Ron's blogs place

Your home espresso Gaggia coffee machine

2010-04-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

Anyone knows that in order to begin your day properly, you should have an excellent coffee maker. Virtually any espresso lover knows that among the finest stuff in everyday life is to get the good coffee extremely swift and ideally in your own kitchen area. With a Gaggia coffee machine you are going to simply question how did you manage until now.

I have long been a supporter of a “buy the most expensive one” viewpoint. Unfortunately my bank manager does not share this belief. If he needed to meet me before 9am, I am certain he would extend my over-limit facility to buy one of the 90950 Gaggia coffee machine selection. The Gaggia coffee machine is simply the best. This product is equipped with touch screen that easily lets you select the cup size. A 1.7 liter water capacity, and two simultaneous cups, is what some mornings require. It’s also rather useful if you have someone over. It weights in at 21 pounds, so isn't easily pulled over, if say, you are hung-over.

But there is certainly more to it than simply making coffee. Once woken up, you'll find that you want it to look good and to be able to wow your friends. And this is what you will get from the Gaggia coffee machine. The 90950 Gaggia coffee maker keeps a stylish titanium shade, drip tray so your kitchen counter is not going to get filthy plus a milk foamer Gaggia machines are designed in Italy which is the best place for best espresso. To make life easy it will take ground coffee and also includes a built in grinder for the ultimate in taste.

What exactly is this baby about to set you back? Well, it’s not at the $250 end of the cost spectrum that’s no doubt. This model can cost you in the region of $1800 through online providers. However on the other end it will give you long-lasting great minutes of coffee for countless years

This is one of the finest units. You should have great fresh coffee with a switch of a button. It might not be cheap but for an excellent cup of coffee and its exceptional capabilities and characteristics it really is well priced. If you need to try to sell this Gaggia coffee machine towards one who keeps the wallet strings, try starting off with “it is definitely an purchase that costs only $1 per day for the next 5 years” and find out how you go from there.

Why digital wireless headphones is a must?

2010-03-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

Anyone who loves music should eventually try to use a wireless pair of headphones. Consider a situation where you would like to listen to music or watch a good dvd movie but can't since your child sleep in the next room. A person in essence may wear your headphone that have a wire and sit close to your stereo system or get yourself a fine pair of wireless headphones. In situations that you work on your computer and like to listen to music and still give quiet to your surroundings, use the wireless headphones

digital Wireless headphones for music exist for a long time now. There are few advantages for wireless headphones. Lack of cables and tangling. To be actually attached to a music system or Television, isn't that pleasant. A cord doesn't allow you to move freely. Often there is the risk that you'll drop off your stereo, if you overlook you are attached to it with a wire and while going, you'll move the device and break it. It happens; particularly when the wire is a short one. With the wireless headphones you won't need to have these issues because there isn't any cord involved and you'll be able to move in a relaxed way around your house and always enjoy clean music.

You've freedom to move all over. It's a advantage that runs hand in hand with having a wireless pair of headphones. You can do all those house work, across the house, whilst enjoying your preferred music; even vacuuming the carpets and rugs. When the hoover is on is nearly impossible to listen to anything, particularly songs coming from the stereo. If you have a set of wireless headphones then you can tune in to your songs whilst vacuuming. When they are a noises reducing set then you definitely won’t manage to hear the vacuum in any way.

There are nice pieces of wireless headphones for around $100.. Some are far more costly. In music studio, you won't find a lot of wireless headphones because they work with normal kinds. The only music professionals which use wireless headphones are disk jockeys that really have to lose these nasty wires that get twisted with their equipment.

Most good quality wireless headphone items have a One humdred and fifty ft radius limitation. If you wish to enjoy listening to music outside that radius all you have to to do is transfer the base, get it nearer to the area you will be located. You can even listen to music when gardening or in the yard. Thus inside that range the reception is good which means high quality of sound.

Digital wireless headphones undoubtedly bring convenience to our daily lifes. If you're looking to get a set of wireless headphones, take some time to investigate your requirements, do the right market homework and get the right set for your requirements.

Italian Man Asks Wrong Question About Christ; Court Agrees To Hear Case

2010-02-11T04:07:00.000-08:00

As you know, an Italian gentleman has challenged the Catholic Church to prove that Christ existed, and, while the case was, somewhat expectedly, tossed out in an Italian court, the plaintiff, undaunted, found a court in Strasbourg that has agreed to hear it. It remains to be revealed who the Catholic Church will designate to defend its historical foundation.

Should we flinch from such a touchy subject and leave you to your own puzzlements? No, dear reader, rest assured that we will never abandon you out of fear to follow whatever the ever-surprising pageant of daily events may present to our fretted brow but smiling aspect. After all, how much more refreshingly salutary it is to realize we can share even the most subtle adumbrations that flit through our evanescent moments of self-awareness.

So what is, in our opinion, the correct question?

We prefer to ask whether belief in Christ, as the Son of God or in any relevant modification, helps people live better lives and deal with the trembling uncertainties that the enormous question mark in the sky about the why and wither of everything, including our mortal selves, still provokes in many a frail human being?

Or is belief in Christ’s divinity more in use to devise liabilities against the natural potential for joy that life seems to be gifted with, while it provides less unshakable hope than one might wish for assured eternal bliss?

What, pray tell, is the answer? Since the two can hardly be hefted into a balance scale, the decision is, agreeably enough, what you, as the decisive individual you undoubtedly are, have determined is your own estimable belief.

Dare we proceed to the evidence for or against what is known as the historical Jesus? What else, ideational companion, would you expect?

First, as you know, the Romans kept engagingly careful histories and prudent civic accounts. Yet there is little mention in the remnants of the Roman record of an existent called Jesus Christ, except one brief notation in a civic record, another in a Jewish history, or a line in a few letters. Some demanding historians, in their histrionics, suppose that, had Jesus performed the wonders He is reported to have accomplished, His existence would have enlarged into an invitingly more elaborate documentation.

Consequentially considered Christian evidence begins with the man who has come to be known as Saint Paul. While he was, unfortunately, too young to have known Jesus in person, it seems he met with the extant personages Peter, James, and John.

We must also come head to headline with the historically disquieting fact that the four Gospels were penned to paper at a later date than we might, in our ideal hopes, prefer: sometime between A. D. 60 and A. D. 120. The Book of Mark, considered the earliest of the four gospels, made its initial appearance about the year 150 AD. While the historic document may well have recorded an oral history or earlier written versions of the story of Jesus, obviously by the time it was penned the scribe never actually broke bread with the central inspiration of his Gospel.

We have not, of course, invented any of the foregoing evidences. We have merely recorded, as accurately as we can in a brief space, what seems to have been passed down over the centuries.

Now, we pass from our wandering deliberations to our initial point.

In the very soul of our hopes and uncertainties, most of us are not excessively concerned about what is historically invariable. We more likely ask what in this wide and chancy world is more helpful, or useful, to us and our fellow uncertain human beings. While it may not be the most piercingly trenchant question, it is certainly the kindest and therefore, in many ways, the most invitingly wise.

By the way, soul of light and wonder, there is also another wrong question we should deliberate with before we conclude. The questioning gentleman from Italy also proclaims that he is an atheist, and we grant him his predilection.

But, one of the surprisingly incisive items the overly commended philosopher William James managed to utter, in his hopefulThe Will To Believe, is that we require just as much information not to believe as it takes to believe.

Once again we must reach for the same handy harp and arpeggiate as follows:

The right question, or so it seems us, is not whether God exists, but whether we can define God in a way we can, with scientific respect, consider valid?

We can only share with you the invitingly unassuming definition that works for us and that, astonishingly, seems unassailably cogent.

And here it is.

Since we, being as logically exacting as we should, cannot dare infer with philosophical propriety that the universe has a “cause,” without the adherents of Davy Hume rushing to inform us that what we, as frequently but not ever fallible humans, perceive as cause and effect may, in fact, be more exactly explicated as usual but not unexceptionable sequence.

So all we can credibly say is that all we behold must have a source – an original or, if you will, an ultimate source – and that we, as placidly accommodated inhabitants of finitude, are willing to consider that source God.

As you might guess, whether or not such a carefully considered God partakes in our everyday lives or has decided we’ve been equipped well enough to manage things on our own – if we would only use the mental and spiritual resources we’ve been given – is, yet again, another question, undoubtedly to be ciphered, yet again, primarily by our own dispositions.

So, interestingly enough, after our exceedingly perspicacious amble through the honed brambles of theological speculation, we arrive, to some extent, where our sometime intellectual companion, ancient Aristotle, left us, that is, with the concept of God as the “First Mover” or “Unmoved Mover.” While his description is obviously a bit more assumptive than ours, it’s reassuringly close enough to make us smile at the inadvertent paternity of his wisdom.

So, lest we trouble you too long in your inquisitive surf of the worldwide Web, we will conclude as follows:

While the daring Italian plaintiff gears up to challenge the divinity of Christ in a Strasbourg court, and the spokespeople of the Catholic Church present their most revered proofs, while the media kern the boiling pot as intemperately as they can, the entire host will all be overwrought about what is, at least to us, really neither the most practical nor spiritually consequential question.

We realize we haven’t been especially humorous in this article, but, if you think about the high subject, such an achievement would have actually been inappropriate.

We also cannot but realize you may be thinking, OK, smarty pants, so what do you think about matters infinite?

Would we ever deny you the inviting knowledge? Never, me bonny lads and lasses!

So here it is. We have a faith not shaken by such perturbations on the largely unmapped sea of certitude, because we have a comforting faith in life – faith that it is, after all, a logical evanescence and therefore an overall benevolence. As part of our faith in it, we believe that, if we take good are of it, we will not only have a much higher likelihood of realizing its resplendent possibilities, but also of helping save it from our own depredations, and, in accordance with our assumpiton of its supreme logic, that whatever made it will, if it takes good care of anyone, take good care of us, who, after all, live in the service of life, accepted as considerately free and capable of exultation. We call this moderate infinite extension of our enlightened commitment faith through life.

Our only remaining hope is that we’ve been able to deconstruct the theological tempest that likely lies ahead into a venue you may observe as, in its inevitable confrontations and triangulations, your informed and wisely unruffled self.

It Became An All-Night Serenade Crusade

2010-02-11T01:58:00.001-08:00

I’m at the age when sleep, especially during the night, is a very fragile commodity. The least little noise arouses my body to full consciousness. I say my body, because I’m not sure my brain is ever conscious. Too much evidence exists to make one believe there aren’t any conscious gray cells in my cranium. At least, that is the opinion of the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage, which she has expressed on more than one occasion.

The confusing thing about all of this is I have no trouble falling asleep during the day. Just let me sit down with a book in hand, and in no time I am in the world of Slumber-ella. To make matters even worse, the world could explode around me and I would never hear it.

This brings me back to my nocturnal sleeping habits. Why I can sleep during the day no matter what noise is buzzing around me and why I cannot sleep at night when even the slightest noise arouses me is beyond my comprehension.

I’ve tried all the remedies and still find myself unable to get a good night’s sleep. I once tried a nice hot cup of cocoa right before going to sleep, but I ended up spilling it on myself just when I dozed, which had the effect of reawakening me and alarming my wife.

Someone suggested once I try some light reading in bed just before going to sleep. I’m not sure why I’ve never thought of this before, but much to my delight it has worked.

I can’t tell you how delighted I have been to overcome my sleeping problem. There is nothing better than waking up in the morning refreshed from proper sleep during the night.

Then, my nocturnal world came to a crashing, chirping halt.

Three weeks ago come next Thurs- day, an incident happened to reverse all of the progress I made to date. Just as I was putting my book away and snuggling under the covers for a good night’s rest, my wife bolted straight up in the bed and exclaimed, “What’s that noise?”

We listened intently and sure enough, there was a foreign noise in the night.

Whispering, for what reason I don’t know, my wife confided to me, “there is a cricket in our bedroom.” We both held our breath and listened.

Chirp … chirp … chirp.

”It sure sounds like a cricket to me,” I agreed.

Then she said those ominous words that began a nightmare of almost three weeks. “Find that cricket and get rid of it.”

I got up, as any dutiful husband would, and tried locating where the noise was coming from. After 15 minutes of diligent searching I came to the conclusion that there was no cricket in our bedroom and that the noise was coming from outside.

I carefully opened the window, so as to not disturb whatever was out there making that noise. Listening carefully it dawned on me that a new neighbor had moved in to our backyard, precisely the tree right outside our bedroom window.

Chirp … chirp … chirp. Our new neighbor turned out to be a tree frog.

I want it known right here and now that I have nothing against tree frogs. I love animals and critters of all kinds. And normally I’m a congenial, easy-to-get-along-with fellow. I harbor no animosity toward my fellow man, fellow frog, or any of God’s creatures.

I do have one exception to this rule. Every rule has its exception. What would a rule be if it didn’t?

The exception is the tree frog in the tree outside my bedroom window. I’ve tried reasoning with this creature, even issuing an ultimatum. But as to this date nothing has convinced this devilish creature to keep quiet during the night.

All night long — chirp … chirp … chirp.

I’m not sure exactly when it begins, this nocturnal serenade, but every morning at 6:11 he quits while it is still dark so I cannot locate him. I think this is a despicable trick.

For almost three weeks this nightly noise has gone continuously without a break.

Chirp … chirp … chirp.

Along about Wednesday night I was finally getting accustomed to this irritating chirp and was finally able to fall asleep. Then the despicable monster changed his tactics.

He chirp … chirp … chirped as usual and then paused. That silence was like a shotgun blast in the night and my eyes snapped open in full alert position. As suddenly as he stopped he began chirping again.

He chirped long enough to lull me into a false sense of security and just as I was about to doze off again the little rascal stopped in mid-chirp, causing me to come to full alertness again.

He now knows he has a captive audience for his chirp-chirp serenades and there is nothing I can do about it. Sleep, as I once knew it, has become but a fond memory.

As usual, I turned to the Bible for some consolation. By chance I stumbled onto Psalms 127:1-2 (KJV.)

“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.”

Although many things can keep us awake, there is one sure way to a peaceful night’s sleep … resting in the Lord who promises to give “his beloved sleep.”

Is Your City Among the Nation's 'Funniest?'

2010-02-11T01:20:00.000-08:00

If, as the saying goes, laughter is the best medicine, then the United States is one healthy nation.

Research commissioned by Shoebox, Hallmark's irreverent greeting card line, set out to find the hotbeds of humor in America. The result: Americans coast-to-coast love a good laugh.

Since California is home to movie and television studios, it's got to be the funniest state in the Union. Right? Think again. Try Rhode Island. That's right: The littlest state also is the funniest.

The survey ranked America's sense of humor through a humor score, measuring responses in three categories: consumers' humor sources, such as television sitcoms, movies or comics; responses from individuals who consider themselves "funny"; and sales of Shoebox greeting cards in American communities.

Colder Climates, Hotter Humor?

Just what promotes jocularity among Rhode Islanders is unknown, but there are a lot of laughs packed in the Ocean State's 1,214 square miles based on all three dimensions of the survey. Massachusetts came in second, followed by Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin and Nebraska.

Illinois, the seventh most humorous state, earns extra smiles by placing four of its cities on the list of the top 20 most humorous cities (Peoria, Champaign, Rockford and Chicago).

The overall No. 1 most humorous place to live? Mankato, Minn., followed by Helena, Mont., at No. 2. Mankato ties with Lansing, Mich., to top the score's Shoebox card sales dimension, while Milwaukee does the most comedy TV- and movie-watching, and residents of Cheyenne and Scotts Bluff, Wyo., are most likely to consider themselves funny.

Laughing last on the Shoebox Humor Score: the warm weather states of Hawaii, Alabama and Arkansas. And as for California, it comes in at 44th in the nation.

Shoebox keeps watch on what makes America laugh so that it can be translated into cards that help people connect. New Shoebox cards are available in Hallmark Gold Crown stores nationwide and wherever Hallmark is sold.

Internet, Which Began As Tech Wizardry, Ends Up As Ad Wizardry

2010-02-10T23:06:00.001-08:00

The Internet, which began as the inspiration and implementation of technical wizards, has apparently ended up as the playground of advertising wizards. Witness the incessant publicity about such Internet prodigies as Google Adwords. And wherever can you click that an ad doesn’t flash at you, featuring one beast or another, from a barrel of monkeys to a cobra, or glitteraty type –- all in an energetic effort to call your attention to everything from low mortgage rates to cures for erectile dysfunction.

Our own unassuming site is hardly innocent of colorful calculations intended to cajole you into opening your wallet for one irresistible offer or another.

But then that’s the way it is with most things. The begin in brilliance and end up as a business, even when it comes to hocking the volumes that embody the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race.

The descent into pecuniary hustings grows out of the inevitable need for anybody who makes or just prints anything to tell us about it so we might consider purchasing it.

The practice goes back a long way. For instance, remember the village smithy? Even he thought to hang out a sign that said something like, “Horseshoes Made, Saddles Mended.”

The most we frazzled recipients of all the advertising hootenanny can do is hope for occasions when the attempt to extract our funds is done with taste and, when inspiration allows, imagination that invites us to attend.

Independence Fever

2010-02-10T22:31:00.000-08:00

1. What event do Americans celebrate with a national holiday on July 4th?
A. George Washington’s birthday
B. King George III’s ascension to the throne of England
C. Formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence from England
D. Official signing of the Declaration of Independence

C. Formal adoption of the Declaration of Independence from England
TOPICS: The official signing actually took place over several days.

2. What country celebrates a national holiday in July in honor of an 1867 act that unified the nation?
A. United States
B. Canada
C. Russia
D. Korea

B. Canada
TOPICS: On July 1, 1867, the British North America Act unified Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia as the Dominion of Canada. The holiday was formerly known as Dominion Day but changed to Canada Day in 1982 when the Canadian Constitution was changed.

3. What country celebrates an independence day that originated 13 years and 10 days after America’s July 4th holiday?
A. Australia
B. Canada
C. England
D. France

D. France
TOPICS: Bastille Day is a national holiday in France celebrated on July 14th. It dates back to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789.

4. Every revolution worth its salt has a flag for its supporters to display. What do you call a person with an expert knowledge of flags?
A. Vexillologist
B. Flagman
C. Flatulent
D. Flagellin

A. Vexillologist
TOPICS: It doesn’t make much sense until you think about revolutions. After all, vex means to agitate and you must admit a rebel flag will do that to the powers that be.

5. In 1581, the Dutch provinces within the Union of Utrecht declared their Independence from what nation?
A. Spain
B. Belgium
C. England
D. Germany

A. Spain
TOPICS: Political dissatisfaction combined with growing Protestant support caused the movement, although this battle for Independence lasted decades and was not won easily.

6. Bernardo O’Higgins was a famous revolutionary leader for what country?
A. Chile
B. Ireland
C. United States
D. None of the above, he was made up by The QuizQueen

A. Chile
TOPICS: He was a Chilean revolutionary leader and in fact declared Chile independent of Spain in 1818, although somewhat prematurely as the last Spanish forces were not expelled until 1826. He was named director general but his rule did not outlast the Spanish as he was ousted by popular opinion in 1823.

7. Between 1821 and 1829 the people of Greece battled for their independence from what empire?
A. Catholic
B. Roman
C. Russian
D. Ottoman

D. The Ottoman Empire
TOPICS: An uprising fifty years previous had failed, but during the intervening years the empire had weakened and the mood of the world had shifted to sympathize with rebels following the American and French revolutions.

8. What country celebrates its Independence Day on September 16 in honor of a martyred priest’s failed attempt to overthrow the government?
A. Ireland
B. Italy
C. Mexico
D. Spain

B. Mexico
TOPICS: Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla led a crusade to free Mexico from the oppressive Spanish colonial government in 1811. His memory was honored after Mexico attained independence in 1824.

9. How many colonies were there at the start of the American revolution?
A. 3
B. 13
C. 23
D. 33

B. 13
TOPICS: No Americans better have missed that question…

10. What country marks August 15, 1947 as its Independence Day?
A. Guatamala
B. Australia
C. Puerto Rico
D. India

D. India
TOPICS: That day marked the end of British rule in India.

11. January 1, 1912, marks what important event in Chinese history?
A. The end of imperial rule
B. Establishment of the Republic of China
C. Establishment of the People’s Republic of China
D. Establishment of the People’s Democracy of China

C. Establishment of the People’s Republic of China
TOPICS: The new Republic of China was inaugurated on that date (under a Republican form of government) although the end of imperial rule would be acceptable (even thought that ended by all effects some time in late 1911. The People’s Republic of China (under a Communist form of government) was not created until 1949.

12. The Russian Revolution of _____ resulted in the formation of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics?
A. 1895
B. 1905
C. 1917
D. 1927

C. 1917
TOPICS: There was a Russian Revolution of 1905 that did earn some concession from the Czar but did not end the rule of Czars. That event came about in 1917. If you think that is nit-picky just be glad I didn’t ask what month (as there were both February and October revolts in that year!).

Dolphins Know Each Other By Name

2010-02-10T08:05:00.001-08:00

Dolphins, which we already know are unusually bright, especially for mammals without arms or legs, are apparently even smarter than we suspected. In a recent study of dolphin behavior, it was determined that the clever mammals can make a series of squeals and squawks that another dolphin will recognize as his or her name.

What has not been widely reported is, the dolphins, once their ability to talk was discovered, were willing to engage in a far more detailed description of their plans. It seems they have determined, in their affable way, that the oceans, as presently polluted, are incapable of providing a hospitable home for the long-term. So they've concluded they must eventually move out onto the land.

Their first efforts to excape the thrall of the ocean, which were mistaken by us as their sonar gone awry, left a number of them washed up on beaches where they, unfortunately, expired. As a result of these unfortunate experiences, they’ve learned that the adaptation will take some time.

In an effort to give evolution a boost, they’ve begun to imitate some of the more simple-minded activities we landlocked humans indulge in, among them, Saturday night poker.

So now, on any given Saturday evening, the leaping over-achievers can be seen gathered round a reef, gaming away.

As they continue to prod their genes, they expect to imitate increasingly complex human activities and eventually move onto the land as our equals, if not something even grander.

As one unusually forthcoming dolphin confided to a researcher, “Hey, if the finny ancestors of human beings could learn to live on land, what’s to stop a bunch of intelligent mammals like us from figuring it out?”

Diving For Treasure In My Own Living Room

2010-02-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

So, time arrived for replacing the living room furniture. Grandpa and I had our same sofa, loveseat, extra chair, tables, and lamps from our thirty-five years of marriage. Still leaning toward denial, we agreed blue remains our favorite color, not one person has fallen all the way to the floor in our chair yet, and parts of the lampshades still block the view of the bare GE 100 watt lightbulbs. Besides, right before the delivery men appeared at my fingerprint-smudged storm door with newly purchased pieces, I had a moment to examine our old stuff and found unexpected reminders of times gone by such as marbles, crayons, Barbie arms, Chapstick tops, and chewing gum wrappers.

After I turned one of the seat cushions on the loveseat over, I discovered a dim outline of our daughter’s first post-potty training accident. Of course, under that same cushion, as well as the others, I collected treasures I thought were forever gone. The first to catch my eye was the yellow edge peeping out from the upholstery of grandbaby’s last pacifier. How well I remembered searching house, yard, and car for that life-giving piece of equipment.

In fact, I can still imagine Grandpa heaves and sighs when he pulled at the carpet edges searching for the prize. After that, he removed the slats off every bed in the house and disassembled the complete frames. About to attack our living room furniture, he paused when our daughter emphatically assured him the baby had gone nowhere near that room. Instead, he turned his attention to the kitchen and hauled out the stove, refrigerator, and cabinets from the wall. There he found nothing more substantial than the only known copy of Great-Great Granny’s famous teacakes recipe that had landed on Plymouth Rock with the Pilgrims, which was buried among artsy dust bunnies that had self-formed, waiting to petrify into immortality. However, just before Grandpa started to peel the wallpaper in the bathroom, Grandbaby went to sleep for the first time without her snookie overhanging the corner of her lips. Her mother insisted the pacifier as no longer needed and threatened to have Grandpa committed if he continued his manic search.

Ahh, such memories. And then there are the tables. Oh, the tables. One big long scratched outline creeping toward a heart shape rested right in the middle of the coffee table. That blemish Grandbaby created proved to me, “Grandpa luvs Grandma now and forever.” Yet, since I interrupted the meant-to-be eternal sculpture, we were forced to live with the half-heart over the years. Another of Grandbaby’s canvases originated on the end table surface where she used the edge of her Fourth of July flag pole to etch a sunflower so that we would always have fresh flowers in our living room.

Before I could continue my walk down memory lane via the Sears Roebuck special deal of thirty-five years ago, the movers began replacing my lifetime of picture backgrounds, Good Housekeeping display tables, permanent grape juice rings, and foot propping coffee table with clean untarnished wooden pieces of beautifully upholstered fabric. Nostalgically, my only hope springs from an image of a great grandbaby of the future sneaking her yellow snookie through the cracks before Grandpa forgets how to handle his trusty Craftsman tools.

Crime Prevention And Horse Sense

2010-02-10T07:01:00.001-08:00

The city of New York has discovered that using horses to help police the city is a boon of such magnitude that it has decided to double the number of equine public servants in its stable.

It seems that an officer on a horse is not only more visible and imposing. He’s even more likable.

A horse is also wonderfully inexpensive to maintain. As The New York Times reports, the dutiful subordinates require “$10 a day for hay, grain, and bedding material.”

A spokesman for the family in Canada that trains the horses stated, “They can gallop through traffic, go the wrong way up one-way streets, and they’re great for community relations. I mean, you can’t exactly pet a cop car. Or a police dog, for that matter.”

Petting a friendly horse aside, discussion of their ability to speed here and there, an inevitable concomitant of law enforcement in Gotham, leads us to the contemplation of what we, as cringing pedestrians, would rather be run over by – a police car or a police horse.

We are not expert in the comparison, but if pressed, we think we’d choose the horse. While they weigh about 1,000 pounds apiece, the average patrol car weighs quite a few multiples of that.

But it seems to us the real deciding factor is choosing between being flattened by one to four tires as opposed to being stomped on by one to four hooves.

All things considered, we think that, by choosing the horse, we might expect a somewhat higher rate of survival.

Crazy student hostel

2010-02-10T06:30:00.000-08:00

The State University of Odessa. Late 1980-s. Department of Romance and Germanic Languages. And it means that only five or six rooms out of 50 were occupied by males. I should mention, that this ratio 1:10 really interfered with men’s concentration upon their studies.

I shared my room with a guy from Kiev, Ukraine, Semen Binder. The name speaks for itself. But he has now complexes about his ehtnicity and loved telling us and listening to various stories and anecdotes about Jews. By the way, one author complained of his poor fate that made him emigrate from Ukraine to Russia just to study. Bullshit! There were lots of Jews in our university, and as long as the action took place in Odessa, every inhabitant could be automatically called Jewish.

Well. In one of the rooms draught slammed the door, having left girls living there outside and their keys inside. Girls were wearing dressing gowns and slippers. Getting back into the room through the window posed a certain problem, as it was the fifth floor. Although one of the roommates had another key, she had gone to her town and was coming back only the next day. The only way out was to break the door. But how could delicate girls do that?! They turned to us for help, and we delegate Senya to them. First, he’s about 2 meters high and weights about 90 kilos. Second, his wife-to-be was living in that room.

We took our seats in the first row to be able to advise, but… we had no chance.

Senya runs and… having approached the door jumps up. The show is not for the nervous. Just imagine the body, 90 kilos, in its flight crashing with its head into the door jamb. The head rebounds like a billiard ball, while the body continues its movement, finally knocking out the door. Then everything falls to the ground: The door, Senya’s body, and what has left of his head. Anyway that’s what we were thinking at that moment.

But why does one want to laugh in situations like that?! We’re laughing like crazy, understanding though that something serious has happened. Then we hear the sound of another body falling: One of the girl fainted at the sight of blood. As she admitted later she had seen not only blood, but also brains. Whom should we bring round first?

Luckily, everything turned out all right. Senya got off cheap, with a broken head, a big bump and a slight concussion. But the funniest thing was that in 15 minutes there came the roommate who was to go home and brought the second key.

It turned out that she failed to buy a bus ticket and had to come back.

Conversation In An Age Of Confusion

2010-02-10T05:58:00.001-08:00

What do people talk about when they all believe different things and nobody is sure what the other person believes?

Then you add to that the usual courtesy that most people don’t want to offend other people, especially when it comes to the topics people disagree about with the most intensity, such as politics and religion, which all but the most foolhardy consider way off limits, at least, in what is referred to as polite conversation.

Actually, the silence of the times is far wider. In fact, the silken muffler of a feared indiscretion is wrapped around virtually every significant area of human thought, from philosophy to economics.

So what are we left with? Certain relatively safe topics, like poetry, unless you’re among poets whose egos are hair-trigger ready to fire back their own preferences vehemently. History might also be a good bet, since the overall tale has been pretty well agreed on, unless, once again, you’re with historians who may be simmering with their own disagreements.

The result? Conversation generally defaults to entrancing topics like the weather. Many spend entire evenings discussing such substitute content as one trifling entertainment or inconsequential entertainer after another. Things get really exciting when someone happens to mention how someone else may look tonight. Then there’s always the daring raconteur who’s arrayed with an evenings worth of sexual allusions.

Listening to such excited vapidity, one’s mind wanders to the legendary salons of France, at their epiphany, home, we read, to forthright conversation about the headiest topics of the time, generally centered around the new insights and old illusions of The Age of Reason.

At vagrant moments, you cannot help but ask yourself if the human race ever get to another time when it has enough beliefs in common to enliven its social occasions with conversations that really are interesting.

Come Out With Your Checkbook Open

2010-02-10T05:06:00.001-08:00

Joey, daring the spotlights that were scanning the warehouse in which he was holed up, took a quick look out the window at the crowd below, and shouted, “Never, you dirty, rotten bill collectors!” Then he ducked back to the haven beneath the sill.

He recently got more into debt than usual – in fact, he found himself surrounded by it – and he was having a restless dream about the multitude of bill collectors who were haunting his mind. Being an old movie buff with smiling memories of Jimmy Cagney, his brain had somehow cast him in a role familiar to all who feel a similar attachment to the Cagney legacy. His black suit was dusty, his white shirt was open, and he had a bottle of whisky beside him, from which he took an occasional reinforcement.

“Joey, do you hear me?” the Verizon customer service rep called through a bullhorn. “This is Verizon.”

“Whaddaya want?” Joey called back.

“This is a final disconnect notice.”

“Already?” Joey replied, and looked down at the pile of bills scattered on the floor. He started to leaf through them nervously and found the Verizon invoice. “I have your bill right here,” he yelled out the window. “It’s only fifteen days overdue. Don’t I get a month or two before you disconnect my service?”

“Not anymore, kid,” the Verizon rep shouted back. “You got a lousy payment record.”

“Yeah, so what do you want me to do about it?” Joey replied, knowing he didn’t have the funds to pay the bill at the moment. He eked out a living as a freelance journalist, and he had only recently come through a period where he had not placed his usual number of articles. Thankfully, he had finally sold a piece to Travel & Leisure.

Just then one of the cops in the crowd lifted his own bullhorn, and called, “Joey, this is Officer O’Hara. Come out with your checkbook open – or else!”

“Or else what, you dirty, stinkin’ copper?” Joey shouted back.

“I’ll tell ya what, kid,” the Verizon rep interposed. “We interrupt your outgoing service. And get this, Joey. Three days later, we interrupt your incoming calls – and that includes your DSL Internet service.”

“No, no, anything but my DSL!” Joey called. “I’m a freelance magazine writer. If I can’t email my articles, I’ll be finished. Have a little mercy, will ya? I’ve been a Verizon customer for over ten years!”

“Sorry, Joey,” the Verizon rep replied, “We gotta go by the rules.”

At that moment, the Con Ed rep reached for the bullhorn, informing the rep from Verizon, “It’s my turn. You’ve had your shot.” Then he bellowed, “Joey, do you know who this is? Con Ed.”

“What are you doin’ here?” Joey asked.

“You know as well as I do. Your electric bill is in arrears.”

“Arrears?” Joey replied. “I’ll give you arrears!” And with that, he mooned the crowd.

“Watch it, kid,” Officer O’Hara called through his bullhorn. “That’s indecent exposure. You could end up in the pen.”

“You think I care?” Joey shouted back. “At least, there I won’t have to pay for my room and board.”

Reacting to that comment, a lawyer, who had been unaccustomedly silent until now, reached for the bullhorn. “Speaking about room and board, Joey, I’m a lawyer with a message from your landlord.”

“No, no, not that, too!” Joey agonized, and, in Cagneyesque style, he made two fists and rubbed his temples with them.

“You’re over a month behind!” the lawyer reminded him, and held up an ominous, legal-size document. “I have the eviction notice right here.”

“An eviction notice?” Joey wailed.

“Yeah,” the lawyer replied. “You gotta vacate the premises!”

Then the Con Ed rep took the bullhorn back, saying, “I wasn’t finished with him.” He turned toward the warehouse in which Joey was holed up. “This is your final notice, kid. If payment in full is not received by today’s date, your service will be discontinued. That means lights out!”

“Yeah, yeah, I hear ya,” Joey called, and lied. “I put a check in the mail.”

“When did you mail it out?”

“Tuesday.”

“That’s what you said last week, Joey,” the rep shot back, holding up his account record. “I have the evidence right here.”

