THE TRANSCENDENCE DIARIES

Avatar Wizards Course Day 9

2012-01-31T10:23:00.001-05:00

Maybe day 9. Not totally sure. Best morning lecture so far. As in WOW! But alas I felt that way about yesterday's and Friday's lectures too. Go figure. Harry Palmer is a genius. In the real sense of the word. [genius takes so many forms that it would be useful to explore the subject at another time. Note.]
If interested in this kind of thing go to eBay or amazon.com and pick up a used copy of Palmer's first book entitled LIVING DELIBERATELY. The fIrst time I read it I did it in one sitting in the bath. Blew my mind. After hundreds and hundreds of hours of research and probably twice as many books, this was the first time in my short life up to that point that I had read a book in the field of Cosmology, psychology, philosophy, theology or Cosciousness research where I felt the author knew as much as I did -- (you either get this or you don't) -- as in that the real key to it all is to humbly admit to what we don't know as much as to what we know; i.e. don't have a hidden agenda that needs to be masked by pretending that you know it all. As in he didnt say one thing that required an intelligent mind to suspend disbelief or accept ideas that were fantastical -- yet at the same time he offered rational solutons to age old cosmological and cosciousness (both human and beyond) mysteries.
I dont want to give it away. Nor do I want to spend any time reviewing or anylizing Ideas. This is just a quick plug -- for those of you who recognize there is more to it than meets the eye, and you've got a sneaky suspiscion that it's somewhere between and yet has nothing to do with the wisdom of ancient religions, mystics and physics then you're in for a real treat.
For a quicker fix head to YouTube and watch some of his lectures for free. For the first time in 30 years these historically confidential lectures are now being released to the public in order to speed up the awakening of the planet.
Prepare for at least two or three things at the start: you'll need to listen a few times to certain sentences. He goes deep and he goes there fast. It's ok not to get it all in one go. IPod or iPhone them in order to view a few times. Two, if this is your type of subject matter you'll immediately feel a sense of relief awe and excitement to hear someone speaking so intelligently clearly simply and without personal agenda.
A possible number three may be a subtle judging or anylizing whether or not you believe he's right or wrong... Whether "you" "agree" with what he is saying or not. This is natural. I did it. We all do. I believe it's a healthy symptom of personal power and or responsibilty. No one who runs or takes the Avatar courses wants mindless will-less submissive slave beings at the bottom of the personal power ladder, those looking to accept ideologies whole without contemplation or introspection in order to worship someone or something else outside of themselves. That just isn't what this is about. So feel into it all and see how it fits/feels to you. Your intuition will make a good guide whether it's right for you now or not.
If you find yourself reading the book or listening to the lectures and being overly critical on the other hand, as in "that's not the truth! I know the truth and that's not it... That's not the smartest thing I've ever read, etc" label it as an unintegrated aspect of the ego's attempt to protect its asserted sense of being right / smart / the greatest etc. Don't let it rule your life or lead you. Dig?
I gotta run... Get back to playing with the materials. Beautiful stuff.

Random Fact: there are 255,268 possible outcomes to tic tac toe.

Last Screening: JANE EYRE the original with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine. Welles is incredible in this film. Mumbles like a madman. But he's so intense. It's almost funny due to how different humanity is now... This kind of high handed mellow-drama wouldnt fly today, but it's a damn good classic. Just see it.

And... THE CONSTANT NYMPH starring Charles Boyer and Joan Fontaine. 24 year old Fontaine plays a 14 year old teen in love with a much older composer (Boyer). These notes are as much for me as they are for you, whoever "you" are, remember. The memory of this 1942 movie will stay with and haunt me for the rest of my life. SEE IT. It's beautifully written and very moving.

