A bit of a Morbid Post

Everyone Dies.



It seems that most people spend a great deal of time trying to escape what is, essentially, an inescapable fact. You will eventually snuff it. A time will come, and it will be soon when stacked against the scale of this world, where the shell which you have been inhabiting will fail catastrophically....on that day You Will Die. This phenomenon will be far from unique to you, almost every member of the human race has gone through this before you. Barring some monumental medical breakthroughs every member of the human race after you will also die.



People die every day:



They die in cradles and on deathbeds.



They die during exercise and in corpulent states on couches.



They die charging for freedom and cowering in basements.



They die having realized their dreams and having done nothing with their lives.



People Die.



It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that some people will go to preserve something (life) that they will ultimately lose. When you are born you are afforded very few guarantees but one of those is most certainly death.



It took me almost twenty-two years to figure this out. Once I reached this realization it's pretty freeing actually.

Keluarga Aftermath

My full writeup on Keluarga South will be coming tomorrow. This week has been a little packed with a new module starting at my school. I still can't believe that some sick fiend would put me in Pathology AND Oriental Modalities during the same module. These are two of the hardest classes in the entire program. I still think I can pull an A out of both of them though.

Incrementalism

What a wonderful start to doing something that they said they wouldn't do while campaigning:

Keluarga, WooHoo!

So this year I'll be going to Keluarga for the first time in.....a while....

Keluarga is an annual gathering of practitioners of the silat style Pencak Silat Pertempuran where we celebrate training, family, and the oppurtunity to beat the crap out of each other. To be honest I can't wait. The event will be held next weekend (instead of wasting my time on some sort of valentine's day pursuits), hopefully I'll be able to get some bloggings done while I'm there.

The Vote Reaper and Macho Sauce Productions

Recently the awesome offerings of Macho Sauce Productions have come to my attention. Nice to hear someone with a brain again:



Check out the guys website too:

www.machosauceproductions.com

That is all.

Rolling Around

Rolling Around

Hey Guys (all 5 of you who read this blog),

I've got a few articles rolling around the old brain but every time I sit down to write them they always roll right back to wherever they came from. It's frustrating. Really. The Duty Fulfilled stuff is still in the ol' noggin vault but moving ahead with it is like pulling teeth. I've also been thinking of writing some fiction but haven't had the time to sit down and map out the stories. Which is really frustrated because I have 3 (I think, might be more) seperate stories and snatches of dialogue and description keep floating into my brain at random times like:

"Doc settled into his chair with a glass of something that smelled like seedy bar bathrooms and hangovers."

or:

"He had read in some old science fiction book that happiness consisted of getting enough sleep, nothing more or less. Tam hadn't realized how true that little snippet had been until he joined and got sent out to the front. It was a test among the old timers to see whether someone had been out or not the question would be posed: "Is a ten minute nap worth taking?". REMF's would always spew out some bravado about how they could "sleep when they were dead", anybody who had been out for more than a week would offer a vital piece of anatomy for 10 comatose minutes. "

and my favorite:

"As Chogala fell to the ground with a cracked windpipe he remembered his tour of the neighborhood from the Heads. Chogala remembered walking around and being introduced to the residents of the sector and told who was golden and who would cause trouble, who to make an example out of and who would be late with their payments. Being given charge of his own turf had put his head in the clouds though instead of listening to the one piece of advice that would have saved his life 30 secs ago: Leave the old men in C Building alone."

These little things just seem to walk right into my consciousness at the most inopportune times, like when I'm giving a massage or I'm in the middle of a phone call at work. Never when I can write 'em down (and the images that they evoke).

Which reminds me, I've got about the attention span of a ferret on pixie sticks these days between school and work. 25 Hours a week working at my school on the federal work study program, 16 Hours of schooling and in between there enough down time to do laundry and partake of the sacraments of the Cult of the Open Bottle. Oh, and I moved in with Dear Old Dad. Big Change in lifestyle from living where I was. It's only for about another 14 months. Give or take, but who's counting?

I do enjoy the work study job though, the pay is fairly low but the work is not onerous at all and I'm inside an air conditioned building. Let me re-iterate that once more, it's SUMMER in FLORIDA and I am in the air conditioning! Previous summers of mine have been spent building cabinets or frolicking about in ACU's in the Georgia heat. It's under circumstances like those that you come to understand that whoever invented the blessed Central Air Unit was one of the more important people to walk the face of the earth, right up there with the guy who invented the Flush Toilet. And I think (since I'm working on Saturday's and it's intermiably slow) I'll be able to get a bit more writing done on this fancy work computer.

Time Less than Well Spent

My whole life I have always tried to spend my time doing something productive. Sometimes I settle for things that are just vaguely amusing but I try to avoid feeling as if I have squandered valuable moments of my life. Most of the time it works. I have relatively few regrets about the last 21 years.

Sadly, I realize that as I lay on my deathbed I will look back and remember certain moments as having been complete and utter wastes. I will wish I had that time back, to spend it differently. Yesterday morning was one of those times.

I've recently started school for my license in Massage Therapy. Massage has always been quite interesting to me from the time I was a child. I don't quite know why I chose massage. I probably made the choice for a combination of reasons including an interest in the human body in general, being a "touchy" kinda guy (not to be confused with touchy-feely), oh, and did I mention I'll probably be starting out for about 4x what I could make currently. Anyway, I'm getting off point here. Sorry for rambling, dear reader. In Massage School and associated subcultures you tend to run into "flakes, fruit loops and honest to god WHACKO'S". Most of these "alternative" types are well meaning folks who are just, well, "out there". And I manage, I think, to put up with it all with a certain....erm....patience?....restraint?.....soul crushing discipline?..... Nah, to be honest my greatest claim to fame is that I don't completely explode more than once a day and vomit caustic sarcasm all over the nearest flakazoid. Well, until yesterday that is. You see, yesterday, we were introduced to "The Secret"! <cue dramatic muzac>



Are you impressed yet? Not yet? What's wrong with you? All right, all right, kill the muzac. I see you are still possesed of a brain. For those of you who have yet to be introduced to "The bestest thing ever! Better than peanut butter, sliced bread, and red-heads bearing whisky in one hand and Guinness in the other!" "The Secret"! is a movie about the Law of Attraction. Great stuff really. According to this hour and a half (it may have been more, I walked out several times during the brain washing session) of drivel, YOU, the gentle reader control your own reality. Everything around you responds to the "vibes" that you put out. By concentrating on what you want and and thinking and wanting really, really, really hard you'll get it.....eventually.....if you want it enough. Now although they don't come out and say it in the movie the visual message is that you just concentrate on whatever your bright and shiny want is and you get it. It's all mental. Hard work and personal sacrifice, self evaluation and personal change have nothing to do with it. It's all about what you visualize in your head.

Pretty cool, huh? I mean, I could really digg this! Gone would be the sucky early mornings, the working to eat or pay bills, and the studying until late hours of the night! None of this would be necessary, I would simply roll out of bed (never earlier than noon) look at my "goals board" (composed of magazine ads or pictures from wherever seems appropriate and shiny) and visualize whatever my little heart desired. It's important to remember, however, that the Law of Attraction does have a little lag time on its delivery. You can't just instantly manifest whatever you want, which is kind of cool according to the little skit in the movie involving an elephant apparating in some poor schmucks living room.


Well, if someone ever figures out a way to make this for sure please lemme know. Seriously folks, I'm tired of working for my beer money.