Something that sucks about adulthood

There's a hurt only fully grown adults can feel. It's a kind of hurt that lacks melodrama. There's nothing in it that permits you to avoid feeling it's full sting. It's horribly unsatisfying. You know that as much as it hurts you the world doesn't stop for you and let you mourn. You're an adult so you still have to go on and deal with the world. You're falling apart on the inside but you still have to go and behave like you have it together. I think possibly even worse then that even you don't cut yourself slack for it. You tell yourself, "Yes it's sad but life goes on and even this feeling will pass." So as an adult you go about in your quiet pain until the hurt finally goes away.

Well as I am not currently a big fan of my writing so I'll stop here and let you think about what you've read here.

A question of morality part II

So I've been thinking about this lately. I want opinions about this question "Who is worst, the hit man or the person who orders the hit?"

Okay here's a thought to start you off. Without the hit man the murder wouldn't take place. So the person ordering the hit can want to kill someone all they want but they are no threat in and of themselves as they are not the person doing the actual killing. Sort of the whole guns don't kill people, people kill people idea.

I look forward to hearing from you on this. Thank you.

E8 Formula

Al righty I'm not holding my breadth on this one in terms of expecting responses. This particular subject matter I think isn't of interest to those who have read my blog but hey maybe it is.

So  I want to talk about the recently solved E8 formula. A mathematical formula so big that if written by hand in tiny letters it would cover the island of Manhattan. In fact if the results of the formula were written in a grid with each cell being 1 inch by 1 inch the whole thing would be 7 miles long on each side. Yep huge! So I'm including links to 2 short articles (article 1, article 2) on the subject that I hope you'll read and then leave your thought and opinions about this whole thing. It doesn't have to be specifically about the formula it could also be about other related things to it as well like "Wow those people need a life!" or something like that.

What I've learned from watching "old" people

Alright my muse has kicked me in the ass so now I can write this one.

So here is a list of things I've learned from watching old people. Well actually tips on living that I've learned from watching "old" people:
1. Keep yourself healthy/maintain your health:

What I've noticed is that a lot of the older people I know are encountering health problems that they're blaming on age but really it comes from years of abusing their bodies. Age is only a factor in that it granted them the sheer numbers of years necessary to damage their bodied that much. You may disagree with me on this but I've known older people who have made a point of keeping themselves healthy and they don't suffer the ailments we have a tendency to attribute to age.

2. Cultivate pleasant relationships with younger people:

I say this because at some point if you live long enough and your health fails you your gonna need someone to help you. Now people may help you because they feel obligated or because they're getting paid to but a lot of them will feel like it is a burden. If you cultivate good and pleasant relationships you alleviate that burden because they actually like you and want to help. Feel free to disagree with me on this one but in my experience I've seen far too many people who feel ashamed of the joy they feel after their demanding "charge" has past on and I've gotten in far too much shit for vocalizing their sentiments for them. Oh and I've seen the toll that caring for a complete bitch or asshole can take on someone. It's not right.

3. Keep and open mind:

The primary reason for this is that I believe that being closed minded leads to an earlier on set of mental decline. However an obvious reason for keeping an open mind is that life is not stagnate. Life is ever changing. If you refuse to adapt you soon become obsolete. I'm not saying jump on every bandwagon I'm just saying adapt to life around you. Also it helps with cultivating pleasant relationships with younger people. I for one get tired of hearing people tell me everything my generation does is evil because they do things different in then in the "good old days".

Okay that's that for now. Maybe I'll have other things to add later.

Afterplay

I'm not sure how many people are familiar with this concept. I never had a name for it until earlier this year. I don't remember where I heard the term I just remember I liked the concept. For those of you who don't know what afterplay is it's the sexual play after you (plural sense) orgasm. To use an exercise analogy it's the equivalent of doing a warm down after you work out, your body needs to cool down slowly and you need to stretch to keep yourself from being sore later. Therefore afterplay is the calming of the excited body after achieving climax.

Now some of you maybe thinking, "Jesus Christ more work! Didn't I work for it with the foreplay?" That's the wrong attitude. If you have a "skilled" partner you might get to realize just how good it feels to be slowly brought down from an orgasm. And it's not hard because it's about winding down so the effort decreases as time passes.

Here's something else that's important about foreplay and afterplay. You should pick a sex partner that you actually want to enjoy the experience with. If you do that then you do foreplay and afterplay with out realizing it because you actually want to get in there and touch and feel and caress and say things inspired by the moment that will drive your partner wild.

Anyway that's just something I was thinking about for some reason.

Something that's always confused me.