Current read: SIDDHARTHA by Hermann Hesse. Yes, again. Every few years you can't go wrong reading this one again say no more. ; >

Avatar Wizards Course 2012 - Day 8

2012-01-30T11:12:00.001-05:00

Ever fantasize about what it would be like to attend Hogwarts? The School of Wizadry for real? Me too. One can't help but feel that it most likely won't have much to do with wands holcruxes or flying brooms if the idea were real in the here-now modern world. Not enough time to get too into it now but...
Time. Dare we go there. Or even contemplate it for that matter. For want of brevity allow me to cut to the chase and confess that I deliberately do not want to spend much time now doing anything other than continuing to study and practice using these incredible tools while still here in the space, makes sense. (I also don't find typing on a miniature little iphone keyboard the most efficient method of downloading ideas).
Of course I also desire to share, fearing that I may forget something that might be of interest or import to myself or another, if only one... And yes, i see/feel/get how funny that sounds - as if there were "something so important that we may forget" in the world other than "I am not I nor I am, though I may be I am the I am that creates I am, and yet maybe not"... And there it is in a nutshell isnt it?
So. Pardon my recent silence, know that I am still here, that I am taking notes (and taking note) of it all and will return soon to share more at some point soon.
In case the thought occurred to you, in reference to time... when we first contemplate going to any sort of "course", be it Avatar or anything else, (even a vacation one assumes), one of the first things we do is ponder whether or not we have enough time; similar to how we consider whether or not w have enough money etc. A 14 day "course" seems daunting at first, I know. In the world 14 days may seem like an eternity to spend "on a course" compared to "all the important things I have to do this year". I'm with you. Been there. Each and every year I plan to attend this course actually.
But it never ceases to amaze me how long the 14 day Wizards Course seems to appear a month or two before I arrive -- feeling as though there is no possible reason I could have to spend that much time working on "my creations" or those of the world, and then how rushed for time we feel once here and settled in -- as if we could easily spend another 14 days exploring expanding cleaning and clearing and still be ready for more.
Consciousness appears to have an infinite unlimited and inexhaustible supply of creations available for us to play with. (And yet we know that it doesn't... ) Point being that if you're sticking point is "what the hell does one do with all that time?" -- not to worry; there is plenty to do. Once you widen back relax and feel safe enough to start being open honest and vulnerable with yourself. Clarity sets in. (though it was there all along). We just deliberately create that "it's ok to feel like this". Long story short that's why one may have that feeling of "holy cow the Course is gonna end in less than a week and I'm just getting started!"
Allora. Back to the original question. Ever fantasize about what it would be like to attend Hogwarts School of Wizadry for real? Me too. How can one resist? There's a reason why the "Harry Potter" movies are now the "most successful film franchise of all time globally". They've surpassed Star Wars. (of course there were like 7 or 8 of them... That's a slightly unfair advantage. But then again there are like 20 or 30 "Chucky" movies and they've never exactly broken at the box office ... say no more...)
Lightly floating about this gigantic collection of nearly 4,000 "Wizards" from all over the world over the last 8 days I can't help but keep thinking how similar this experience is to a real rather than fictional modern day Hogwarts School of Wizardry. Look at the picture attached. I'll post more as we continue. There's no way to actually capture the entire room full of everyone here in one shot. But you can get a good idea from just zooming in and out and looking at the thousands of various little groups doing their thing. Each and every person here to do nothing but work in consciousness. It's a powerful idea to fathom.
I heard it expressed quite well this morning: "Do you realize there is nothing in the world of this kind (or size) happening anywhere else in the world? Never has been from what we know of... It's nice that you're here." Well it's nice to be here, thank you. More later. Love...

Why Isnt Ron Paul Winning?