“But it’s February! Without electricity, I could freeze to death.”

“We regret any inconvenience.”

The lawyer reached for the bullhorn again. “About your electric bill, Joey – don’t worry.”

“Why not?”

He had by now tied the legal document around a rock and held it up. “Because you must vacate the premises no later than three days from the service of this notice.” Then he hurled the stone-bound document toward the window. “Read it and weep!”

It broke through the top of the window and crashed onto the floor. Joey shook the glass fragments off himself, crept over to the recently arrived document, and slipped it off the rock. He looked it over and mumbled to himself, “The pressure, how can I take all this pressure?” Then, with renewed resolve, he called back, “You’ll never take me alive! Never!”

The cop lifted his bullhorn. “Joey, listen to me. This is Officer O’Hara again. Be reasonable. No phone, no DLS, no lights, no heat. What kind of life is that? Do the right thing and come out with your checkbook.”

“I need time,” Joey called back. “There’s a check in the mail.”

The crowd burst into peals of laughter and commented variously, “Not that sorry tale again!”

“No, no, I mean, a check is in the mail to me.”

They laughed even louder.

“You don’t get it,” he said. “For once, I’m tellin’ the truth. You have my word on that.”

“Your word?” the lawyer asked, and laughed even more heartily. “You know what that’s worth? Not a plug nickel!”

“We’ve heard that one before, Joey – heard it too many times,” the Con Ed rep said.

“What is the source of the check?” Verizon asked.

“I sold an article to Travel & Leisure magazine. A major piece. They owe me almost three grand.”

“Did you say almost three grand?” Verizon wanted to know.

“You heard me,” Joey confirmed.

“When is the alleged check due?” the lawyer demanded.

“Any day. Accounting told me it’s in the mail.”

“In the mail?” the lawyer said, with a cynically sympathetic glance at the reps. “No dice, kid. What kind of chumps do you think we are?”

“But it’s Travel & Leisure, not some two-bit gazette. They always pay on time.” Then he reconsidered his options. “If that’s not good enough, how about this? I’ll take care of all of you out of my checking plus account.”

At the mere mention of that resource, the Citibank rep took the bullhorn. “Not so fast, Joey. This is Citibank. You already used up your checking plus.”

“All of it?” Joey asked.

“Worse, kid. You crossed the credit line. Today, we had to bounce three checks.”

“Not that! Anything but that!”

“Sorry, kid, we didn’t have a choice. Admit it. You’re at the end of your rope.”

“Just so I know, who were the checks to?”

The Citibank rep looked at Joey’s account. “The Chinese Laundry, the Korean fruit market, and Blockbuster.”

“Blockbuster? How could you do that to me? I’ll never be able to rent a DVD again.”

“Tough luck, kid. You didn’t give us any choice.”

“But I’m a good customer. I’ve been with Citibank since I came to the Big Apple.”

“Yeah, and you’ve racked up quite a history with us. I’ve got the whole sorry tale right here.”

“Come on, have a little mercy, will ya? Increase my line of credit. I’ll pay you back. You know I’m good for it.”

“Can’t be done, kid, your credit score is too low.”

Now, a matronly woman worked her way up to the front of the crowd. “Please, let me talk with him,” she pleaded

“Who are you, lady?” Officer O’Hara asked.

“I’m his mother.”

“His mother? That’s all you had to say.”

He turned to the reps. “We’re givin’ her a shot.”

The Citibank rep handed her the bullhorn, saying, “Good luck, lady.”

She turned toward the warehouse and looked up at the window. Straining to see through the glare of the spotlights that traced across the faחade, she called, “Joey?”

He looked up. “Is that you, Ma?”

“Yes, Joey.”

“Look, Mom, I’m sorry about this, but I’m in trouble, big trouble. I got in over my head. ”

“I know, son.”

“There’s only one way out for me. I know I’m a grown man and I hate to ask, but can you spot me a grand? I’ll pay it back, I promise.”

“I would if I could, son. But I don’t get my social security check until next week. How about a hundred? I can eat baloney sandwiches until then.”

“A hundred?” Joey asked. “Did you say a hundred, Ma?”

“Yes, Joey. I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do.”

“That’s all right, Ma. You keep it. I’m in too deep. You can’t help me anymore.”

“You know I love you.”

“Yeah, I know, Ma. I’m sorry I didn’t do better in life.”

Just then a mail truck drove up, with the horn honking like a bugle. The crowd turned toward it. The mailman jumped out, mail in hand, and announced, “Never fear, the mail is here!”

“Don’t tell me?” Joey called. “You got my check?”

The mailman took a telltale white envelope out of the handful of other missives and held it up proudly. “I got it right here, Joey.”

“Did you hear that, you dirty rats?” Joey called back, and stood up, dusting himself off. “I got the check.”

“Mind if I take a look?” the lawyer asked with the usual skepticism.

The mailman held the envelope up like a billboard.

The lawyer studied it, and affirmed, “It’s from Travel & Leisure all right, and, from the look of it, I’d say it’s definitely a check.”

A hubbub rippled through the crowd.

“Did you hear that?” the Verizon rep commented. “He got the check.”

“What do you know? The kid got the check,” the Citibank rep admitted.

Joey walked out of the building, a free man, and made his way to the crowd. He reached out and took the check from the mailman. “Thanks, buddy.”

“Just doin’ my job,” the mailman replied.

Then he headed for his mail truck with an irrepressible heroic swagger.

“Oh, Joey, I’m so happy for you,” his mother effused.

“Thanks, Ma,” he told her, and put his arm around her.

The lawyer, becoming instantly cordial, reached his arm around Joey. “Problem’s good as solved, kid. Just pay up and you can stay.”

“And you can count on Con Ed to provide all the electricity you need,” the rep assured him.

The Verizon rep winked, and added, “We’re your phone company. You know that, Joey. You got all the service you want, including your DSL.”

“And about your checking plus account,” the Citibank rep told him. “We’re gonna find a way to work around your credit score so we can give you an increase.”

“Really? Hey, whaddaya know? Just goes to show you what an ordinary guy like me can accomplish when he gets a check.”

He tore open the welcome envelope and looked at the little piece of paper that had just saved him from a fate worse than death. Then he kissed it and held it up for all to see.

“I’m a free man! Free of all my most pressing debts.”

With that realization, he smiled and slipped into a much more deeply satisfying sleep.

Classic Television on DVD bring late night's Carson back to fans

2010-02-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

Who could forget the smooth sound of Ed McMahon’s voice announcing with practiced timbre, “Heeeeeeeeere’s Johnny!” each night to millions of Americans as they sat up in their living rooms ready to watch another round of Johnny Carson giving his low-key monologue with the hard-to-resist deadpan delivery that we all came to know and love. Even today in the new millennium, thanks to classic TV DVDs, we are still able to see the comedic genius at work, albeit it doesn’t have to be in the wee hours of the morning.

Johnny Carson’s primary claim to fame was as America's late night king of comedy. For thirty years he hosted NBC television's Tonight Show, and because of his up-to-the-minute monologues, flippant characters and lighthearted sketches he entered more homes via the television than any other performer had ever done before. His late night set provided the launching pad for many budding stars and starlets, gave widespread publicity for hundreds of books, movies and gadgets and never failed to offer a laugh (or two or three) to the millions of viewers tuned in.

Carson was well known as getting his start in the world of magic at a very young age in his hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska. Performing feats of prestidigitation was his first love, but that was interrupted by World War II and a couple of years in the US Navy. After the war, Carson decided to attend college and chose the field of radio as his major. This proved to be a good choice for a young guy who had no idea of the impact that entertainment, particularly television, was about to have on the world at large as well has his home soil. After graduation he started a job as a radio deejay, but shortly thereafter the advent of TV began to take the country by storm.

Starting out with television at its inception must have been an exciting time. Johnny Carson got in on the true ground floor and never left until his retirement some 40 years later. What a mark he left on the industry. His first stint on the visual air was hosting an afternoon program broadcast out of Omaha, Nebraska, called The Squirrel’s Nest. He pretty much had the run of that show doing local interviews, practicing his vast array of characters by performing skits and sketches and learning how to perfect his inimitable timing in the delivery of jokes and stories. Today some of his earliest works can be seen on classic TV DVD selections where a young Carson displays the same endearing grin he charmed audiences with decades later.

Johnny Carson decided to try television in a big way when he made the decision to move to Hollywood in the 1950s. During his fledgling years in Hollywood, Carson hosted a gamut of television shows ranging from such titles as Carson’s Cellar, two different versions of the Johnny Carson Show, and two quiz shows called Earn Your Vacation and Who Do You Trust? During this time he also worked as a writer for the Red Skelton Show. All of this was merely practice for what many say is his greatest achievement - replacing the retiring Jack Paar and hosting the Tonight Show.

It was in the Fall of 1962 that Carson took the seat behind the famous desk that was to be his for the next 30 years. Even though he had a completely opposite style from Paar, Carson did not need long to win over his audience. Before a half year had passed, the Tonight Show ratings were exceeding Paar’s by almost 500,000 viewers. It was an unprecedented event when within a decade and a half on the air, the Tonight Show doubled its audience numbers. Johnny Carson had left his mark on the world and became an icon of classic television. Film critic, David Edelstein, put it so well when he wrote Carson was the “naughty genius of late night”.

Johnny Carson was an entertainer who drew viewers in night after night with his droll expressions, edgy comedic sketches and compelling, humorous interviews. His comedy was as timeless as his slim, dapper, boyish good looks. Through the emergence of classic television on DVD, Johnny Carson’s comedy is being relived by his fans and seen for the first time by a new generation.

Circus Clowns - Without Skill Laughter Turns Into Disaster

2010-02-10T03:04:00.000-08:00

We all love clowning around and playing the idiot bringing laughter to those around us but sometimes our antics seen as bit of fun can turn laughter into disaster. Circus Clowns are similar to that of the jester in many ways in how they entertained crowds of people with performances which included daft tricks and funny doings like face pulling even throwing buckets of water over fellow Circus Clowns.

As funny and hilarious as the clowns pranks are, what you have to remember is, these funny folk are well rehearsed in their profession - it takes years of training to perfect what they do. The Circus Clowns performance may entail death defying stunts which have had to be carefully supervised and pieced together because of the risks taken to claim laughs and giggles. Displays from the Circus Clown can consist of acrobatics where the clown now becomes a stunt man - for example knowing how to break a fall or tumble without causing injury to himself or to other clowns in on the act.

A travelling circus show that come to town will no doubt highlight the main event of entertainment with classic performances from the Circus Clowns. It is quite common for the clown to ask for audience involvement in their circus act where the clown gets a little naughty with the onlookers. Just the mention of the circus is coming to town is enough to start a riot among the happy customers queuing for tickets. Besides all the circus animals like the elephants - lion taming acts and dancing dogs - it is without doubt that it is the Circus Clowns that draw the crowds.

The clown entertains in many different ways, some acts may just be floor shows but others may include bareback horse riding - and it is because of this that any clowning you may have in mind for a friend or friends at a party needs to be well thought through. Clowns take risks but are trained to do so and you are not - so think twice before engaging on any dangerous mission you have planned just to get a laugh.

Fancy funny displays from Circus Clowns are no doubt hilarious just like that of their funny costumes and disguises - but take away the disguise - the ginger wig and cosmetic make up and we have a very serious person that takes their profession just as serious. Clowns are very skilled people.

If you are having a party then consider calling in the skilled to provide the entertainment for you. Warning if you are not skilled then dont take any chances because laughter can turn to disaster which is no laughing matter

Chinese Hope To Make British Car That Works

2010-02-10T02:28:00.000-08:00

Remember the MG? Worse yet, did you ever own one? Then cower in fear. The Chinese bought the MG brand name and are about to open a plant to build the malfunctioning suckers in Oklahoma.

The Nanjing Automobile Group, which acquired bankrupt MG Rover Group last year, plans to be the first Chinese automaker to open a factory in the US. The product will be called the MG TF Coupe and will be out in 2008.

Let’s hope they do a better job with the racy brand than the Brits did.

I never did own an MG, but I owned another British car, a venerable Jaguar, that I had repaired at a place that specialized in servicing MGs.

Here is my story, with one caveat. I understand now that Ford bought the Jag brand, it works better.

My old Jaguar XJ 6 sedan was a beauty, prettiest car on the road. Only trouble is the mechanical aspects brought home the idea of a hornet's nest. There were always at least five things going wrong at the same time.

To save money on the upkeep, I used to take it to place that worked on MGs instead of to the Jag dealer. I asked the guy who ran the shop, a wily Irishman, why the cars always had problems.

“Well, you know the limeys," he replied with a ornery glint in his eyes. "A bunch of socialists. So they’re on the assembly line, and they see an engine with a loose screw. So Frank looks at Harry and says, “Harry, would you look at that? A loose screw.”

And Harry says, “Why, yes, I believe you've got that right. It is a loose screw. ”

But do either one of them bend over and tighten it. No. The engine just keeps moving along the assembly line.

Then there was the day I was parked outside the shop, waiting for a space inside the busy place, so I could pull my car in for repairs, when suddenly I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Then there was a huge thump on the side of the car near the sidewalk. I turned and an otherwise normal-looking businessman in a suit had a furious look on his face and was actually kicking my car.

I rolled down the window and, in keeping with the British spirit of the car, I asked calmly, “Excuse me, sir, but why are you kicking my car?”

“I used to own one of these damn things,” he shouted, “and every time I see one I think how many problems I had with it and I get upset.” Then he quieted down, as if the confession let the hottest steam out. “I’m sorry,” he went on, “but I couldn’t help myelf.”

“That’s OK,” I said, “I might decide to kick it myself.”

Then there were the two worst problems I had with it. The drain in the dashboard for the air conditioner used to get plugged. Apparently, it was too small. Anyway, the condensation would build up, and pretty soon I could hear water sloshing in the dashboard. The real problem was, when I turned a corner, the water would rush to one side and pour out of the vent onto my lap or, worse yet, onto the lap of the person who was unfortunate enough to be on the passenger side.

The other rather inconvenient problem was, when I’d be driving down the highway at night and a car would come my way, and I’d push on the button on the floor to dim the headlights, they’d go out completely. That’s right. I’d be hurtling down the highway in pitch darkness, except for the scant illumination provided by the distant oncoming lights. So I’d quickly start slamming at the button, and, after three or four desperate shots, back on would come the headlights.

When I brought the problem to the attention of my world-weary mechanic, he referred to the name of the manufacturer of the electrical setup, as he informed me, “You now what they call the Lucas electrical system, don’t you? The prince of darkness.”

To add insult to injury, I went to the automobile show at the old New York Collesum one year. When I saw the Jag on display, I went up to the dealer in attendance and asked, "Why can’t they make a Jaguar that works right?”

He smiled slyly and gestured toward the sleek, gleaming grey sedan, and just said, “But look at it.”

Yep, if you liked the design, you were expected to put up with the malfunctions.

Last, when the time came that I could no longer stand the wreck, primarily because the radiator wouldn’t stop leaking, I looked in the yellow pages for the places that buy used cars. I saw an ad that said "2000 Cars Wanted."

I called. The guy who answered was very receptive till he asked, “What kind of car do you have?”

“A Jaguar,” I confessed.

“Oh," he said, his voice growing recessive, “that’s the only car we don’t take.”

So I loaded the radiator of the embarrassingly rejected beast up with fresh water and drove it to the nearest dealer in American cars, swearing I’d never buy another import. Fortunately, I arrived before the thing started to smoke and managed to make a halfway decent deal.

I drove out in a new American car. While it didn't turn out to be a flawless mechancial achievement, either, it was at least a hundred times better than the Jag.

Obviously, this article strayed from MGs, but the car was cut from the same carelesss cloth as the Jag. Both brands help account for why, in these sleekly robotic times of exact Japanese assembly, English cars now own even less of the road than Detroit’s.

Chicken Rearing 101

2010-02-10T01:58:00.001-08:00

Chick: A hatchling

Capon: A castrated male used for meat. (How much could that yield?)

Pullet: A female chicken under one year old.

Hen: A female chicken over one year of age

Rooster: A male chicken over one year of age.

Raising Chickens for the first time can be intimidating. When I first called the Feed Shop, I was trying to sound like a pro. I asked, “Do you sell pullets?” “Yes”, the man replied. “Are they all females?” It’s been an uphill battle ever since.

Pullet parenthood is an much of an adventure as child rearing, only with more feces per pound of body weight. However, I’ve been reading quite a bit on poultry matters. (Yes, my coolness just turned over in its grave.) So if I am correct and I am quite certain I am not, here is how chicken rearin’ goes.

Go to your local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Don’t forget the water dispensers. Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always advised. I have yet to see a metal one.

Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood shavings and promptly dangle a glowing heat lamp just above them. Note to self: Update homeowner’s policy.

For the next several weeks feed them 3 lbs of food per day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t per day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not just one wing total. If clipping is done late chicks will nest in your toilet. This is a bad thing.

Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, poop and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile. Restrain it with one hand. Stretch the wing out with your second hand. Clip off 50% of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand.

As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree per day. No, this is not actually possible. That’s not my point. You start at 100 degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree per day until your bedroom is a minimum of 3 degrees cooler than the spring blizzard outside your window.

Once you have frozen your ear to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they can be moved outside to the coop. I estimate the initial closet rearing stage to have taken five years.

Before the move, experience the Joy of Wing Clipping one more time. Feather clipping never works the first time. No one knows why. Still, after all the hassle you probably don’t want them to fly the coop in under sixty seconds. Of course, if you’re like me, by this time you may be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a stack of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate.

Regarding habitat construction: Hen houses and chicken coops are a competitive art form. There are a myriad of web sites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Chateaus to Bird Bordellos. The meticulous craftsmanship makes my own home look like – well – like a chicken coop.

Always fashionable, I went with a shabby chic motif for my coop. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of stolen milk crates affixed to the wall by anything in arms reach. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Quite frankly, my first attempt at a coop looks like Dr. Seuss dropped a hit of acid, blasted some Jefferson Starship and rolled around on the wire with every Who in Whoville. I think I’ll keep it.

Inferior design aside, I ultimately learned a thing or two. The nesting boxes are supposed to be up off the ground. That is correct. For those of you keeping score you just spent two weeks cutting back the birds flight feathers only to hang their houses in the sky. It’s just sick.

Higher than the nest boxes, you are to build a roost. This is where the birds crap at night so they do not crap on your breakfast eggs. Of course the roost is usually OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don’t use those perforated plastic milk crates.

For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house. Then on cooler nights an animal with a brain the size of an bulimic toe nail clipping will make the conscious decision to forgo your nest boxes, bypass the instinctual roost and leap into a tanning bed.

And finally there is the feed regime. I asked several experts and read up on feeding as well. Make sure to give your chickens, starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing suggested on the internet, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never ever switch in-between.

I may not be Queen of the Coop yet, but I’m working on it. Though I am still a zoologist and I still know Birds 101. Here are two myths I can help with. First, you do not need a rooster to get eggs. Most folk, especially those who have never owned chickens, will advise you on chickens. Each will insist you need a rooster for a while to do his manly duties, then you can slip him in the pot. As appealing as this concept is, your pot is a separate issue.

Roosters are only needed to make fertile eggs. Hens are all that is needed to make breakfast eggs. Fertile eggs are just peachy if raising chicks was such a joy the first time you want to repeat the whole freakin’ process. In addition there is always the risk of breaking a fertilized egg open and finding a 50% formed chick fetus hitting your hot skillet. Yum! Years of therapy will follow.

To keep it straight in your mind consider this: You are going about your life. Suddenly massive balls of calcium start stacking up inside your abdomen. Are you going to hold on to them just because you have not had sex lately?

The second bird myth is totally unrelated so I thought I would mention it. Penguins occur in nature from the Equator on Southward. That is down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they do not hang out with Polar Bears who live in the Arctic. No, you did not see them when you worked in Alaska, in the Arctic. Those were puffins. No, I am not sorry you look stupid to all those folks you told penguin tales to.

Yes, some penguin species even reside on the Galapagos Islands at the equator (Cold weather would kill them), not floating around on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I realize my eggs are not all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded people who insist you need a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears won’t loose their food supply drove me crazy!

Cell Phones and the Dentist

2010-02-10T01:25:00.000-08:00

Don't you just hate people who talk on their cell phones while they drive? Blindly babbling away, not paying attention to the road, endangering everyone nearby … so inconsiderate.

Anyway, today while I was chatting on the phone and driving to the dentist, I got a tiny bit distracted and turned onto the wrong road … twice. But I cleverly figured out a shortcut back to where I belonged and pulled into the parking lot right on time. Unfortunately, it was the parking lot at my doctor's office, not my dentist's.

Now, I've always been a little reluctant to go to the dentist. When I was young, they used to lie to me to get me there. Of course once I knew what was happening I would throw a crying fit — in the car on the way to the dentist, in the elevator on the way up to the office, in the waiting room, in the dentist's chair throughout the entire visit, in the office while my mother paid, in the elevator on the way down, in the car on the way home, and once again when my father came home that night just to be sure everyone knew how I felt about it.

My mother was afraid of the dentist. And she shared that fear and its effects with her children. She picked our dentist based solely on the fact that he would give her lots of Novocain. Lots of Novocain. Much Novocain. Beyond that, she never really bothered about the skills-as-a-dentist thing.

My own theory is that dentistry was invented by Beelzebub, based largely on the fact that our dentist looked exactly the way I imagined a Devil's minion would look. And, oh, by the way, when we were finally done and wanted nothing more than to run as fast and as far as possible, he would smile at us kids, with his coke-bottle-thick glasses making him look popeyed, and hand us each a lollipop. Maybe not the best dentist, but surely a clever businessman lining up return customers.

Today, even after better dentists have shown me that there may possibly be some redeeming value in dental care, I still get a bit unsettled before an appointment. Therefore, I have two things to say about the cell phone thing:

1) It might have been the fact of going to the dentist that distracted me and not the cell phone. I think, maybe, my subconscious was trying to get me to go to the wrong place and miss my appointment completely. Self-protection is a very powerful instinct in times of peril. That could explain it.

2) If it was the cell phone use, I think I deserve an exemption from condemnation because, after all, I was on my way to the dentist. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to talk again when I came out. One little slip of the drill and, oops. Or I could have choked on one of the forty appliances they had crammed into my mouth just before asking me how I was doing.

Either way, I feel completely justified in continuing to judge others if they use a cell phone while driving. Unless, of course, I learn that they were on their way to the dentist.

By Plane or By Car; On-Screen Entertainment Travels With You

2010-02-10T00:55:00.000-08:00

Entertainment and travel are more integrated today than ever before. In fact, two airlines, JetBlue and Song, are using in-flight entertainment as a top selling point with consumers.

JetBlue was the first carrier to debut up to 24 channels of live DirecTV programming in-flight in 2000 and remains the only carrier offering satellite television free at every seat.

JetBlue also plans to offer customers first-run movies, sports and news programming, plus other original entertainment developed by Fox.

These features arrive just as Song Airlines is announcing the addition of pay-per-view to its existing live television on flights.

For those not traveling by plane, there's good news: On-screen entertainment is rapidly expanding to automobiles. According to J.D. Power & Associates, 28 percent of new 2003 full-size sport utility vehicles were equipped with a passenger entertainment system, and 46 percent of consumers are interested in adding rear-seat entertainment to their next car.

Because satellite's broad coverage area reaches not only planes but also automobiles in motion throughout the United States, live satellite television is a new, fast-growing trend in vehicle entertainment. It's made possible by companies like Rhode Island-based KVH Industries.

KVH Industries has created the first in-motion satellite television system, called the TracVision A5, especially for use in passenger vehicles. The system contains a rugged, low-profile antenna and a compact satellite receiver.

The TracVision A5 system can support multiple video screens and receivers and is designed to be a part of a versatile entertainment system that can include DVD players, VCRs and console game systems. It is compatible with DirecTV service; KVH plans to also offer a Dish Network-compatible receiver in the future.

The system is available at more than 800 U.S. retail locations and costs around $2,295. The monthly satellite service fee varies depending on the package selected but is similar to home programming.

Black Humor, College Humor, Blond Jokes, funny pictures

2010-02-10T00:24:00.001-08:00

I have had over the years (48 of them) a lot of time to review and participate in many different styles of humor and have studied their various effects on the human psyche. I will convey many of my observations, thoughts and ramblings where humor is involved. Over the next few months I will write on the following topics Cold Humor, Fat Humor, Bad Humor, Tasteless Humor and others.

Black Humor: This is the type of stuff that doesn’t quite make the Darwin’s but leaves the participant alive. In my findings, if it doesn’t kill you, it’s funny. Let me elaborate; as you have no doubt seen some of the horrendous accidents portrayed in the evening news, each of which I think to myself what were they thinking about. It’s clear to me that they aren’t thinking about what they are doing. Let me tell you of one such case I heard several years ago. Several guys were sitting around on the back porch, drinking beer as sometimes guys will do. They were also shooting 22’s at anything that moved. They had been doing so for some time as the local wildlife lay strewn about the place along with the empty beer cans when one of the drunken participants spotted a skunk. Now if you know anything about skunks you know that they are not the perfect prey; they shoot back and although a direct hit by the skunk will not kill, it does take awhile to explain to your significant other the events of your day. I digress; back to the story. The skunk avoided the first 100 to 200 rounds fired by the drunken lot and eventually found haven within a culvert placed in the ground at some angle enabling the skunk to travel back and down in the ground out of the reach of the drunken group. One of the drunkards decided to get the skunk to voluntarily leave his haven by smoking him out. So the drunkards start stuffing the culvert with dried grass and newspaper and lit it afire. The skunk however did not relinquish his hiding space, he stayed in the culvert. The drunkards then thought that because of the angle of the culvert that the smoke had likely not reached the skunk so they decided to make another attempt by pouring gasoline into the culvert. They gathered up the 5 gallon gas can and poured the entire contents into the culvert. Having the gas poured in they attempted to ignite the gas by throwing lit matches into the culvert after the gasoline. The lit matches would burn out before igniting the gas and so one of the drunkards, specifically the one that this black humor is written about, decided the best method of igniting the gasoline would be to climb into the culvert prior to igniting the match, so down he goes. At last he gets the gasoline ignited and what happens next is a thing of beauty. I will paraphrase the newswoman’s interview with witnesses. “He came out of that culvert like he was shot from a cannon, with his hair on fire, leaving a smoke trail that went from the culvert, over the back porch the drunkards had been enjoying all afternoon into the front yard where he lay, clothing smoldering, hair gone and burnt to second and third degree burns about his face and upper torso.” Now that’s funny!

If you would like to see other funny things I have accumulated over those 48 years go to my website and check them out http://www.TheDailyQuip.com/ and please have a humorous day, it’s the only way your going to make it out sane…

Beginners Guide To The Internet

2010-02-09T23:53:00.000-08:00

Recent studies have shown that there are now well over one hundred websites available on the computernet. This puts it second only to ceefax as a useful source of information. Monkey Empire has rounded up the best of these sites, ones which enhance the life of real people like you, not the spotty bearded freaks that you picked on at school for being computerboys or nerdnspellgirls, no real people who go out and drink alcoholic sugar liquid in crowded town bars and watch soap operas and need to have their behaviour validated by weekly publications littering the news stands like so much used bog-roll. Well this is a virtual equivalent of those c-list simpering shitfests so let me validate your fucking behaviour, that's right I'll tell you where to go and what to fucking do because it will keep you the fuck away from me so that I can continue my work in peace. And when my work is done holy dong you'll know about it. I'll be the god damn mayor of London. Anyway here are the top 5:

Google Founded in 1923 the Google Corporation originally produced radiator hoses and casino chips before entering the lucrative internet search market in 1997. Google is like a thesaurus, simply type in words and it will give you a list of related words from inside your computer and beyond. People who are good at Google (known as Hardcore Googlists) have even discovered that some of these words open up whole new websites, and sometimes even pictures. Google is now so widespread that none other than Leonard Nimoy was once overheard to say "you can find anything on google you really can, may the force be with you".

eBay eBay shot to fame in 1999 when that chick that is really a witch in Buffy the Vampire Slayer managed to buy a special kettle that contained a genie that would save the world from the online auction site. Whilst you yourself may not be so lucky you will be able to get a bargain on the dvd of that very same episode, or maybe some new brasswork for your front door, or a ninja turtle action figure that you have never forgiven your parents for not buying for you when you were 12 years old. Adventurous types may even wish to try selling items that they no longer have use for. eBay is now so widespread that none other than Leonard Nimoy was once overheard to say "you can find anything on eBay you really can, may the force be with you".

The BBCThe Beeb, good old Auntie, The British Broadcasting Corporation, no longer the stuffy 2 channel black and white tv monolith that doesn't start until midday and finishes with the national anthem at teatime oh no the Beeb has been forced to get with the times and after collecting your money and throwing it in a big pile for approximately 60 years when the internet bubble came bouncing along the BBC was ready. It is now estimated that 87% of all internet sites are part of the BBC, this is in addition to their 167 digital TV channels, 2 radio stations and their Sandwich Toaster fast food chain. You give them money so that a bunch of London-blinkered new media tosspots can tell you what to do and you wouldn't have it any other way. The BBC is now so widespread that none other than Leonard Nimoy was once overheard to say "the BBC puts food on my table, it really does, may the force be with you".

MySpaceThe fact that you've made it this far down a Beginners Guide probably means you think that making a wonderful informative website such as this one is beyond your meagre skills. We don't hold that against you, you probably know more about footy or booking holidays in high street travel agents than us, takes all sorts doesn't it really. Well not any more, MySpace is the great leveller, the democratisation of the internet, now anyone can stick their photo online and surround it with flickering animated hearts floating across a purple background with yellow text talking about how you like to go out, watch telly and listen to music. Or maybe you are part of a subculture and you want your page to feature crunchy guitar music on a black background with pictures of you heavily made up to look like a vampire porn-star. Actually though MySpace is a game, you see other MySpace users can make virtual friends and then their picture appears under the "friends" list on your page. The game is to get your face on as many MySpace pages as possible, the one with the most displayed photos at the end of space and time wins and gets to become a baron of the afterlife. So don't get left behind, get on MySpace, get flirting and ego massaging and exchanging naked pictures with people who's age you can't be sure about or you might regret it for eternity and then some. MySpace is now so widespread that none other than Leonard Nimoy was once overheard to say "I've got 28 friends already I really have, may the force be with you".

Bat Ejection Techniques

2010-02-09T23:22:00.000-08:00

People lie! They lie about the bliss of rural relocation. They lie about the size of fish they catch. They lie about being there for you. But, mostly, they lie about bats! Such a silly thing, yet no one can admit the ugly truth. “Bats only come into your house. It never happens to me,” friends say. Liars!

Evidence to the contrary exists. Bat visitations have occurred regularly in all three of my country homes. Each was a different style house, in a different town with different surroundings. No way am I the only person this is happening to! I’ll believe the annual summer bat inundation isn’t a part of normal life when butter is fat free and Smucky’s Electric gets back to me with that wiring estimate they promised just prior to the Mammoth die off.

One of my sisters in particular gets a kick out of telling people I am a witch attracting bats to my home like anorexics migrating to the Cannes Film Festival. She does it to be ornery – a competitive sport in my family. Of course, I could get even by pointing out right here in my very public essay that she is my OLDER sister by a DECADE. However, I am too peaceable and well centered for such adolescent behavior. Besides, you are here to learn another fine country skill – the Bat Ejection Technique (BET).

Lesson 1 – Why BET

Rural dwellers should all master BETs. Realtors will never admit to the Coloptera inundation plaguing the West. Property values would tumble! Amidst all this denial, a seamy cover-up has formed. Copies of Bat Removal for Dummies are burned at country BBQs and members of the Society of the Dead Elk deliver bat traps to farms under cover of darkness.

As my town’s resident City Idiot, I chose to break ranks. If Cidiots are not taught to deal properly with winged rodentia, both will suffer. Bats will be ‘baseballed’ into walls with brooms. If not, Cidiot homes will overflow with wiggling blankets of screeching critters. Folks will be driven back to the burbs in droves. Quite selfishly - I need newbies to stay in the country. Please don’t leave me alone out here! Take notes.

Lesson 2 - History of the BET

For whatever reasons bats enter homes in pairs. My hypothesis is; one holds the dog door open while the other flies through and vise versa. Attempts to document this behavior have been hampered by the presence of innumerable dogs kissing my eyes shut when I stake out the laundry room floor. Nonetheless, like bats to Noah’s ark, they arrive by twos.

Throughout history Novice Bat Ejectors dispelled unwanted intruders with the pacifistic Zero Interference Technique (ZIT). For a true ZIT open all windows and doors and cower on the floor waiting for the bats to fly back out. I researched the effectiveness of this method at my first country home. There are three problems with this technique:

Bats never leave as easily as they enter. A person could learn Arabic before the ZIT clears matters up.

Heat leaves houses quite quickly resulting in cold ZITs.

Bats tend to turn up in the middle of the night. Sleep deprivation is a direct side effect of ZITs.

Lesson 3 – Modernization

Athletic newbies frequently combine the open window/door approach of a ZIT with a more proactive approach. They jump around with a blanket in an attempt to herd bats outside. This is the Comforter Herding Ejection Technique (CHET). A good CHET take two people. Even then CHETs are hard.

Bats do not know they shouldn’t fly around the blanket.

The technique is rendered totally ineffective when your husband, who is suppose to hold the opposite side of the blanket, does a “stop, drop and roll” every time he spots a bat from thirty yards away.