This has been bugging me since 9/11. I read blogs and/or watch celebrities/personalties talk about how going into places like Afghanistan or Iraq has changed them. Saying things like "you really get to put a face to the 'enemy' or the victims of war and start to see them as real people." I respond to this by saying, "Just how far up your ass was your head before?" Now don't get me wrong. I'm glad these people had these experiences and are now getting the word out because this is a message worth spreading but still. Why did these people and others not get this in the first place. I mean I get it if you're a child. Your brain isn't fully developed to appreciate the nuances of life but holy shit, how are full grown adults missing this? Seriously how fucking stupid are we as a species that most of us fail to grasp that real people die when you drop bombs on them. Seriously it baffles me.

It just needed to be said.

The plight of Superman

I always imagine Superman's biggest problem in life is who can he turn to when he needs help. Okay I know the advid comic book fan out there can probably name a dozen superheroes who could fulfill his needs but I was thinking more along the lines of if you're at the top of your game who do you turn to? I mean if you're the smartest person in the world who do you turn to when you're not smart enough? If you're the strongest person, who can help you when you're strength fails you?

I ask this because I think that people with exceptional attributes are automatically screwed. Yeah they're of use to other poeple but other people are of little if any use to them. In the end when there is no one for them to turn to what keeps them going? I would imagine people of exceptional attributes carry on because they have exceptional attributes and that in and of itself is their reason. Sort of an instinctual need to pit themselves and their capacities against the world and see what they can accomplish.

In a lot of ways I want to blame the people without the exceptional attributes for the plight of the exceptional but then I think, "Well they are unexceptional. You can't expect them to behave like they are exceptional. That's just stupid." But then I also want to say, "True enough but then why should we spawn exceptional people in the first place if it's only going to be wasted on those who can't rise to the occasion?"

Anyway just something I've been thinking about. I expect no comments on this one. If I truly believed that I would disable the kudos and comments but for better or worse with me "hope springs eternal" so I hold out for some feed back that I don't believe will come.

A word from the Urban Shaman

****** Warning some of the ideas here may be contraversial. Do what you want with this warning. I'm not your keeper. *******

Every so often I feel the need to remind people about the reality of life. Bear with me while I set this up.

As humans we are social creatures needing contact with one another. Yes for some it seems like they don't need that contact but that's an illusion. People divorce themselves from other people because they can't reconcile what they need to do with the demands of their relationships. Now to continue. As a consequence we have devised societies and created beliefs and concepts in hopes of making it easier to coexist. That doesn't mean that these things are right or can be easily reconciled with reality.

Violence/Killing: We are not suppose to approve of violence yet we do. Why? Because it works in a lot of situations. I'm not big on using violent means. In fact except for once or twice in my childhood I've never had to use it to accomplish anything but I know the value of putting down a rabid dog to keep everyone else safe. Well actually more obvious we all eat living things so our very survival is based on some pretty horrendous violence directed at one living thing or another. Now we hide that violence from the general public but it happens none the less.

Marriage: There's been a lot of complaining about gay marriage saying it desecrates marriage but when you think about it marriage exists because we can't trust two people to make sure they spend their resources towards their common good and the good of their children. Or that society at large can't be trusted to let two people who love each other to stay together and share resources that's why we have legislation that forces companies to cover employees spouses and children. Of course marriage was never about love, I mean dowries... hello!

Monogamy: Is but one mating strategy for our species. I'm sorry but I have to say just how blind are some of us to miss the obvious. Until the advent of modern medicine and some cultures quasi-genocidal attempts at reducing the numbers of female children, women have always outnumbered men. We default to female as a species if something goes wrong in the birthing process. Monogamy is only one way to ensure you pass your genes on to the next generation. Actually it's the equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket and watching that basket like a hawk. Polygamy spreads the genes around this way if one partner isn't viable then possibly the others may be. Now I will say this. We have lower birth rates then other species so we can spend more time on rearing our children in monogomis relationships but that still doesn't make it our only option. Our gender distribution doesn't permit it to be an option for everyone.

Love: Okay here we go. Most people aren't capable of the kind of love we like to rave about. On the other hand we are capable of killing ourselves for the benefit of others. However don't hold your breadth. If you're a little kid maybe you can expect it but adults... good luck getting someone to sacrifice themselves for you. I know you're gonna say, "What of our troops, our fire men, our police men?" True enough but they all have internal agencies to investigate those who have strayed from their noble cause and they have a fighting chance. They're equipped and trained to deal with the dilema they've chosen to confront. But I digress I was talking about love. Love is an emotion to motivate you do to something for someone other than yourself. A consequence of being a social creature. I personaly believe in it and suffer from a large dose of it for my fellow living beings. One because I like how it feels and two because of the strength I derive from it. Although the point I had intended to convey was that the need to survive tends to trump love. Another consequence of being a social creature is to realize we all take part in the maintenance of the society. And unfortunately we are sometimes far to willing to sacrifice those we love for the whole.