2012-01-28T14:16:00.001-05:00

"Winning". Who knew? Before a man called Charlie Sheen decided to publicly play out what a personal and professional meltdown looked like in front of the whole world in 2011, to most of us the word "winning" was primarily relegated to sports and political competitions. In reality we won't know if ole "Tiger Blood" is truly "winning" for another year or two at best. But like most, I wish him the best in whatever he decides to do next. If anything I'm sure it will be interesting.
Speaking of "winning", I was pondering the Ron Paul dilemma this morning. On the one hand Ron Paul appears to stand well above all the other candidates on both sides of the fence in his ethics integrity and understanding of what the American constitutional republic is supposed to look and act like, and how it was originally meant to function. The American people have known him for years now; he's not a Ross Perot/Herman Cain like newcomer out of left field. Everyone seems to know who he is and almost everyone seems to like and respect him.
He's a respected doctor (I've got two different friends from Texas who he "delivered" when they were born many years ago - he's truly beloved in his hometown), an admired loyal family man, and a civil servant who's been re-elected to Congress multiple times. He makes sense when he speaks. He doesn't waffle shift or switch his positions on 'the issues'; doesn't accept bribes, lobbyist money or giant corporate campaign contributions. No Wall Street croneys, no shady skeletons in his closet to hide, mask, or explain away.
He's the only candidate in the race on either side of the fence who is bold enough to speak the truth about the secretive nefarious private foriegn banking cartel known as "the Federal Reserve". For that alone he is one of the most heroic public figures in American politics today. A living "founding father" legend.
From a distance Ron Paul appears to be as popular a cultural figure with the American people as any modern day celebrity. And yet he has not "won" or placed "first" in any of these little pre-primary electoral games they play thus far in the political party he's decided to run in. It's an odd situation, an anomaly. Ron Paul may be winning the hearts and minds of popular culture both in America and abroad, he is not winning Primaries.
To even consider that the Republican Party may decide to select someone like Miitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as their "nominee", with all their respective baggage and their "questionable at best" repuatuons, to run against one of the most revered presidents in recent memory, Barack Obama... It's truly a bewildering thought to ponder. If Ron Paul is so beloved, why is he such a distant third? What is it that registered Republicans do not see in Paul? (Yes, please feel free to answer if you call yourself a Repub)
And further, do any Republicans really believe that The Newt or The Mitt have even a slim chance of beating Barack Obama in the general election? Personally speaking, I'm stymied by it. Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who has a chance of earning Democrat or Independent votes; which is what it's going to take to beat Obama come November. So what gives? What are Republican voters thinking? Why havent they embraced the slightly whacky brilliant and honorable lone wolf? Any ideas?

Last Screening: THE INVISIBLE MAN and THE LION

2012-01-28T00:11:00.001-05:00

Don't have much time this evening. Tired. Discovered something quite unexpected but thoroughly enjoyable considering the circumstances. After 12 hours of personal introspection and consciousness and spiritual work sometimes there's nothing better than an old movie. Just to bring one down to earth a bit and free the attention particles. Look, look away. Look, look away. It's a technique employed both by the Avatar materials and Anthony Robbin's work. Though Tony refers to it as "immersion, abstinence..." It's also a powerful method to master skills much faster when learning or studying almost anything.

So... There's a little something on the tele called TMC or TCM. A channel called Turner Classic Movies or close to that. It's quite wonderful. I had heard of the channel, but this whole researching television project is still fairly new to me. I didn't realize how special it was, playing all these classic old films, some over a hundred years old and some of which have never before been seen on television. Yes it's very niche, perhaps only for film geeks, but one could easily become addicted to it for a few weeks at least I'd think.

Last night we caught a surprisingly powerful film called THE LION starring Trevor Howard, William Holden and the French actress Capucine. Highly recommended. Trevor Howard = new fave classic actor. He was very cool. This evening we are watching the original film version of HG Welles classic THE INVISIBLE MAN starring Claude Raines. Interestingly enough this is Raines' first starring role. Imagine that. In it he's already "the finest actor of his day" Claude Raines... Very good.

More later. Check out the network if old movies are your thing.

Avatar Wizards Course Day 3

2012-01-25T10:38:00.001-05:00

"Look around you. Everything you see wouldn't be there if you weren't here to view it... You're quite a powerful creator." Harry Palmer

Excited but exhausted. The ego is hanging on tightly for it's life as I as consciousness continue to slowly unravel it. All the "I am's" are coming up, asserting themselves strong. I am tired. I am a night owl, not an early bird. I am cool. I am smart. I am worried. I am not perfect. I am wants approval. I am wants to be liked. I am doesn't want to be worng. Unless I am can be right or liked or cool or approved of by deliberately being wrong. Ah hah!

Today we go deeper. We'll unravel more. We being me here typing and the invisible me who appears to exist somewhere in my mind and occasionally speaks subtle truths quietly, the me I usually label higher self, God, angels, spirit guides or intuition. Once unravelled we will unite and become one. No more we. Only I, or I am the I am. I've heard that before...

But still... As good as it all sounds, who are 'we' really? Did I really create I? Or did someone else create I? Did a God create I? Is that who I am is talking to?Or is it just another aspect of I/I am? One that I am is not fully connected to all the time? Were we really created eons ago by an extraterrestrial alien race and just don't yet know it? Or further... Did we just slowly evolve organically out of somethingness that at some point was nothingness?

But what is nothingness? It's still something if we are attempting to imagine it. Thus nothingness is unimaginable. Somethingness cannot come from nothing. A priori, the first cause cause etc... Yet still no proof.