At night neighbors can see you, but not the bat. So there you are running amuck in your PJs. The doors and windows are wide open as you spiraling over furniture with your flag-like fabric in tow. Meanwhile your underwear-clad man is having what is apparently some version of repeating epileptic seizures. And you, you cold-hearted bitch, you just keep on dancing.

Lesson 4 – BET Evolution

Bat invasion number three of year number two was a turning point for me. For some bizarre reason I was washing the morning dishes. We must have been out of coffee. Obviously I was not quick-witted enough to get out of dish duty. Suddenly, I heard the high-pitched chatter of a bat straight over my head.

The space over my cabinets is where all my gigantic jelly-making kettles are poised. Grabbing the step stool, I hovered near and listened. Something was in my stoneware – dark, like a cave, the crafty little bugger. Please, don’t let it get airborne. I have to go to town this morning, I thought. There was no time for the traditional CHET dance.

My cerebral light bulb clicked on. Hey, It’s easier to catch bats when they aren’t moving. A Nobel Prize for would be mine. Apparently washing dishes has some net value after all. I slid a plate over the stoneware rim and took my captive out side.

Plate removed, an upside-down shake and plop. The bat was on the ground. I watched for a moment making sure my son’s devil cat did not turn up. Finally, the bat orientated itself and flew off with chatter. Dam, I’m good, I mused. Then I turned and took two steps towards the door. Gasp! Leap! Curse!

Something bad hit my bare foot. Reflexes took over. I went for a field goal. Another bat had been in the jar. Curse! Hebbie Jebies! Will I never learn? Twos, always twos! Scratches, tiny claws on my foot - it was all to early. First dishes, then this.

The traumatized bat landed several feet away. It took a good five minutes before the winged menace recovered enough to fly off. Headed for town, I left a note for my son. “Finish the dishes.”

Lesson 5 – BET Mastery

I learned two things that morning. First, generic dish soap sucks. Second, a motionless bat is the best bat to catch. Chasing them in flight is a fool’s game. In retrospect Samuel, my Great Pyrenees, had attempted to point this out earlier that spring.

Hearing one of the midnight riots, I ordered all my dogs out. There was no need to look for the cause. I knew by then what the combination of barking and a synchronized chase meant at 1 a.m. Ho hum, more bats in the house. The other dogs complied. Sam however stood there looking sleepy, stubborn, sad and guilty.

Anyone who owns a Pyrenees knows this is their natural state. Just as I demanded, “Samuel, go!” I spotted the diminutive little wing sticking out from under his massive front paw. Here Mom, a motionless bat is the best bat to catch. He is a genius!

BET Summary

Grab a teacup or the aquarium net and a saucer

Wait for a landing

Cup/net over the Bat

Saucer or magazine carefully slid under

Out the door it goes

Hee Haw! With practice you’ll be back in bed before the underwear-clad epileptic knows your gone. You can BET on it

Basketball For Short People: Basket To Be Lowered

2010-02-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

ince the 1950s, when short but fast players had a chance of making it onto a professional court – such as the legendary Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics, known for startling innovations like dribbling and passing behind the back – the sport has been dominated by ever taller athletes, starting with the arrival of Wilt, The Stilt, Chamberlain.

Now, The National Basketball Association has come to realize that the trend to tall has demoralized people of who fall within the usual range of human height and that it has positively devastated short people.

Compared to the slam-dunking ways of the seven footers, these distressed athletes just can’t get people interested in watching them hoop it up. As a result, interest in the game as a participation sport has waned, and the association is concerned that, as fewer people work up their excitement about playing it, fewer of them will pay to see it.

In an effort to return basketball to the widely poplar place it held in the minds and hearts of the American public before it became the exclusive province of players whose mothers are suspected of stretching them as infants, the association is considering legitimizing a court just for people of average height, with a special accommodation for shorter people. The basic plan calls for the basket to be lowered by one foot for players from 5’ 6” to 6’ 6” and two feet for people who are even shorter but still imagine slam-dunking the ball and hanging from the hoop in a celebratory manner.

When the new rules go into effect, virtually everyone will finally be able to play the game in as dramatic a fashion as today’s seven footers.

For now the plan calls for limiting the innovation to amateur players, but the association confides that if fans once again take an interest in watching average-size people play the game, there is the potential to establish an entire new league, made up of speed merchants who are only eye-high to a current pro’s elbows.

Baby Boomers Moderate Exercise; Notice Scarcity of Seniors In Marathons

2010-02-09T22:21:00.000-08:00

Baby boomers, who exercise more than any generation before them, have been flocking to orthopedic surgeons to tend to their aching tendons and joints.

As news of the growing need for surgical intervention spread, a number of boomers have found the willpower to moderate the intensity of their workout routines.

Personal experience has also confirmed the wisdom of moderation. For example, one inveterate marathoner was shocked by the surprising perception that there were not a lot of senior citizens dashing across the finish line in the New York Marathon.

He began to wonder if at a certain age less strenuous activity might actually be, not only the better part of healthcare, but all that’s generally possible. He also began to ask himself if seniors who persisted in intense physical challenges like the marathon were absent at or near the finish line because they literally dropped by the wayside. He dismissed that possibility, because it really brought into question his hope for up-to-the-last-minute youth.

He shared the possible advisability of moderation with a fellow boomer, who happened to be his girlfriend. She agreed to take it into consideration but required proof of the astonishing comeuppance. So, while working out at her gym, she looked around and noticed, to her amazement, that there were not a lot of seniors sweating along with her, especially on the running track and in the weight room.

Most unsettling of all, she noticed that a confounded lot of the runners looked younger than she did.

She dared to break the stunning revelation to a friend, who told her boyfriend. Since hot news has a way of making it through the boomer vine, soon the bewildered generation was abuzz with the invitation to moderation.

Being serious about their health, many have researched the bone-crushing consequences of persistent over-exercise and have discovered that that they really should take it a little easy on themselves, especially since many of them are flirting with age 60. It seems that if they can persuade themselves of the wisdom at least some moderation they will go a long way toward preserving their knees, ankles, and assorted joints, tendons, and muscles. They could also save on visits to the surgeon.

As expected, however, hard-line boomers are adopting an over-exercise-until-you-drop attitude.

As one recalcitrant member of the group said, “Hey, it’s like exercising came with the genes. I can’t change my routine anymore than I can change my feet, which wake up every morning, ready to run for miles.”

This group is so determined they plan to exercise excessively, even if it means hobbling into old age due to self-inflicted hobbling. As another member of the over-exercise or you’re over-the-hill group stated, ”Look, if I’m going to need a knee replacement or two, I might as well be one of the first in my generation to get one.”

An Efficient Commute

2010-02-09T11:05:00.000-08:00

This morning, as usual, I was pressed for time. I had to be to my "9 to 5" especially early and I woke up late. Instead of rushing around more than I already had been, I thought I would take the time to finish my "getting ready for work rituals" in the car. After all, I have seen countless others in my rearview mirror and beside me in their cars do the same, so why can't I?

As I grabbed my things, I raced out to the car and started on the 32-minute commute to work. As I was brushing my teeth, I realized, I had no place to spit out the toothpaste foam that accumulated in my mouth. So, I rolled down the window and masterfully drooled down the inside of my car. Crest and saliva dripped down the inside of my car door into the power lock and window switches. At least my car has a minty fresh scent to it. I took a swig of orange juice and remembered what vomit tasted like.

Not having a lot of time to worry about my toothbrushing experience, I figured I should do my hair next. One of the nice things about owning a Pontiac Vibe is the 110 Volt AC plug built into the car. Perfect for my wife's hair dryer. Red lights were spaced perfectly to allow me to safely dry my hair. I wasn't about to dry my hair with a towel in the car. That would be just dangerous. The hair paste and styling of my messy spiky hair went off without a hitch.

The final thing on my list to do before work is shave. Now, I won't really go into a lot of detail, but I will say that this was the hardest task of my commute. I made it to work with a little time to spare and the only evidence that I was really hurried this morning was a hairdryer on the passenger seat, dried drool on the driver's side door and shaving cream with beard stubble on the floor mats.

A Revised History Of Pasta

2010-02-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

While Marco Polo, a Venetian, is generally given credit for discovering noodles in China, recent research suggests that Italian pasta in all its glorious varieties was actually discovered in Rome nearly a century earlier, and quite by accident, by a remarkably unlikely epicurean named Julius Amplonius, with the able assistance of an invading barbarian named Klunk, The Great.

The momentous event occurred one afternoon when this portly patrician was dining at a chic restaurant just off the Roman Forum. He was savoring a sip of red wine from Tuscany when a group of alarmed citizens came running by, screeching, “The barbarians are coming! The barbarians are coming!”

Amplonius had witnessed their arrival before, and by now he had made peace with the ancient wisdom, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may be out of food and wine.” It was by such Stoicism that the wise were able to witness the destruction of the Roman Empire while preserving a somewhat peaceful life. So, with a knowing smile, Julius simply raised his glass toward the fleeing crowd.

“What are you going to do, Julie, just sit there and eat?” a citizen who knew him quite well asked.

“Why not?” he replied. “I’m thirsty. Not to mention hungry.” With that, he indulged in another taste of the Tuscan red.

“You’re crazy!” a speeding friend called. “Run, Julie! Run!”

Just then a waitress who doubled as a temptress arrived with Julie’s lunch, which might be described as a plate of proto-pasta. It consisted of a flat, round piece of dough that hung just a bit over the margins of the plate. It had a baked tomato sitting in the middle of it, with a single chunk of parmesan cheese next to it, and around both was a wreath of fragrant basil leaves.

“Enjoy your plano,” she said, putting down the dish, for that is the name the proto-pasta was known by.

“Thank you, gorgeous,” Julius told her, and gave her a pinch.

“Oh, you silly man,” she replied, and, looking about, seemed nervous. “Can you do me a favor, love, and close out your bill now?”

“No problem, you sex kitten,” he said, and reached for his purse. He took out enough Roman coinage to include a generous tip. “Keep the change,” he told her, and pursed his lips expectantly.

“Thank you, sweetie,” she said, and gave him a luscious but ever-so-brief kiss. Then she hurried off after the other fleeing citizens.

Julius calmly picked up a knife and fork and began to eat his proto-pasta.

Just as he cut off and savored his first bite, in rushed a huge, fur-covered barbarian, with a leather shield and the fateful sword with which he would help Julius discover pasta in many of the varieties we enjoy to this day, from lasagna to angel hair.

“Uh!” he grunted, and raised his sword.

Julius continued to dine. “Uh! Uh!” the barbarian raged, for the sound “uh” comprised much of the everyday range of his proto-language. To attract the attention of the unperturbed diner, he swung his sword in a circle and just happened to whack off the head of a statue of the great Augustus. It crashed to the marble floor.

Julius couldn’t help but notice the decapitation and, placing a leaf of basil on his tongue, said, “That wasn’t very nice. I kind of liked that statue.”

The barbarian could not, of course, understand a word. In an effort to establish a bit of good will, at least long enough to allow him to finish his meal, Julius held up his bottle of wine. “Like some vino?”

“Huh-Uh!” the barbarian managed to say.

“Suit yourself,” Julie told him. “Got a name?”

The barbarian stared at him without comprehension.

“Name?” Julius repeated, pointing to himself and then at the barbarian to illustrate the point of his question.

“Klunk,” the barbarian said.

“I might have guessed,” Julius commented.

“Klunk, The Great,” the barbarian continued, with some intellectual effort.

“Good for you,” Julius told him, and put out his hand. “I’m Julius, The Roman, also known as Julie, The Ample. Have a seat.”

“Huh-uh! I am conqueror – conqueror of Rome!” Klunk managed to say.

“Good for you!” Julie told him, and couldn’t resist asking the most challenging question. “Are you sure you can afford the upkeep? It’s an expensive city to maintain.”

“What is upkeep?” Klunk wanted to know.

“You’ll find out,” Julius advised him. “Now, come on. Have a seat. You’ve had a hard day.” Then he pointed to his dish and indicated a reluctant willingness to share some of his food. “And enjoy some plano.”

Klunk looked down at the plate, and asked, “What is plano?”

“You don't know?” Julie inquired. “Where have you been?”

“Other side of the Alps,” Klunk managed to get out.

“Oh, no wonder,” Julie replied, and decided to educate the deprived soul. “See. This is a plate. Ever hear of a plate?”

“Plate?”

“Instead of eating off the table, or the ground, you eat off of a plate.”

“Uh,” Klunk said, with apparent understanding.

“Now, on the plate we put a flat piece of boiled dough, called plano,” Julius continued, lifting up the edge with his fork to demonstrate. “Then we put all kinds of goodies on top of it. In this case, a tomato, a piece of cheese, and basil leaves.”

“Uh-huh.” Klunk acknowledged.

“All you do is take a knife and fork,” Julius explained, picking the utensils up slowly, so Klunk wouldn’t mistake his intentions and send his head rolling the way of the great Augustus’s marble head. “Then you cut off a piece.” He went through the process and took a bite. “Ah, delicious! Sure you won’t have any?”

“Uh-huh,” Klunk said, holding his ground, and repeated with some effort, “Plano.”

“Excellent!” Julius exclaimed. “You'll be a true Roman in no time!”

“Klunk – a Roman?” the barbarian responded, visibly insulted, and raised his sword high above Julius. Then, unexpectedly, he brought the sword down on the plate and cut the plano right in half. “Now, what do you call it?” he was somehow able to ask.

Julius looked down at the two half-moons, and said, “I think I’ll call that one big agnolotti.” Then he took another sip of wine and smiled at Klunk.

Incensed at his inability to frighten Julius, he raised his sword again and whacked the plate three or four times. “What do you call it now?”

Julius examined it, and said, “This I’ll call lasagne.” With that, he took a bite and savored it.

Now furious, Klunk attacked the plate repeatedly, and demanded, “What do you call it now?”

Julius, despite his indifference to fate, was a bit shaken by all the clatter, and said, “I will name it linguine.”

Needless to say, Klunk swung his sword at the plate with an unprecedented volley of strokes. “What is it now?”

Julius examined the mishmash on his plate. By now, the plano was cut into thin strips, the tomato was diced, and the cheese was grated. After some deliberation, Julius announced, “You made what I will call spaghetti.” Still remaining remarkably calm, at least on the exterior, Julius took his fork and wound some spaghetti around it. Then he took a bite. “Delicious! And fun, too,” he told Klunk.

Enraged at his seemingly imperturbable true Roman, the barbarian now slashed at the contents of the plate until his arms were a veritable blur. Then, short of breath, he sighed, “Tell me what you name that.”

Julius looked closely at the mayhem in his plate. Now, the pasta was as thin as he could imagine it, and the tomato sauce, cheese, and basil were all mixed together. “It is so thin I think I will name it angel hair.”

Klunk became unexpectedly curious and bent toward Julius. “Angel hair? What for? You no angel. You fat Roman.”

Considering how finely the plano was now sliced, Julius could not imagine how much longer it could invite the attentions of Klunk and imagined that his own neck might well be the next object of the barbarian’s fury. Ever the clever Roman, he noticed that, as a result of Klunk’s exertion, his tummy was showing a bit.

Julie was, of course, also aware of the legendary weakness of the barbarian shield, as opposed to the metal shield that accounted for much of the impenetrability of the storied Roman phalanx.

So he pretended to move his knife toward the last remaining decent-size piece of tomato, saying, “No, my friend, I am not an angel.” With that, he quickly stabbed the somewhat exhausted Klunk, and added, “But you’re about to become one.”

Klunk looked down at his sudden, fatal wound with shock and fell to the ground with a thud. His head knocked the table and, if Julius’s hands weren’t so quick, the movement would have upset his glass of wine.

Leaning back and enjoying a sip, he said, “I think I’m gonna call all these things I discovered after my beautiful girlfriend, Pastina.” Then he rolled a bit on his fork and indulged in another mouthful, musing, “I just love Pastina.”

All the names Julius invented that day, with the undoubted help of the ill-fated barbarian Klunk, have come down through the centuries without alteration, except for the categorical appellation, which usage would eventually abbreviate to the more familiar word “pasta.”

A Page From Betty Crocker’s Cookbook

2010-02-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

Recently, while sitting in my chair drinking the last of my breakfast coffee, a thought staggered into my mind. I must confess most thoughts are quite lonely once they enter my mind, but this one had a nagging element to it.

Experience has taught me I should never give in to these strange trespassers. Every time I entertain any of them, I’m the one getting burnt.

This time was different. Don’t ask me how it was different, or how I knew it was different, it just was. Of course, looking back I could have been wrong.

The thought: why not surprise my wife by baking her a cake?

I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing when this suggested itself to me. But, the more I thought about it, the more delightfully delicious it sounded. How can anything go wrong if I am doing it for my wife?

The only question I needed to answer was what kind of cake should I bake.

After a long period of ruminating, I settled on a lemon sponge cake with peanut butter icing. This was going to be the best surprise my wife has ever received from me.

Sitting in a prominent place in the kitchen is my wife’s Betty Crocker Cookbook. I don’t know how long she has had that book, it’s been in our kitchen for as long as I can remember — which really may not be that long when I come to think of it.

I took the book, sat in my favorite chair and opened it. How do you read a cookbook? As I leafed through it, it did not have any rhyme or reason to me. In musing on the book I said to myself, how important is it to follow directions?

Placing the book back in its revered spot, I concluded that since this was my cake, I didn’t need help from anybody else, particularly Betty Crocker. This is the difference between men and women. Women need a lot of directions, while men enjoy the liberty of doing their own thing.

I knew exactly what I wanted. A lemon sponge cake, with peanut butter icing. What could be simpler?

Retrieving a large mixing bowl, I assembled all the ingredients I needed; flour, sugar, eggs, milk and baking powder. Everyone knows you cannot bake without baking powder.

I have no idea what baking powder is, except when you bake you use baking powder.

I put everything in the mixing bowl. The only thing I wasn’t quite sure of was the measure, but how hard could that be anyway? Betty Crocker mentioned a cup of this and a cup of that, but never defined what she meant by a cup.

I went to the cupboard and looked at all the cups. There were all kinds and sizes of cups and I did not know which one to use. I eyed a large coffee cup and said to myself, this will do just fine.

I dumped 6 or 8 cups of flour into the mixing bowl, I can’t remember how many. Then I cracked a dozen eggs and put that into the mixing bowl as well. Pouring a quart of milk into the mixing bowl, I whipped everything into a nice batter.

This was to be a lemon sponge cake but I could find nothing marked lemon in the cupboard. I opened the refrigerator, and as luck would have it, I found a quart of lemonade.

I poured this concoction into the largest cake pan I could find. As I was about to put it into the oven, I remembered the baking powder. How is this cake going to bake if it doesn’t have the baking powder?

Setting the cake pan down, I grabbed the baking powder and liberally sprinkled it on top of my batter. I have no idea what baking powder does but I put enough on my cake so it would do a good job.

Into the oven the cake went, and with a flick of the wrist I turned the temperature to 450 degrees. Remembering this was a big cake, I readjusted the temperature to 650.

The bigger the cake the hotter the oven, is what I always say.

Now all I needed to do was wait for my cake to bake. As I was waiting, I heard rumblings coming from the oven but just chalked that up to a good cake baking.

I guess I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew there was a strange odor permeating the air. It smelled a little smoky and then it dawned on me. My cake, it’s done.

What I pulled out of the oven did not resemble any cake I had ever seen. It looked like a burnt pancake, twice the size of the cake pan, with some kind of disease on the surface.

No amount of peanut butter icing in the world could camouflage this disaster.

It was about this time I began reassessing the idea of reading directions. Maybe instructions have a purpose after all.

I remember something the Apostle Paul said. “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV.)

To live right without getting burnt you need the right directions.

A Lawyers Favorite Lawyer Jokes

2010-02-09T09:11:00.001-08:00

Lawyer Jokes

Q: How does a pregnant woman know she is carrying a future lawyer?

A: She has an extreme craving for baloney.

Q: What is the legal definition of “Appeal”?

A: Something a person slips on in a grocery store.

Q: Why did God make snakes just before lawyers?

A: To practice.

Q: What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 12?

A: Your Honor.

Q: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a herd of buffalo?

A: The lawyer charges more.

Q: What do you call a smiling, sober, courteous person at a bar association convention?

A: The caterer.

Q: Why are lawyers like nuclear weapons?

A: If one side has one, the other side has to get one.

Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with a lawyer?

A: An offer you can't understand.

Q: What do you call a lawyer gone bad?

A: Senator

Q: Did you hear they just released a new Barbie doll called "Divorced Barbie"?

A: It comes with half of Ken's things and alimony.

Q: What's the difference between an attorney and a pit bull?

A: Jewelry.

Q: What's the definition of mixed emotions?

A: Watching your attorney drive over a cliff in your new Ferrari.

Q: What’s the difference between lawyers and accountants?

A: At least accountants know they’re boring.

Stories:

1. A man who had been caught embezzling millions went to a lawyer. His lawyer told him, "Don’t worry. You’ll never go to jail with all that money? In fact, when the man was sent to prison, he didn’t have a dime.

2. As the lawyer awoke from surgery, he asked, "Why are all the blinds drawn?" The nurse answered, "There's a fire across the street, and we didn't want you to think you had died."

3. God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences once and for all. Satan heard this, laughed and said, "And where do you think you're going to find a lawyer?"

4. A lawyer is sitting at the desk in his new office. He hears someone coming to the door. To impress his first potential client, he picks up the phone as the door opens and says, "I demand one million and not a penny less." As he hangs up, the man now standing in his office says, "I'm here to hook up your phone."

And finally:

You Might Be A Lawyer If.... You are charging someone to read these jokes

A Funny Joke and The Man without Humor

2010-02-09T08:11:00.001-08:00

April fool’s day is a favorite day for some, because there are many funny jokes that can be played. But when you are working for ‘The Man’ humor can be unacceptable. The workplace has become a controversial place for funny jokes, because what is funny to one person can be considered an attack by another. Finding humor at another person’s expense can cause many stressful days at work or even many lawsuits.

Many companies hold informational meeting on not practicing office humor, because they don’t want any of there workers to be offended. However, at time companies can cross the line on what is acceptable and not acceptable. Part of the problem with telling a person that funny jokes or humor is not acceptable is that if a person can not enjoy themselves at work the workplace will become uninviting and the workers unhappy.

‘Night Court’ was a sitcom that came out quite a few years ago. The judge on the show was always having fun, but playing practical jokes occasionally got him in trouble. However, most of the time the judge’s antics allowed him to see a larger scope of the people he met and he was able to help them to better their lives. A saying that many companies need to learn is the ‘a little levity never hurt’. Allowing personnel the opportunity to send jokes through email and find humor in some of the bad things that may happen in the office can help to handle stress and bring a better camaraderie between the workers.

Where the line needs to be drawn on funny jokes and humor is if the joke shows a racial or gender bias or if the joke is intended to harm another or cause a person to be made to look bad (especially in the eyes of their superiors). Harmful jokes or humor should never be acceptable in the workplace. Every individual should be responsible for their actions and take steps to know what is acceptable and will be found as a funny joke. If a joke is questionable the individual should recognize that that type of humor should be refrained from.

A company does have the responsibility to uphold its reputation and should educate its employees on acceptable humor and what would be considered a not so funny joke. However, companies should also take steps to allow their employees a fun work place. Part of this may include allowing a worker to use email to send jokes to people they know. One suggestion for the workplace may be to have a ‘no joke’ list and if people do not want to receive jokes through email they can place themselves on the list.

Humor and jokes should be allowed in the work place to allow a happier and more jovial work environment. A funny joke can cheer up a person’s day and a little humor can relieve stress. If an individual is responsible to not offend a person and the company encourages their work force to be happy working for ‘The Man’ wouldn’t be so bad.

A Deep Look At Soap Operas

2010-02-09T05:47:00.000-08:00

You have got to love soap operas. From the intricate plots and finely woven webs of deceit, to the depths of schemes, they were, are and always will be classics. They are timeless. I wrote this article as my take on them back in 1970 when filling white space for our high school paper. Watch a few soap operas for the next few days and see for yourself how closely they resemble the soap operas of 36 years ago...

And now for that thought provoking question that plagues men’s souls unceasingly through the bright shining of the day and through the untold dark depths of the night:

Why did Peter, who in reality is actually Superman, fake that he stubbed his toe on the 17th stone on the sidewalk starting at 4th and Grand instead of the 16th stone, which was bigger and more logically the victim of that invulnerable toe and why did Marlys take Sam’s advice to buy the yellow tulip instead of the red and green carnation, while all the time Rodregus knew that the curvaceous young Pandora was at the moment buying the last purple, double-breasted, duck-billed, warbling giraffe in the world for her dear departed Phillip disguised as a lowly second mate on the Queen Mary, which was under attack by the tyrant Cedric because of the terrible beating he had suffered at the hands of Radcliff whose ex-wife Natalie was actually Percival’s long lost great-great-uncle Maximillian in disguise who knew that Zigmond was fond of un-pitted olives stuffed into green grapefruit filled graciously with Granny and Gretchen’s goulash, which was gradually getting gooey and who also knew of Jennifer’s contact Louella in the deep Congo, seized at the time by the dread Gardenia, the 7th cousin of Guenivere, in hopes of receiving the eight-ounce bottle of Elmer’s Glue stored in the vast files in the cortex of Courtney’s colossal computer complex carefully compiled to correct the current curling, commonly crusading as the contagious, communicable, crystalline, cucumber crud, carried on cue sticks by crying cuckoo clock birds continuously to conform with the cunning Cornelius’ cumbersome plot to corrupt the currency and continue the crisis of the Cormandel Coast Cult, complicated by the coroner Cort’s corny connotation to conceal his consecutive coronary contractions constantly crippling his conscious efforts to contradict congenial counterparts’ careful counterfeit correspondence with Corwyn, the cosmic cosmetician?

Was it because Bill had green eyes or was it because Melissa meddled menacingly and meticulously in Maude’s plans to read the calendar to see what year she had been sent to by her superiors in the future?

Tune in tomorrow for the exciting climax created by another deep question.

A Cialis A Day Keeps The Uncertainty Away

2010-02-09T05:17:00.001-08:00

The maker of Cialis will apply to the FDA for approval of a once-a-day version of its ED treatment. The company maintains that a daily dose will allow the benefactor to enjoy more spontaneous delight than he can with what the manufacturer refers to as its "on demand" version.

The company maintains that side effects of the new dosage are mild and consist primarily of an inexplicable bulge in the pantaloons.

Dr. Ira D. Sharlip, professor of urology at the Univesity of California, San Francisco, stated, "For patients who are more sexually active, which generally means younger patients, whose sexual activity is more spontaneous, it will be an attractive alternative, provided the cost is not prohibitive."

Until now, men had to take Cialis and other impotence drugs thirty minutes or more before they flung themselves into the arms of their lovers. Now they’ll be ready at the drop of a belt.

Some analysts doubt that millions of men will take the drug every day, since the biggest users of the therapy generally have sex only a couple of times a week.

Insurance companies may also refuse to pay for a daily dose.

Interestingly, a Cialis a day may also have cardiovascular benefits, since the enzyme that Cialis, as well as other impotence drugs, inhibits, flows in all the body’s blood vessels. As a result, the drug may be an effective treatment for high blood pressure.

An expert stated, "There may be a much bigger picture than just for erectile dysfunction."

He certainly chose his adjective well, since “bigger” does seem to be the operative word here, except in regard to the one item Cialis does, at its best, reduce the size of, and that is, of course, the performance anxiety, or uncertainty, of the aspiring lover.

18 Similarities Between Women and Computers

2010-02-09T03:49:00.000-08:00

Before you read any further, please note that this is not a piece out to damage or cut down the important role of women in our society. Read below only as humour and nothing more. These are intended solely for a good laugh.

Women are unique in many ways (and by this I mean different than men) and its this specific uniqueness or certain traits that I refer to when likening a woman to a personal computer. Do not get offended; it is intended to create a smile.

1) A woman is like a computer in that she costs more than you thought it would.

2) A woman resembles a personal computer in that she will not do exactly what you thought it will.

3) After a while, you simply cannot do without both: your computers and your woman.

4) Computers are just like women: after you have gotten used to them and cannot do without them, you discover that one is not enough.

5) Some computers, like some women, serve many people.

6) You can work miracles with both by gently using your fingers if you only know the proper code.

7) If you are inactive with them for more than fifteen minutes, they go off.

8) Just like a computer, the one who runs her has more privileges than just anyone else who is just running her.

9) When there are short-circuits of electricity, they shut you off and then you cannot always return to what was before the short-circuit.

10) Normally, they are available and receptive in the night, but it’s a lot better when they are available and receptive in the morning.

11) When you are, at last, sure that they will do what you wanted, they go off and do something else.

12) The only thing that you predict about the future with them is that they will react unpredictably.

13) Just like women, so too for computers: every year a new model is released that is younger, more advanced and gives a lot more.

14) A woman is just like a computer: you are happy with what you have but when you see what your friends have got, you are sure you want what they have.

15) Women are like computers in that no matter how much you improve and put into them, they only improve for a short time and then go back to their same old pace.

16) Women are like computers in that every day a new program comes out promising to revolutionize your knowledge and use of them, but after spending a lot more cash you realize that none of them work better than the old one you had before.

17) Women are like computers: you always want what others have and they want what you have but you cannot switch even for a trial basis.

18) Women are like computers in that when you get them you are sure that they are the best. But when the days go back, you wonder why you did not get them with a replacement note.

5 Reasons Why You Should Quit Your Day Job

2010-02-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

Most of us would stop working if we could. We constantly dream about it, but that's about as far as we get-dreaming. Working a 9-5 just seems inevitable. I, Timothy Ward, however am a master at defying the inevitable. I stare 'The Inevitable' in the face and call him dirty names. I say, if you want to stop working, STOP WORKING; I'll even give you 5 reasons why you should.

1. If you stop working you'll have more time to devote to reading my articles, columns, and lists. This will enable me to become a household name down at the Unemployment and Welfare offices. My fame is a small price to pay for you living your dreams. Think about this when you see me on the 'Today Show'.

2. Quitting your job will make you feel wonderful. For about 10 minutes you'll be on cloud nine, you'll be on top of the world, you'll be living the good life, you'll be: -insert your own cliche here-. Then you'll start worrying about the car note, the mortgage, the kid's school clothes, groceries, and how you're going to pay that $850 you owe the Petermanns for running over their mailbox and a whole row of prize-winning azaleas. All this will probably depress you to the point of assisted suicide, but at least you had 10 minutes of freedom.

3. Daytime television is some of the most exciting and captivating television around. You'll wonder how you ever survived without all those quality soap operas, daytime talk shows, and judge shows where you get the sinking suspicion that the judge has been paid off. When you combine this with all the informative commercials that air during the daytime that will 'Show you how to make $1,000 a day stuffing envelopes, 'Teach you to drive a tractor trailer in 4 days', 'Allow you to get a degree from home in such exciting fields as GED preparation and septic tank scrubber' and you'll not only wonder why you didn't quit your job sooner, you'll also vow to never work again.

4. In your formerly employed state you missed all those important calls from collection agencies and other bill collectors. Now that you have quit your job you'll be able to sit at home in eager anticipation of these oh-so-important calls. Toss in a few telemarketers, calls from the Sheriff's Association asking for donations, and a few of those computers that call you and ask you to 'Hold for an important message' and you'll have a full day of just answering the phone. It will be like having a full-time job all over again, without all the hassle of getting a paycheck.

5. Dragging yourself out of bed every morning at 5:45 a.m. can't be good for your health. Your doctor will proud of you for caring enough about your body's well-being to go as far as quitting your job. He will not, however, see you as a patient anymore because you no longer have health insurance. But there's no need to worry, after all that's why we have free clinics. Sitting all day in a damp clinic waiting room next to two teenagers with stage 3 Chlamydia is yet another experience you would have missed out on if you had kept your day job.

There you have it folks. 5 reasons why you should immediately go out and quit your job. Feel free to quote any of these reasons to your employer when you turn in your two weeks notice. If she wants to know where you came across such valuable information tell her that a unselfish friend of humanity supplied them to you free of charge, and all I asked in return was that you remember me next time you need your septic tank scrubbed...

5 Big Advantages of PC Games on Demand

2010-02-09T02:49:00.001-08:00

Not to knock PlayStation 2 or Xbox 360, but I have a decent PC. The consoles are okay for the kids, but I am happy with a keyboard and mouse.

I play online games to relax between work sessions on the computer. I don't want to get up from the machine to play. Thankfully, there are games on demand made for my PC.

Here are some of the reasons PC games on demand are going to change the way most of us play the latest video and audio intensive games:

1. Instant Gratification. I can demo the latest games to see what appeals to me. When I find a winner, I can purchase on the spot and download the entire game instantly. No waits. No trips to the mall to find the game I want - if they have it in stock.

2. New technology takes care of the install. Some PC games can be a bear to install from a CD or DVD. Why bother. I downloaded a fast free player from Triton (http://www.playtriton.com), and I am using the latest streaming technology to start playing the hottest games on the net.

3. I can begin playing full games within minutes of purchase. Triton's player will download and install your new game in the background using the fastest streaming delivery media available today. You don't have to wait for the entire game to download before you begin play.

4. Automatic updates. When you login to your game, Triton automatically makes sure you have the latest and greatest version of your game and player. No more searching the Internet for updates. You get yours automatically in the background.

