensely regret later. the trip down was relatively uneventful, however when i got off the freeway south of portland for a food and pee stop, i noticed that as soon as i stopped moving forward, the temperature in Ganesha The Car shot up to the red zone. i put some water in the radiator (which was completely empty) the temperature went back down to the normal range almost immediately, but it was a little frisson of anticipation that made life interesting.

before the fairi was actually able to get through the H.I.F. (Hippie Ineptitude Factor) surrounding checking in with little difficulty, but i didn’t realise that there is a big difference between asking and informing when it comes to announcing that your plan is to drive in to chelamela with a full load to be delivered to morningwood odditorium. if i had informed them of what i was doing, i would have been able to drive in without any problem, but because i asked if it would be okay for me to drive in, i was told that i couldn’t drive in without a van or a pickup load of stuff. so i waited for a gator (gaiter?), which is a motorised utility vehicle with a long string of carts that it tows behind it, to ferry my load to the stage. i then found a camping spot behind the stage, in the middle of a huge swarm of voracious mosquitoes which proceded to cover my back with about 5000000000 mosquito bites (of course, they chose the only place on my body where i can’t kill them or shoo them away, and where i can’t scratch). so i got my tent set up as quickly as possible, which was a chore, because it was hot and sweaty, which made the mosquito infestation even worse, and there wasn’t quite enough room under the bushes, so i had to incorporate the undergrowth into the structure of the tent, and got my stuff loaded into it, inflated my (new) bed, and then went back to the outside where i left my car, and parked in scoff-lot. i got finished with all the essential stuff around 3:00 pm or thereabouts, but because of the fact that the ritz was only open for showers (no saunas until thursday 8/ ) i had to put up with an extremely itchy night.

before the fairthursday was spent finishing the stage and wandering around gawking and taking pictures of the places that i knew would be full of people within the next 24 hours. it’s really odd to see nobody there, when you know that when everyone else sees it, they’re going to see everyone else as well. it really makes me want to come back in the winter, to see what the fair site is like when there’s really nobody there. i’ve got some friends in eugene that might actually make it possible for me to do that, at some point…

i also got attacked by huge swarms of voracious, bloodthirsty insects – something that very rarely happens to me – so i decided to go into town to buy bug spray… and ice… and beer… well, okay, the ice and beer were for other people, but i was going into town anyway, so i made the run so they didn’t have to, and that meant that i had beer when i got back. i blocked off my parking space in scoff-lot and told the guy at the gate that i would be back in half an hour, which i was. however, when i came back in, another guy told me that blocked spaces in scoff-lot were taken immediately, and that i should head for outta site parking, which is about a mile further down the road. this is where i learned the difference between asking and informing the people of what i am going to do. the next guy i came to (there were three or four of them along the road) i told him that i was going to scoff-lot. he told me that scoff-lot was full, and i said that was okay, so he let me get through. i drove up to scoff-lot right behind the tow truck, but because of the fact that i not only was able to say that i blocked a spot, but because of the fact that i was able to say that it was in row J, the guy let me in anyway – much to the chagrin of the people who were being towed to the dead lot, which is all the way at the far end of the site. and when i got to row J, what do you know? my spot was there, right where i left it… i am certain that at least part of this is because of the fact that i invoke The Remover of Obstacles ON my car, especially because, all the way back in, everyone was telling me that scoff-lot was full and the fact that i had blocked off a parking space didn’t make any difference.

still, it’s a LONG way from scoff-lot to chelamela when you’re carrying four bags of ice. stuart and i went back for the beer with a black plastic garbage bag, so that i wouldn’t have to carry it in alone, and so that we wouldn’t be stopped and potentially asked to share, which is definitely a possibility.

the discowe had a dress rehearsal thursday evening, immediately followed by a disco, which was an incarnation of the same un-namable evil that first manifested when disco was still popular, 30 years ago, so i took pictures of it from a distance, and then immediately left to go to the ritz, where i sweated out about half of the mosquito stingers in my back and got to feeling relatively clean again.

the lizard in the gazeeka boxfriday was the beginning of the fair for most “ordinary” people, which meant that it was the beginning of a working weekend for me. we did two shows a day, one at 12:00 noon, and one at 3:00 pm. on friday, we also did a 10:00 pm burlesque show. because of the fact that Big Bois With Poise were Short Dudes With Boobs this year, an act which doesn’t include fire, we opted out of the fire show. in spite of the fact that we didn’t use fire this year, they asked us to perform anyway, which gives you an idea of how intensely popular BBWP has become. the band really didn’t have much to do during the burlesque show (a fact which depressed stuart to the point where he said that if we do the show next year, we should ask for a specific slot to be an act, like everyone else, and then just vacate the stage rather than sitting there for the entire show), but because of the fact that i had BBWP duties, i also decided that it would be fun to be a part of the gazeeka box as well, so maque gave me a lizard costume and i was his ex-wife’s attorney, much to the amusement of everyone.