In time though. Time. It's nearly gone now. Off line. Thought it was day 4 yesterday. Feels like I've been here for weeks.

Still seeing friends from all over the world as if they weren't here the last few days. Three thousand Wizards. An incredible feeling, energy... The potential of it boggles 'the mind'.

Today is the first day of the rest of I am's life. Right now is the first moment of the rest of I am's life. I am is excited about the possibilities. Together we will go deeper than we've ever gone before. We'll go for the big stuff. Haha again... Big stuff becomes small stuff becomes no stuff. Then what's left? Well, we don't know yet but we shall see.

The Ambassador is on His Way Back

2012-01-14T06:03:00.001-05:00

Raw. That's how I describe it. Feels like there's fire running through my veins. That's another way. But most people don't understand these ideas. Perhaps only conceptually at best. So we say things like I feel anxious all the time. Wired. I can't sleep. Except during the day. After a long night of laying there awake fighting to fall asleep. So they call us vampires. Night owls.
I wrote a chapter in this tome once long ago called Night People Day People based on seeing the populace of the neighborhood I lived in starting to wake up leave their houses and get in their cars to go to work at around 6 and 7 am while I was still up tripping on LSD. Realizing that "people like us are different. We're still awake. Our day is still going. Our night is still going. These people stumbling drearily out of their houses to head to the gym or a job have awoken to a new day. These Day People, they have no idea that the Night People are still awake. Watching them."
I had calculated that the way we were living back then --up for three days, down for about 12 to 16 hours, up for another three days etc -- we only got two and half days per week. Compared to normal people who experience a week as seven days. I'd wake up on a Monday and stay up till wednesday or thursday. Then crash at noon or even six at night. By the time i woke up again it would be friday morning or afternoon at three. How the hell did we get from monday to Friday we used to ask. But it happened. A lot.
And that's rock and roll. In a nutshell. I lived that way for years. For a decade or more really. I've written about it extensively. I'm glad for that. Because it's hard for me to remember those days now. I've just not posted those years here yet. But we'll get around to it.
But what's the point? Why are we here now? We're here because fire is running through our veins once more. We cry a lot. I can feel again. And it hurts sometimes. It also feels incredible. I can't believe I spent the last three years not feeling. I feel like my eyes are bugging out. Like rays of lasers are shooting out of them. That's why we're here now. 3 am in the morning. The whole house asleep. The night people still awake. But it's only me now. Gone is all the madness. Gone is the bandhouse with The Grey Wolf and The Toad and Coon and Madelynne O'Ryan. I'm married now. Supposed to be settled down. Those years are long gone. I'm the only Vampire in the house now.
Thats another thing that happens. Your memory comes back. You start remembering things you forgot about years ago. And music. I hear music now. I'm starting to anyway. The problem is I'm not quite ready to talk about what I'm really talking about. So I won't. But it's a strange sensation. It's going to be a wild ride. But I can feel it. The Ambasador is on his way back. God help any soul who gets in the way.

Farewell Christmas We Shall Miss You

2012-01-11T04:43:00.001-05:00

I enjoy my job. Nearly every aspect of it. Though i must admit i enjoy recording and promoting new albums more than being on the road now; perhaps it's my age. I can't imagine saying this when I first started in the business in my late teens. Perhaps it's also due to the fact that I've finally married, after searching and waiting so long for it. I feel very lucky that I waited so long. The most obvious advantage being that I made quite sure that I married the right person. There is also the undeniable fact that unlike many I allowed myself ample time to sow my wild oats so to speak. At the very least I never worry about that 50% divorce rate caused by so many men in the States who claim to hit a midlife crisis and abandon their wife and children in favor of a motorcycle and their 25 year old secretary.

The truth is that I love to travel as much as I ever have. But I'd much prefer my new wife accompany me. Too few men these days unfortunately seem able or willing to make this claim. Thats a shame for us all. I also love being home; home being anywhere my wife and family are.

Every evening at some point between the hour of 1 to 3 am I pick up our little Cavalier Spaniel from where he's been sleeping on our bed while the Princess sleeps and I wind down from a long days work and I walk him down a long staircase in our entryway to escort him on one last walk outside before he retires to his own bed. This assures he will sleep through the night. And we too of course. As I slowly descend the stairs with the sleepy little boy in my arms it is always this image I see glowing in front of me from our living room during the 30 days or so we call the Christmas Season.