5. Worldwide availability. No matter where you live in the world, if you have a good PC and a broadband Internet connection, you have access to the best games at the same time as anyone else. It doesn't matter if your local computer store carries the game you want or if they sold out before you went to buy. You are in control.

As PCs get more powerful, and broadband becomes the international standard for accessing the Internet, it only makes sense to move to a faster, more economical delivery method for cutting edge games.

3 Surefire Ways To Combat Rising Gas Prices

2010-02-09T02:15:00.000-08:00

I have heard the rumblings of many of you in Readerland about the recent spike in gasoline prices. In fact it's all I seem to hear about lately. But at least it keeps you from rumbling about the infrequency of my columns and articles. Nonetheless, I have decided to try to help you get through this crisis by generously providing: 3 Ways to Combat Rising Gas Prices!

1. Don't Drive Your Car

This is, of course, the most obvious solution. If you never take the old Plymouth out the driveway, then it won't matter that at current gas prices it takes $125 to fill up the 30 gallon gas tank, or that you only get about 2.51 miles to the gallon. If you never drive, you could care less.

Of course, I know what you're going to say. "But Tim, I have places I need to go-like work. And the kids have school and soccer practice. And then there's grocery shopping and yoga lesssons and dinner at the Richardsons and blah blah blah and...." Ok, I get the point. Not everyone can sit around the house writing not-so-funny articles and searching the Internet for Drew Barrymore
photos like me. I fully understand that some of you have a life. But just because you don't drive your own car doesn't mean you can't get around. The answer?

2. Carpool

It's seems so simple now doesn't it. Instead of using your gas-Use Someone Elses! Have someone else pay $5.50 a gallon for gas to take your kids to school. Make someone else dip into their retirement fund just so they can cover the gas bill needed to get you to the office and back everyday. Make someone else get a second job so that they can have a full tank of gas in their SUV when your daughter needs to cruise the mall. It's so simple.

Of course, the concept behind carpooling is that everyone takes turns driving. So in a normal carpool situation you would eventually be required to use your car and spend your money driving others around. But this is not a Normal Carpool Situation, this is a Tim Ward Carpool Situation (TWCPS). In a TWCPS you avoid using your own car by making it so that the other carpool participants would rather walk barefoot on 120 degree asphalt than ride with you. You achieve this by:

(a) never washing or cleaning your car. Leave it looking and smelling like the county landfill.

(b) Have the worst behaved child in your family sitting in the front seat at all times. Feed the child lots of candy so he/she is always superhyper.

(c) Refuse to discuss anything in your car except your spouses bad bathing habits, bodily fluids, hang nails, chest hair, etc.

(d) Only play reggae music on the radio. Loud!

You shouldn't have to worry about anyone wanting to ride with you ever again.

3. Ride the Bus/Subway

Many cities have a mass transit system that is an alternative to driving your own vehicle. If you live in a city that doesn't have one don't worry-you can
always move. Of course, riding public transportation does have a few drawbacks, but these can be easily overcome if you follow these simple guidelines:

1. No matter what happens never, ever make eye contact with anyone. Making eye contact is an invitation for someone to mug you.

2. No matter what happens never, ever give up your seat to anyone. This is seen as weakness, and will be taken as an invitation to mug you.

3. No matter how tempted you are never, ever strike up a conversation with the person sitting next or across from you. This is very annoying and can be taken as an invitation for someone to mug you. Or worse, for someone to talk back.

4. Always make sure you are alert to get on and off at the right stop. Getting off at the wrong stop can lead to immediate mugging.

5. Never, ever take children with you on public transportation. Fellow passengers hate children. Children make you definite mug victim material.

Well, there you have it. 3 ways to deal with rising gas prices. Hopefully, you will be able to use these methods to keep from spending twice your car's Blue Book value just going to Walmart. Hopefully, next time your friends are grumbling and ranting about the mounting gas prices you will be able to
just sit back and smile, content because the issue no longer concerns you. Hopefully, I've once more helped my loyal readers in a time of crisis. And all I ask in return as a simplethank you next time you see me. Just make sure we're not on the bus. I'd hate to have to mug you...

Zen in a thimble.

2010-02-09T01:42:00.000-08:00

This is a way i use to bring thoughts to the physical world. There are a great many of them, and the better you get at creating them (thinking em up)The easier it will be to find work arounds in the real world, when obstacles and hurtles present themselves.

Im not exactly sure of why they work, but they do.Ok, for the first one, take all you money out of your pocket. Now lay it down on a table or something on the other side of the room.Now go find a seat somewhere that still lets you see your money. Now look at that money and try to think of ways to get that money back in your pocket. And you cant get help.List them.Hopefully everybody figured it out. If you are not magic, you gotta get up and go get it. Only way. If you are magic, then you dont need this article, so put it down and call me, imeechatly.

Doing This exercise makes you see in the physical world what you think. And from it you should see that the way to get what you want is to go get it, and bring it back to you. the funny thing is you will keep trying to figure out ways to get your money off the table, even though there arent any, its impossible. But the weird thing is that you no longer truly believe it is, yet. Use this exercise a lot and it will get you the answer to some tough questions.

Just about everything is possible, till it proves it is not.

Sometimes you have to make your thoughts real, envision them in your mind and make them real. Its like wouldnt it be much easier to figure out how to make something if you could see it. I believe that if you can see a thing in detail in your mind, it will give you clues as to how to make it real. Think about it, its corny but it feels right and works.

If you keep doing the exercise for different thoughts, you will start giving the impossible the burden of proof. And the more you think ahead the better you know what to expect,and the better you know what to expect the better you deal with the obstacle or hurtle or problem, so don't only think about reacting to hurtles and obstacles, think about attacking them too. That let's you react better in the process also, 2 for the price of one. This really works, give it a try

Wisdom

2010-02-09T01:24:00.000-08:00

What is wisdom? But first, what are the conditions that render it desirable, if not necessary, and what is its essential purpose?

Life is a desire to live, and better still a desire to live happily. As we strive to satisfy this desire, we encounter obstacles that complicate or frustrate our efforts. This complication or frustration amounts to suffering because it stands in the way of satisfaction.

Wisdom is designed to help us cope with this suffering. It is an adaptive product of reason in the face of tough circumstances. Thanks to it, happiness is conceivable and achievable in spite of everything. It is therefore the supreme good.

Actually, religion is a good that many rank equally high, since it serves the same purpose as wisdom, if differently. The difference lies in the way religion and wisdom portray suffering and define the meaning of life.

From the perspective of religion, suffering betrays a state of worldly imperfection that is in contradiction with the human desire for perfect happiness. Consequently, life here below – where humans are doomed to suffer – is absurd in itself. Or rather, life is meaningful strictly in terms of means to a heavenly end in the great beyond: A life of virtue prepares the way for an afterlife of bliss. The religious believe this in accordance with the teachings of an inspired spiritual leader, who claims to know the transcendental nature of the hereafter.

While personally I cast a skeptical eye on these teachings, I keep my mind open. They are highly suspicious, but the transcendental nature of their object puts them beyond the reach of any discredit based on conclusive evidence.

Anyway, as I see it, wisdom is independent of religion, though it can complement the latter. According to it, life in itself has meaning, despite its imperfection that people can learn to accept. Better still, they can learn to value this imperfection as they realize that perfection, contrary to popular belief, is not infinitely desirable.

Indeed, perfect happiness leaves something to be desired. By definition, it excludes suffering and hence all forms of complication or frustration. It supposes that circumstances are absolutely favorable – that is, not tough in any way. Therefore, no effort is necessary while every dream is possible. At first glance, this sounds like the most wonderful situation imaginable, and yet taking another look at it will dispel this illusion.

What strange whim, in the history of humankind, has compelled people from every walk of life to leave their cozy home and embark on risky ventures? Perhaps this whim is not so strange after all. A multitude of conquests have been made for the sheer joy of conquering against great odds. The operative word is pride, accompanied by excitement. To conquest-minded people the infinite ease of heaven entails infinite boredom. To them life – together with the struggle that is integral to it – is the very thing that perfect happiness leaves to be desired. It is an opportunity to prove courageous and victorious, though it is also a risk of failing painfully.

Happiness is about grasping this opportunity with courage and gaining a victory over the obstacles that stand between us and success in all the activities that most matter to us. This victory is often strenuous and always limited, precarious, and transitory, and we are bound to lose the battle in the end; but that makes the victory all the more precious and worthy of savoring.

When trying to define the activities in which we most care to succeed, we are forced to study our nature to know our purpose. Our growing wise depends on this study and this knowledge, leading to this definition. It begins with an awareness of our animal will to survive, as survival is the foundation on which life, in the truly human sense, is built. The awareness of life in this sense follows. It takes into account both our humanity and our individuality, as members of society with particular tastes and abilities to which a wide range of activities are suited.

The clearer we are about our purpose, the more we can live our lives with determination and passion, and so with a greater chance of succeeding and achieving happiness. The reverse is equally true. It therefore stands to reason that in striving after wisdom we lay the groundwork for success and happiness.

We Have Two Kidneys But Only Need One Kidney To Live

2010-02-09T00:25:00.000-08:00

Organ donation is a gift and it should come from the heart, not by emotional coercion. Kidney transplants are the most common organ transplant that happens. Kidney transplants paved the way for surgical teams to develop successful transplantation of other organs including heart, lung, pancreas and liver.

People who do not have good kidneys are very sick. Kidneys do many things that are important to stay healthy. Normal kidneys perform several important tasks that keep the body in good health:

Clean your blood and remove waste products through the formation of urine
Balance fluids in the body by controlling water and salt concentrations
Maintain the balance of the bodys chemicals (potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus)
Control blood pressure
Supply elements used to make red blood cells, which carry oxygen in the blood
Help sustain strong bones.

One kidney, functioning at 20% capacity, can do all of the above. The kidneys produce urine that drains through narrow tubes (called ureters) into the bladder. Every day the kidneys filter 160 quarts of fluid from the bloodstream, removing about 1-1/2 quarts of waste in the form of urine.

There are two ways to replace the kidneys: dialysis and transplantation. Dialysis is when doctors use a machine and medicines to do the work that kidneys do. A better way to do the kidneys work is to give the person another kidney. To be a candidate for immunotherapy, the patient must be in good general condition, have adequate function of vital organs (such as the heart, lungs and kidneys) and have no brain metastasis.

For those with kidney failure, kidney transplants are preferable to treatment by dialysis. Kidney transplants are designed to treat patients whose kidneys are failing, making them unable to process body waste products. Transplants done relatively soon after starting dialysis are on average more successful than transplants performed two or more years after a patient starts dialysis. Patients who receive live donor kidney transplants usually have much shorter waiting times than those who receive kidneys from deceased donors. Transplants of kidneys from younger donors tend to survive longer than transplants from older donors.

Kidneys are allocated based on, among other considerations, the match between the donor and recipient blood groups and genetic type (called the tissue type or HLA type). Kidneys taken from living donors often begin to function immediately, while those from cadavers may take up to two weeks for tissues to adjust and become functional.

Unlike the backlog of patients in other medical areas, renal transplants happen when the donor kidney becomes available. On average, patients who are listed for a deceased donor transplant wait approximately three years, but there is a great deal of variability in this. For example, for a patient with a rare tissue type, there will be fewer donors with a tissue type that matches that of the patient well, compared to patients with more common tissue types. Furthermore some patients have antibodies directed against certain tissue types, which means that some, or even most, donor kidneys are not suitable for these patients.

After surgery, patients can expect to be hospitalized for approximately 7 to 10 days. After being discharged patients are seen daily as an outpatient for approximately four weeks. After the daily outpatient visits patients are instructed to do no heavy lifting or exercise for 8 to 10 weeks. Patients who do not smoke or give up smoking, maintain a good body weight and exercise regularly are more likely to have many years of good quality life with a well functioning kidney.

Violence

2010-02-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

Flashes of memory stream into my consciousness. They take me back thirty years plus. I was a boy then, a newcomer to a poor and tough neighborhood. My parents, of moderate means and daring to a fault, had decided to move there after my father had accepted an editing job in the federal government. They had taken a lease on a low-rent brick house, which was also run-down, covered in filth, and littered with trash. I do not mince my words: Previous tenants had been pigs that got along with bugs and rats.

“The house has potential,” my mother had said to reassure me, seeing that I was aghast at its sordid aspects. Its one redeeming feature, besides its solid construction, was a large woody front yard, neglected, allowed to become a large dumping ground, as weedy as it was woody, but potentially attractive and pleasant, to be sure.

My mother was a hard worker with a great deal of stamina, creativity, and tastefulness. She mastered the art of doing wonders with little money. After three months of intense labor – which for the first week involved a carpenter and two garbage collectors plus two dump trucks – the house was transfigured, quite presentable, even nice, much to my amazement. It now contrasted sharply, cuttingly, with the slums at the rear of the house and on the left of it. On the right was a school and at the front, across the street, was a nunnery on a large piece of land. My parents had conveniently focused their attention on these establishments, as if the good education and good disposition of their teachers and sisters could shield us from the evils of the slums.

Needless to say, they did not. Violence was rampant in this neck of the woods and I was elected punchbag with only one dissenting vote: mine! At the root of this violence was malevolence, which grows from resentment, after one has been subjected to mistreatment. As much as my family projected an image of distinction, the neighborhood boys were malevolent and violent toward me. To them this image of distinction was an act of humiliation; their feelings were hurt and it was natural for them to hurt me. Of course it is a lot worthier to elevate oneself than to abase someone else. It is also a lot harder, and nature spontaneously levels everything the easy way. Moral excellence relates to culture, is an acquired trait, by virtue of which a human is courageous and just, worthy of praise.

One winter evening, I was crossing the field next to the rink where I had played hockey, when a gang of hoodlums encircled me like a pack of wolves. There were six of them, one of whom – a weakling who always relied on others to feel powerful – lived three doors down, east of my house, across the back street. The leader stepped forward and turned around with a snicker. “Hey shithead, come and kiss my ass.” I was tempted to kick it, not kiss it. “No thanks. Please let me go; I don’t care for trouble.” As I was finishing my sentence, one of the boys lunged toward me from behind and shoved me forward. I dropped my hockey equipment and braced myself to fight and suffer. I was big for my age, but big is small when outnumbered by six to one.

Again the leader took the initiative; the fight was on. With several thrusts, punches, and kicks, I repelled my assailants momentarily, until I was knocked and wrestled to the ground. Fists and feet hit me everywhere, nonstop, from all directions. Suddenly I heard a menacing shout and everyone slipped in a last blow before fleeing. A brave and kind man had caught sight of their misdeed and chosen to intervene, armed with a hockey stick. I was hurt but saved.

A few days later, still aching all over, I saw the weakling, alone by his house – his hovel to be exact, which was covered with old imitation brick, torn in places, and infested with cockroaches, rats, and woodworms. His face was bruised and wet from weeping, as he screamed with rage, “Fucking bastard, fucking bitch, fucking life, fuck, fuck, fuck!” My anger was now tempered with compassion. I unclenched my fists, prompted by a desire to spare him. I could not demean myself to add pain to his pain, already so excessive that it overflowed in streams of tears and curses.

His father was an illiterate and idle drunkard who collected welfare and spent considerable time and money at the tavern. At home, slouching in an armchair, he forever watched TV and drank beer or liquor. When grossly intoxicated, he sometimes vomited before reaching the bathroom and, without cleaning up his mess, fell unconscious on his bed, the armchair, the floor, or wherever. He was also vulgar and brutal. He often battered his son and his wife, and heaped insults on them.

His wife was an abusive and sluggish woman who had grown obese from attempting to fill her inner void with chips, cookies, and pop. Day after day she wore the same tattered nightgown and constantly found reasons for bawling out her son and swiping him. She drove him insane, then used this insanity as another reason for persecuting him.

These two loathsome and pitiful parents rendered his life at home unbearable. He usually roamed the streets with fellow-sufferers from similar – miserable and violent – backgrounds. Together they ganged up and took their resentment out on other kids such as me. My aggressors, first, were victims.

My insight into the origin of violence came to me at that time and has never left me. I saw then and still see a victim in every aggressor. Some say there is such a thing as gratuitous violence, committed by individuals whose youth was favorable to all appearances. Violence for the sake of violence, an exercise in brutality at the expense of others, without provocation, past or present? I beg to differ.

Appearances are not a valid means of assessing someone’s youth, whose favorableness or unfavorableness is a subjective, not objective, matter. Circumstances have no value in themselves, but in relation to people who consider them favorably or not. Attitude is here the only relevant concept. Also, brutality cannot be exercised at the expense of others unless these others are viewed heartlessly as expendable. This heartlessness is greatly suspicious, unlikely to belong to someone who regards humans with favor, thanks to a feeling of solidarity, of mutual benefit.

In my opinion, aggressiveness is triggered by hostility, without which it is dormant: a mere potentiality incapable of harm. It may include an abnormal sensitivity or intellect that intensifies or alters someone’s perception of the environment. The fact remains hostility, as perceived by someone who feels painfully antagonized and proportionally victimized, is always a factor. Therefore, aggression cannot be dissociated from victimization, not only that of the victims but also that of the aggressors. These aggressors are victims of their sick minds or of the ill treatment they have endured. They deserve compassion, besides indignation.

They are liable to a punishment that ought to be effective and exemplary, not vengeful. Vengeance and violence are one and the same thing. Both are resentful and harmful. Both are reprehensible. The harm inflicted does not remedy the harm suffered; it simply compounds one harm with another, and invites yet another harm. It lengthens the chain of savagery from x (a frightening number of savage links) to x+1, potentially +2, +3, +4, etc., instead of breaking it and helping to free humanity from it. There is no worse slavery than savagery. The best course is to make every effort to get over a wrong and forgive it, while bringing the wrongdoer to justice.

In sum, justice should not serve to avenge people. It should serve to prevent crime and protect the public, by intimidating or incarcerating those who are a menace to others except under threat or behind bars. It should never push the severity of this mandate to the point of cruelty, in which case it would be a perversion of justice, an ominous sign of barbarity. On the contrary, it should be a jewel in the crown of civilization and foreshadow the coming of a better humanity, more consistent with its true nature and purpose – in a word, more humane.

The difference between severity and cruelty is radical yet subtle; it must be emphasized. Cruel law enforcers delight in the punishments they inflict and readily overstep the mark. They are vicious and blameworthy, like the criminals they punish. Law enforcers who are severe, but not cruel, administer punishments reluctantly or regard them as a necessary evil they would gladly forgo if they could. They deplore the criminal element in society and strive to neutralize it through intimidation, or incarceration as a last resort, and preferably through reformation, a fundamental change of the criminal mind for the better. Their ideal, as unattainable as it is elevated, is the supremacy of justice without the institution of justice: no threats, no prisons, only people who deeply understand and freely exercise the principle of justice.

Impossible as this supremacy is, it is usefully pursued. The institution of justice can become less and less necessary for the manifestation of justice, which can become more and more customary. This progress depends on the wisdom and willpower of its proponents who make it their duty to educate, assist, and encourage potential followers. It also presupposes that these potential followers take an active part in this endeavor. They cannot be actual followers unless they welcome this education, assistance, and encouragement, and display intelligence and determination of their own.

How much can we collectively be civilized – that is, mutually respectful and helpful, in the knowledge that this high goal can unite our wills toward a common good of colossal proportions? In other words, what is the ceiling of our possible civilization, which implies responsibility and solidarity, an elevation of life to love? Nobody knows the limit, so none should be set but the sky!

Generally, in a loving environment, human beings show humanity as naturally as fruit trees give fruit in the summer. Love is to these beings as sunshine is to these trees. It helps them grow into what they are meant to grow into (unless their nature is flawed from the start, which is an exception to the rule): beautiful and bountiful creations, as opposed to ugly and puny aberrations. Yet, beware of love; it can be possessive and manipulative, selfish and devilish! Yes, some angels have horns, unnoticeable at first sight under their pretty hair; their paradise is hell.

True love is in the image of God (by God I simply mean the fundamental cause of everything. It brings us into existence and, within the limits of its might, supports us in our quest for fulfillment). It is a desire to nurture, not to capture. Under its divine rule, one always has the other’s best interests at heart. No one, however, should be supportive to the point of being an accomplice in someone’s oppressive or destructive acts of egocentricity, folly, or injustice. These evils should not be loved and served; they should be hated and combated.

Hate is legitimate toward them, whereas the people who embody them are worthy of love because they exceed them by their ability to do good. They are indeed greater than the sum of their evil ways; they include the power to improve them. Therefore hate is directed at these ways, and love at this power: It promotes the people’s ability to do good. What if a person who is oppressively or destructively egocentric, foolish, or unjust never responds to this love? In that case it is lost and the life of this person shamefully amounts to a waste of soul.

By a stroke of luck, my parents were bright and warm people who helped me blossom into a joyful and respectful individual. Their love was true and so was the love of many others who took part in my life. I was also lucky enough to be a good seed. I was a strong and healthy boy, extremely lively and moderately clever, cheery and gentle-natured, though impatient and self-assertive. In my eyes, until my family moved to the poor and tough neighborhood, civility was the norm among the members of society; it made sense. Barbarity, on the other hand, was a stupefying rarity. The abused weakling gave me an understanding of barbarity – which was common in this neighborhood – and replaced my stupefaction with commiseration.

Type Of Tattoo

2010-02-08T23:15:00.001-08:00

Tattoos are at their heart a sign of individuality, and as more and more human beings seek a path to locate themselves apart from the crowd, the popularity of tattoos as a form of self expression is only likely to grow.

In act, the strict code of practices takes every safety measure so the risk of transmitting HIV or other diseases is virtually nonexistent.

however before spread outside, bids from approximately the society drove the reward over the century mark. If you bear these things in head and keep you eyes peeled, asking any and all questions that come to head, you should be fully capable of deciding whether or not your decision to get tattooed will be a acceptable one.

One beneficial body about henna tattooing, unlike the tattoos the western culture is used to, the henna tattoo is not permanent, for it fades away in age or it comes outside after a hardly any washings.

This path, others that are researching where to get a tattoo, will have that much more helpful info to ease them outside! A great place to do this is Body Mod.

Others events are far more profound, like the large number of policemen and fire fighters who tattooed the names of fallen colleagues on their arms for all to see.
If you contemplate on the internet there is a controversy about getting Kanji and Japanese Tattoos also. They will necessitate to contemplate into the dynamics of their relationships with customers and the nature of their interaction.

Getting a tattoo involves piercing the skin, and so there is going to be some pain involved, no complication how small the tattoo and no complication where it is on your body.
The more tattoos you have, the more ink spots you will end up with all over your body as age goes by.

This is easy! I know, you are thinking that you can’t much scan Japanese, so how on earth will you be able to recognize these different styles? Well, try this:

A temporary tattoo can latest for anywhere from a couple of days to various months and may be an alternative for you who are not certain that a permanent tattoo is the fair body for you.
Granted it is a small snaggy and faded at once however he still has one on his forearm nonetheless.

A legitimate, well-trained tattooist follows strict health guidelines and is willing to answer any of your questions about tattooing procedures and concerns.

However many tattoo artists are spotting the trend and jumping on it already. The best defense in the battle of the fading tattoo is to stay outside of the sun, cover the tattoo with clothing and wear a really acceptable sunscreen.

Hepatitis, a disease that attacks the liver, is of a parcel more concern, being a much heartier pathogen that requires a much smaller amount of body fluid transfer, though it should be mentioned that , according to the Centers for Disease Control, there has NEVER been a documented action of Hepatitis OR AIDS caused by a tattoo.

Therefore, soon after their tour of the Honda plant, the Harley Davidson Motor Society decided to lay into practice this originally rejected approach. Try to utilize some kind unscented, undedicated body lotion, as some scents may irritate the still-tender skin of your tattoo. Some human beings decorate a small area of skin, while in others it may be difficult to find a square inch of un-tattooed flesh.

Studies showed that about 75 % of Harley customers made repeat purchases, and executives quickly recognized a pattern that refocused the convention’s overall strategy.
anyway, after getting a tattoo done you should know some aftercare tips that cannot be ignored.

Fortunately there are other avenues you can capture instead of getting a permanent tattoo lay on. They are also a great path to express your individuality and unique sense of style.

To Think for Oneself

2010-02-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

Let us examine the three purposes of writing: to inform, entertain, and enlighten. To me, the second one is bottom of the list, though it is instrumental in the achievement of the two others. Every great teacher knows this intimately and readily laces his teachings with relevant and interesting stories, and humor.

The first purpose, to inform, comes second in my mind, whereas the last, to enlighten, comes first. To explain my attitude, I think it appropriate to draw your attention to my book A REASON FOR LIVING, where both of these purposes are pursued.

Part of my book relays factual or theoretical information about things like human physiology, nutrition, and universal evolution. This information relates to the current perception of reality in scientific circles. I am just a vehicle for it. Now, for two reasons, my role as a writer who informs his readers about scientific facts and theories comes second in my mind to my role as a philosopher who strives to enlighten his readers.

My main reason is that I regard wisdom as paramount, whereas the knowledge of the material world (i.e., the constituents, structure, and workings thereof) is not equally important, however useful it is on a practical level. Conscience comes before science, which in itself is incapable of providing humans with a sense of what is good, right, or sacred – in a word, with moral principles. An example of science without conscience is the destruction of nature and the violation of human rights by rogue companies who are efficient in their use, or rather abuse, of their environment and their workers to satisfy their greed.

My other reason is that my role as a writer who informs his readers about scientific facts and theories is indeed that of a mere vehicle. It is very much secondary to the role of researcher, which drives the scientific enterprise thanks to advanced instrumentation plus skillful, scholarly, and clever observations and rationalizations.

By contrast, my role as a philosopher who strives to enlighten his readers is in the driver's seat, so to speak. Not only is it concerned with everything that makes life worth living and gives humans a sense of purpose, but also it does more than mirror the light of wisdom; it generates it by force of thinking on the basis of experience and study.

Truth to tell, my readers can likewise think for themselves. They themselves can be philosophers and create their own wisdom while discovering and evaluating mine. Therefore, the light shining through in my book is there to help my readers see a range of weighty matters on which they can meditate to form their own thoughtful opinions about them. And since they can do so, I venture to argue that they should.

The Quest for Truth and the Meaning of Life

2010-02-08T07:45:00.000-08:00

All too often, the quest for truth – which admittedly can only yield a qualified success in the best case scenario – is tainted with laxity and fancifulness, and hence is doomed to a pitiable result, not to say failure.

Strangely enough, Blaise Pascal, a famous mathematician and philosopher, is also the eccentric author of a wager according to which the belief in God (or more precisely in heaven as a divine reward for virtue) is defensible to the extent that it is desirable, even though it cannot be proven. Actually, it is supposedly defensible because not only cannot it be proven, it also cannot be disproven. So desirableness is considered a valid foundation for belief, absent provableness and disprovableness! The door is open to every wild fancy, as long as we lack the empirical means of discrediting it.

— Who have you invited to dinner, dear?
— Some fabulous folks, my love.
— Great! And who exactly are these folks?
— I don’t know, but they’re fabulous.
— Hum! How can you say they’re fabulous if you don’t know them?
— Our neighbor across the road told me so.
— Forgive me for asking, dear, but isn't that neighbor somewhat loopy? The story about angels watching over us sounds like wishful thinking to me.
— This loopy neighbor, as you say, is more fun to listen to than your professor friends, with all due respect.
— But don't you think…
— Forget about thinking; I’m in the mood for a dinner with some fabulous folks.

(If you feel this is a bit of sexist humor, note that I have made no mention of genders. The prejudices that offend us are sometimes very much our own. Remember also that Blaise Pascal was a man.)

Personally, I am not willing to forget about thinking. However attractive a claim may be, this attractiveness must be accompanied by credibleness – which is a function of provableness and trustworthiness – before I let it shape my view and govern my life. When credibleness is wanting, I reserve judgment until further notice and meanwhile accept reality as it appears to be, judging from facts and solid arguments, even if this appearance is not consistent with a so-called ideal world. Call me austere (not ready to indulge in the luxury of extravagant beliefs), a man of reason who associates his intellectual austerity with intellectual integrity.

Having said this, the reverse attitude is common, especially in matters that are beyond the realm of experience and hence can neither be proven nor disproven. For example, as regards their future – here below or in the hereafter – many do not reserve judgment or keep their minds open to all possibilities, ranging from disastrous to glorious. Instead they believe a heavenly tale because they fancy believing it and often also because a charismatic fortuneteller or spiritual leader, allegedly endowed with supernatural powers, is the originator of this tale.

In its wildest and blindest form, optimism coupled with faith is illustrative of this attitude. Is it fanciful and naןve, or even foolish? I am tempted to say yes, and yet I will resist this temptation. There is no denying that the inveterate optimists-believers derive significant enjoyment from seeing their future through rose-colored spectacles. In view of this enjoyment, a sophisticated better like Blaise Pascal will argue that these spectacles are worth wearing, at the risk of laboring under a delusion. I myself lack the grace or the guile of innocent or calculating souls to whom ignorance is bliss.

I am all the stauncher as a committed realist since life in itself – without fables and despite the adversities that are part and parcel of it – has meaning to my mind. Furthermore, I contend that religion (as a provider of a questionable but meaningful myth that makes a blissful afterlife the purpose of life) is often a poor substitute for wisdom. It is designed to offset the feeling of dissatisfaction that shadows the foolish if often profound concept of existential absurdity. The more deficient in wisdom, the more avid for religion (as defined above) one is.

Now, what is the content of this wisdom, or what is the meaning of life within the limits of life? I have answered this question to the best of my ability in my book A REASON FOR LIVING; and my answer – like any answer to this question – is sure to be both at odds and in keeping with yours. But then, the antithesis of statements and disagreements can usefully stimulate the intellect to resolve the oppositions and achieve a new and superior synthesis.

Be that as it may, this antithesis betrays the imperfection of individual wisdoms. At best, they are true up to a point, and we can persistently overpass this point while the complete truth indefinitely recedes like the horizon as we advance toward it. There are as many wisdoms as there are individuals; nevertheless their subjectiveness admits of much intersubjectiveness or deep intellectual kinship.

Let us explore a number of cardinal facts and logical assumptions based on facts.

1) The observable universe is the obvious manifestation of a tendency toward order. Ordered things and beings (that show their attraction for a particular inert or living state), ordered behaviors and thoughts (that aim at specific achievements and feelings in preference to others), all this testifies to the tendency in question, which can be called the principle of universal order. The oneness of this principle is not merely nominal. It is fundamental, as demonstrated by the unitary if complex human nature, which comprises every physical and nonphysical aspect of the observable universe.

2) The observation of the universe relates to observers: humans, in the present instance. It is limited to the observable manifestations of this universe, or provides a basis for knowledge only within the limits of these manifestations. Everything beyond these limits – that is, everything that is not observably manifest – transcends our ability to know it. Nevertheless, as Kant pointed out, our inability to know it does not suppress our curiosity. Whereas some accept the limits of knowledge, many don’t. Their effort to penetrate the transcendental mystery ought to yield nothing except fancy.

3) There are, however, various degrees of fancy. At one extreme, fancy is grossly unfounded or rests on the highly suspicious claims of inspired visionaries regarding the great beyond. At the other extreme, fancy is very much tempered with reason. It is reminiscent of poetry, which assimilates certain things to kindred things through metaphors and similes.

Take for example the predictions of learned and intuitive futurists about the distant future of humanity. They clearly overstep the limits of knowledge, and yet they are believable to the extent that they are conceivable, given the way this knowledge represents humans and the world they inhabit. Take also for example the conjectures of learned and intuitive philosophers about the intimate nature of nonhuman beings or things beyond their observable characteristics. Like the above-mentioned predictions, they clearly overstep the limits of knowledge, and yet they are believable to the extent that they are conceivable, given the way this knowledge represents humans and nonhuman beings or things.

4) With respect to our human nature, observations include introspections and reveal both the spiritual and material aspects of this nature. Since we measure the value of life in terms of pleasure (sensual, intellectual, or moral), it is safe to say that the spiritual aspect is preeminent.

By underscoring the pleasure principle in moral matters, I imply that even the most edifying proof of nobility comprises an element of self-interest. Indeed, nobility is an ideal in the pursuit of which the noble soul takes pleasure – not the low sort of pleasure that one derives from such activities as feasting on a palatable dish or having intercourse with a seductive lover, but the most elevated sort. Therefore, self-interest and nobility are not mutually exclusive. When they come together, the former is exalted by the latter.

5) As we fathom our human nature, we ultimately acknowledge the principle of universal order as the essence of our being, which can normally acquire habits – of thought or behavior – that are conducive to well-being. And so gratitude adds to the acknowledgment, though misery may reverse this attitude when it plagues us despite ourselves.

Why such misery? There is no answer to this question. We can ascertain the possibility of misery; we cannot explain it. Saying that the principle of universal order is such as to permit the occurrence of misery is like saying that misery is because it can be, which is no explanation. In short, misery is a mystery; and the best we can do is fight and overcome it, or resign ourselves to it when it is insuperable.

Actually, we can do better. We can regard misery as a precious opportunity for courage and merit, whereas an absolutely blissful and effortless life would require no courage and hence afford no merit.

But what about extreme cases where we are truly miserable and helpless? We can then take comfort from the knowledge that the principle of universal order is the essence of our being. Each of us is a single human incarnation of this principle among countless other like incarnations, which offer the prospect of a meritorious happiness through considerable effort.

