Where hearts love longer
and sap drips from our lips
just so we can feel the thirst
again and again.

“Either you love all people, or you shut the hell up” – Bill Hicks said something like that when he was discussing abortion in one of his acts. According to him, it would be more beneficial for “pro-life” people to adopt a kid, instead of trying to save unborn fetuses. He has a point. What about the people who are already living here? We cannot save the ones who are living, but there people willing to blow up abortion clinics in order to save unborn fetuses. Oh, and we also want to save the planet. Big savers we are.

The people I met, however, did not have the desire to cover themselves up with religion, a twisted sense of accomplishment, or boastfulness. They didn’t want to save or be saved. They just wanted for they voice to be heard and I was willing to listen. Well, one of the old women was crying because her adopted grandchild was moving out of town with her husband, the other old lady just wanted to get on the bus, and the old man looked like he could arm-wrestle me and win (easily).

I have seen folks around their 20’s who are ready for a career, a family and their daily dose of Viagra. I have also seen 60+ people who want to fall in love again, do a bungee jump, or make a Twitter account. Here is the catch – none of those ways of living is “wrong.” We are constantly pressured to think about preconditions. We have this idea that we need to be x in order to become y. Who has decided this? And who am I to judge?

Let’s leave the ball rolling, shall we?

I also read somewhere recently that “we are human beings, not human doings.” Actions speak louder than words and they define who we are, but we often lose ourselves in the routine. A lot of Buddhist literature mentions how our bodies are constantly in the present, while our minds are either in the past or in the future. Meditation is a way of being in the “now.”

We shouldn’t be afraid to be in this moment, now.

It doesn’t matter whether I will be remembered or not. I do not want to compete with rainbows and unicorns. I am raw, uncut and uncensored. I don’t want to be called “sir” by people who are my age, don’t want to be a professional, don’t want to wear a suit every day, or overdose on plastic – it’s a false sense of comfort. I don’t want to cheer on the sidelines, become a leader or sign up for your mailing list.

“I leave symbols to the symbol-minded.”

George Carlin

Yes, I am a monkey, but I am not your monkey or their monkey. I chew and spit my opinion at you. I don’t research, publicize and market it. Your nationality or the groups you subscribe to don’t really concern me. I judge people on individual basis.

I want to be make it clear that anger has nothing to do with it. I am not a sociopath, clinging to my ego like a tick. It is precisely the potential in people that I have seen, that makes me believe in something more than the circus that we have created for ourselves. I find positivism in my attempts to create and understand, not turn my back to this world. I believe in sharing all of this.

That’s why I am back.

- Wow, you can’t play (insert popular card game here)??? What kind of freak are you?

Not a freak, mind you, just someone who doesn’t feel the need to sit in one place and play with luck for three hours.

- But, it is so much more than that!

Yes, that’s what they all will say. They will say that it is about skill, bluffing, reading facial expressions, adrenaline, etc. However, any game that encourages wearing a hat and sunglasses indoors is not really worth it in my opinion. Just watching those dwarfs play their little tournaments rips my heart apart — hours and hours of sitting down, playing with their chips and hoping to get a good hand.

I was watching a poker game for a while one day, and I was really wondering what those people were thinking while they were playing. Some of them were stretching expansively, others were close to falling asleep. What goes through their minds during that time? Surely, their brains couldn’t be occupied with plastic cards and chips for such a long time. Maybe something like “Oh, I wonder why Obama changed his stand on the FISA bill?” or even something in the lines of “I wish the Backstreet Boys would make another CD” — I just want some kind of thought from these guys. By the way,  how do they reminisce over their games?

- Hey, do you remember that hand I once had? - generic poker player 1

- You mean the aces and the kings? - generic poker player 2

- That’s exactly what I mean, man! - generic poker player 1

- Cool! Those were some good times! - generic poker player 2

Am I forgetting something? Oh yeah, people play for money. I wouldn’t hate this game if money was not involved in it. Believe it or not, most people won’t play poker unless it is with real money. I know right? There are always going to be a selected few who “made a fortune” out of poker, but  for most it is a cycle of losing and gaining. Some are even addicted to this crap. It is such a terrible waste to use the perseverance of the human spirit on something so limited and pointless. Betting on a cock fight is more exciting than losing your money in poker. Then again, I am sure that there are people who are addicted to cock fights. I wonder how I know…

Anyways, it seems that the only climax in poker is when somebody goes “all in,” but what about the rest of the time? It’s a terrible thing to watch and play. Amusing, but still terrible. No matter how many movies they make about poker and its coolness, I will never buy into it because I am a man of principles (well besides the cock fighting, but that’s just something I do).