Okay so I didn't say everything I wanted to say. I just don't have the patience or attention span but I hope I have at least said enough to spark a debate.

A question of morality?

So I was staining some wood with oil in order to weather proof it. As I'm doing this a tiny little spider got stuck in a puddle of oil (I was applying it libraly). I watched for a minute. The spider didn't seem like it was going to get out of the puddle. Since I made the puddle I figured I should help it out. Now I was wearing gloves so I misjudged the distance and I ended up crushing the wee thing. So I wondered to myself, "Was my good intention really so good? Did I end up doing some wrong thing? After all the spider didn't ask for my help. Possibly if I had been  a little more patient it would have pulled itself free and still be alive today?"

So my question here is: "If you do something to help someone and it turns out disasterously wrong because of your actions should you be held accountable even though you had only intended to help?"

Behold my attempt at clever blogging.

Okay. Two things have been brought to my attention today that I wanted to talk about but I didn't want to write two blogs. With a little bit of thought I've found how to connect them.

The first topic is plastic surgery. I was listening to CBC radio and they were doing a comedic debate about plastic surgery. The "for" debater opened with, "The only people really against plastic surgery are the naturally good looking who don't need it or the really ugly who can't afford it." I started to think. I don't disagree with plastic surgery. If only because it's not all frivolous. I've known people who have been in bad accidents who needed to restore their features or because of severe birth defects. You know like being born with only a partial face for instance. I don't even care if people make themselves look like complete freaks. Why? Because we're a "tool" using species who use technology to our advantage. You want to make yourself better looking (or at least what you think is better looking) that's fine. In my opinion it is no less moral than push up or padded bras, make up, hair dye, wigs, false eyelashes, high heel shoes, lifts, structured clothing and so on and so forth.

So altering your appearance to impress others is done all the time. So that can't be used against plastic surgery. Now unlike those other things plastic surgery is surgery and can go very wrong and leave you worse off than before *shudder* It also suffers from the consequences of any surgery such as infection and the not so often spoken about anasthesia shock where you die because of the anasthesia. Also most plastic surgery is essentially permanent so you have to decide if it's what you want to look like.

And so speaking of cosmetic oddities I go on to the next topic wich is the rougarou also written roux-ga-roux, rugaroo or rugaru. A form of French were-wolf (loup garou) but it seems to be a person who turns into a wolf or dog? that appearantly has horse like legs and can run at least by one account up to 50 mph for up to 2 miles. I want to add a weird fact here while loup is French for wolf a loup garou can be any animal. I read a story about a loupgarou that turned into a cow instead of a wolf.

So once a gain this was clever because I used the theme "cosmetic oddities" to tie them together.

Cute, Pretty, Beautiful or Sexy

Since I complained about curvy and what it means to feminine beauty I thought I'd actually deal with my idea of feminine beauty in more depth. To make it easy I'd thought I'd divide my idea of femine beauty in to four categories: cute, pretty, beautiful and sexy.

Cute

Cute to me implies child-like qualities. Cute invokes more the feeling I have towards children then I do to adults. When someone is cute I am more likely to want to hold and protect them and "play" with them. Also cute doesn't have to have an esthetic value to it. Troll Dolls are cute but are not ortherwise esthetically appealing. Also cute can invoke the more dangerous side of the psyche because child-like also implies weak and defenseless.

Pretty

Pretty is completely a matter of esthetics. If you are not esthetically pleasing you cannot be pretty. However pretty also invokes the idea of fragility. Esthetics are easily messed with. Introduce a flaw to a pretty person and they are no longer pretty. Esthetics was all their apperance had going for them. In my opinion pretty is the worst thing to be. Well okay it beats being a complete freak of nature but of the four listed here pretty is the worst thing to be.

Beautiful

Okay some of you may have a hard time with my definintion of beautiful. Beautiful is essentially the manifestation of something well done. A beautiful person can have less esthetic appeal then someone who is pretty but introduce a flaw to the esthetic and it serves only to highlight the person's apperance. By well done I mean a beautiful person will look healthy and well formed and will generally be symetrical as much as our species permits anyway. Also they will appear functional. A beautiful person doesn't inspire a need to protect they inspire a need to excell and to be worthy of them. As an example if  you were a violinist and I gave you a Stradivarius you would most likely  not use it to play "Mary had a little lamb". You would probably use it to play a far more complexe piece of music and in front of a large audience and most likely you would tend to it to make sure it was always in good working order.

Sexy

Sexy is pretty self-explanatory. If you consistantly invoke a desire for sex regardless of your esthetic, you're sexy. It's not too complicated. Mind you I could have used sexy as a component of female beauty like I did with esthetic rather than make it a type of female beauty but sexy deserves to be described as a type because I've encountered too many women who I'd like to have sex with that didn't fit into the other categories.