The Madness of Playing Games

2010-02-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

If a lone, unkempt, person, standing on a soapbox were to say that he should become the Prime Minister, he would have been diagnosed by a passing psychiatrist as suffering from this or that mental disturbance. But were the same psychiatrist to frequent the same spot and see a crowd of millions saluting the same lonely, shabby figure - what would have his diagnosis been? Surely, different (perhaps of a more political hue).

It seems that one thing setting social games apart from madness is quantitative: the amount of the participants involved. Madness is a one-person game, and even mass mental disturbances are limited in scope. Moreover, it has long been demonstrated (for instance, by Karen Horney) that the definition of certain mental disorders is highly dependent upon the context of the prevailing culture. Mental disturbances (including psychoses) are time-dependent and locus-dependent. Religious behaviour and romantic behaviour could be easily construed as psychopathologies when examined out of their social, cultural, historical and political contexts.

Historical figures as diverse as Nietzsche (philosophy), Van Gogh (art), Hitler (politics) and Herzl (political visionary) made this smooth phase transition from the lunatic fringes to centre stage. They succeeded to attract, convince and influence a critical human mass, which provided for this transition. They appeared on history's stage (or were placed there posthumously) at the right time and in the right place. The biblical prophets and Jesus are similar examples though of a more severe disorder. Hitler and Herzl possibly suffered from personality disorders - the biblical prophets were, almost certainly, psychotic.

We play games because they are reversible and their outcomes are reversible. No game-player expects his involvement, or his particular moves to make a lasting impression on history, fellow humans, a territory, or a business entity. This, indeed, is the major taxonomic difference: the same class of actions can be classified as "game" when it does not intend to exert a lasting (that is, irreversible) influence on the environment. When such intention is evident - the very same actions qualify as something completely different. Games, therefore, are only mildly associated with memory. They are intended to be forgotten, eroded by time and entropy, by quantum events in our brains and macro-events in physical reality.

Games - as opposed to absolutely all other human activities - are entropic. Negentropy - the act of reducing entropy and increasing order - is present in a game, only to be reversed later. Nowhere is this more evident than in video games: destructive acts constitute the very foundation of these contraptions. When children start to play (and adults, for that matter - see Eric Berne's books on the subject) they commence by dissolution, by being destructively analytic. Playing games is an analytic activity. It is through games that we recognize our temporariness, the looming shadow of death, our forthcoming dissolution, evaporation, annihilation.

These FACTS we repress in normal life - lest they overwhelm us. A frontal recognition of them would render us speechless, motionless, paralysed. We pretend that we are going to live forever, we use this ridiculous, counter-factual assumption as a working hypothesis. Playing games lets us confront all this by engaging in activities which, by their very definition, are temporary, have no past and no future, temporally detached and physically detached. This is as close to death as we get.

Small wonder that rituals (a variant of games) typify religious activities. Religion is among the few human disciplines which tackle death head on, sometimes as a centrepiece (consider the symbolic sacrifice of Jesus). Rituals are also the hallmark of obsessive-compulsive disorders, which are the reaction to the repression of forbidden emotions (our reaction to the prevalence, pervasiveness and inevitability of death is almost identical). It is when we move from a conscious acknowledgement of the relative lack of lasting importance of games - to the pretension that they are important, that we make the transition from the personal to the social.

The way from madness to social rituals traverses games. In this sense, the transition is from game to myth. A mythology is a closed system of thought, which defines the "permissible" questions, those that can be asked. Other questions are forbidden because they cannot be answered without resorting to another mythology altogether.

Observation is an act, which is the anathema of the myth. The observer is presumed to be outside the observed system (a presumption which, in itself, is part of the myth of Science, at least until the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was developed).

A game looks very strange, unnecessary and ridiculous from the vantage-point of an outside observer. It has no justification, no future, it looks aimless (from the utilitarian point of view), it can be compared to alternative systems of thought and of social organization (the biggest threat to any mythology). When games are transformed to myths, the first act perpetrated by the group of transformers is to ban all observations by the (willing or unwilling) participants.

Introspection replaces observation and becomes a mechanism of social coercion. The game, in its new guise, becomes a transcendental, postulated, axiomatic and doctrinaire entity. It spins off a caste of interpreters and mediators. It distinguishes participants (formerly, players) from outsiders or aliens (formerly observers or uninterested parties). And the game loses its power to confront us with death. As a myth it assumes the function of repression of this fact and of the fact that we are all prisoners. Earth is really a death ward, a cosmic death row: we are all trapped here and all of us are sentenced to die.

Today's telecommunications, transportation, international computer networks and the unification of the cultural offering only serve to exacerbate and accentuate this claustrophobia. Granted, in a few millennia, with space travel and space habitation, the walls of our cells will have practically vanished (or become negligible) with the exception of the constraint of our (limited) longevity. Mortality is a blessing in disguise because it motivates humans to act in order "not to miss the train of life" and it maintains the sense of wonder and the (false) sense of unlimited possibilities.

This conversion from madness to game to myth is subjected to meta-laws that are the guidelines of a super-game. All our games are derivatives of this super-game of survival. It is a game because its outcomes are not guaranteed, they are temporary and to a large extent not even known (many of our activities are directed at deciphering it). It is a myth because it effectively ignores temporal and spatial limitations. It is one-track minded: to foster an increase in the population as a hedge against contingencies, which are outside the myth.

All the laws, which encourage optimization of resources, accommodation, an increase of order and negentropic results - belong, by definition to this meta-system. We can rigorously claim that there exist no laws, no human activities outside it. It is inconceivable that it should contain its own negation (Godel-like), therefore it must be internally and externally consistent. It is as inconceivable that it will be less than perfect - so it must be all-inclusive. Its comprehensiveness is not the formal logical one: it is not the system of all the conceivable sub-systems, theorems and propositions (because it is not self-contradictory or self-defeating). It is simply the list of possibilities and actualities open to humans, taking their limitations into consideration. This, precisely, is the power of money. It is - and always has been - a symbol whose abstract dimension far outweighed its tangible one.

This bestowed upon money a preferred status: that of a measuring rod. The outcomes of games and myths alike needed to be monitored and measured. Competition was only a mechanism to secure the on-going participation of individuals in the game. Measurement was an altogether more important element: the very efficiency of the survival strategy was in question. How could humanity measure the relative performance (and contribution) of its members - and their overall efficiency (and prospects)? Money came handy. It is uniform, objective, reacts flexibly and immediately to changing circumstances, abstract, easily transformable into tangibles - in short, a perfect barometer of the chances of survival at any given gauging moment. It is through its role as a universal comparative scale - that it came to acquire the might that it possesses.

Money, in other words, had the ultimate information content: the information concerning survival, the information needed for survival. Money measures performance (which allows for survival enhancing feedback). Money confers identity - an effective way to differentiate oneself in a world glutted with information, alienating and assimilating. Money cemented a social system of monovalent rating (a pecking order) - which, in turn, optimized decision making processes through the minimization of the amounts of information needed to affect them. The price of a share traded in the stock exchange, for instance, is assumed (by certain theoreticians) to incorporate (and reflect) all the information available regarding this share. Analogously, we can say that the amount of money that a person has contains sufficient information regarding his or her ability to survive and his or her contribution to the survivability of others. There must be other - possibly more important measures of that - but they are, most probably, lacking: not as uniform as money, not as universal, not as potent, etc.

Money is said to buy us love (or to stand for it, psychologically) - and love is the prerequisite to survival. Very few of us would have survived without some kind of love or attention lavished on us. We are dependent creatures throughout our lives. Thus, in an unavoidable path, as humans move from game to myth and from myth to a derivative social organization - they move ever closer to money and to the information that it contains. Money contains information in different modalities. But it all boils down to the very ancient question of the survival of the fittest

The Essence of Freedom

2010-02-08T07:02:00.001-08:00

Life is too hard and too risky in the eyes of many. By contrast, others are such proponents of a virile existence, demanding great courage and giving great pride, that they are ready to leave the coziness of their home to scale Mount Everest and breast the elements for the sheer joy of conquering the summit. Whatever the perspective, the nature of things remains unchanged. There are rules, necessities and duties, and limits, possibilities and impossibilities. Until doom, one can accept them and make the best of them, much to one’s pleasure and honor, or one can do the opposite and suffer the consequences. The choice between these two options is the very essence of freedom. Personally, I have no use for the second option: a self-inflicted misery that is without the slightest doubt a pitiable way of life.

The first option, on the other hand, is a pleasurable and honorable alternative that I find compelling, though uphill. It is applicable to any situation encountered in the course of one’s living venture, provided one is not unfortunate to the point of being hopelessly unable to cope. The range of this applicability corresponds with the range of one’s adaptability. It is normally considerable, despite the tendency to cling to old gratifying habits even after they have become impracticable or unsuitable, owing to a change of situation. One can be weaned from such habits onto new gratifying habits, in the same way as a baby can be weaned onto solids. The more the change is significant and one is reluctant to adapt to it, the more the weaning process is difficult and long in producing the desired effect. Again, the only option worthy of one’s attention consists in taking things as they come and making the most of them, for one’s sake and that of others. The reverse is foolish and harmful, a deplorable waste of humanity.

On the whole, the power to live in a well-adjusted and high-minded way and the freedom to choose this way in preference to the alternate, illegitimate, way are the foundations of the life one builds. The exercise of this power does not necessarily imply a principled resignation toward the status quo. One may be faced with a remediable evil that calls for a struggle to remedy it, effectively and rightly. In that case, living in a well-adjusted and high-minded way entails accepting the need for this struggle and the means of waging it, and sparing no effort to attain one’s end. Ills are a test of will, an opportunity to show dignity.

They are also an opportunity to probe and appraise one’s inner resources. Over the years, I have improved my situation and especially my attitude, whose negativity was the most unfavorable and improvable aspect of my life. In so doing, I have discovered my true richness. Nature has endowed me with an adaptable capacity for happiness within the limits of my changeable reality. According to my observations, this capacity is not unusually great, compared with that of most people. I am even tempted to think it is somewhat lagging behind. Eleven years plus to adapt in triumph to my physical disability is no feat for the Guinness Book of World Records!

During that time, the riddle of life had more or less baffled me. Yet, laboriously, with the help of many books and much thought, I had managed by degrees to clear it up, enough to find a meaning to my life. This riddle is comparable to a mire: The slower you go through it, the deeper you get into it. Perhaps thinkers are commonly untalented in the art of living and their saving grace is their dogged determination to redeem this lack of talent by dint of studying the human soul. Amusingly enough, these untalented individuals are often perceived as gifted, once they have seen the light and reflected it with the numerous mirrors of an elaborate analysis, after a tentative and protracted search in the dark.

This sort of overcompensation is typical of people who experience difficulties in a certain area, but refuse to admit defeat. While some fare well in this area with a minimum of effort, they try hard to overcome these difficulties, with the result that they often fare better than the others. Their redeeming feature is their willpower in the face of their shortcoming, which they use as a reason to redouble their efforts, not as an excuse to throw in the towel. This is a recipe for a worthy success. They discipline and surpass themselves, and thus proudly turn things around.

The Characteristics of Soul

2010-02-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

At the dawn of spring, I am reminded by my children the joy of anticipating new life.

They will usually see a flower or two that has made its way through the soil to a world beyond itself. What starts out as a seedling or bulb is transformed by nature's capacity to evolve.

Inside each of us lies dormant an awareness, an identity, an ability to grow beyond what we appear to be. Every moment, we are being challenged by others and by circumstances to create a life that exceeds our present state of living.

To move toward our highest good takes a willingness on our part to let go of what we know to what can be known in and through us. You and I are part of the Created Order we see around us, and we are participants in Creating Order out of what we have been given to care for.

With this in mind, let us turn to ways our soul can be described in the characteristics that make up a flower:

1. The Ground.

The ground nurtures, protects, and gives birth to a flower. Inside the womb of the ground, life is taking root long before we can see it. Because we cannot see a flower that has been planted in the earth, does not mean life is not being created. To be full participants in our world means to be fully connected and rooted in the world we have been given.

2. The Stem.

The stem begins its growth in the earth below and into the sky above. This part of the flower is the connecting characteristic of the plant. Much like humanity, we are in this world without being fully of it. This creates a sacredness to our lives. It is our unique ability to live and grow in a way no one ever has, is, or ever will.

3. The Flower.

In full bloom, a flower is the illumination of all the life that has preceded it. The radiance and color that pour out of it create life. Notice the next time you look at a flower how you are affected by it. You may notice your heart open and be filled with joy. Or, you may notice more energy and clarity in your vision for being blessed with great beauty.

4. The Spirit of a Flower.

The spirit of a flower is the life force moving in and through it. It is the essence of a flower that identifies with your spirit. This part of you opens from the inside out and becomes ONE with the spirit of a flower. It is the same energy that runs in and through you. Like a flower, you begin to radiate your own soul from the essence of your own being.

Each spring, take the time to notice the part of you opening up to new life. Just like flowers, we grow from the inside out. What illuminates in our life began inside us. We nurture these inner qualities of attention until they eventually take root and grow into our daily lives. The growth that follows is created from what we attend to or hold our attention on within us.

Like the pedals of a flower opening to the world around it, we create a presence of awareness. In full bloom, the beauty or the lack thereof touches the lives of everyone around us. As our inner patterns of attention move through us, the world illuminates the seeds of awareness contained within us for so long. Here, a life is created.

The Capacity for Happiness and Respectability

2010-02-08T06:10:00.000-08:00

Humans are liable to experience a variety of afflictions, but they are commonly endowed with a capacity for happiness and respectability. There is no guarantee, however, that they will exercise this capacity at all times and to the maximum, whatever happens. Depression and shame remain a possibility, which increases with the severity of their afflictions and the difficulty of living up to the values that are necessary for their happiness and respectability: courage, efficiency, wisdom, and nobility.

Living up to these values is never easy, even under extremely favorable circumstances. It requires an effort of will. To make or not to make this effort is the question, central to the human existence. This question is difficult in proportion to the weight of suffering that bears on humans, while their dignity hangs in the balance. The more burdensome this weight, the more tempting it is for them to take the easy way out. The fear of losing their dignity, however, is a strong deterrent. There is no greater loss than that of dignity, save the loss of life itself. Yet, the easy way out is a very powerful temptation in extremely unfavorable circumstances. Giving up instead of living up to the values mentioned above is then deplorable but understandable. Excruciating circumstances are extenuating ones.

Amazingly enough, despite the burden of suffering that is oppressive to many, the incidence of moral collapse – in the form of errant ways like carelessness, vagrancy, and crime, often accompanied by alcohol or drug abuse to fuddle the conscience – is small in comparison with the incidence of worthy behavior. Furthermore, a moral collapse is remediable, except when the person concerned shows an inveterate or congenital weakness, or a mental illness that is beyond cure. On the whole, dignity can be lost and regained.

As for those who resist quitting the struggle for worthiness, they rarely do their best. In many instances their spirit is tainted with some degree of indulgence in laziness, cowardliness, ineffectiveness, foolishness, selfishness, and meanness. It has the grayness of dawn. Even those who shine like a late morning sun have a shadow of imperfection at their heels. In short, humanity has yet to fulfill its potential. While there is much courage, efficiency, wisdom, and nobility in the world, much happiness and respectability, there could be a whole lot more. The key to this rise is an effort of will.

The Bottom Line

2010-02-08T04:49:00.001-08:00

The following article includes pertinent information that may cause you to reconsider what you thought you understood. The most important thing is to study with an open mind and be willing to revise your understanding if necessary.

What Really Matters

We are here on this earth to learn acceptance. Acceptance of everything that life can throw at us, the good and the bad. One still needs to work at right livelihood and fight for truth and justice, but there will always remain many things we simply have no control over, and we must learn to accept this. We have no other choice but acceptance if we want to progress. Acceptance leads to forgiveness which leads to progression, but it is never easy. How does one accept the continued support and popularity of war criminals masquerading as leaders or child molesters.

To embrace acceptance is to become objective...about everything in this life and on this planet. By becoming objective we are able to disconnect from many of the attachments that bind us to servitude. In the ultimate scheme of things our lifelong tribulations are insignificant. We are here such a short time, and for most of us, our influence and ability to change anything for the better is limited or remote.

The path of least resistance for most unwary souls is to be caught up in the obligations pertaining to cycles of birth, family, children, and the roles we are taught or forced to assume. In this mode the freedom of disconnection alludes us. But it is through the gradual disconnection to our worldly attachments that allows us to realize how trivial jealousy, deceit, anger and acquisition are in relation to the big picture of existence which extends well beyond our occluded perceptions. True freedom comes when one is free of these distracting imperfections and can find forgiveness towards those who have wittingly or not caused us harm or pain.

The most difficult part is to forgive yourself, but this becomes available once you realize that most of the wrong decisions made, and hurts caused to others, were made from the immature vantage point you were in at the time. You didn’t have the tools or perspective you now have to realize that bad things happen to good people, that what you may have thought was important and worth the shortcuts, was in fact just a blind alley of glitter or delusion. If you can reach this level of awareness, to see that past decisions and actions were made by a less complete and understanding self, you will then be able to find compassion and eventually forgiveness of yourself for the harm you caused to yourself and to others as a result of your shortcomings.

Nobody said it was easy. That is why, in my view, most people continue to go round and round in their mental prisons, some eventually spiraling downwards, most doomed to instant replay, and only a few who find the doorway leading to salvation. Is deliverance available to everyone? I don’t know, in fact, I doubt it. So many with besmirched and sullied egos will inevitably follow their ill conceived prejudices to the grave. Or perhaps we all have epiphanies at one time or another and it is up to us whether this brief unanticipated opening into other domains should be acknowledged and pursued, or simply dismissed as a momentary slip of the gears as in a dream.

One thing that cannot be dismissed or ignored is the reality of life, death, corruption and beauty. Also intelligence, as it is apparent that this faculty, above all, has allowed our species the ability to comprehend these very notions, and through freewill, choose to manipulate them for better or worse. Most social manipulation via political, monarchal or religious constitution, served some evolutionary purpose but ultimately failed, because no man or demigod can impart spiritual epiphanies on another. Each individual soul must make a choice to see or not to see. On a collective scale, sooner or later any Emperor in any guise is observed to have no clothes, in fact never did, and becomes exposed.

We find ourselves at this time, in this hyped electro-techno modern world, either intellectually adrift from the old paradigm of institutional oppression and its attendant restraints and excesses, living in our own delusions, or blindly and fanatically grasping its slimy tentacles as evidenced in the Muslim world. Neither is sustainable, and more likely than not, to clash inducing further misery. Attachment to any belief, even if it’s a non belief, is sowing the seeds of eventual self-destruction. Only through disconnection from externally imposed belief or self-seeking illusion, and by acceptance and the fostering of forgiveness, can we hope to find redemption. Furthermore, this enlightenment can only be realized on an individual basis. The only exception where group fervor is benign is in the unfettered praise of the gift of life through gratitude and thanksgiving, as evidenced by the enhanced aura of such gatherings. The best we can do towards the edification of grace in this world is to help others by encouraging them to follow their own insights, to impartially lend a genuinely helping hand in practical and useful areas, or to communicate love through art and beauty if we are so gifted.

Sadly, scientific studies tell us that in the marketing world at least, only 2 percent of any given population can think for itself. The remaining overwhelming majority can only act when persuaded or cajoled by an external entity, which usually means political, religious or commercial coercion. And of course, foolishly allowing this majority to lend control of our lives to any of these interest groups has resulted in our collective consciousness being entangled in yet another fine mess. The best we can hope for now, as thinking individuals, is to be adept and agile enough to position ourselves as advantageously as we can, in circumstance and place, without sacrificing our hard gained spiritual insights to expediency especially at the expense of others. We must continue to disconnect while at the same time investing in pursuit of right livelihood, which usually means sharing the best of what is in us, not an easy feat. Writing this article is my humble attempt to add some clarity to the constant clamor of present day unconscionable self-aggrandizement, and the inevitable pervading disillusionment that will soon be swirling around us.

The day will come when you can use something you read about here for beneficial impact. Then you'll be glad you took the time to learn more about actualizing acceptance.

Suffering

2010-02-08T04:19:00.001-08:00

Since wisdom is the art of coping with suffering, it starts with a willingness to tackle it head-on:

a) Such is the harshness of our condition that we suffer, sometimes greatly or worse, insuperably.

b) Such is the richness of our nature that we can learn to live happily, or at least serenely, within the limits of this condition. This entails us either pursuing goals that are not only desirable or honorable, but also attainable, or resigning ourselves to the inevitable.

Admittedly, a great many suffer whose suffering is all the more problematic as their wisdom is still largely in the making. I remember my own past as a young unhappy and suicidal man who composed dark poems. My negative attitude compounded my difficult situation, and I lacked the awareness of my ability to improve both. Today, I feel deeply connected with those who live in the limbo of gloom. Even if my words only reach one of them, they will not have been written in vain.
I have recently come across some dark poetry, reminiscent of mine in my young days. The author – Melyssa G. Sprott – is a young talented woman whose youth has been poisoned by abuse and other hardships. Her suffering and her talent have inspired me to feature some of her work and respond to it. Note that my responding to it in a positive manner testifies to my being help-minded, but note also that my responses are written in a spirit of humbleness. I don't claim to provide a remedy; I just try my best to give some useful insights.

* * *

The following excerpts are from one of Melyssa's collection of poems, entitled "Descent into the Dark." They reveal her aching soul with the moving simplicity of a woman crying for her overwhelming grief.

1.

When I was six,
my father had me convinced
I wasn't worth the air I breathed,
the food I'd cost,
or other things I'd need.
When I was six,
my father didn't want children
or want the wife he kept,
so we were forced to suffer
for my father's regrets.

"Remember to tell him you love him or you'll die,"
Mother sings her twisted lullaby.
"Wish for mercy, pray for death,
await the day he ceases breath.
He'll wake you up at three in the morning
to beat you senseless without warning.
It doesn't matter how still you lie,"
Mother sings her twisted lullaby.

I want to bleed forever,
bleed out my sorrow.
I can't even bear
the thought of tomorrow.
I want this nightmare to end.
I'll close my eyes to the world.
I've been begging for death
since I was a little girl.

2.

How could all this damage
come from such trusted lips?

You throw words like stones.
My heart is breaking glass.

The key you held is the knife you twist.

3.

Nowhere to hide
in the dark of the night.

Sometimes the only comfort we find
is in our own pain….
They'll never understand the calm
of relinquishing all control.

Suffering takes less courage
than it takes to be content.

I didn't choose the less traveled path
of love, joy, and luck.
I chose the other path,
and now I am stuck.

I'm a prisoner of the dark in my eyes.

* * *

Let us take stock of a few harsh facts that are part and parcel of life, not only Melyssa's or mine, but everyone's.

a) The human potential for greatness – great learning and nobility, and great accomplishments – is matched only by the human potential for the reverse. Yes, humans can be and sometimes are monstrously poor-spirited, narrow-minded, and black-hearted, among other despicable traits. These traits may involve genetic or environmental factors that predispose to them, but ultimately they are the fault of the individuals who give free rein to them. The unfortunate thing is, these individuals are a source of suffering not only to themselves but also to those who are at their mercy. Among their victims are children, women, and elderly or disabled people. Actually, even the strongest of men can suffer as a result of falling prey to them. Yet, the others are more vulnerable – especially children who often make the dreadful mistake of blaming themselves for the abuse or neglect to which they are subjected.

b) As a rule, people are neither great nor bad in the extreme. They are relatively friendly and helpful – if you treat them fairly – and they lead decent though imperfect lives. Having said this, they have minds of their own, which may not be in keeping with yours. A man may fall in love with a woman who doesn't care a whit about him, and vice versa. A job seeker may hope for employment at some outfit, where in his opinion he belongs, and have his application turned down by an employer who sees things in a different light. These two examples count among an infinity of possible ones that testify to the same truth: Other people's wishes and yours often differ and you must then (out of respect) compromise or abstain from doing as you please.

c) On a positive note, there is some degree of harmony between nature's purpose and that of humans. As harsh as our life is on earth, we can subsist or even thrive. Yet, this harmony does not alter the fact that both purposes are distinct, always in danger of being opposite. Just think about the amount of resourcefulness and adaptability we must show to indeed thrive. At best the harmony is labored and confined within narrow limits. Think also about the number of times nature's purpose and that of humans clash, as demonstrated by all manner of nuisances, illnesses, and disasters. In short, the relationship we have with nature is like the relationship some people have with wild animals they have tamed. These animals are pleasant pets provided their needs are catered for. Still, they can turn against their owners for no apparent reason, except that they are fundamentally wild.

As I pointed out earlier, wisdom starts with a willingness to tackle the harsh reality of life head-on. It is the reverse of ignorance, and hence is exclusive of the illusory bliss that accompanies this ignorance. If happiness is possible through wisdom, it is achieved with the full knowledge and acceptance of the harsh reality in question. By acceptance I do not mean a passive resignation toward the status quo in all its harshness. I mean a brave readiness to turn our situation – possibly bad in a number of respects – to good account. And this includes bettering what we are able to better, while making do with everything else.

Easier said than done, of course. But then happiness is not about what is easy; it is about what is good and right and can only be accomplished through a great deal of meritorious effort. To make or not to make this effort is the question, which sums up human freedom. And surely nobody in their right mind would forever take the easy option that leads to unworthiness and unhappiness!

No Pulitzer For Drama; No Wonder

2010-02-08T03:39:00.001-08:00

This year, when The Pulitzer Prizes were announced, the not entirely delightful news is that no Pulitzer was awarded in drama.

While the decision is unsettling, the prudence of it must be acknowledged, since, affection for the theater and those who make it aside, there was no drama to consider.

Let us have the courage to ask why and, along the way, try our best to understand everybody’s culpability or innocence.

If you keep tabs on Broadway, just so you’ll know if, by some surprising concatenation of events, a drama you might actually be interested in seeing comes along, you know that the usual fare this past season was once again a series of enthusiastically promoted trifles.

But the financial realities on Broadway make it exceedingly chancy for producers to put up anything that isn’t already proven at the box office and, even more importantly, with the critics, who can even disable a previous box-office success. All very understandable. The producers are not in the business of nourishing unproven works, no matter how worthy they may suspect or be advised they are. Not understandable.

The small and regional theaters are seldom managed by people who have any sense of what mainstream appeal might be or they very likely wouldn’t be working in a little or regional theater. Perfectly understandable.

Even if a small or regional theater puts up a work that might attract a wider audience than the reliable coterie whose interests are decidedly offbeat, the likelihood that a well-known critic or even a second-string critic will show up is discouraging. Understandable. During the theater season, little theaters put up shows with withering frequency in New York and all over the country. The critics whose names people might known do not flock to any production that doesn’t have some kind of major preproduction cache. Their primary job is to review the little shows in the big venues, not the remotely possible big show in a little venue, and their secondary job, should they occasionally be inspired to assume its obligations, is to cherry pick smaller productions that present some precondition of influential interest. Also understandable.

The current crop of critics, when confronted by a work in any theatrical venue that smacks of being mainstream, are unlikely to find it suits their own offbeat temperaments. Not understandable. It is such temperamental selectivity that prevented, among countless lesser knows, a relatively mainstream playwright like Arthur Miller from getting a rave review during the last two or three decades of his life, and even a popular confectioner like Neil Simon from getting one for many years.

The inescapable fact is, offbeat people usually prefer offbeat works. Very understandable. We’re all human.

But what would be really refreshing is for a major critic or two to surface whose tastes would incline them to help nourish intelligent theater that deals with the major text and subtext of contemporary mainstream American life. Once we were fortunate enough to have them, like the legendary Brooks Atkinson and the more recent Walter Kerr, we could be far more hopeful that mainstream works would have a chance of surfacing. After all, critics are the first significant audience for any work, and so they are necessary partners in the attempt to rejuvenate intelligent and widely relevant American theater.

As for the playwrights, we must understand their plight, too. Simply put, comes the hopeful new playwright with a mainstream sensibility, where can he hope to find an outlet? And, if he does, can he hope to have a critic show up, let alone one who is on the same page with his sensibility? Quite a rare – and, year after year, an apparently impossible – combination.

Even Actors Equity is aligned against the poor talented soul. Should the playwright somehow find a theater that will put us his or her work, he or she will get what is known as a showcase presentation, which provides for four weeks of rehearsal and a four-week run, possibly extended to five weeks. Since the rehearsals must be conducted with actors who have to participate in their spare time, due to the meager honorariums showcase appearances provide, it’s difficult to get a production that does the work justice. And a four-week run simply is not long enough to build word of mouth.

Between the scarcity of venues that have a predisposition toward a playwright who has a sensibility that might reach mainstream America, the difficulty of getting a production that showcases the work in a way that renders whatever excellence it may hold, the brevity of the run, and the scarcity of critics who might arrive, compounded by the unlikely prospect that any who do might appreciate it, can we blame the playwright who finally decides that he’s involved in a hopeless puzzle that, at best, is merely baby sitting him as an intellectual. Is it any wonder that he may sulk between disappointing efforts and finally walk away into a writing career where there is some hope of getting somewhere. Understandable, at least.

So there you have, as best as we can explain it, why no Pulitzer was awarded for drama.

But we could never leave you without whatever hope there might be.

The one factor that hasn’t yet entered contemporary theater that has influenced, for better or worse, film and television, is the advent of the self-funded writer-producer. Considering the gauntlet that faces the mainstream playwright without his or her own resources, such a writer-producer, maligned as he may initially be as self-aggrandizing by the theatrical establishment, may be the only hope left.

Meanwhile, we must reluctantly admit, better not to award the Pulitzer at all than to award it to a trifle, masquerading as a piece of consequence. At least, some sort of standard has been indicated.

Love and Courage

2010-02-08T03:06:00.000-08:00

To many work is not a gratifying opportunity to do good, but a necessary evil they would gladly forgo if they won or inherited a fortune. It is just a livelihood, a vital drudgery. Its meaning is the paycheck and the value it has in terms of service to their community is indifferent or very subordinate.

Their calculating and uncaring attitude is recognizable. Whereas people who heartily act in the interest of others are gracious, they are perfunctory. At best, in establishments that demand courtesy from employees, their behavior is irreproachable, albeit artificial. “Can I be of assistance? Here you are. Will there be anything else? You’re welcome” – no genuine attempt at pleasing, just a vapid exercise in politeness and efficiency that follows a procedure and arouses a feeling of satisfied indifference as would a serving of plain noodles. They do the minimum that is required of them, to maintain their employment, and gladly do nothing provided they get paid all the same. They never miss a break. Come the end of their working day, they rush out before the first second of the next hour has passed. They live for their time off and dream of a permanent vacation, as though leisure were the essence of happiness.

What about the dignity of making oneself useful, which is the antipode of this levity? What about love – I mean the desire to live usefully in the service of others? This desire builds on gratefulness, with a view to worthiness. I start from the assumption that love is a characteristic of people who appreciate living in society, thanks to a combination of positive attitude and relatively favorable social environment. To sum up, the more they love life, in company with others who take part in their life, the more they love others.

Now, feeling this love is one thing, acting upon it is quite another, which needs courage. Actually, a lack of courage would not only render this love inactive but also tend to destroy it in order to avoid shame. The mind is a double-edged thinking tool that can cut its way in and out of truth by means of veracious statements or specious arguments. Love may be denied despite every reason for loving. Therefore, courage is a rich trait of character without which love is unable to flourish, neither as an emotion nor as an action. Of course, where laziness and cowardliness have rotted or stunted love, dignity – which stems from the act of loving – is but a potential bloom. May courage be cultivated! I hate to think that the soul has such a capacity for beauty and yet can remain undeveloped, morally retarded, as ugly as a shriveled growth that an earnest gardener could have transformed into a heavenly rose.

On reflection, courage should be valued above all other virtues, since it constitutes the necessary condition for developing them. It is not a sufficient condition, however. It is capable of nothing by itself while everything depends on it. Courage is the force that can raise life to joy and joy to love and love to dignity, insofar as the human nature aspires to these difficult heights, though it is always tempted to go for the easy and low option. This nature is indeed dual. People are forever torn between their lofty aspirations and their base temptations. Their choice to honor these aspirations or surrender to these temptations determines their moral status, admirable or pitiable.

Admittedly, the more you are afflicted with misery, the harder it is for you to lead a courageous and honorable existence. It is not surprising that children who grow up in miserable circumstances sometimes display miserable attitudes and behaviors once they are adults: low self-esteem and under-achievement, resentment and aggressiveness, alcoholism and drug addiction, vagrancy and crime, among others. These attitudes and behaviors deplorably impact the other members of society who are worried, troubled, harmed, or perverted by them. The problem is clearly cancerous. I hope that the future will bring effective social measures to better assist these children in their pursuit of happiness and worthiness. Benefactions, family allowances, subsidized housing, free health care and school education, together with scholarships, are present solutions that rely on private charities or government policies and call for improvements through greater creativity and generosity.

Bearing in mind the deplorable impact that the children of misery can have on society, as they sometimes grow into failures, misfits, or outlaws, I feel compelled to underscore the utilitarianism behind this generosity. Just as these children arouse compassion, they are a cause for anxiety in everyone who is aware of this possible impact. Their welfare is actively sought, both for their sake and that of society at large whose interests are at stake. Likewise, employers who care about their employees, while caring about their business, always offer them the best possible working conditions. These employees are joyful and grateful as a rule, which ensures a superior efficiency and loyalty on their part. Good spirit is good profit.