It’s 4:30 in the morning and I discovered a very beautiful song. I can predict that I am going to listen to it for a long time. The stars have aligned again. The band is called “God is an Astronaut.”

Of course, people have turned our “scent memory” into a business, by giving different enjoyable scents to bubble gum, detergents, toothpaste, etc. I think that times will come when people will use those artificial scents to judge the real stuff. A scene from the Matrix comes to mind, when the guy is eating a stake and says that even though he knows the steak isn’t real, it is still delicious. Yes, I think that we will be able to trick our minds in the future , but I personally prefer to stimulate my senses the old-fashioned way. Artificial scents, like online virtual worlds, can only go so far. But still, people want to smell (or smell like) tropical forests, vanilla,flowers, or whatever those marketers decide that it’s best for your nose. The shirt that I am wearing right now smells nice, but I really can’t decide if it’s morning dew or something else. It’s funny how all that we can say is “that smells nice,” without linking the scent to anything in particular.

(By the way, what’s the deal with fake flowers, can somebody explain that please? I think that people with fake flowers have some real issues.)

It’s very weird for me to smell an old perfume, I can almost feel the atmosphere of that particular time. One of my favorite movies is actually called “Perfume,” so if you haven’t seen it please do so. It really made me think about appreciating my sense of smell. Could it be that we have surrounded ourselves with so much metal and plastic, that Earth’s natural scent might disappear one day? If people had to choose between getting rid of their vision, taste, or their sense of smell, they will most likely choose the last one. When I think about it, we can live a pretty ordinary life without having a sense of smell (some might even like it).

People are very particular when they want to create the perfect atmosphere. Although, we don’t pay much attention to it, I think that we all have a particular idea of a “party” smell. Depending on the crowd, it may be expansive perfumes mixed with fine wine, or weed mixed with Milwaukee’s Best Light beer. Either way, we all have our idea of a party smell. In other words, we have artificial scents reminding us of our idea of a “fun time.” Well, unless our idea of a fun time is spending it outside in the mountains (but then we have that barbecue smell).

“Hey, I wouldn’t be surprised if they make a party smell freshener — that way you can still feel like you are at a party, but from the comfort of your home. They might even have an outdoorsy type one. I am just predicting the future, that’s all.”

In the beginning I said how certain smells can bring me childhood memories. I often use different scents to travel back in time and remind myself where exactly a particular scent has made an impression on me. I have come to the conclusion that what smells nice for me, actually encompasses moments in time that I consider worthwhile for one reason or another. This is something very unique for every one of us and it is worth being aware of. Do you all have a scent that you link to an event in your life? I link the smell of a tent ( I don’t know how to describe it better) to when I was five years old and ran in my grandparent’s backyard all day. I guess they had that certain fabric around. It is very uplifting to sense that particular smell after many years, tens of thousands miles away, and still be reminded of that time and place. A real trip.

PS. Another one of my favortite movies (ever since I was very little) is “Scent Of A Woman,” so don’t be surprised by my fascination with scents. And please watch that movie.

“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night” (Eleonora)

Omitting some of the obvious reasons for day-dreaming loneliness, I have to say that one of the main reasons for the isolation that those people feel is seeing that there is no escape, but still searching for it.

How do they explain that to those who dream only by night? They really can’t. They can write songs, poetry, do stand-up, but I feel like all of those things are done just to “plant the seeds” for someone in the future, rather than a desperate call for understanding now, at this moment.

This is why the most influential people that we know of today, are said to have had “universal ideas.” I also believe that most of them were alone, but not lonely, because of the state of equanimity that they had reached. Still, I think that the ideas that spurred in their minds, as a result of self-realization, can only be truly felt by an individual who shares the same mindset. Sharing the same mindset, however, requires you to dream by day, which makes you feel like you are living in the ice age. So, we are back to where we started. We are stuck in the ice age, aren’t we?

I think that it would have been great if we lived in the ice age right now– we wouldn’t have all of those distractions that we have today. Maybe we will even dream all the time instead of choosing between day and night. Enjoy the song bellow!

I have a couple of things to say about this video, please click continue to read what they are after you watch it.