the cast and bandthis year’s panto is the traditional tale of cinderella, with the expected panto gender-bending, marginally obscene innuendo and horrendous puns. we’re getting good enough at this that this year we didn’t even have as many problems with the feral children who see every single performance and screw things up by anticipating lines and heckling us. at one point simon called a girl up onstage who had been anticipating his lines, and taped her mouth closed with gaffer tape, much to the amusement of everyone. the audiences absolutely despised the ugly stepsisters, who were played by chris huson and dan “the body” goodman. i actually heard him introduce himself to a group of tourists as ‘dan “the body” goodman’, which i found to be really amusing. we did actually get three new pieces of music on thursday at the dress rehearsal, and there’s still more to come, but presumably we’ve got a while to rehearse now that OCF is over. it was all 100% original, 100% new music, including a couple of pieces by amy bob.

i was standing in the food line at hospitality camp when a person i didn’t know came up to me and said “you’re salamandir”… i didn’t know what to say, so i said “yeah…” it turned out to be the mother of a friend of ezra’s from bellingham, who ezra refers to as “jordan(e)”. it seems oddly coincidental that i would have to go to the oregon country fair to meet a person who i know from bellingham, but oddly coincidental is a very good way of describing the oregon country fair.

friday was also my birthday. i’m 48 now, an age which i, in my wildest dreams, never imagined that i would actually reach. whoopie. 8/

saturday night the fremont philharmonic played at the ritz. i took off right after our 3:00 performance was over, and got there about 5:00, so i was well and truly sauna-ed by the time the rest of the band showed up, which was around 8:00. when i walked up, tuba in hand, i was met by a woman who said “NO tubas!” in an authoritative voice that i recognised immediately to be a joke, and, later on, i talked to lem and david, who were part of the ritz crew responsible for music. i was very suprised to learn that they don’t allow bands with drum sets to play. “at all?” i inquired, and they responded yes, which concerned me a great deal. it turned out that the guy who i thought was responsible for us getting to play, peter toms, aka professor petrol von huffenfuel, isn’t actually a part of the ritz crew, but the fremont philharmonic is apparently grandfathered in, so we weren’t kicked out for having a drum kit. i finally got around to arranging “Rubber Duckie” for the phil, and, of course, we played that. we also played “Il Ballon di Quaqua”, with a great effect. i talked to david on sunday and he said that he had frequently seen bands that had the entire ritz singing along, but he had never before seen a band that could get the entire ritz dancing. we also were offered a gig at a nudist colony near portland.

gnomesthe fair had to put up with an infestation of gnomes this year, which was amusing and frustrating at the same time: the gnomes were rowdy and rambunctious, and always getting into trouble. they broke in to our back stage area and drank all our tequila, and from there it went from bad to worse. they were ubiquitous. sunday, they were seen shaking down a vendor in the meadow, and when confronted, became belligerent… i think tricky bunny was a part of them, but i’m not sure, because they were wearing annoying gnome costumes, and avoiding my camera. also, i was walking up the eight saturday and i was accosted by a huge flock of people in flamingo costumes. they all gathered around me, honking and cooing and fanned me with their wings for about five minutes, and then flew off again. once again, it is my understanding that tricky bunny was a part of that as well, but i couldn’t tell. as i was walking away from the encounter, i wondered how one could take a picture of such an experience that would come anywhere close to reflecting what i actually experienced.

lightsi met a whole bunch of people, including positively stephie, who had vibrating massage bugs that felt really good on my mosquito-bitten back, and a family of neon people, the father of which works at adobe and will probably be looking for the pictures i took of them.lights

i saw a sign, of which i was not able to take a picture, unfortunately, which said “The Oregon Country Fair – Psycho-Spiritual Rejuvanation For Everyone”. it’s kind of ironic that i would see that, because i was talking with ned a week ago, and he was saying, based on what i have told him, that things like OCF are like medication for me, which is absolutely true. it’s just too bad that OCF only happens once a year. it’s even more ironic because i realised even more this year that an observation i made about OCF last year is also absolutely true, and that is that OCF is basically a big, hippie-oriented mall without the mall. it’s strange that i should get so much benefit from something that, at it’s lowest common denominator, is specifically designed to extract money from unsuspecting tourists.

there are a whole bunch more pictures which are the only things left of OCF 08. so go look at them… you know you want to…

important stuff for everyone

i’m leaving for the oregon country fair tomorrow, and there’s still a lot to do. but, at the same time, there’s a bunch of web sites that i want to remember, so here they are:

‘World’s longest concert’ resumesJohn Cage is at it again, for those who didn’t know, despite the fact that he’s been dead since August 12, 1992.