It is always a welcoming and soothing site. This Christmas tree all aglow. The calming scent of pine and fir in the air. This evening I realized we have probably exceeded the normal duration that one keeps a Christmas tree up. Tonight could be the last that Alistair and I see the glow of the tree welcoming us downstairs in the middle of the night. And that's ok. Everything has it's time and place.

2011 was sheer madness. To be sure. 2012 offers all of us a chance for new beginnings. We can feel it in the air. No one I've spoken to whether friend family or associate has had an easy time over the last twelve months or so. And yet no one can pinpoint why exactly. Life itself seems to have stepped on the accelerator and taken a turn toward mild insanity. The only good I see coming from it is that everyone seems aligned in desiring to slow things down. There also seems to be a strong shift towards renewed faith, and family values. A sincere desire to commit more time and attention to the things in life that really matter.

Nothing bad can come from this. I can't quite make out yet if we are all preparing for something devilish and ominous to come, or if everyone is just plain exhausted from last year's madness and wants a breather. Either way, this slowing down will do us all some good I'm sure. Christmas trees that glow in the middle of the night and fill a room with the scent of forests tend to do this to all of us. My only wish is that this feeling stays with us through the rest of this year no matter what happens next. We shall surely miss Christmas as much as we were surprised by it's early arrival only a few weeks ago.

But let's hope that we are successful in our longing to create more peace tranquility wellness honesty faith hope and love in this new year. God knows we need it. I've never seen a more chaotic year than 2011 in my entire life on earth thus far. And I dare say I'd be happy to never see another. No matter what happens in 2012, let us remember the basics. Family friends good deeds health and wellness tradition values charity hope justice faith and most of all happiness. We deserve it. This is it after all. This IS that one life we've all been blessed with. I am more grateful than I've ever been.

You know when you know that you know

2012-01-01T22:37:00.001-05:00

Most people may not know it. But YOU do. YOU... KNOW... when you know that you know. You just know it. And no matter what anyone else says or thinks they know, you know that you know you know; and that's as golden as gets. Though it's not without it's challenges. Number one, you need to learn to and learn how to trust it. If you really know you know, then you know. And you know that. So forget about what other people say or claim to believe. You need to master the art of ignoring the various objections you may hear from others; for arguing about something you already know you know is a waste of precious time effort and energy. You will also want to cultivate a thick skin in order to handle the occasional attacks on your character by those whose insecurities compel them to resort to ad hominem falacies when confronted with people of superior intelligence.

Try to remember "the lowest common deniminator phenomenon"... Ie that there are billions of people on planet earth, and that most of them are either not so smart or not so bold as to stand up to the not so smart to defend the few who stick out because they know things most people don't. Call it the law of crowds, or mob rules, or live and let die. It's an unfortunate aspect of being alive in human form on planet earth that throughout recorded human history almost anyone who knew something valuable well before most others was usually mocked ridiculed attacked imprisoned or put to death because of it. Think Jesus Gandhi Gallileo Tesla Einstein or MLK. To name only a few.I'm sure there are thousands of examples. Knowing stuff can be dangerous.

In our own time names like David Icke or Richard Branson or even the late Steve Jobs come to mind. Without an ounce of brand loyalty nor any corporate sponsorship (I'm certainly not opposed to the latter though) take Steve Jobs for example simply because his story makes a great case to further the point. From the very beginning of the personal computer age to the present day, Jobs had numerous opponents objectors and competitors. Most notably Bill Gates and his fledgling Microsoft. It's no secret anymore that Gates and company tricked deceived and stole many of the most important elements of their Windows OS from the more gullible Jobs and Wozniack(sp?) and their burgeoning Apple Computers OS. It's also no secret that no matter how much one pays for a "Windows based PC", it will never look or perform as well or as quickly or as efficiently as an Apple computer. And yet the majority of the aforementioned billions of people on planet earth still use said Windows based PCs instead of Apple.

Call it the law of the land. The idea of the masses of mediocrity controlling things in our world is so ingrained in all of us that as most people now know Steve Jobs was fired from his job as CEO of Apple even though it was his own company. Yet again, if Jobs suffered from anything besides the arrogance that often accompanies the intelligence of those who know they know that they know it was gullibility. Of course history eventually self corrected that injustice in the nick of time right before Apple was about to go bust and bringing him back on board not only saved Apple the company, it also revolutionized how nearly every person on earth lives works communicates and functions; along with half a dozen global industries as well. Steve Jobs and "what he knew" was vindicated in this case. But many aren't.