Ok, I seldom discuss politics in this blog, but this is just too good to miss. I want to rip what McCain said on the video above to pieces, because I disagree with 95% of it. Just the fact that he uses the word cyberspace twice, while admitting of being “illiterate” on this subject, can tell you how authoritative he is on that issue. But he is making some progress on getting online, so it’s ok.

“I am sure that we’ve had something to do with it, with some action of ours.”

Why not tell it like it is (especially concerning the Iraq war)? By “some action,” doesn’t he mean a war started by manipulating facts and using constant propaganda through the mass media, to sell a war that uses peace as a rationale? It is a war through which 90% of all casualties are civilian? Even the words that he uses — “something” and “some action” hint that there is absolutely no desire for him to self-analyze the situation and is eager to put the blame on religion and ideology.

“Perverted adaptation of an honorable religion.”

This is the 5% where I tend to agree with him. Religion has and will be used by religious leaders to gain control over the populace to execute their goals. Even John Paul II said that “A clash ensues only when Islam or Christianity is misconstrued or manipulated for political or ideological ends.” So, in that train of thought I will add that just as Bush used the word God when fabricating the reasons for the invasion of Iraq, religious leaders use Allah to justify their actions. They are both “perverted adaptations of honorable religions,” even thought for McCain that argument works only one way.

McCain’s next words are truly remarkable. He says that:

“they” want to destroy “our” ideals, principles and “Bill of Rights” in governing not only in America, but in other places of the world.

Well, isn’t it common sense that if you want to apply your fundamental principles in other places of the world, you have to expect some resistance? Of course that they want to reject your way of thinking if it contradicts with their whole way of life and philosophy.

“They want to destroy it and it is very hard for us to understand.”

Again, he uses the words hate and destruction and for the second time he has made clear that a self-analysis is not needed, which gets him into a one way street, which he dodges by saying the next pathetic thing:

“It’s very hard for us to understand, but we better understand that they are making good use of cyberspace.”

So, it is very hard for us to understand what prompted that hatred and destruction, but we better understand that they hate us and want to destroy us using cyberspace. What? That doesn’t make sense. He is basically saying over and over again that we wouldn’t be able to determine the cause of the issue, so we should concentrate mainly on its manifestation. All that we know is that it might be something or some action that we have done. Is that enough?

So, this weird, untraceable disease can take even doctors in Glasgow to Denmark to Germany and, course, build Al Qaeda cells in America. But, all of the sudden, he says that:

“At the end of the day it is going to be an ideological battle just as the Cold War was.”

What?! What happened to the “perverted adaptation of an honorable religion?” An ideology is an organized collection of ideals. Well, that makes more sense. However, you might be at the losing end if you are fighting an ideological battle with a nation that you have occupied by false accusations of having nuclear weapons and ties with al Qaeda. All explanations concerning the spreading of democracy and ridding Iraq from a brutal, evil dictator came after the invasion. So we have an ideological battle, or in McCain’s words “struggle,” that exists because one of the sides broke all international laws to accuse and chase weapons that didn’t even exist in the other side. Hey, maybe that’s the “something” that McCain couldn’t find earlier! Maybe that’s the “some action” ?

“We have to make better use of the internet.”

Something tells me that McCain should really not talk about this when he has absolutely no knowledge of the “internet,” and has even recently used it to provoke compassion by self-irony. So, he is telling us what we must do better, but he himself has no experience whatsoever in that area. That’s maybe a poor argument on his part.

“We have to set up radio and television the way we did during the Cold War”

Wow. Just wow. It takes a lot of courage to admit the constant propaganda that the US government exerts on the mass media. Some example include the hiring of past and present military officials even before the war had started, in order to convince the public of how inevitable the war is, and the refusal to show dead US soldiers or in other words the war’s “sanitization”. I have to disagree with McCain again and say that radio and television have already been “set up” quite nicely just like the Cold War.

“Advocates for human rights and democracy.”

Sure.

“And all of those kind of things that you and I would be standardized approaches.”

That doesn’t make any sense and it is what he said, I am not making this up.

So, we went from a perverted adaptation of an honorable religion, to an ideological battle, to a war between the good force and the evil force (those are McCain’s actual words). I think that it’s pretty easy to see how outrageously stupid his arguments sound. It doesn’t stop there:

“We will prevail in a long…in many ways, as I said, military and diplomatic intelligence”

Again that doesn’t make sense, but I know that we make those mistakes; we try to say something, but end up saying something completely different. There is only one thing that disturbs me. Why the word “long?” Long war, long presence, long battle? Why does it have to be long and how does he know that. He did a good thing by changing the subject.