Some dream of equal opportunities for everyone. Will this dream someday become a reality? Everywhere in the world, it meets with inequality – between those who are born lucky and those who are not, relatively speaking. Is it a lost cause? I believe so, though I am a firm believer in progress. Even a welfare state with the most extensive social assistance could only reduce this inequality, not eliminate it.

What if it resorted to communism to reduce this inequality further? History suggests that a communist regime would prove ruinous, economically and psychologically, in the long run. The equal sharing of resources between people, imposed on them by a centralized government regardless of their respective contributions to the common good, is an untenable and unviable totalitarian approach. In a word, it is an absurdity. Democratic societies, on the other hand, leave much to be desired, but are certainly the most satisfactory to date. They are based on freedom, talent, chance, and merit, while including a safety net for those who have fallen off the high wire of health and success. Things merely have to improve. The status quo is a steppingstone to brighter days.

Forget perfection, which is deadly and imperfect after all: an illusion. However bright the future may turn out, it will not be without shadows. Unhealthy, unwise, unsuccessful, unhappy, and unkind adults will keep bringing children into the world. Assuming these children will benefit from improved relief measures, they will nevertheless suffer from a difficult youth, lacking in the material and spiritual advantages luckier children enjoy. Like their previous counterparts, they will be confronted by the challenge of growing into the opposite of their parents – that is, into healthy, wise, successful, happy, and kind adults. None but the strong will overcome. Only they will appreciate the divine justice that counterbalances the problem of inequality: The less luck people have at the start, the more merit they have in the end if they make a success of their life. This principle is universal and timeless; it is applicable here and now. May the objects of our compassion fill us with admiration as they rise from their woes to become our heroes!

This victory against the odds is an extreme. I can think of a second extreme, as pathetic as the first is heroic. Contrary to expectations, some people born of goodhearted and well-to-do parents are miserable individuals. They are insatiably selfish and shockingly ungrateful, so infantile and spineless that play and rest are their sole ambitions. Did they have a weak character to start with? Did their parents kill them with kindness and spoil them rotten? Is that why they have no soul?

Isolated Expedition

2010-02-08T02:33:00.001-08:00

Imagine an expedition to the Antarctic in 1914. There is no GPS, no world-reaching radio, and no satellite phone. Brutal conditions, rationed food, tight living quarters. Sounds pretty bleak. Now imagine that something goes horribly wrong. As days turn into weeks the rationed food is exhausted. As weeks turn into months hope is all that is left. When hope diminishes, all that is left is the will to live.
Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 voyage turned into a disaster just before he and his crew of twenty-eight could reach Antarctica. Their ship The Endurance was held up by ice for ten months and then crushed by it's frozen, unforgiving force, and that is just the beginning of this two-years long journey. It is amazing what he and his crew endure over this time period just to survive.

This is an excerpt from a diary kept by crewman Thomas Orde-Lees that recounts a very cold and desperate time some six months after the men abandoned the crumpled, mangled wreckage of their ship on three lifeboats.

"As the water splashed into the boats it froze instantly forming thick incrustations of ice on the inside of the boat and over all the gear freezing up the sail as stiff as a piece of corrugated iron. Fortunately the water which ran into the bottom of the boat did not freeze at once so that by frequent bailing we were able to keep pace with it and prevent the accumulation of ice along the keels, where, had it once formed, it would have been next to impossible to eradicate it on account of the cargo.

Much sleet covered us, and what with this and the sea spray we were all more or less wet through and our outer clothing was frozen stiff. Our time was largely occupied in picking the ice off each other's backs. It would be a lie to say that we were at all happy under these circumstances but now and again we made a feeble effort to assume a cheerful, hopeful air in spite of ourselves. We were being sorely tried, indeed, though."

Ignorance and Fantasy

2010-02-08T01:54:00.001-08:00

Are beliefs not often the children of ignorance and fantasy? Consider the heavenly view of the world that young souls entertain at the height of their innocence, when their youth has been surrounded by love and filled with happiness. Hear their laughter. Dreams expand in a vacuity of knowledge like a laughing gas and induce the blindest, the purest joy.

Ignorance is bliss, as they say, because it spares us the mental restraints associated with knowledge (which reveals the limits of reality and hence the impossibility of our fantasies). It is the ultimate playground where the mind can build castles in the air, create a wonderland, and live delightedly in this kingdom of reverie. It paves the way for the reign of error, as it leaves us to believe whatever we like. Everything that is desirable is realizable, if not real, until we find evidence to the contrary. Santa Claus eventually dies of our old age – when we are no longer so young, so green, that we are easily fooled by a tall story.

In truth, however wise we may be, we are still at risk. We spontaneously indulge in fantasies about the world here below, which is never totally known, or the beyond, which is unknowable. We are always tempted to believe that our health, our relationships, our career, or any other part of our life, will be wonderful, or that our death will not be an end, but a passage from here to a paradisal hereafter. This temptation is irresistible for many when they discover a charismatic fortuneteller or spiritual leader who professes this belief, which remains unproven nonetheless. Our believing is then the result of ignorance and fantasy, plus faith.

An example of self-deceit that concerns young idealists and betrays their warm-blooded aspiration for perfect love is the illusive passion they often experience toward attractive members of the opposite sex whom they little know. By perfect love I mean a complete and durable harmony at every level – physical, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual – between two lovers. It involves friendship to a high degree, as the words “girlfriend” and “boyfriend” suggest. While it includes lust, it transcends and transfigures it.

Pop songs are common vehicles for this ideal, which entices many young souls. I am thinking of young men in particular, who are usually quick to fantasize about pretty young women and fall madly in love with them, or rather with a fantastical image of them. This quickness is typical of their ardent and imprudent youth. It needs nothing more than a few smiles and nods, a few gracious words of agreement, to make these young men imagine they have found a soul mate, as they pour out their inner self – their sense of what is good, true, right, or sacred. A few auspicious signs and, voilא, they take the pretty young women for dream girls and are besotted with them! A few misleading signs, in fact. Every charm hides a cause for alarm.

If, in the struggle for survival and happiness, society is a cure for individual limitations (an imperfect cure to be sure, with side effects), it is also a pill hard to swallow. Civility is a smooth sugar coating that eases the swallowing. Give thanks to those who phrase their discontentment with delicacy and embellish it with a compliment and an encouragement. No nagging, no gagging. Sometimes civility excludes honesty and amounts to well-meaning or self-serving hypocrisy. It turns into servility through a mix of kindness and weakness, or through pure selfishness. One way or another, some people are fooled, kept in the dark, while they should live wisely, in the light of knowledge. They are denied truth: the opportunity to conceive of their true situation and achieve their true purpose.

Young men, among the fantasizers I referred to earlier, are often lured by the social graces of pretty young women. The poor fish take the hook and eventually discover they have made a mistake, like many others in the same boat. The dream girls were ordinary maidens or vixens who first behaved and talked infinitely sweet, and later proved lovable in a limited way or revealed their sour temper.

A long intimacy is a good test of a couple's true nature. It always strips relationships of the silky appearance they sometimes have initially, when seduction overrides every other consideration. This appearance is superficial and deceptive like the outer layers of an onion. Once it is removed, after a succession of changes that marked a gradual return to naturalness, conflicts arise. The truth is uncovered; tears are shed.

Many young fantasizers part from their lovers at this point. They embark on another relationship until the next disillusion, the next dissolution, then embark on another relationship, and so forth. They do the same in other areas of life, starting this or that with high expectations and quitting upon the first difficulties, time and again. They never settle for less than perfection; they never build anything to speak of.

Some of these fantasizers stop this nonsense after a number of disappointments and finally change into brave realists. Their bravery distinguishes them from other disenchanted souls who give up hope to give in to laziness with a clear conscience. These defeatists confuse their attitude with realism and suffer nullity or mediocrity rather than fight for excellence, which is possible, unlike perfection. In their view, humans are in their element only when fantasizing, like fish when swimming. In fact, humans – who are adaptable – are closer to amphibians than to fish. They can come back to earth without dying of frustration, and even better, with a chance to live happily, thanks to a blend of struggle and resignation that yields joy and serenity.

Brave realists know and accept the conditions and limitations of happiness. They think it all the more precious as it has a high cost and is bound to be lost sooner or later. They also understand that although one may indulge in a fickle existence for a while, one must eventually commit and apply oneself to a particular relationship, study, or career, in spite of imperfections and difficulties, if one wishes to achieve something worthy of mention. Nothing good can come from a search for better that always leaves one thing for another.

Ian Fleming - James Bond's Creator

2010-02-08T01:15:00.000-08:00

Ian Lancaster Fleming (1908-1964), the author of the James Bond 007 novels, was the grandson of a Scottish banker and the son of a Conservative MP (Member of Parliament). His father died in the first world war. In his will, he bequeathed his property to his widow on condition she never remarries.

Ian's youth was inauspicious. He was expelled from Eton following a sexual liaison with a girl. He left Sandhurst without obtaining an officer's rank, having been caught violating the curfew. He continued his education in Kitzbuhel, Austria, in Munich and in Geneva where he studied languages. But the chain of disappointments continued apace. He failed in a Foreign Service exam and had to join Reuters as a journalist. There he successfully covered a spy trial in Russia (1929-32).

He then joined a British investment bank as a stockbroker and moved to live in a converted temple in Belgravia, a fashionable district of London, where he entertained the members of the Le Cercle Gastronomique et des Jeux de Hasard.

In 1939, Fleming took on an assignment for The Times in Moscow - in effect a cover. He was spying for the Foreign Office and later for Naval Intelligence where he attained the rank of Commander.

During the second world war, he worked from room number 39 in the Admiralty building in Whitehall as assistant to Admiral John Godfrey. He was involved in the evacuation of Dieppe in 1940, in the smuggling of King Zog out of Albania and in setting up the Office for Special Services, the precursor of the CIA.

As commander of the 30th Assault Unit, he sometimes operated behind the German lines, trying to secure important documents and files from destruction. But, mostly, he directed the Unit's operations from London.

When the war was over, he built a house - Goldeneye - in Jamaica. He worked for the Kemsley group of papers and vacationed every winter in the island.

While awaiting the divorce of one of his numerous paramours - the pregnant Lady Anne Rothermere - the 44 years old Fleming wrote "Casino Royale" published in 1953. It was the first of 12 James Bond thrillers, translated to 11 languages and with total sales of 18 million copies. James Bond novels are now being authored by a new generation of writers.

In 1961, John F, Kennedy, the newly elected president, listed a James Bond title as one of his favorite books. Many movie plots were loosely based on Fleming's novels and have grossed, in total, more than $1 billion. The 007 trademark was merchandised and attached to everything, from toys and games to clothes and toiletries.

But Fleming was also renowned for his non-fiction: tomes like "The Diamond Smugglers" and his "Atticus" column in The Sunday Times where he served as foreign manager (1945-9). He successfully branched into children's literature with "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1964), also made into a movie.

Ironically, his mother died and left him a fortune in 1964 - when Fleming was already wealthy and dying. The trip to her service may have done him in. His son committed suicide in 1975 and his wife died in 1981. He left behind one heir: James Bond.

Hindu God idols – discovering Indian mythology!

2010-02-08T00:32:00.001-08:00

We all enjoy decorating our homes as beautifully as possible, especially when it comes to statues or small sculptures that depict various symbols. Powerfully attracted by the complex history of Buddhist idols, a lot of people have discovered an entire array of objects presented online, included in the gold collection. For them, these religious murtis (idols) are just what they needed for beautification and adoration at the same time.

Each idol is unique but any of the Hindu God idols that you choose represent ideal objects for adoration, worship and they can adorn any temple (also known as mandir). The 24k gold plating is definitely a plus, especially since such religious statues are given at special occasions. Some are offered at weddings, traditional festivals like Diwali (festival of lights), as a new-house present or even for welcoming a baby into life. The incredible thing about these objects is that they can fit into any culture, being an expression of religion and a gift that will be for always cherished.

Indians have a very rich and deep culture, particularly when we are speaking about religion. They pray and worship these religious idols, showing their respect at every festival and cultural event. Such products are widely purchased when the festival of lights is approaching, the legend saying that Ganesha and Laxmi gold idols should be bought. Ganesha is known to be the God that takes care of all things to run smoothly, eliminating obstructions and imparting wisdom. Many people choose to worship Ganesha by having religious idols in their temples or even in their homes, especially when they plan on starting new projects.

The Internet is today the best place where you can search for religious murtis and receive the most detailed offers, not to mention the best prices. You can enjoy the greatest diversity for the gold collection, including Radha Krishna (symbol of love in the Indian culture) but also a lot of other religious statues that are not so easy to get hold of, particularly Sai Baba, Bal Gopal, Ambemata, Kali or Shiva (one of the three major divinities in the Hindu temple). If you are not satisfied with the gold religious murtis, you can always search for the silver collection. You will definitely be impressed with the choices you are given.

Attracted by the incredible culture, many people have become ardent collectors of Hindu God idols. They have learned more about Indian mythology and religious beliefs, most of them being even interested in expressing their confidence in these deities. For them, the silver collection presents a number of interesting opportunities, especially if we were to take into consideration the depiction of the Ganesha idol. Ganesha is indeed among the most prized religious statues, being often offered as a gift but also being kept for worship.

If you are interested in Krishna gold, Sai Darbar gold, Ganapati silver or Ganesha silver idols, you can definitely find what you are looking for online. You can offer a wonderful gift to someone who is just as curious about the Indian culture or you can always add a new religious gold or silver idol to your growing collection!

Psychic Readers Predict The Future But You Create Destiny

2010-02-07T11:11:00.001-08:00

Has a psychic ever told you something incredibly amazing about your future that is hard to imagine as true? Or warned you, perhaps frightened you about the future by reading an awful outcome to a situation? Did you know whether to believe the prediction or not? Sooner or later most of us who use the services of a psychic reader are likely to encounter this type of experience even if you have never been to a psychic or think you will ever go to one.

More and more, people are seeking answers for their problems through the venue of the paranormal. There are unexplainable experiences reported every day, as well as, insurmountable problems challenging our coping skills in this rapidly changing world. Therefore, there is a good chance that one of these situations may eventually drive you to seek the services of a psychic, whether you think you would or not. Should you believe a psychic’s fateful predictions? If so, can the future be changed?

People tend to think the future is predetermined. Therefore, it can not be changed. That statement couldn’t be any further from the truth. Psychics don’t predict the future. Instead, they predict the probability of the future. Psychics read the future based on the current path you are on at the moment of the reading. If you make a decision that takes you off that path, more than likely the predicted future will no longer be accurate.

What really is the future? There is no set time that we can actually label and claim as the future. Think about what happens to time when you read a page in a book. Before you read the book the first page is the future. While you are reading it, the page can be described as the present. Once you have finished reading it, the page now represents the past. The future isn’t a constant, because it is fluid and always moving.

Why go to a psychic if the future isn’t engraved in stone? Think of a prediction as a mechanism that can provide a meaningful insight or some self-knowledge not consciously apparent to you. For example, a positive prediction can be a motivating force or something that offers you hope. On the other hand, a negative prediction can offer a chance for you to grow emotionally and spiritually. It can be a warning for you to thwart a foreseeable problem by taking a different course of action.

When you go to a psychic, remember to keep the predictions in perspective. Your thoughts and actions today can actually create the destiny you must then meet in the future. The next time a psychic predicts a car accident for your future, take some action. You can watch your speed, drive defensively and be alert as a way to avoid your “so-called” fate. Remember: You are more in control of your destiny than you think.

Happiness

2010-02-07T10:41:00.000-08:00

Having said this, even this sort of happiness is a product of positive thinking and positive action, with good fortune lending a helping hand. In short, it is a product of will in relatively favorable circumstances. But isn't it peculiar to imply that happiness can be of one sort or another? Are there not simply happiness and unhappiness? I think not. The sort of happiness that the sage talks about is compatible with misfortune. It is preeminently a doing from within – while without, the only prerequisite for it is that the sage be alive and capable of thought. It is a feeling of serenity, of being at peace with his situation and his conscience, as a well-adjusted and fully committed servant of life, of humanity, of God as he sees them.

However conscious he is of the subjectiveness – i.e., the individual limitations and hence the imperfection – of his view, he does live by it with utmost faithfulness, if also with a willingness to reevaluate it critically when he catches himself out in a misstep. His wisdom is forever a work in progress; it is always laced with some form of foolishness, which leaves him open to ridicule. Humility and compassion, plus humor are therefore qualities that he cultivates. He mocks and forgives himself, and above all strives to improve. He shows no complacency, but an acceptance of his humanness that he is intent on bringing to the highest possible degree of truth and nobility. And this delicate blend of resignation and struggle alone – in any situation, favorable or not – is indeed the secret of his happiness, which admittedly is a dry manner of joy that fills the mind rather than the heart.

It follows that this happiness leaves something to be desired: happiness in the fullest sense of the word (a state of fulfillment, when everything is going our way, in terms of results as well as efforts), which is a joy, ever so sweet, that fills both the mind and the heart. When the sage experiences this supreme happiness, he rightly feels blessed, and knows how precarious it is. Furthermore, he accepts this precariousness, or the fact that suffering and ultimately death loom ahead. Only battles are won in the war of life that will inevitably – despite every valiant effort to prevail – end in defeat.

Some will say that happiness in its so-called fullest sense leaves something more to be desired: the power to make this happiness infinite: immeasurably great and unlimited in duration. Among them, some will choose the path of faith, which allegedly leads to a heavenly afterlife, whereas some will choose the path of reason, which admits of no rosy belief based on wishful thinking and unbridled trust. This path leads nowhere as far as the beyond is concerned, or rather somewhere that is unknown – presumably so different from what is known that it totally exceeds our ability to conceive of its nature.

I count among these proponents of reason, these infidels, to whom the only source of meaning is not a paradisiacal destination, whose existence is supported by no credible evidence, but the journey itself, a rugged and uphill journey to be sure, with an abundance of twists and turns, some of which are propitious, others not. This journey is well worth the trouble, in my opinion. It is so independently of the above-mentioned destination, which people are free to pursue blindly or regard with skepticism (and with detachment to boot, in the best case scenario). It is all about the dignity of living and loving and the pleasure of succeeding in these difficult assignments. From this perspective, the purpose of life is none other than life itself, in partnership with our fellow creatures; and happiness is made possible – within certain limits – by our striving to achieve this worthy, albeit humble purpose.

The limits imposed upon worldly happiness may initially stick in our craw, but after due consideration, as we realize that life without these limits would be death, we accept them, and better still we welcome them. Life is by definition a dynamic state that presupposes a perpetual tension between desires and their satisfaction. Render this satisfaction absolute, you resolve this tension and consequently reduce life to nothing; i.e., something as inert as a stone. And this nothing – this inert something – is death, as I just pointed out. Not a brilliant prospect in the eyes of a life lover!

Divining The Future

2010-02-07T10:06:00.001-08:00

Whether in movies or books or in life, it is human nature to be curious about “what happens next”, what the future holds in store. Because of this curiosity divination methods were developed, some even centuries old. There are several tools and ways to divine the future. Forms popularized by gypsies (as related in tales) are crystal (ball) gazing, tarot card reading, palmistry, tea leaves, bones, etc.

Divination is anything but an exact art or science. People who have the gift of divination are often called fortune tellers. This is actual a mislabel, because it really isn’t fortune that the diviner sees but possibilities of a person’s future live, love, finances, etc. All these based on decisions that a person makes now. In the Filipino language, diviners are called manghuhula which literally translates to “guessers”. Essentially, this means that fortune tellers are supposedly just guessing. Amazingly, their guesses hit the mark often enough that divination became a thriving business.

Despite its many forms, the one that appears to be most trusted is astrology. There are different types of astrology but the ones most popularly known are the Chinese astrology (one of the oldest divination techniques created centuries ago) and the western astrology (created by Babylonian astronomers).
Chinese Astrological signs change on an annual basis, based on the cycles of the moon. Hence, their year starts with the first full moon of the year. The Chinese zodiac is based on 12 animals. Your animal is based on the year of your birth. The twelve animal signs are: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar.

The zodiac that people are more familiar with is the one that changes by the month. Depending on your birth date you could fall under the sign of Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, or Capricorn.

Nowadays divination nuts (whether diviners or those who want to have their future read) seem to be everywhere! From the cafי at the corner, to bookstores, to the funny section in newspapers, to radio, to TV, to websites, and even, yes, to call centers. Psychic hotlines have been all the rage for many years now. One notable personage to get on the band wagon is Dionne Warwick and her psychic circle of friends.

Diviners who use astronomy employ a lot of math and research before they give their predictions. The result depends on the position of the stars and the alignments of the planets plus the date and time of your birth for them to feel that they can come up with a more or less accurate prediction.

The diviners of the 21st century are more than fortune tellers. They also act as counselors or advisers to their clients. They provide more than advice; they also provide comfort, and an attentive ear at a very affordable price. Your favorite diviner becomes a part of your life and at times transforms from being a simple diviner to a good friend.

Be Psychic- Tips For Awakening The Psychic In You

2010-02-07T09:35:00.001-08:00

Have your ever had an experience you thought was a coincidence, but a nagging feeling made you feel there was more meaning to it? Those nagging feelings may be the very seeds of your own psychic ability waiting to be cultivated.

Your psychic sense can be compared to the bubbles that surface on a quiet pond. As you quietly stare into a still pond, you will soon notice the movement of the water. When you continue to focus your attention into the small body of water, you will eventually see tiny ripples of water and small bubbles emerge from the depths of the quiet pond. That’s exactly the way your sixth sense will respond, when you pay attention to the “psychic bubbles” of insights that surface from the depths of your mind.

How can you develop your psychic ability naturally? Set aside time to do nothing but experience your senses. Absorb everything you observe or feel around you. When an image flashes into your mind or a feeling runs through your body, don’t be quick to dismiss it. Instead, allow yourself to savor it as you would a delicious dessert. If it is an image, observe the details of it but also pay attention to the way the image makes you feel. If it’s a feeling, try to make it into an image. Imagine it as a sound or a smell.

Try new activities and do old things in new ways. Loosen your focus on goals and try being flexible enough to stimulate your mind by doing something out of the ordinary. Follow your impulses and lean toward the unusual. As you do, you will be exercising your mind to function psychically.

Studies show that the brain waves of subjects change when they’re introduced to new materials or experiences. A person who is receptive to new experiences, new information, and has been exposed to unusual and varied life experiences, will find it easier to develop the ability. Therefore, act like sponge! Soak up as many experiences as possible to feed your mind the subliminal stimuli necessary to cultivate your psychic ability.

Exercise your extra-sensory mental muscle naturally with these five simple tips:

- Travel as much as possible and observe everything.
- Change your routine by driving a new way to work or in some other way.
- Try an exotic food and savor the experience.
- Talk to someone you think you have nothing in common with.
- Solve a problem by listening to a “hunch” or “gut instinct”.

Developing your psychic sense is a natural as learning how to exercise. One is for body fitness and the other is for mental fitness. Both give you the tools to reach your full potential and the ability to create an even better life than you have now. To develop your sixth sense naturally set aside time to accomplish nothing. Instead just experience the moment through your senses and become aware of everything as though you were just born.

About Tattoo

2010-02-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

More recently however there has been a revival in anchor tattoos and there are many new designs that are full of brilliant colors and new design motifs for anchor tattoos. There has been a revival in more traditional tattoos.

As always history, symbolism and meaning provide an interesting overlap of cultures and times. If you are thinking about getting an anchor tattoo it helps to know the background on them and do some research to find out the different meaning and symbolism of anchor tattoos. Some common designs in ankle tattoos are a tribal symbol, a floral arrangement or an initial. An ankle tattoo can be small enough that it isn't noticeable unless the person is very close. Many professional women choose this type of tattoo because it isn't overbearing and at the same time it allows them to carry something personal on their bodies always.

Once you have decided on a design and coloring for your ankle tattoos you'll want to visit a reputable establishment that does tattoos. Looking through the yellow pages is one route but if you know anyone who has a tattoo you should ask them about their experience. Quite often they'll be happy to share with you and they may recommend a place for you to visit. After deciding on a tattoo parlor you'll want to discuss with the artist your concept. If you come there without a design in mind they will be able to show you a range of images that you can choose from. Most people prefer a smaller design for ankle tattoos and if the artist feels that yours is too large, they will work with you to bring it down to a scale that is more appropriate.

Getting a tattoo involves piercing the skin, and so there is going to be some pain involved, no matter how small the tattoo and no matter where it is on your body. The amount and type of pain experienced is highly variable depending on each individual's tolerance to and acceptance of pain. While tattooing, the needles puncture the skin at a very fast rate and at a variable depth. The outline is usually the most painful work, because the needles are being used to create a nice solid black line that will define the tattoo, and so it is inserted deeply and carefully to ensure complete and effective coverage. The shading is usually not as painful, but this also depends upon the depth of penetration and the desired effect.

The pain you feel is generally as a slight burning or hot scratching sensation. Generally, the tattoo is more painful if applied to areas of the body where there is less muscle and fatty tissue covering bone, like wrists, ankles, chests, and other normally sensitive body areas. Upper arms are usually the least painful, while the ankles and sternum can be quite sensitive.

The tattoo pain is certainly not unbearable, here are some tips for coping with and minimizing the pain:
Find a reputable tattooist that you feel comfortable with to get the tattoo work done, the confidence you get from a tattooist can minimize your pain to the highest. Don't show up drunk or on drugs.
Go in with some determination and accept the fact that a few hours of discomfort without giving the tattooist a hard time will help ensure that you get a first-rate tattoo. If you feel you can't take the pain anymore, tell your tattooist. Take a short break, or come back in a few days. Tattoos don't have to be applied all in one sitting. Break up your session if needed. Listen to music or let your imagination go wild during the procedure, a certain degree of distraction set by your self will help you put less concentration on the pain.

U2: Legends of Rock

2010-02-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

U2 was founded in 1976 and features Bono (Paul David Hewson) on vocals, The Edge (David Howell Evans) on lead guitar, keyboards, and background vocals, Adam Clayton on bass guitar, and Larry Mullen, Jr. on drums and background vocals. The band found popularity in the mid 1980’s and is still wildly popular today. They have sold about 50.5 million albums in the United States alone, and approximately 170 million across the globe.

Six of U2 albums were #1 in the U.S., and the band has won more Grammy Awards than any living or past recording artists, with 22 under their belt. In its April 2004 issue, Rolling Stone magazine, named U2 in its 50 “greatest rock & roll artists of all time” and in the following year, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Arguably, one of the most successful bands of all time, the band continues to top music charts and sell out stadiums and arenas all around the globe.

U2 was initially formed in Dublin, Ireland in the fall of 1976. Mullen, Jr., posted a notice on his secondary school’s bulletin board seeking musicians to form a new band. Seven boys would attend the band’s first ever practice, but only Mullen, Jr., Clayton, Evans, and Hewson would be left by the time the band was performing at a talent show in Limerick, Ireland on March 17, 1978. The band won the top prize at the top show and impressed Jackie Hayden, one of the judges for the show, who also worked for CBS Records. Hayden would provide the band with studio time to record their first demo. Before releasing their first single, the band went through multiple band names, starting with The Larry Mullen Band, then changed it to Feedback, and then to The Hype, and then finally settled on U2. Under the CBS label, U2 would release their first two singles in the Irish market. Neither singles generated much attention from audiences and critics.

In March of 1980, U2 signed with Island Records and released their first international single “11 O’ Clock Tick Tock,” and their first album, Boy. The album included their first hit single, “I Will Follow.” The album, along with the band’s first tour outside of Ireland and the U.K., were well received amongst music critics and their fans. In the following year, U2 released October, an album that exhibited strong spiritual, Christian overtones. In 1983, U2 released their third album, War, which included the band’s first international hit single, “New Year’s Day”. The song would peak at the #10 position on UK charts and climb just under the top 50 on US music charts. MTV placed the “New Year’s Day” music video into heavy rotation, which helped introduce mainstream America to U2. From that point on, performing at sold-out concerts in Europe and the U.S. was nothing out of the norm.

In 1984, U2 released The Unforgettable Fire, which included hit single, “Pride (In the Name of Love).” The album contained a new sound from the band that was more atmospheric, effects-driven, and symphonic. The single, about civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., would penetrate the U.S. Top 40 and U.K. Top 5. The album also included “Bad,” a song that would go on to become a fan favorite, particular at live concerts. In 1987, the band released The Joshua Tree, which would debut at #1 on UK charts and also peak at #1 on U.S. charts. The album, which included hit single “Where the Streets Have No Name” and #1 hit singles “With or Without You,” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” would go on to win the coveted Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The album to date, has sold an estimated 25 million copies. Later that year, U2 was featured on the cover of Time magazine, with the headline reading, “Rock’s Hottest Ticket”. The band’s Joshua Tree Tour was a commercial success, as the band consistently played in front of sold out arenas and stadiums. In 1988, U2 released a double album entitled Rattle and Hum. The album, which featured tracks performed with Bob Dylan and B.B. King was well received by fans, but with lukewarm reviews from music critics. In the following year, U2 announced they would take some time off from touring.

In 1991, the band reentered the music scene with the release of Achtung Baby, which included smash hit single, “One”. The album was well received by both fans and critics. To date, it has sold over 17 million copies. In 1993, U2 released Zooropa, an album that infused techno style and electronic effects to U2’s traditional alternative guitar rock sound. The album, which included tracks, “Zooropa,” “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” and “The Wanderer,” featuring country and rock legend, Johnny Cash, expanded the band’s reach and sustained their popularity going into the 90s and beyond.

In 1997, the band released Pop, an album that would debut at #1 in 28 countries. The album was also noted for mixing elements of popular 90s techno with traditional US alternative guitar rock. Critics were mixed on the album, which despite being an early commercial success, has lifetime sales that are among the lowest in U2’s catalogue. On September 20, 2007, U2 would set a new European record at that time for the largest attendance at a concert for a single band, thanks to the 150,000 Italians that went to see them at the “Campovolo” in Reggio Emilia. In 1999, U2 released All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which included several hit singles, such as: “Beautiful Day,” “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out of” and “Elevation”. In 2001, the band would highlight the halftime show of Super Bowl XXXVI, set in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In November 2004, U2 released How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, which would debut at #1 in 32 countries. The album, featuring hit singles “Vertigo” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” would sell an estimated 840,000 copies in the U.S. in its first week, a record for the band. U2 would go on to make a huge splash at the 2005-2006 Grammy Awards, taking home five Grammy’s including: Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album.

U2 is also well-known for their active participation in the cause for human rights, particularly in Africa. Most recently they have been encouraging fans and the general public to take part in the ONE campaign, even taking time during their concerts to talk about the cause. Frontman Bono was named as one of TIME magazine’s Persons of the Year in December of 2005 for his participation in worldwide humanitarian efforts. Their most recent album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, has sparked a hugely popular worldwide tour. Recent singles include “One” with Mary J. Blige, “All Because of You,” “City of Blinding Lights,” and “Vertigo.”

The Winding Road To The Center Ring

2010-02-07T07:14:00.000-08:00

Ask a boy what he wants to be when he grows up, and you're unlikely to hear the response of "circus ringmaster." And even if a youngster is intent on stepping into the center ring, most would not know how to get started on such a career path.

That path can be rather circuitous, as it was for Tyron Stucks McFarlan Jr., who grew up a "military brat" and enlisted in the Army National Guard at age 16. He completed advanced training while attending college, and graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in criminal justice. But, as McFarlan puts it, "Whatever is truly inside you is going to come out-sooner or later," and for him that "whatever" was music; in high school he'd discovered a talent for singing and performing.

After college, McFarlan ventured into musical theater, modeling and commercial work. But it was his unique combination of talent, work ethic and physical presence that made him ideal for his biggest role: Ringmaster for The Greatest Show on Earth®.

McFarlan describes his good fortune to be selected as Ringmaster as an occasion to "celebrate life" and looks forward to sharing his excitement with his daughter Nymah, who will visit him on the road throughout the show's tour.

As Ringmaster, McFarlan is considered the voice of Ringling Bros., and is excited about "vibing" with the audience and interacting with many different talents and nationalities. Some of the acts he proudly introduces to circus-goers include:

• Brian and Tina Miser (Mr. and Mrs. Human Cannonball)-A married couple that takes devotion-and detonation-to new heights.

• Taba Maluenda-Incredible feline trainer and superior tumbler; will amaze and astonish with his seven enchanting Bengal tigers.

• Clown Alley-Delivering dining disorder at the local pizzeria. Plus a basketball challenge against the Windy City Acrobats.

• Powerful Pachyderms and Paragons of Playfulness-What would the circus be without elephants? Ten-ton diva, the amazing Asia, mesmerizes all as she carefully walks over six production women.

Tyron McFarlan is a genuine American hero-a dedicated military serviceman-as well as an imposing stage presence and powerful vocalist. McFarlan takes charge of the 135th Edition of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, commandeering his talented troops and sending them forth to conquer the evil forces of Mundane Monday, Tedious Tuesday, Wearisome Wednesday...In other words, he and his fellow Ringling Bros. performers are Saving The Day From The Everyday!

The Secret To Becoming A Star...

2010-02-07T06:37:00.001-08:00

A Star is Made: Where does talent really come from?

Reviewing a new 900 page academic book The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance that will be published this month, Freakonomics authors report some very interesting findings.

(I highly recommend you read this piece if you have an interest in finding out how a star is made in any discipline.)