Since when?

Since when did "curvy" become a negative thing? Curves are essentially the main physical characterstics of feminine beauty. I ask this because I once again found myself watching daytime television. I was watching Pretty Oprah (Tyra Banks) I have a crush on her. What can I say? So she was chatting with somekind of fashion expert and they were talking about a woman and the fashion expert said that the woman was curvy...but in a good way. As if being called "curvy" was an insult. I can only assume that curvy went the way of voluptuous and became synonymous with fat. That being said, fat is only a bad thing in terms of appearance if you don't carry it well or if it robs you of your curves. Hell it helps some women by giving them curves they don't actually have.

The interesting thing about curvy being used for fat is that I think it shows a blantant misunderstanding of feminine beauty. You may have a hard time to believe this but the next time you watch a fashion show or some kind of fashion related program look at the models with the greatest acclaim or who are in the greatest demand. As skiny or as dangerously underweight as some of them might be you'll notice that they still maintain a semblance of curvyness. Hell next time you look at plus size models you'll notice the same thing. It's the curves that mean everything.

So inconclusion send me the curvy and voluptous women. I'll take them even if popular fashion doesn't want them;)

Oh yeah this also brings up another question. If all these positive, healthy (this is also another word that has become synonymous with fat) traits are becoming synonymous with fat, how are you suppose to be able to give an eloquent compliment?

Flowers for Algernon

I don't know if you've read this book or saw the movie (I did in high school). If you didn't the book is about a developmentally challenged janitor who undergoes an experiment meant to enhance his intelligence and what he learns about life because of it. Algernon by the way is the lab mouse who the experiment was done on first.

But I'm not here to pimp the book or the movie I want to point out a part of the story that I find significant. At one point Charlie Gordon's (the main character) intelligence is so high that it far surpasses that of the doctor experimenting on him. He comments something along the lines of "that it's not right that such a mediocre man should be his judge" Once again I read it like 20 yrs ago so that isn't an exact quote.

I find this idea important because I was just watching a special on CNN about genius and they were discussing how do you recognize genius and it reminded me about somethings when I was in school. One: the kids who went to the "gifted" classes were the ones who asked the most questions (which in my experience is often frowned upon) and two: my learning style didn't mix the way they taught at my school. Mind you I still managed to maintain As and Bs despite a learning disorder and having my own way of learning. But my method of learning is basically "give me the hard stuff first. I'll pick up the easier stuff later". I'll give you this as an example. To learn to spell the word "eight" I spelled it that way even if the context required the past of the verb "eat". I could spell "ate" no problem what I needed to do was drill into my head how to spell "eight" the number. So I got a lot of errors attributed to me because I never followed the exercise. Okay I'm no genius but one of the geniuses in the CNN special pointed out that he felt if had been taught in the regular school system he never would have finished his novel (which is going to be a movie set to be released this November or the next I'm not sure) before he was sixteen because it didn't allow for free time and independent thought.

I guess my point is that genius is not well understood because the people who are interested in defining geniuses aren't geniuses themselves and therefore often miss the geniuses they come across. If only because they are ill equipped to recognize what only the genius can see in the first place. This amounts to a number (I have no idea what the stats are) of potential geniuses having to "bloom" in infertile ground, if they do bloom at all.

I once heard it said that the saddest thing an intelligent person can learn is that "stupid" people run the world they live in. Not an exact quote but that is the sentiment.

It's funny as much as I don't like to argue about differences in intelligence because like anything else it's just an edge not a guaranty of success. I still find myself saying things like, "stupid people shouldn't be allowed to have an opinion." Some of these "stupid" people have said things that have provoked epiphanies for me.

Anyway I just needed to "hear" myself "speak" ;)

What kind of tree are you?

Okay some of you are familiar with this ice breaking exercise and some of you aren't. Basically everybody in a group takes turns to visualize then describe what kind of tree they are. When I was involved in one these exercise one guy described himself as a dead tree in a graveyard and I think with a noose swinging from one of it's branches. I'm not exactly sure as it was over 10 years ago. We all thought that was pretty weird if not a little creepy. What does it say about you if you visualize yourself as a dead tree in a grave yard? So as the turns went around I figured that was about as weird as it was going to get...until it came to my turn.

I don't know what this said/says about me but when I visualized my tree here is what I got. I was one of six huge planet sized? trees floating in orbit above the Earth with intertwined root systems that formed a protective shield for the planet. Oddly we six trees didn't block the sunlight. At worst we filtered it. Our job it seemed was to protect, not to interfere. Now I know I have an overactive imagination but even for me that's a pretty grandiose image. At the time I was feeling pretty shitty so I don't know why I visualized this.

So that's it. Does any one else have weird ice breaking exercise stories?