California to Legalize Weed for Everyone – i’ll believe it when i see it, but at the same time, it’s another good reason to move away from this benighted state…

Study finds long benefit in illegal mushroom drug – aaah, mushrooms: my favourite drug. i have spent many autumn hours, accompanied by cows, searching through wet grass for little hiding gnome-caps. perhaps this is a step in the direction of making them legal as well…

Does what happens in the Facebook stay in the Facebook? – answer: apparently not. good thing i never signed up with facebook…

Continue reading important stuff for everyone

this is why i’ve been staying away from public media… 8/

U.S. Bill of Rights Amendments

  • First Amendment – Establishment Clause, Free Exercise Clause; freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly; right to petition
    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
  • Second Amendment – Right to keep and bear arms.
    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
  • Third Amendment – Protection from quartering of troops.
    No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
  • Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
    The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
  • Fifth Amendment – due process, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, eminent domain.
    No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
  • Sixth Amendment – Trial by jury and rights of the accused; Confrontation Clause, speedy trial, public trial, right to counsel
    In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
  • Seventh Amendment – Civil trial by jury.
    In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
  • Eighth Amendment – Prohibition of excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment.
    Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
  • Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
    The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
  • Tenth Amendment – Powers of states and people.
    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Why I’m Not Patriotic

How dare they rip the Fourth Amendment?

U.S. interrogators were taught Chinese coercion techniques

Continue reading this is why i’ve been staying away from public media… 8/

WE ARE TERRORISTS!

INDEPENDENCE DAY
July 4, 1776 – 2008

When in the course of human events the government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the Right of the People to alter it and demand restoration of those Constitutional Principles that have so long assured their Liberty, Safety, and Happiness. Therefore, on the anniversary of our Independence, we offer this new declaration for our times.

The history of this president is one of arbitrary usurpations of power, the effect of which is to establish tyranny through false promises of greater security.

He has created a multitude of secret programs and sent swarms of petty officers to spy on Americans in a misguided effort to combat foreign terrorism. He has invested these agents with sweeping new powers to monitor our conversations and ransack our personal papers and effects without judicial supervision or any reason to believe — as the Constitution requires — that a crime has been committed.

He has further claimed the power to disregard legislation that Congress has passed.

He has suspended the laws and treaties against torture, authorized the kidnapping of mere suspects, and transported hundreds of prisoners beyond seas so that no independent judiciary could question the legality of their mistreatment.

He and his supporters in Congress have granted amnesty to the officials who unleashed torture and humiliation upon helpless prisoners, to the disgrace of our nation.

He has denied these prisoners access to attorneys, family, and friends and has claimed the right to try them before military tribunals specifically designed to disregard the most basic principles of law.

He has imprisoned thousands of lawful immigrants for months without charges, under brutal conditions, until his agents, rather than independent courts, decide that they posed no threat.

He has wrapped his usurpations of power and his deprivations of liberty in thick cloaks of secrecy, thereby showing contempt for the rule of law and the proper functions of Congress, the courts, and the press.

At every stage of these oppressions we have sought redress, but our petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

We, therefore, resolve to resist these usurpations by all lawful means at our disposal. We insist that the powers of our national government be shared by all branches of that government and not concentrated in one alone. And we call upon Congress, the courts, and the press to reassert their constitutional functions and restore the promise that is America.

To these ends, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.


Sign the pledge

happy “independence” day… 8/

incense as science!

for the place to purchase your new psychedelic anti-depressants, we have a wide variety from manufacturers such as Auroshikha Agarbathies, Srinavas Sugandhalaya, Sarathi Perfumery, Hem Manufacturing, and a variety of others. among our best frankincense fragrances are Auroshikha Frankincense 10g for $1.75 – catalogue #AUI003, Tulasi Frankincense cones 12 cones for $1.50 – catalogue #TUC004, and Hem Frankincense 20 sticks for $1.25 – catalogue #INS060. buy now before the price goes up… 8)

Incense is psychoactive: Scientists identify the biology behind the ceremony

the actual paper is very technical, and will cost you $7 if you actually want to download it. here are some more non-technical user-friendly summaries (if you happen to download a copy of it, please send me a copy, thanks!).

Burning Incense Is Psychoactive: New Class Of Antidepressants Might Be Right Under Our Noses

Hippies might have something going with that incense crap

Continue reading incense as science!