Here are three conclusions from this massive work:

1. The trait we call talent is highly overrated.

That is, expert performers - whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming - are nearly always made, not born. And yes,

2. Practice does make perfect. And last, my personal favorite:

3. When it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love - because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good.

They add, "Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't 'good' at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin."

But the truth is this:

"What they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

Joseph Campbell was right when he told his students, "Follow your bliss."

And yes, especially in your work. If you don't love your product for example, chances are you won't do the deliberate practice it takes to learn how to talk about it so that you get good at it.

If you don't love SOMETHING about your network marketing business enough to spend the time to learn to do it well, your chances of succeeding are slim to none.

So ask yourself, what do you LOVE MADLY about what you're doing? Is it making a difference in someone's life? Is it what the income can buy?

Whatever turns you on, will keep you going.

And if it's nothing special, perhaps this business really isn't the best thing for you to be doing. Why NOT love what you do? People can tell if you don't.

One thing's for sure in our business: The promise of income is NOT enough. Not for the 95% who drop out, that is.

So what else is there that you love enough or are challenged by enough, to keep you practicing deliberately and systematically, like everyone has ever done who excels in something?

The purpose of the latest celebrity gallery

2010-02-07T05:26:00.001-08:00

Everyone wants celebrity pics with their favorite star so the best place to find more pictures of him or her is a celebrity gallery. A celebrity gallery is a sum of information about different celebrities and of course celebrity pics put together for the curious eye.

If you are the “biggest” fan of a star then a celebrity gallery is everything you need to be happy. Not only that it’s the best place you can find the latest celebrity pics, but you can find a lot of interesting things about famous people: like what they eat, where they spend their time and a lot of trivial things about their lives.

The best place to find a celebrity gallery is the Internet, as always. Usually the latest celebrity gallery can be found on a celebrity’s website. There you can enjoy the latest celebrity pics and news. The World Wide Web comes to anyone’s help so there are also web portals made especially for people who want to see a celebrity gallery or celebrity pics. All you have to do is search “latest celebrity pics” or “latest celebrity gallery“. You will find more then you expect. The web is full of sites like those where you can listen to music, watch the favorite stars in a video or see the latest celebrity pics.

Another thing you could do is look for a fan club, either in your city or over the Internet. A fan club usually has the latest celebrity gallery with the latest celebrity pics and news. It’s good to join a fan club because you will get the celebrity pics you have always dreamed of and you can also receive daily news. There is the advantage of similar company as well because your interests will be shared by all those who have already joined the fan club. So this is actually a brilliant move because you will gain access to a celebrity gallery with a lot of celebrity pics and a lot of people who share your passion. Also you will be one of the first people to know if your favorite star will visit a near by town. You will be able to get tickets at your favorite star’s concerts, in case if he’s a singer, before they all get sold. If you’re mad about some star and you need to see his or her face every day, then a celebrity gallery with the latest celebrity pics is the best idea ever. You can store the celebrity gallery on your computer to look at it until you feel you had enough. You can also put your favorite celebrity pics on your mobile phone or on your desktop to have their faces near you at all times.

There is a whole industry created around celebrity pics. The mobile phone companies have made a fortune from selling celebrity pics for people’s phones. A downloadable celebrity gallery is not so cheap. You’ll end up paying around ten dollars or maybe even more for a small celebrity gallery, but hey! What wouldn’t you do if you’re the “biggest” fan and you positively must have their latest celebrity gallery on your phone?

If you want to find the latest celebrity gallery you have to do some hard work. To find the latest gallery means it must contain the newest celebrity pics out there and this isn’t so easy. Some people make an honest living from celebrity pics. They follow famous persons around and take their photos in the most awkward moments and then sell them for big bucks. So it is really difficult to get the latest celebrity gallery for free. Some people, they are called collectors, actually spend a lot of money for some pictures of a celebrity and especially for different items that over the years belonged to the stars. This isn’t a very healthy habit, but you can’t judge a person’s personal pleasures.

If you are looking for the latest celebrity gallery just as a hobby because you enjoy admiring photos of your favorite celebrity and you enjoy reading about his or her life, then good for you! A hobby that relaxes you in those few spare moments of the day is most welcomed. But if you are a collector and must have something new everyday, you have to know there are some limits. It is not worth loosing your life and personality while trying to live other people’s lives. Our existence is too short and wonderful to waste it trying to imitate someone.

The Life And Times Of John Lennon

2010-02-07T04:54:00.000-08:00

John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an iconic 20th century composer and singer of popular music with Paul McCartney as Lennon McCartney throughout the 1960s, and was the founding member of The Beatles.

Lennon's songwriting was an integral part of The Beatles' profound commercial and critical impact. His melodies, written during the Lennon-McCartney era, and later, in his solo career, are distinctive and unashamedly romantic.

Lennon's lyrics reflected his personal and career demands, philosophical outlook, his unease with his fame and current events. He and McCartney popularized the use of electronic effects in rock music.

Lennon, on television and in films such as A Hard Day's Night (1964), and by press conferences and interviews, revealed his rebellious, iconoclastic nature and quick, irreverent wit. Lennon channeled his fame and penchant for controversy into his work as a peace activist, artist and author. He was murdered in New York City in December 1980.

In 2002, the BBC polled the British public about the 100 Greatest Britons of all time. Respondents voted Lennon into eighth place.

Lennon had a profound influence on rock 'n' roll and in expanding the genre's boundaries during the 1960s. He is widely considered, along with McCartney, to be one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians of the 20th century.

Many of the songs written exclusively or primarily by Lennon, however, are more introspective — often in the first person — and more personal than McCartney's.

His most surreal pieces of songwriting, "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "I Am the Walrus", are examples of his unique style. Lennon's partnership in songwriting with McCartney involved him - many times - in complementing and counterbalancing McCartney's upbeat positive outlook with the other side of the coin, as one of their songs, "Getting Better" demonstrates.

Lennon had a profound influence on rock 'n' roll and in expanding the genre's boundaries during the 1960s. He is widely considered, along with McCartney, to be one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians of the 20th century. Many of the songs written exclusively or primarily by Lennon, however, are more introspective — often in the first person — and more personal than McCartney's. His most surreal pieces of songwriting.

Invite A Best-Selling Author To Your Book Club

2010-02-07T04:23:00.000-08:00

In an attempt to provide readers with a unique and compelling experience, author John Shors is making unheard-of efforts to connect with book clubs across the country. Shors is the author of "Beneath a Marble Sky," a work of historical fiction based on the remarkable story behind the Taj Mahal's creation. "Beneath a Marble Sky" has been hailed by book reviewers as a "work of art," is being made into a major motion picture by Hollywood and won a "Book of the Year" award from ForeWord magazine.

For the past two years, Shors has been asking book clubs across the country to invite him to participate in their meetings. By his count, he's spoken (via speakerphone) with about 200 book clubs. Says Shors, "I grew up reading several books a week and after finishing many works wanted to ask the author questions. Unfortunately, I only had a few such conversations, usually at a book signing with a roomful of strangers. Feeling that readers deserved more, I promised myself that if I ever had a novel published that I would go to great lengths to connect with readers."

"Beneath a Marble Sky" was published as a hardcover in 2004. As his book hit best-seller lists, Shors created his book club program, through which he called into book clubs across America. Clubs needed to simply contact him in advance and have a speakerphone handy. Shors promoted his program via his Web site (www.beneathamarblesky.com) and was soon chatting with several book clubs a week.

"My book club program has been extremely enjoyable, both for me and readers," Shors says. "Readers are able to ask me any sort of question about my novel, the publishing industry or the process of turning 'Beneath a Marble Sky' into a major motion picture. They get to talk with me among their friends and in a manner that is extremely casual and open-ended. Most every group, as our call winds down, tells me that this has been their all-time favorite discussion."

How Do You Know What an Autographed is Worth?

2010-02-07T03:52:00.000-08:00

Have you recently started to become interested in autograph collecting and would like to know the present day market value of an autograph that you are interested in purchasing? Or have you inherited an estate from a family member and was surprised to find an abundance of autographed photos, items, cards, posters that you have no idea how to find the value much less who to sell them too?

There are several sources to find out how much your collectible or autographed collectible is worth. The internet has open a world at our finger tips, with online auctions to online stores, published price guides that can be purchased at most bookstores offer a “ rough estimate”, mainly it is worth what someone is will to pay for the item. Online Auctions are now a great source of finding out just that.

The key points that influence the value of autographed memorabilia is supply, demand, condition, form, content, subject, rarity. There is a demand for certain celebrity autographs and people willing to buy and sell them. That creates the market, which determines the value which is understood by both buyer and seller. Collecting autographs usually starts with a particular interest in and individual or occupation or interest in a certain subject. It is one of those hobbies that once you dibble in become a passion. Then in time become a very nice investment as those of you who have inherited collections and were surprise to find out that their value was more than you had ever imagined.

Many categories determine the price of a signature from an individual. The following abbreviations are used to help describe the type of letter or document that is being offered for sale.
· AD: Autograph Document (hand-written by the person to be collected, but not signed)
· ADS: Autograph Document Signed (written and signed by same individual)
· AL: Autograph Letter (hand-written by the person to be collected, but not signed)
· ALS: Autograph Letter Signed (hand-written and signed by same individual)
· AMs: Autograph Manuscript (hand-written; such as the draft of a play, research paper or music sheet)
· AMsS: Autograph Manuscript Signed (hand-written and signed by same individual)
· AMusQs: Autograph Musical Quotation Signed (hand-written and signed by same individual)
· AN: Autograph Note (much shorter than a letter)
· ANS: Autograph Note Signed (hand-written and signed by same individual)
· AQS: Autograph Quote Signed (hand-written and signed by same individual; poem verse, sentence, or bar-of-music)
· DS: Document signed (printed, or while hand-written by another, is signed by individual sought to be collected)
· LS: Letter Signed (hand-written by someone else, but signed by the individual sought to be collected)
· PS: Photograph Signed or Postcard Signed
· SIG: Signature on index card, cut out of autograph book or letter
· SP: Signed Photograph
· TLS: Typed Letter Signed
· TNS: Typed Note Signed
· folio: A printer's sheet of paper folded once to make two leaves, double quarto size or larger.
· octavo(8vo): A manuscript page about six-by-nine inches. (Originally determined by folding a printer's sheet of paper to form eighty leaves.)
· quarto(4to): A manuscript page of about nine and one-half by twelve inches. (Originally determined by folding a printer's sheet of paper twice to form two leaves.)
Not only does the category determine price, but so does condition, quality, rarity and the person of interest celebrity will also play a major part in determining value. As you will see in future weekly articles; a detail definition of each abbreviation, so you will become more educated in the valuation process of collecting.

Coaching Celebrities

2010-02-07T03:21:00.000-08:00

I’ve kept the same cell phone number for the past 7-8 years. I’ve lived in NYC, NC and now Florida and in all that time, I’ve never changed phone numbers. Nor will I. Sure, it’s inconvenient for my mom who lives across town to have to dial a NYC phone to get me and I’m only a few miles away, but for me it’s worth it.

I have clients that still call me periodically for coaching that used this cell phone years ago. They like knowing that I’m just a call away if they need me. Several of these clients would probably have names that you might recognize, and don’t use a coach on a regular basis, but if the need arises, they know I’m there.

I’ve spent a large part of my career working with and for celebrities. Whether I marketing for them, do PR for them or consult and coaching with the them, I’ve made a part of my career working in that market. As a result, I’ve gotten to know many agents, publicists and Event Planners.

I also coach individuals in business. Right now, it seems that a large bulk of my clients are in new jobs, businesses or about to make a transition. I don’t work by contract, only on an as needed basis. Some of my clients show up every week. Others are clients that are only once a month. I’m flexible because my clients are busy. So am I, and I’m fine with them rescheduling with me a day in advance.

I started coaching this way because the high profile clients that I served couldn’t meet on a regular basis. They were traveling or unavailable at normal business times so I made allowances for them. As my business and experience grew, I found that working with high profile types was going to be different than a traditional client that may be.

I work on a project basis with many of these high profile types. Some of them are high level executives, besides celebrities and I’m there as a personal consultant that they call upon for many different issues. Most of them found me through the communication coaching that I provide and we’ve kept the relationship going through the years. Whenever they call I merely write it down and keep a log. I usually bill once a month. On projects, I’ll estimate a cost for the project and always try to come in under the estimate.

I have clients that will fly in for the day and for that, my fees are a bit higher than on the phone. It’s a concentrated coaching session that can deal with family issues to creating a work out schedule or recreating a brand or speech. We’ve discovered projects to create that they can market and we’ve written the outline of books.

I noticed right up front that celebrities are keenly aware that people try to make a buck off of them so I actually charge them less in some cases. Regardless, overestimating the bill is the way to go, and they always appreciate the financial break. I learned this early on when I had a repeat customer and I sent a bill that she questioned. She didn’t feel that I had put in that much time with her so I told her that I had struggled with the bill myself because the project was so “off and on”. So, I told her to rip up my invoice and to pay me what she thought she should. I got a nice check in the mail that was just a little bit less than I had originally charged and it had a nice note attached. It was definitely the right decision because I’ve continued to coach this person here and there over the last many years.

Coaching high profile types are a great gig if you can get it. But don’t make the mistake of holding to your exact requirements or you might lose a client in the process. The ones that I know appreciate my willingness to be flexible with my schedule and to reschedule if something else comes up. I’m fair with the money and I always try to deliver more than promised.

I love the coaching people who are successful, energetic and ambitious. They never refuse a challenge and they’re always up for new ideas. They appreciate others who are hard working like them.

That is why I keep my cell phone number the same. Being available to these people is the name of the game.

Classic TV DVDs Return Bob Hope to the Small Screen

2010-02-07T02:34:00.001-08:00

“I’m so old, they’ve canceled my blood type” quipped Bob Hope, upon reaching the age of 100 in July 2003. Indeed, Bob Hope has been around throughout the 20th century, becoming immortal to so many generations by entertaining the masses with countless films, TV and radio shows and of course his appearances with the troops overseas.

Bob Hope was born on May 29, 1903 in Eltham, England although his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio when he was four years old (“I left England at the age of four when I found out I couldn’t be king”). His first modest success in show business came in 1915 when he won a Charlie Chaplin imitation competition.

He began to work in vaudeville in the early 1920s and during the early 1930s was appearing on the stage in Broadway. His first film role was “The Big Broadcast” in 1938 in which he sang the song “Thanks for the Memory” in a duet with Shirley Ross. That song would become Bob Hope’s signature tune.

Bob Hope appeared in over 75 films throughout his career although he only won two honorary Oscars. He even joked about his lack of Oscar awards - “Oscar night at our house is called Passover!” He may not have won many Oscars but he enjoyed bringing his unique humor to the awards ceremony – he presented or co-presented them on a record 18 occasions up until 1977.

His most famous movies, of course remain the series of “road” movies that he made with Bing Crosby during the 1940s. He also starred in “The Paleface” along with Jane Russell which many consider his best film. Today, many of his classic movies are available on DVD or regularly shown on cable TV channels.

Hope took to TV fairly late in his career, not entirely convinced that the still fairly new medium would succeed. “Television – that’s where movies go when they die,” quipped Hope once. However, it was television that really made Bob Hope a star and a household name throughout the United States.

Easter Sunday 1950 was a memorable day. It was on that day that Bob Hope made his formal television debut. In addition to Hope’s appearance, the “Star Spangled Revue” featured other popular entertainers and stars of the day including Dinah Shore and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The show’s formula was immediately successful and Bob Hope’s television shows remained successful for the next 40 years. NBC was his network of choice and Bob Hope appeared in many of the network’s Christmas and other holiday specials. His last TV special was in 1996 appearing alongside Tony Danza. Today these programs are rightly considered classic TV shows, television programs that translate for multiple generations.

Perhaps Bob Hope is most famous for his appearances with the troops, a gesture that almost certainly boosted morale far more than any appearance by the president. His first such appearance was in May 1941, when Bob Hope, along with various friends, appeared at March Field in California to entertain the airmen.

The rest, as they say, is history. Bob Hope was soon christened “G.I. Bob” by the troops and went on to perform all over the world during the next 60 years. He has entertained troops and broadcast from Europe, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. He nearly always appeared in army fatigues as a further gesture of support for the soldiers.

Bob Hope has been honored five times by the United States Congress, has been made honorary mayor of Palm Springs and an honorary veteran. He also has several theaters, a battleship and an airport named in his honor and his love of golf lives on in one of the sport’s major events – the Bob Hope Classic.

But his biggest legacy is the wealth of entertainment he has given us over the years. And of course, his sharp wit; his one-liners and quotes are almost as well known as his TV shows and movies. As he accurately remarked once, “I’ve always been in the right place and time. Of course, I steered myself there.”

Classic 1970s TV: The shows that made the family tune in

2010-02-07T02:03:00.001-08:00

Imagine a family, all sitting around the TV, possibly the only TV in the house. Dad is holding the remote control, which everyone refers to as “the clicker.” The remote has only two functions. One of the functions turns the TV off and on. The other changes the channels, all 7 or 8 of them, with a click of a button. Now try to imagine what that family is watching. Are you imagining them watching one of the classic TV shows from the 1970’s?

In the 1970s most families had one, maybe two televisions in the house, and the second television was usually stashed away in mom and dad’s room where they could watch the classic shows that the kids couldn’t watch yet like Maude or Soap. The televisions in the house might have even shown the programs in black and white.

What kept families glued to these televisions that had only a handful of channels, an ancient clicker, and frequently no color? The classic TV shows from the 1970s, of course. There were so many family-friendly shows in a variety of genres.

For families that enjoyed comedies, the 1970s had some of the most memorable sitcoms. The families in the ‘70’s learned all about families in the 1950’s by watching the wildly popular Happy Days and its equally popular spin off Laverne and Shirley. Happy Days also launched the career of comedian Robin Williams who went on to star in another spin off of the show – Mork and Mindy.

Other family friendly classic television shows of the 1970’s include The Partridge Family (with teen hearth throb David Cassidy), the show that introduced us to John Travolta, Welcome Back Kotter, One Day at a Time, Chico and the Man, The Odd Couple, Good Times, WKRP in Cincinnati, What’s Happening, Three’s Company and The Jeffersons.

Families with older children enjoyed comedies with a social conscience like All in the Family, Maude, Barney Miller or Mash. These classic 1970s sitcoms dealt with the social issues of the day in poignant yet comedic way.

Families also had several variety shows to choose from for their viewing pleasure. Classic variety shows such as The Donny and Marie Show and The Sonny and Cher Show had music, comedy sketches and popular guest stars each week. The Carol Burnett Show brought together some of the 1970’s funniest comedians each week and The Muppet Show combined the genius of Jim Henson’s fantastic creations with musical and comedy guest stars sharing the stage with Kermit, Miss Piggy and Animal.

There were plenty of one hour family dramas, too. Eight is Enough, Little House on the Prairie, and The Waltons were just a few of the classic television dramas that brought families together in front of the television each week.

There was also room for crime fighting and action heroes in the classic 1970s TV shows. The world learned what bionics was in The Six Million Dollar Man and its spin off The Bionic Woman. Each week families would tune in to see how Lee Majors and Jamie Sommers would use their bionic eyes and ears. CHiPs gave us a glimpse into the life of California Highway Patrol officers. Starsky and Hutch chased bad buys in their hot rod and BJ and the Bear tracked down bad guys in an 18 wheeler.

Two other classic television shows from that era that can’t be defined by any of these other genres were The Love Boat and Fantasy Island. These shows were the place for the stars of yesteryear and the stars of the current era to make guest appearances, several at a time. For years, families stayed home on Saturday nights just to see who would get off the plane onto the island or turn up Julie the Cruise Director’s guest list.

In today’s modern times, there are hundreds of channels on each of the four or more TV sets in most homes. Yet, there seems to never be anything to watch, especially something that the whole family can enjoy together. Many of these classic TV shows from the 1970’s are now on DVD and can be bought or rented either online or at a store. Why not consider getting a classic TV DVD for your family this Friday night instead of the usually family movie?

Celebrity Social - Gossip and Scandal is Everywhere!

2010-02-07T01:31:00.000-08:00

Gossip and scandal are everywhere when it comes to stars and celebrities around the world. And no matter how much you deny that you don't pay attention to celebrity news, how often do you find yourself joining in a hot discussion at work or around the dinner table? Keeping your eye on the stars is one way to amuse yourself and keep smiling.

Not many people can resist a bit of gossip about the celebrities that make the news. Award ceremonies are a great way to see what everyone is wearing and how bad or good they look wearing it. Watching a popular starlet stumble her way to the podium wearing an unflattering dress can lead to weeks of gossip about what not to wear when the cameras are hot and ready. Magazines are filled with the latest fashion mistakes that the stars make when they venture out into public places.

Celebrity relationships continue to baffle most of us. What makes motion picture stars such as Brad Pitt leave one relationship for another? Celebrity gossip has followed Mr. Pitt as he baffles the media with his behavior. The scandal of celebrity relationships gone wrong is always at the forefront of the news, covering the pages of serious newspapers all the way to gossip magazines that line the shelves at the grocery store.

Stars range from movie starlets such as Meg Ryan to music icons such as Madonna. Society loves to follow their actions whether they are performing in front of a camera or on stage. And when these stars are caught at their worst, even more gossip hits that media.

Celebrity news and gossip can be found in magazines, on the radio, and on the television screen. Gossip is a great way to take a break from the more serious news that is found both locally and around the world. As a society we like to follow the actions of those people we see in the media light. After all, do you really want to miss out seeing the next outrageous outfit that Paris Hilton is going to wear?

Celebrity Sedu Hairstyles – Secrets Revealed

2010-02-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

If you’re into fashion and into keeping up to date with the latest trends then you will have heard all about sedu hairstyles but how do celebrity sedu hairstyles achieve the look we all want? Would you like to know how to achieve Paris Hilton sedu hairstyles? Maybe you would prefer to know how to get Britney Spears sedu hairstyles. Whatever celebrity sedu hairstyles you are after we have the answers you have been looking for.

Celebrity sedu hairstyles are not the great mystery you may have though they were, in fact you can create these celebrity sedu hair styles from the comfort of your own home, and you don’t even need a hair stylist. That’s right you can achieve Paris Hilton sedu hairstyles yourself. Not convinced, then let us reveal the secrets to celebrity sedu hairstyles.

If you have seen pictures of sedu hairstyles then you have probably dreamed of having the same look. These celebrity sedu hair styles are everywhere you look and believe it or not they are also very easy to achieve. In order to create your own celebrity sedu hairstyles you will however need to purchase on major item and that is the sedu hair straightener. The sedu hair straightener is the key to creating these celebrity sedu hairstyles and it is so easy to use you can do it from the comfort of your own home in as little as five minutes.

So there you have it, the secrets of celebrity sedu hairstyles revealed; the sedu hair straightening iron. Of course it is not only the iron that creates the celebrity sedu hair styles you dream of, it is also learning to use the iron and knowing how to create the style. A sedu hairstyles guide will give you all the information you need and in no time you too will be sporting celebrity sedu hairstyles.

Celebrity Love

2010-02-07T00:30:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that love for some celebrity exists within us all. This isn’t the traditional definition of love but rather defined by an excessive admiration for a famous person whom we will probably never meet. The use of “love” is appropriate here as we who love celebrity tend to exhibit signs of undue influence by those highly visible. Famous people, the non-elected representatives of the human race, have always held some influence over the masses. In the days before mass media, television sets and computers fame was circulated orally, carried by the gossipy nature of social beings. Today, we open our eyes and cannot avoid these people. Of course, in a developed society entertainers are necessary. We laugh and sometimes cry at a quality performance. Our memories are seared with images, movies and songs which have touched us, frightened us and stimulated us. They dramatize the political, the romantic, the good and bad. We see in them the potential for perfection of man or woman as an expression of utopian ideals of love and success.

Yet, have we gone too far? How much influence should they have over us? Our choice of clothes, jewelry and hairstyle, our languages and ideas are often areas that we look toward celebrities to define. If you deny this then you are exceptional; the rest of us are invariably, more susceptible. Our culture has become saturated with celebrity influence. We watch their every move including who they are with and what they do. We absorb their politics and gobble up their quotes. We think about what it may be like to be that beautiful, rich and powerful. Fame is an aphrodisiac or so it seems to the unrecognized. Today we have TomKat(Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes). Yesterday it was Bennifer(Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez). Public Interest in these people is frighteningly obsessive in nature. After all, their claim to fame is usually based on pretense or non reality. They are the constant pretenders, illusionists with screens as their canvas.

The entertainment value of a celebrity stretches beyond the screen or stage and they are wholly aware it. We are witness to carefully arranged relationships, sudden sightings in sports arenas and controversial quotes days before a new movie or show opens. They appear on your screen suddenly seemingly not to promote themselves but rather attempting to come across as natural, likable, smart and funny. Sometimes we get a glimpse into what certain celebrities are really like. Unfortunately, it is usually when they do something wrong. Drugs, infidelity and physical assaults are a few areas where celebrities have slipped in their public presentation. Mug shots and unflattering photos of famous people are the currency of entertainment news outlets. Being a celebrity has its drawback in this regard as they are monitored as closely as governmental heads of the biggest nations on earth. Alas, the power of celebrity is here with us to stay. Or is it? Can we teach our children who the chancellor of Germany is before we explain the history of Madonna? If we can’t, America will become a nation of uninformed celebrity worshippers numb to the more important realities of the world.

Celebrity Hairstyles and Wedding Hairstyle Trends

2010-02-07T00:06:00.000-08:00

Every year, celebrities set the trends of fashions and hairstyles. Everywhere you looked, you could see celebrities with many different and fashionable hairstyles from short and sweet to long and elegant, from curly or wavy to up-styles. No matter what the style these celebrities were wearing, they made a fashion statement that everyone else followed after. If a next-door girl won’t wear celebrity hairstyle to work or to school, the weddings is a perfect time for her to try celebrity hairstyles, and feel like a true celebrity.

Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lopez were two of the most popular celebrities that people were talking about when it comes to hair styles. Each of these celebrities had a hairstyle that no one else could touch and until recently, many of us only dreamed we could have a Jennifer Aniston Sedu hairstyle or a Jennifer Lopez Sedu hairstyle.

Creating beautiful wedding hairstyles is easy after browsing through the numerous bridal printed magazines or available on the Internet. Searching “hairstyles 2006” in popular search engines, you’ll have a plenty of ideas.

Long hairstyles are still the favorites of most brides, because they add sophistication and elegance to a wedding ceremony and reception accordingly. Go for casual, romantic long hairstyles or practical, modern short styles if you feel that any of them match your own style. If you are wearing short hair but you want a fashionable long hairstyle or up-do, you can let you hair grow in plenty of time or opt using hair extensions.

If you decide to wear a Jennifer Aniston sedu hairstyle or a Jennifer Lopez sedu hairstyle for your wedding or your friends’ wedding, I‘ll reveal the secrets here. The secret behind their gorgeous hairstyle is of course partly due to the sedu flat iron, not to mention what they do prior to using this wonderful sedu flat iron. They both must use a conditioning shampoo and then dry well and again add more conditioning to assist in straightening their hair and making it very soft and flexible. The next step in the Jennifer Aniston sedu hairstyle is to add equal parts of shaping gel and calming serum massaged into the hair. Using a big round hairbrush and your blow dryer, you will be simulating how Jennifer Lopez sedu hairstyle is created. The next thing these two Celebrities have done is the flattening with the sedu flat iron.

Will the 2006 hairstyles give us the same great looks with celebrity hairstyles or is there a change a coming? The new in fashion for celebrity hairstyles, or what designers are saying, is that short hair is coming back in style. The bob is one of the hairstyles that is making its way to the big screen and all around Hollywood. This celebrity hairstyle is easy to manage, looks great, and may become the top 2006 hairstyle. We will have to wait and see if the Jennifer Aniston sedu hairstyle or the Jennifer Lopez sedu hairstyle will be one of the prominent celebrity hairstyles in 2006 or if someone else with a bob style or a curly style makes the headlines. Whatever wedding hairstyles you choose, they shouldn’t lose your personal identity.

Celebrity Hairstyles and Prom Hairstyle Trends

2010-02-06T23:40:00.001-08:00

Prom dresses and prom hairstyles are the first grown-up statement young girls make. When a girl feels her prom night is around the corner, a number of ideas come across her mind planning the best look on her big night. It will not look as great as it could be, if you forget the importance of prom hairstyles to accentuate your dress. A balanced combination between your dress, shoes, accessories, hair, makeup, and the magic of a perfume, are a just a few points of attention for a gorgeous look. Sexy looking up-dos, short hairstyles, long hairstyles, and even funky styles, prom hairstyles are a world apart to choose from right one for a stunning looking appearance on your special night.

Whether you are aware of or not, you may have browse through your memory for all the celerity hairstyles you can remember. Everywhere you looked, you could see celebrities with many different and fashionable hairstyles - short, and sweet, or long yet elegant. No matter what the style these celebrities were wearing, they made a fashion statement that everyone else followed after. You may decide to try a Jennifer Aniston sedu hairstyle or a Jennifer Lopez sedu hairstyle. The secret behind their gorgeous hairstyle is of course partly due to the sedu flat iron, not to mention what they do prior to using this wonderful sedu flat iron.

Many great prom hairstyles are created in the salon, but you can get astonishing results with a hairdo made at home by yourself or with the help of your close friends. You can find a good source of hairstyles through online photo galleries, and also browsing beauty magazines and catalogs.

Decide on the style that best fits your personality or the special look you want on your prom night. Sophisticated, classic up-dos are always great to wear on one the most important events of every woman's life. Prom hairstyles come also in long hairstyles and short hairstyles. You can always visit a salon if you are unsure of your choice, and make an appointment. You should call the salon at least one to 2 months prior to the prom to set your appointment.

The most important thing is be yourself. Consider also that short styles are more often associated with casual or sporty lifestyles, while long hairstyles are more likely associated with a sexy looking image. Think of your personality, or the self-image you want to offer on prom night. Explain to your friends or your stylist what the exact look is that you want, and consider having a trial. Most salons gladly will guide you through many prom hairstyles until you find the right one, whether with hair extensions, up-dos, long hairstyles or short hairstyles.

Will the 2006 hairstyles give us the same great looks with celebrity hairstyles or is there a change a coming? Designers are saying that short hair is coming back in style. The bob is one of the hairstyles that is making its way to the big screen and all around Hollywood. This celebrity hairstyle is easy to manage, looks great, and may become the top 2006 hairstyle. Curls are coming back as well in all kinds of lengths from short to long and romantic.

Celebrity Beauty Secrets - What They Are & How To Copy Them

2010-02-06T22:57:00.001-08:00

You are probably wondering how celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson & Hilary Duff look so gorgeous all the time? How does their hair always look so perfect and well-conditioned?

What’s the Secret?

Well the secret is in the tools, the products and the stylist.
You can create these looks at home, and one of the best tips is:- the less time you spend on it the better it will look. Now you are probably wondering how, but if you think it takes 8-20mins to straighten your hair, you may start to believe me.

Here’s some great tips that you can use at home that will help you to look even better. These tips come not only from personal experiences but also from the celebrity stylists, who help to create a great red carpet look.

So here we go, read on for the ultimate in celebrity hair tips.

How to get that “Going to the Oscars” Glamour

Whenever you see a picture of a celebrity on the red carpet, you are probably thinking how amazing they look. And what you can see is a hairstyle that has taken months of planning and trips to the stylists in order to look absolutely Hollywood perfect.

Before the big event, the celebrity will consult with their stylist about how they want to look, but also ask advice from their hairdressers on how to look up to date, but also very sexy and feminine.

Those who kept up with the times on the red carpet this year went for very large Hollywood curls, with an extra rich colour and shine. To recreate this look here are some tips on how to curl your hair so you can look just as elegant.

Create Great Curls

If you have just bought yourself some very expensive straighteners, or you are thinking about it, why not consider the idea of curling your hair with straighteners? You can get more controllable curls which are far easier to manage than your natural hair is!

Try:-

1. Make sure that your hair is semi-straight, or if not straighten it.
2. Spray on some heat-protection spray and then divide your hair into sections. The fewer the number of sections the tighter the curls will be.
3. Take the straightener and clamp it over the top of the section, then whilst pulling down the straighteners turn the straightener round. To produce a tighter curl clamp harder with the straighteners and pull harder when you bring it down.
4. Do not brush your hair after you have done this, but simply tease through with your fingers.
And add some shine spray.

Another way to curl your hair that always creates great celebrity styles hair effect is to use some heated rollers. The type of rollers that you should get should depend on how long and thick your hair is, and how tight the curl that you want to achieve is.

For short thin hair try using a straightener (the above method) or tongs, for thick medium length hair to use some medium sized heated rollers and for really long hair I would use some very large velcro rollers. Try using these on wet hair and then drying off with a hair dryer (be sure to have plenty of hair grips on hand however).

The most perfect thing about celebrities hair is that it always appears in perfect condition. Just think, can you remember every seeing Jennifer Aniston with her hair looking messed up?!
Many celebrities will have plenty of deep conditioning treatments at their salon before the big event. These treatments will vary from Damage Restructuring to Deep Conditioning and Detoxifying.

There are plenty of high street products out there that are suitable for home use and you can pick them up on the high street for reasonable prices. I would always recommend that you look on the back and see the list of ingredients, the more chemicals it has in it, the worse it will be for your hair in the long run.