He ends with the most hypocritical thing that he has said so far (notice how he gets uncomfortable when he says it):

“It will be our ideals, our beliefs and the common values that all of us are created equal by our creator with certain inalienable rights. That will be the way we prevail”

He is basically saying that American, or western, ideals, beliefs and values will prevail in the so-called ideological battle and, of course, he has to tie everything up with the word “creator.” Well, wouldn’t his “creator” maybe prefer his “children” to have different ideals, beliefs and values? Also, I want to see him talk about inalienable rights to the innocent Japanese-Americans who were put into “war relocation camps.” Where were their rights as American citizens and where was his creator then? Just like it was then, our rights today can be taken away any time if it suits the government’s agenda.

By using God in that particular statement he shows that he is no better than the ones he accuses of “perverted adaptation of an honorable religion.” As idiotic as it sounds, he is saying that his western God is better for them than “their” fanatical, hating, destroying, distorted God. You might say that that’s taking it too far, but why in the world would he mention his creator when asked “how do we win?” Come to think of it, this doesn’t sound nearly as bad as his words about the good and evil “forces.”

As far as his ideological war argument I shall ask: if there is a battle between two ideologies and one of them wins, we are left with only one ideology, correct? I think that, that’s a fair assumption when keeping in mind  what he has said so far.  Well, if we look at what history has to say:
“Totalitarian regimes or movements maintain themselves in political power by means of an official all-embracing ideology and propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party that controls the state, personality cults, central state-controlled economy, regulation and restriction of free discussion and criticism, the use of mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror tactics.” (source)

Interestingly enough, that covers a lot of what has been said so far. Maybe McCain should consider his “good” force to leave a couple of ideologies floating around just in case.

The truth, as always comes out in the end:

“And there are many aspects of it, which would take you and I a long, long time – such as economic developments”

I know what he wants to say, don’t get me wrong. Yes, this has been taken out of context and, yes , he uses it to strengthen his flawed argument, but I just wanted to say that : “McBush we can finally agree, it will take you and I a long, long time to discuss this particular aspect of the war.”

PS. Afghanistan is a different case. Although I don’t agree with the idea of having a war to promote peace, Afghanistan is where al Qaeda and Bin Laden are (or were). It also had more international support then the Iraq war. I am just saying that in case somebody wants to point it out. I am also aware that McCain does not mention Iran or Afghanistan, he doesn’t even mention the word “terrorist,” but interesting enough, he manages to say “faith” and “religion” many times. Hmm, I wonder why? I am just connecting what he says with the war in Iraq and his firm, educated, experienced stand on it.

I chose this song because it  has a lot to do with my previous post. I have taken a more philosophical path latelely, but I hope that my readers enjoy it (as much as I do). I don’t really claim to be anything more than your ordinary guy, I just like to record my stream of thought and see what emotions it evokes in other people.  Anyways, I can’t really choose what to cite from this song, because  every part is a masterpiece on its own. Here it is:

I think I know what you mean but watch what you say
’cause they’ll be try to knock you down in some way
Sometimes it feels like the world is falling asleep
How do you wake someone up from inside a dream?

Your mind would wander and searched for its place in the night
Your body followed this feeling like following light
Once that your music was born it followed you ’round
And then it gave your activities meaning and let you be loud

You’re sad but you smile
It not in your eyes
Your eyeballs won’t change
It’s the muscles around your eyes

An egg to fertilize
A pulse to stabilize
A body to deodorize
A life to scrutinize
A child to criticize
Young adults to modernize
Citizens to terrorize
Generations to desensitize

You’re dreams are sweet and obsessed
And your overworked
You’re overtaken by visions of being overlooked
How disappointed would D.(ead) I.(dealistic) D.(esperate) I.(nventor) P.(ioneer) P.(hilosophers)
Be to see such power in our hands all wasted on greed
Am I a prisoner to instincts?
Or do my thoughts just live
As free and detached
As boats to the dock?

Just like when music was born
And detached from your heart
Is your free time to free minds
Or for falling apart?

Night after night
You turn out the light
You don’t fall asleep right away
“Are we… are we done?”

A desk to organize
A product to advertise
A market to monopolize
Movie stars you idolize
Leaders to scandalize
Enemies to neutralize
No time to apologize
Fury to tranquilize
Weapons to synchronize
Cities to vapor-i