Ron Paul introduces the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act

in general, ron paul would not be good presidential material, but his presence in congress may actually do some good, if not immediately, then in the long run. of course my congressional representative (adam smith) won’t do much to support it, despite my encouragement to do so, nevertheless, here is the link for those of you who have more progressive represntatives that are more willing to support the will of the people…

sigh

when i see things like the pastor who gave a sermon about the evils of pornography at a pornography convention and a “modern” country where women still “belong” to men, i have to keep reminding myself of something that one of my first gurus (dr. burrows, not my satguru, and not even a hindu) told me when i was in my 20s. she said that the more clear the line dividing “good” and “evil” becomes, the closer we will be to the time when spirit returns to the earth in a bodily form (jesus return, kalki appearing, that sort of thing). the more diverse and divided things get; the more direct the proponents of a such a profound division are willing to be, the closer to “the eschaton” – whatever that means – we are. it will all be over soon… i’ve just got to hold on, and it will be different soon.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is mostly inhabited by, and ultimately designed and created by people who are acting under some sort of illusion, delusion or misconception
— salamandir 890628

I AM A TERRORIST!

When they took the fourth amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
     I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
     I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
     and I can say nothing about it.

i sincerely wonder why the revolution hasn’t started yet, and i despair for a country that can sit idly by while these kinds of things are perpetrated on us in the name of “protecting our freedoms”. really… bush has gone too far this time, and it’s time somebody did something about it. >8/

Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S.

Continue reading I AM A TERRORIST!

here is someone who knows what i went through!!!

here is someone who knows what i went through and is able to talk about it without sounding like a raving idiot!

Dr. Jill Taylor‘s talk at 2008 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)

a few things are different: i suffered an Arteriovenous Malformation, not a stroke, and i still have quite a bit of trouble with language, mood, and my right hand. my clot was more the size of an egg than a golf-ball, but it was on the periphery of the left hemisphere, just above my left ear, and is in a very similar place to the location of Dr. Taylor’s scar and what i can tell from the angiograms that she shows. of course, she started out as a neuroanatomist to begin with, and has a lot more language skills to describe such an event than i ever had, and i believe my AVM was higher up on the left hemisphere, which affected my language center a lot more profoundly.

i wrote to dr. jill, just to say how much i admired her talk.

Confucius

Once when Confucius was passing near the foot of Mount Tai in a chariot, there was a married woman weeping at a grave mound, and dolorously too. Confucius politely rested his hands on the front rail of the chariot and listened to her weeping. He sent Zilu (Tzu-lu) to inquire of her, saying; “From the sound of your weeping, it seems that you indeed have many troubles.”

Then the woman said; “It is true. My father-in-law died in a tiger’s jaw; my husband also died there. Now, my son has also died there.” Confucius said, “Why do you not leave this place?” The woman said: “Here there is no harsh and oppressive government.”

Confucius said, “Young men, take note of this: a harsh and oppressive government is more ferocious and fearsome than even a tiger.”

important things to remember

An elderly Chinese woman had two large pots, each hung on the ends of a pole which she carried across her neck.

One of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water.

At the end of the long walks from the stream to the house, the cracked pot arrived only half full..

For a full two years this went on daily, with the woman bringing home only one and a half pots of water.

Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments.

But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it could only do half of what it had been made to do.

After two years of what it perceived to be bitter failure, it spoke to the woman one day by the stream. “I am ashamed of myself, because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your house.”

The old woman smiled, “Did you notice that there are flowers on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?”

“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, so I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back, you water them.”

“For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the table.

Without you being just the way you are, there would not be this beauty to grace the house.”

Each of us has our own unique flaw. But it’s the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

You’ve just got to take each person for what they are and look for the good in them.

SO, to all of my crackpot friends, have a great day and remember to smell the flowers on your side of the path!

The Goal

The goal is to reach the flat roof of the house, which affords an unobstructed view of the entire countryside. You can reach this highest point by climbing stone stairs, wooden steps, bamboo slats, or rope ladders. You can even scale a nearby tree and somehow clamber onto the roof along a large limb. Just get there! Then you will see clearly that the unimaginable variety of prayerful or meditative methods all lead to the same goal, to the same panoramic vision, to the same timeless awareness.

One certainly perceives errors of understanding and superstitious behavior in the various religious traditions as they are imperfectly practiced. So what? Every human approach inevitably contains error or partial understanding. Such distortions are, of course, most difficult to notice in your own approach, because each person stubbornly believes that his own clock tells the correct time. There is no way to purge your personal, social, or religious context from every error, but if you persevere in sheer yearning for God, sheer love of Truth, these unavoidable limitations will gradually be dissolved. It will be sufficient simply to love for love’s sake.

     — Paramahansa Ramakrishna

sivalinga in the bible!

i knew that there was an old testament prophet that went for hindu ritual, but i couldn’t remember where. now i have proof that jacob was a sivaite!

And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.
     Genesis 28.18

And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pillar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon, and he poured oil thereon.
     Genesis 35.14