You may wish to consider trying some organic haircare products, which are not always as expensive as you think, and with organic followers like Gwyneth Paltrow and Elle McPherson you will be in great company!

Or indeed for a special event such as a prom or a ball, why not go down to your local hairdresser or beauty salon and have a hair wrap or mask? These may be quite expensive but will definitely get you the look that you desire and it’s worth treating yourself for a special event.

Always check with the salon about which treatment they think will be right for you, because not all of them will be suitable for your hair type.

Remember, you are just as special as any of those celebrities and you too can look like a star!

Celebrity Baby Names

2010-02-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

Celebrities are not like everyday people. They have busy schedules, drive expensive cars, and wear jewelry that others can only dream of owning. Maybe it is because celebrities are so far removed from normal life that they often give their babies unusual names.

Some names are just a little different. John Travolta and Kelly Preston have two beautiful children. Their daughter's name is Ella Bleu. Their son's name is Jett. Jett is different, but anyone who knows anything about John Travolta knows he has a love for flying. Gwyneth Paltrow, pregnant again, came under scrutiny for naming her first child Apple. While it is unusual, it is somewhat cute, like in the "apple of their eye." Chris Martin, her husband, tired of the controversy over the name Apple, has jokingly stated their second child, whether male or female, will be named Banana. Another cute name is Dandelion, the name of Keith Richards' daughter. Julie Roberts recently gave birth to twins - a boy and a girl - and received flack over the names she chose. She received almost as much grief over the choice for her daughter's name, Hazel, as she did the more eccentric choice of Phinnaeus for her son.

Many people speculated what Madonna would name her first child. Lourdes Maria seems a fitting name for child who's mother's name is Madonna, but she often goes by Lola. Her son is named Rocco, which sounds a bit like a cartoon character, but at least it is a tough sounding name. Actor Casey Affleck and fiancי Summer Phoenix recently had a son named Indiana August, which leads one to wonder what state and month their son was conceived in. Toni Braxton has two sons, Denim and Diezel. While both useful products, they make somewhat strange names for children. Rob Marrow decided it would be cute if he named his daughter Tu Simone Ayer, calling her Tu Morrow. Wonder if she will think it is cute 20 years from now? Actor Jason Lee named his son Pilot Inspektor, but magician Penn Jillette may have topped them all. He named his daughter, Moxie Crimefighter, saying "because when she's pulled over for speeding she can say, `But officer, we're on the same side, my middle name is CrimeFighter."'

If you think it is a new trend, think again. Back in 1971, David Bowie and his then wife Angela decided to name their son Duncan Zowie Heywood Jones. He soon became known as Zowie Bowie. Cher named her children Chastity Sun and Elijah Blue.

The Phoenix family is well known for their unusual choice of baby names. Summer Phoenix's siblings are the late actor River Phoenix, actresses Rain and Liberty Phoenix and actor Joaquin Phoenix. Joaquin felt his name was so out of place with his siblings, that when he was four, he decided to change his name to Leaf. By the early 1990's, he had reverted back to using his birth name. Another family infamous for their choices of baby names is the Zappa family. Frank's children are Dweezil, Moon Unit, Ahmed Emuukha Rodan and Diva Muffin. While many people think that Dweezil is his given name, his birth name was originally Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa because the hospital refused to register the name Dweezil. Always called Dweezil, when he was a child, he wanted to make the name official and his parents took him to have it changed legally. Paula Yates, former wife of Sir Bob Geldof and girlfriend of late rocker Michael Hutchence, also had a knack for giving her children unusual names. Among her brood are Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa, Heavenly Hiraani Tigerlily, and Little Pixie.

Some celebrity baby names make sense if you know the story behind them. Eurythmic's Dave Stewart named his son Django after jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Stevie Wonder named his son Mandla Kadjaly Carl Stevland, however Mandla means "powerful" in Zulu and Kadjaly means "born from God" in Swahili. Helen Hunt just gave birth to a baby girl she named Makena'lei Gordon. The name Makena'lei is from a friend's dream and means "many flowers of heaven." Gordon, an unlikely girl's name, was to honor of Helen's father, television director Gordon Hunt. Nicolas Cage just named his new baby boy Kal-el. Because Nicolas took his stage name of Cage from comic book character Luke Cage, he decided to name his son Kal-el after one of his favorite comic book heroes. Kal-el is Superman's kryptonian name.

So, do the children like these unconventional names given them by their parents? In some cases, they do. The Phoenix's seem to love their nature-inspired names and the Zappa children seem to have had no ill effects from their eccentric names. However, some children tire of the peculiar names quickly. Zowie Bowie had had enough of his moniker by the time he was 12 and asked to be referred to as "Joey." Although Dandelion Richards does not seem too bad, she has since started referring to herself as Angela. Recently, Peaches Honeyblossom Michelle Charlotte Angel Vanessa Geldof has been the most outspoken about the odd choice her parents made in naming her. She has been quoted as saying, "I hate ridiculous names. My weird name has haunted me all my life."

While having an unusual name might be difficult for any child, the celebrity of a child's parents may enhance it even further. Thankfully, celebrity children who decide they don't like their given names can switch to a nickname or even eventually have their names legally changed.

Celebrity Hairstyles and Prom Hairstyle Trends

2010-02-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

Celebrity Beauty Secrets - What They Are & How To Copy Them

2010-02-04T07:39:00.001-08:00

Celebrity Baby Names

2010-02-04T06:44:00.000-08:00

Celebrity Autographs - Spotting the Frauds

2010-02-04T06:07:00.001-08:00

Celebrity autographs are not only fun to collect but they can also serve as great investments to add to any portfolio. There are a several things to keep in mind when purchasing celebrity autographs to be sure you are investing in authentic autographs.

Recognizing fake autographs is almost a black art. Spotting them can be difficult when celebrities change their signatures on a regular basis. Some simple approaches include the basics such as spelling. Often, the imposters will incorrectly spell celebrity names and these are easy to spot. Also check for age of material. For example, if the celebrity is relatively old and they have laser printed photos floating around the web, with their so-called signature, you know these are fake as laser photos did not exist when they were alive.

It is a good idea to also remember that there are celebrity autographs often referred to as "secretarials", meaning that they are autographs signed by their assistants. These types of signatures are also often printed in bulk on 8x10 photos and are not worth the paper they are printed on. Spotting these frauds is important since you do not want to waste not only your time, but your money in what turns out to be a worthless investment.

If you are looking to make a profit from your celebrity autograph collection, consider how the celebrity lived their life. For example, James Dean not only died at a young age, but he is known to have led a controversial lifestyle. The age that the celebrity passed away can play a significant part in how much their autograph is worth. Imagine celebrity autographs from such public figures as Bruce Lee or Marilyn Monroe. These types of autographs can garner you a hefty profit quickly.

More up to date celebrities can also turn a quick profit if the celebrity has been in or continues to be headline makers. Think along the lines of Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. Sports celebrities are no different. In their case, famous athletes like David Beckham who is not only a great athlete, but a well known sex symbol, should be a good investment when you are actively seeking autographs.

Just remember to play it smart and think twice about fraudulent celebrity autographs before plunking down your cash. Use common sense methods to spot the frauds and you can begin building a great portfolio.

Celebrities and their Sunglasses

2010-02-04T05:37:00.000-08:00

Every celebrity out there knows the real value of a pair of designer sunglasses. Whether it's to hide the effects of a late night out on the town or an effort to blend in on the street, a pair of quality sunglasses is absolutely indispensable. We've seen a lot of trends come and go, but a great pair of sunglasses will always transcend the passing fads of the day.

With the summer just around the corner, we have begun our fashion trend spotting efforts for 2006. Like years passed, celebrities are on the forefront of eyewear fashion. One of my favorite pastimes is to monitor the fashion trends of my favorite celebrities. As with last season, big sunglasses are all the rage for the ladies. God bless you, Jackie O!

Carmen Electra is one of my favorite celebrities, and one of the most stylish women in entertainment. While I could do without another season of her dreadful "reality" television show, I am dying to get my hands on a pair of the Missoni shades she was recently spotted in. They are oversized and oh-so-glamorous!

Catherine Zeta-Jones may have a thing for old, outdated actors but her fashion sense is as fresh as a spring breeze. I recently saw her sporting a pair of Dolce & Gabbana glasses that were out of this world! I suspect they were the utterly amazing "4005" model. They were black, with the D&G logo designed into the arms of the glasses. The shades are big, bold, and beautiful!

Heidi Klum, our favorite supermodel and partygirl, has incredible fashion sense. I saw a picture of her earlier this week wearing a classic pair of Aviator shades. While a number of people in the fashion industry have been lamenting the prevalence of Aviator shades, I couldn't imagine a world without them. Heidi was wearing a pair made by Ray Ban, and they were absolutely fabulous!

Speaking of partygirls, how could I go on without mentioning Paris Hilton? I adore Paris. She may not be taken seriously as an actress or singer, but she reigns supreme over the fashion world. She was recently spotted wearing a pair of the new Oakley glasses for women. That's right, kids. Oakley just launched a new line of shades exclusively for women, and they are the must-have item for this fashion year. Believe the Hype!

Cashing the Czech

2010-02-04T05:06:00.000-08:00

Whether Robert Maxwell committed suicide or was murdered may never be known to the public ...

Suffice it to say the disgraced publishing magnate cheated so many people and financial institutions to such an extent that there wouldn't be a paucity of suspects if it was the latter. Born in Slatinske Dעly to poor parents as Jan Ludvick Hoch and Anglicizing his name when he migrated to Great Britain during World War II, Maxwell used the fog of combat to his advantage, picking off a scientific journal distributorship at a bargain rate. He soon parlayed that into more literary acquisitions and doing so with such aplomb, he even gained election to Parliament.

However, a trail of deceit began soon thereafter, which led to a High Court censorship, then to possible war crime allegations and, ultimately, to an amazing web of falsified balance sheets and deceptive bank loan collateral which masked Maxwell's mass looting of his own publishing empire's coffers. When all was about to come crashing down upon him, Maxwell was reported to have fallen overboard while yachting along the Canary Islands. His extensive double-dealing earned him the posthumous title of The Bouncing Czech.

Maxwell's bombastic ego, though, was authentic. He ached to be larger than life and to outdo any perceived rival, such as Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch, whose own publishing empire spans the globe. Ironically, Maxwell tried to seize any opportunity to portray Murdoch as a low-life, casting himself as a higher-minded alternative to the conscientious consumer. Thus, to counter Murdoch's titillation-themed, Tory-leaning tabloid, the Sun, Maxwell ran his Daily Mirror as a seemingly kinder, gentler, Labour-oriented purveyor of similar stories.

Maxwell always ran a distant second in the United Kingdom's tabloid wars, so he was constantly looking for an edge with which to tweak Murdoch's operations and further convey the image --- however cynical --- of his holding the higher social and ethical ground. I can attest that, at least once, a blend of this obsession and his blowhard personality got the better of him.

It was a summer day in the mid-80s, and the prospects of secondary smoke being a health issue in the workplace were beginning to be accepted as fact. It was surely noble for Cap'n Bob --- as Maxwell was derisively known --- to be among the first to attempt an office-wide smoking ban. The Mirror's headquarters was no doubt better served, but it was clear his motives were for self-promotion rather than a genuine concern for his employees' welfare.

The first clue that this was the case was the boisterous manner by which Maxwell arbitrarily enforced the policy. Specifically, he loved to make a scene if it showed him in an authoritarian and positive light. Thus, when Cap'n Bob proclaimed a ban, he did it for maximum effect. In this instance, he decreed that anyone caught smoking in his building would be fired on the spot.

On this day, Maxwell was holding court for visitors of some dignified nature. He was guiding them through the Mirror facilities when a man hunched over a nearby photocopy machine caught his attention. The man had a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Cap'n Bob summoned his guests to follow him over there. Puffing his chest as he approached the man puffing away, Maxwell began his diatribe within steps of his quarry and gained decibels with each successive step.

"Sir!" he exclaimed, "How much do you make a month?"

The target of his wrath was caught off-guard. It took him a moment to confirm that Maxwell was speaking to him; actually, 'at him' would be more accurate.

"I asked you a question," Maxwell pressed, making sure that his guests totally understood who was in charge of the moment, "And I expect a prompt answer. How much do you make a month!"

"2000 quid," was the nervous response. "Why do you ask?"

"You're smoking!" was the roared retort. Cap'n Bob then reached into his pocket in preparation for the coup de grace. He pulled out a wad of bills, quickly sifted through £2000 and jammed it into the surprised man's shirt pocket.

"There's a month's wage! You're fired! Now, get out!"

Maxwell then stormed away, his cotillion of impressed guests following dutifully behind. A strong boss had surely made a firm point.

Left in the wake, the stunned man retrieved the stash of cash from his pocket, looked at it and then shook his head in amazement.

"I was just called here to repair the copier," he shrugged. He put the money in his pants pocket, flicked a few ashes to the ground, headed toward the front door and proceeded to his van. Perhaps he had more calls to make that day, but he probably opted to cancel them and make his way to a pub, instead.

The incident capsulized Cap'n Bob's act in a nutshell. He was all show, with little attention to detail. It was a harbinger that whenever someone paid close heed to his affairs, he'd be sunk.

I just didn't think it would happen so literally.

2010-02-04T04:32:00.000-08:00

Before we begin asking if the celebrities are happy, let us first find out what is happiness? If I feel good for an hour a day, and horrible for the rest of the day, am I happy? What if I am happy for eight hours a day and horrible for the rest of the sixteen hours? Am I a happy person? For most of us happiness is a state that is not permanent. We are not happy throughout the day. At least majority of us are not.

What is happiness? Happiness means a sense of deep contentment. A cheerful outlook. An attitude of positive thoughts. A person who has these qualities is happy during all the times of the day.

How about celebrities then? They have name, fame and wealth. They can, not only buy whatever they desire, but they can also buy a loved one. They can buy anything. Their name is splashed around in the media most of the times. Every news about them is awaited by the general population. Celebrities may not have been born with a silver spoon in the mouth, but the current spoon is mostly that of gold. So they must be happy!

But sadly, happiness is away from most of them. Speaking of contentment, most of them are not only not feeling any contentment, but are frustrated. They are jealous at times. And they have no deep sense of peace in them. Rather their life and minds are full of turbulence most of the times. They are at times so dissatisfied with their own life that they wish to run away from themselves. This they cannot do, and therefore substances that take them away from their own realities are so often used by them.

Happiness has something to do with money, but only to an extent. Happiness has nothing to do with fame, if you are not satisfied with yourself. Whatever the world may say, unless one has self-esteem, one can never be happy. All of us sail in the same boat. Most of us are living unhappy lives most of the time. Let us get happiness that will give us a satisfied sense of living. Let us strive for happiness in our own inner world.

Angelina Jolie and her Humanitarian Efforts

2010-02-04T03:52:00.000-08:00

Angelina Jolie, partner to Brad Pitt, is the star of several blockbuster movies. Among them Girl Interrupted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, coincidentally where she met Pitt. But perhaps her most well known portrayal was as the buxom Lara Croft, in the Tomb Raider films. During the shooting of the first movie, much of which was shot on location in Cambodia, Jolie came to witness the beautiful environment, immersive culture, and rampant poverty of the nation. This, she says, opened her eyes and was her stepping stone into humantiarian work.

After Cambodia, Anglina Jolie took a trip to Sierra Leone and Tanzania in 2001, and it was there that she first became actively involved in humanitarium causes. The purpose of that fateful trip was to discover first hand the conditions that refugees must suffer. Angelina was so shocked that shortly after, in August 2001, she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, otherwise known as UNHCR.

The UNHCR assists over 20 million refugees in 120 countries around the world. They were created to protect and safeguard the well-being and rights of refugees. They believe that refugees have a right to seek asylum in another country and will actively seek to engage nations to integrate and support those refugees. Thus far, in only 5 decades, they have helped over 50 million people in the world.

Angelina’s contribution has greatly assisted in generating more widespread attention to this worthy cause. As a goodwill ambassador, her role is to communicate to, and provide a focus on refugees by generating mass-media attention. Though in Jolie’s case this is not merely superficial. She actually spends much of her own time and is genuinely affected by their misery. On her trip to Ecuador, Jolie wrote of the suffering, “People's lives are truly in danger – not just in the sense that you feel your town is unsafe – their lives are actually being threatened and their houses are being burnt down.”

To further increase public awareness, Jolie has released several personal journals of her experiences during field visits. More information can be found at unhcr.org.

As well as the physical effort that Jolie contributes, her foundation with partner Brad Pitt, called the Jolie-Pitt Foundation recently donated USD$1 million to groups working in Darfur. Darfur is a region in war ravaged Sudan, which Jolie has visited three times already.

Jolie now plans to spend most of her time in humanitarian efforts, revealing that she splits her actress her salary three ways; a third for savings, a third for living expenses and a third for charity. Considering she commands a high pay packet for movies, as well as product endorsements, that equates to a considerable amount donated.

Jolie has two adopted children, and is currently thinking of a third. Maddox, a cambodian refugee boy she adopted in 2002, and Zahara, an ethiopian refugee girl. She also has a child with Brad Pitt, named Shiloh.

Together with Pitt, Jolie has stated that she will continue to promote and actively engage in humanitarian causes, as well as pursuing her acting ambitions.

Alice Cooper - True Rock And Roll Is Live Once Again

2010-02-04T03:17:00.000-08:00

The originator of “shock rock” is brining his live act back to the stage in 2006, and Alice Cooper is sure to create the same frenzy he always has. Cooper’s past acts on stage are famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, but one thing that’s indisputable is that his show is one that every member of the audience remembers. Cooper’s sound is as memorable as his live act, and a look at his life may help explain how his persona came to be.

Early Life

Vincent Damon Furnier was born in Detroit on February 4, 1948. His heritage was quite interesting, in that his grandfather was an ordained Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ and his father was an elder in the same church. After spending the first few years of his life in Detroit, the family decided to move to Phoenix, which was where Vincent spent his formative years.

Furnier enrolled at Cortez high school in Phoenix, and became known by his peers as a columnist in the school newspaper. His tone in these columns was quite sarcastic, and two of his loyal readers became his closest friends of the time - Glen Buxton and Dennis Dunaway. Buxton and Dunaway would play a large role in Furnier’s musical career down the road.

Furnier, Buxton and Dunaway were motivated by one thing in high school - gaining the attention and adulation of the female students at Cortez. Their first foray into the musical world occurred during a school talent show where they donned wigs and gave a mock performance of songs by The Beatles. Even though their show was definitely amateur in nature, the group discovered that music was definitely the way to go if they wanted to be popular.

The trio was joined by another friend, Michael Bruce, and the quartet formed a band named The Earwigs. The group’s musical influences included The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks and especially Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds. The name “Earwigs” didn’t last long, as the band soon became known as the Spiders.

The Spiders released a single, "Don't Blow Your Mind," that was a hit on Phoenix radio, and as a result, the band once again changed their name to The Nazz and traveled to Hollywood to pursue larger goals. Despite years of struggle in Los Angeles, The Nazz did manage to play opening acts for such bands as The Doors and The Yardbirds. The final change came in 1968, when Todd Rundgren named his band The Nazz, forcing Furnier and his crew to rename their band “Alice Cooper.”

Alice Cooper Days

In 1969, the band Alice Cooper released their first album, Pretties For You, which sold reasonably well but was seen as an outlandish work at the time. One of the reasons was the legendary story that the band showed up still reeling from a night of heavy drinking to record the album. This legend helped play into the overall theme of craziness that the band embodied going forward.

The band Alice Cooper released a total of five albums, but they split up in 1974. Furnier then became known as Alice Cooper, and released his first album, Welcome to My Nightmare, in 1975. The album became a top ten hit, and Cooper was on his way to stardom.

Since then, Cooper has released more than 30 studio, live and compilation albums, and has sold millions of records worldwide. His onstage legend has never waned. Even though he denies biting the head off a chicken and drinking its blood, the story made waves all over the world and is still a subject of discussion in many interviews.

Cooper’s outrageousness is definitely part of why he is known, but he is also one of the top-selling artists of his time. He has always flown a bit under the radar, but his shock rock innovations have been admired and to an extent imitated by the likes of Judas Priest, Kiss, Megadeath and Marilyn Manson.

One thing is sure - to see Alice Cooper is to see a show you’ll never forget.

Addiction to Fame and Celebrity

2010-02-04T02:40:00.001-08:00

Question:

Are Narcissists addicted to being famous?

Answer:

You bet. This, by far, is their predominant drive. Being famous encompasses a few important functions: it endows the narcissist with power, provides him with a constant Source of Narcissistic Supply (admiration, adoration, approval, awe), and fulfils important Ego functions.

The image that the narcissist projects is hurled back at him, reflected by those exposed to his celebrity or fame. This way he feels alive, his very existence is affirmed and he acquires a sensation of clear boundaries (where the narcissist ends and the world begins).

There is a set of narcissistic behaviours typical to the pursuit of celebrity. There is almost nothing that the narcissist refrains from doing, almost no borders that he hesitates to cross to achieve renown. To him, there is no such thing as "bad publicity" – what matters is to be in the public eye.

Because the narcissist equally enjoys all types of attention and likes as much to be feared as to be loved, for instance – he doesn't mind if what is published about him is wrong ("as long as they spell my name correctly"). The narcissist's only bad emotional stretches are during periods of lack of attention, publicity, or exposure.

The narcissist then feels empty, hollowed out, negligible, humiliated, wrathful, discriminated against, deprived, neglected, treated unjustly and so on. At first, he tries to obtain attention from ever narrowing groups of reference ("supply scale down"). But the feeling that he is compromising gnaws at his anyhow fragile self-esteem.

Sooner or later, the spring bursts. The narcissist plots, contrives, plans, conspires, thinks, analyses, synthesises and does whatever else is necessary to regain the lost exposure in the public eye. The more he fails to secure the attention of the target group (always the largest) – the more daring, eccentric and outlandish he becomes. Firm decision to become known is transformed into resolute action and then to a panicky pattern of attention seeking behaviours.

The narcissist is not really interested in publicity per se. Narcissists are misleading. The narcissist appears to love himself – and, really, he abhors himself. Similarly, he appears to be interested in becoming a celebrity – and, in reality, he is concerned with the REACTIONS to his fame: people watch him, notice him, talk about him, debate his actions – therefore he exists.

The narcissist goes around "hunting and collecting" the way the expressions on people's faces change when they notice him. He places himself at the centre of attention, or even as a figure of controversy. He constantly and recurrently pesters those nearest and dearest to him in a bid to reassure himself that he is not losing his fame, his magic touch, the attention of his social milieu.

Truly, the narcissist is not choosy. If he can become famous as a writer – he writes, if as a businessman – he conducts business. He switches from one field to the other with ease and without remorse because in all of them he is present without conviction, bar the conviction that he must (and deserves to) get famous.

He grades activities, hobbies and people not according to the pleasure that they give him – but according to their utility: can they or can't they make him known and, if so, to what extent. The narcissist is one-track minded (not to say obsessive). His is a world of black (being unknown and deprived of attention) and white (being famous and celebrated).

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Mistreating Celebrities - An Interview

Granted to Superinteressante Magazine in Brazil

Q. Fame and TV shows about celebrities usually have a huge audience. This is understandable: people like to see other successful people. But why people like to see celebrities being humiliated?

A. As far as their fans are concerned, celebrities fulfil two emotional functions: they provide a mythical narrative (a story that the fan can follow and identify with) and they function as blank screens onto which the fans project their dreams, hopes, fears, plans, values, and desires (wish fulfilment). The slightest deviation from these prescribed roles provokes enormous rage and makes us want to punish (humiliate) the "deviant" celebrities.

But why?

When the human foibles, vulnerabilities, and frailties of a celebrity are revealed, the fan feels humiliated, "cheated", hopeless, and "empty". To reassert his self-worth, the fan must establish his or her moral superiority over the erring and "sinful" celebrity. The fan must "teach the celebrity a lesson" and show the celebrity "who's boss". It is a primitive defense mechanism - narcissistic grandiosity. It puts the fan on equal footing with the exposed and "naked" celebrity.

Q. This taste for watching a person being humiliated has something to do with the attraction to catastrophes and tragedies?

A. There is always a sadistic pleasure and a morbid fascination in vicarious suffering. Being spared the pains and tribulations others go through makes the observer feel "chosen", secure, and virtuous. The higher celebrities rise, the harder they fall. There is something gratifying in hubris defied and punished.

Q. Do you believe the audience put themselves in the place of the reporter (when he asks something embarrassing to a celebrity) and become in some way revenged?

A. The reporter "represents" the "bloodthirsty" public. Belittling celebrities or watching their comeuppance is the modern equivalent of the gladiator rink. Gossip used to fulfil the same function and now the mass media broadcast live the slaughtering of fallen gods. There is no question of revenge here - just Schadenfreude, the guilty joy of witnessing your superiors penalized and "cut down to size".

Q. In your country, who are the celebrities people love to hate?

A. Israelis like to watch politicians and wealthy businessmen reduced, demeaned, and slighted. In Macedonia, where I live, all famous people, regardless of their vocation, are subject to intense, proactive, and destructive envy. This love-hate relationship with their idols, this ambivalence, is attributed by psychodynamic theories of personal development to the child's emotions towards his parents. Indeed, we transfer and displace many negative emotions we harbor onto celebrities.

Q. I would never dare asking some questions the reporters from Panico ask the celebrities. What are the characteristics of people like these reporters?

A. Sadistic, ambitious, narcissistic, lacking empathy, self-righteous, pathologically and destructively envious, with a fluctuating sense of self-worth (possibly an inferiority complex).

6. Do you believe the actors and reporters want themselves to be as famous as the celebrities they tease? Because I think this is almost happening...

A. The line is very thin. Newsmakers and newsmen and women are celebrities merely because they are public figures and regardless of their true accomplishments. A celebrity is famous for being famous. Of course, such journalists will likely to fall prey to up and coming colleagues in an endless and self-perpetuating food chain...

7. I think that the fan-celebrity relationship gratifies both sides. What are the advantages the fans get and what are the advantages the celebrities get?

A. There is an implicit contract between a celebrity and his fans. The celebrity is obliged to "act the part", to fulfil the expectations of his admirers, not to deviate from the roles that they impose and he or she accepts. In return the fans shower the celebrity with adulation. They idolize him or her and make him or her feel omnipotent, immortal, "larger than life", omniscient, superior, and sui generis (unique).

What are the fans getting for their trouble?

Above all, the ability to vicariously share the celebrity's fabulous (and, usually, partly confabulated) existence. The celebrity becomes their "representative" in fantasyland, their extension and proxy, the reification and embodiment of their deepest desires and most secret and guilty dreams. Many celebrities are also role models or father/mother figures. Celebrities are proof that there is more to life than drab and routine. That beautiful - nay, perfect - people do exist and that they do lead charmed lives. There's hope yet - this is the celebrity's message to his fans.

The celebrity's inevitable downfall and corruption is the modern-day equivalent of the medieval morality play. This trajectory - from rags to riches and fame and back to rags or worse - proves that order and justice do prevail, that hubris invariably gets punished, and that the celebrity is no better, neither is he superior, to his fans.

8. Why are celebrities narcissists? How is this disorder born?

No one knows if pathological narcissism is the outcome of inherited traits, the sad result of abusive and traumatizing upbringing, or the confluence of both. Often, in the same family, with the same set of parents and an identical emotional environment - some siblings grow to be malignant narcissists, while others are perfectly "normal". Surely, this indicates a genetic predisposition of some people to develop narcissism.

It would seem reasonable to assume - though, at this stage, there is not a shred of proof - that the narcissist is born with a propensity to develop narcissistic defenses. These are triggered by abuse or trauma during the formative years in infancy or during early adolescence. By "abuse" I am referring to a spectrum of behaviors which objectify the child and treat it as an extension of the caregiver (parent) or as a mere instrument of gratification. Dotting and smothering are as abusive as beating and starving. And abuse can be dished out by peers as well as by parents, or by adult role models.

Not all celebrities are narcissists. Still, some of them surely are.

We all search for positive cues from people around us. These cues reinforce in us certain behaviour patterns. There is nothing special in the fact that the narcissist-celebrity does the same. However there are two major differences between the narcissistic and the normal personality.

The first is quantitative. The normal person is likely to welcome a moderate amount of attention – verbal and non-verbal – in the form of affirmation, approval, or admiration. Too much attention, though, is perceived as onerous and is avoided. Destructive and negative criticism is avoided altogether.

The narcissist, in contrast, is the mental equivalent of an alcoholic. He is insatiable. He directs his whole behaviour, in fact his life, to obtain these pleasurable titbits of attention. He embeds them in a coherent, completely biased, picture of himself. He uses them to regulates his labile (fluctuating) sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

To elicit constant interest, the narcissist projects on to others a confabulated, fictitious version of himself, known as the False Self. The False Self is everything the narcissist is not: omniscient, omnipotent, charming, intelligent, rich, or well-connected.

The narcissist then proceeds to harvest reactions to this projected image from family members, friends, co-workers, neighbours, business partners and from colleagues. If these – the adulation, admiration, attention, fear, respect, applause, affirmation – are not forthcoming, the narcissist demands them, or extorts them. Money, compliments, a favourable critique, an appearance in the media, a sexual conquest are all converted into the same currency in the narcissist's mind, into "narcissistic supply".

So, the narcissist is not really interested in publicity per se or in being famous. Truly he is concerned with the REACTIONS to his fame: how people watch him, notice him, talk about him, debate his actions. It "proves" to him that he exists.

The narcissist goes around "hunting and collecting" the way the expressions on people's faces change when they notice him. He places himself at the centre of attention, or even as a figure of controversy. He constantly and recurrently pesters those nearest and dearest to him in a bid to reassure himself that he is not losing his fame, his magic touch, the attention of his social milieu.

4 Secrets To Becoming A Guest On Top Tv Talk Shows

2010-02-04T02:24:00.000-08:00

The phone rings. You hear an authoritative voice say, *Hello, I'm the producer of...Good Morning America or Oprah, or Larry King Live* or any other top talk show, you name it. This is your big moment, the break you've been waiting for. After you catch your breath what do you do?

Producers make an instant assessment of you in thirty seconds--or less. When you get that coveted call from a producer, you aren't just *talking* to him: you're auditioning. You are being screened to be accepted or eliminated as a guest on their show. How can you pass the audition?

Secret #1: Ask Before You Speak

Before you even open your mouth to start pitching yourself and your story to the producer, ask them a simple question: *Can you tell me a little bit about the kind of show you envision?* In other words, ask the producer the angle he is planning to take.

Doing so has two advantages. First, it gives you a moment to overcome the shock and to collect your thoughts.

Second, once you hear the producer's reply, you can gear your pitch to the type of information he's seeking. Listen closely to the angle that he's interested in and tailor your points to it. Publicists often use this technique to get their clients booked on shows. They *get* before they *give* - so they are in a good position to tell only the most pertinent information about their client.

Secret #2: Wow the Producers with Brevity

Follow the advice of jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie: *It's not how much you play. It's how much you leave out.* Keep your list of talking points by the phone when you call a producer (or a producer calls you), so you'll be succinct. You will already have rehearsed your points so that they'll sound natural and inviting. Be prepared with several different angles or pitches, different ways to slant your information. *Nobody gets on these shows without a pre- interview,* says publicist Leslie Rossman. *Be a great interview but don't worry about the product you want to sell them because if you're a great guest and you make great TV, they'll want you.*

And keep in mind the words of Robert Frost: *Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.*

Secret #3: Prove You're Not a Nutcase

If you area nutcase on the air, the producer will lose their job. What constitutes a nutcase? You may think it's a positive trait to be enthusiastic (and it is), but anyone who is overly zealous about his passion is considered a nut. Best-selling author and screenwriter Richard Price talks about this phenomenon as *The dangerous thrill of goodness.* He says, *What happens is you can get very excited by your own power to do good.* Don't get carried away by this thrill.

One way to tell if you're being too zealous is that you're hammering your point at top speed with the energy of a locomotive pulling that toot lever non-stop. I remember a man calling me up about how he was single-handedly taking on Starbucks - who, he felt, had done him wrong. He wanted me to promote his cause. While this could have been a great David versus Goliath type story, he was long on emotion and short on facts. Some statistics or figures would have tempered his mania.

But he also never checked in with me to see if he had my interest. By talking loudly and barely pausing for a breath, he appeared to be a man who wouldn't take direction well. His single-mindedness was off- putting, not engaging.

When you're talking to a producer speak for 30 seconds or so and then check in by asking, *Is this the kind of information you're looking for?* Listen for other verbal cues, such as encouraging grunts, or *uh huhs.*

Secret #4: Can You Mark *The Big Point?*

Contributors to the popular radio show *This American Life,* hosted by Ira Glass, have taken to calling the wrap-up epiphany at the end of a story, *The Big Point.* This is the moment that the narrator gives his perspective on the story in an attempt to elevate it from the mundane to the universal.

Another radio personality, Garrison Keillor, is a master at it. He tells long, rambling stories (not good advice for you), then ties up all the story strands in a coherent and satisfying way. As a great guest, you want to illuminate your story with a big standout point that helps the audience see the significance of your story in their world and the world at large. Rather than hitting them over the head with a two-by-four, you want to share your insights with a feather-like touch. By framing your story you alert the producer to the fact that you're a thinker and can contribute great insights and clarity to a story thus increasing its appeal.