And yet we cannot forget the more important point of the Steve Jobs story, that being that Microsoft branded Windows based computers still outsell the far superior Apple brand by at least 100 to 1. Truth be told those numbers may be much higher. The statistics aren't as important as the phenomenon itself. It's an anomaly that is as easily understandable, due to this "lowest common denominator phenom", as it is surprising.

If you get this then you probably also get the gist of the importance of staying true to yourself when you know you know whatever it is that you know. But social pressures are often the straw that breaks the back of many of the smartest people in human society. Many play dumb to fit in. Pretending they don't know what they know. Or at least don't know as much of it as they do. Others simply give in to the threat of losing contact with others due to recognizing that if they stand tall and speak up about how much they know then they start to get verbally attacked by those around them. Sometimes those "others" can be the closest people in proximity to you. One's own family or best friends.

People don't like "know it alls". And most of us simply don't have the time nor the capactity to know it all. But if you know a lot about a thing or two you may have experienced this label being branded on you more than once in your life. It hurts. It's not fun. People will accuse you of always thinking you're right all the time. The problem is that you may well be right all the time because you may be one of the few who don't ever speak about something unless you know for sure that you're right. Or not. Only you know. But 99% of people don't live this way. So they have no idea that it's possible. Take a few days of silence and do nothing but listen to other people. Whether in person or on the Internet or the radio or the TV, most people just talk all the time regardless of whether they know what they're talking about or not. If you're one of the few who already know you know that you know then you know this already. Which means you also understand why the world we live in has always been so compromised mediocre and painful.

Most people are not half as interested in being right as they are to being heard. Which is why the world is filled with so much noise disguised as content. Erroneous soundbites created by misinformed (or worse yet, disinformed) propaganda machines. Mediocrity for the masses of mediocre. But again, if you're one of the few who know, then you know this already. The secret is to do your best to disguise the fact that you know this so you can maintain a semblance of feeling and appearing as though you fit in.

Some people don't recognize how often you confess to not knowing things so you can in turn ask about and then learn about whatever it is in that moment that you don't think you know enough about. This is one of the tell-tale signs of a someone who knows a whole hell of a lot versus a pompous know it all who only thinks they know a lot. People who know a lot have no problem admitting when they dont know something. In fact they do it all the time. They remain in effect in a constant state of knowing how much they dont know and thus are always attempting to do something about it.

This is why -- if you're a long time reader of The Transcendence Diaries or just one of those who "know" -- you may remember the old adage proffered here years ago stating that "Those who truly KNOW (all cap KNOW) know that they don't know. (meaning they know that they don't know much of anything and will therefore never truly KNOW) and thus this is how those who KNOW can recognize others who KNOW. By the fact that they know that they don't really KNOW and they don't mind admitting it. None of us do. This, it turns out, is just about the only thing there is to really know. Therefore if you're ever in a position where you're trying to figure out if someone really KNOWS, or if instead they're just "smart" or know a lot, you can easily determine this by their willingness and/or capability to admit that they know that they don't really KNOW. If you KNOW then you know what I'm talking about here. If not... Then, well, start taking a look at all the things you and everyone else doesn't know. Soon you'll discover that none of us really know much of anything. That's the first step and the first major realization on the road to really KNOWING But of course that's also our curse. It isnt easy knowing so much that you've reached the point where you know how much we still dont know. It makes social interactions with nearly everyone entirely unbearable. Your choice again is to pretend how little you know all the time in order to fit in, ie "playing dumb," or being a flat out recluse or loner. But at least we know it. There's a wee bit of solace and refuge in that.

And therein lies the challenge. Just by your very nature, even if you've perfected the art of dumbing down in order to fit in, you still may get attacked. It's as if people can vibrationally pick up on the fact that you arent nearly as dumb and normal as you pretend to be. And to the other strategy, just being yourself and boldly going through life hoping that over the years you will meet others at the same level as you, even when you confess to not knowing things you dont know, you still get accused of always thinking you know it all.

It's easy to start playing dumb. To fit in wirh the bulk of the people you encounter on the road through life. But I recommened resisting that temptation with everything you've got. The same goes for going the loner route. History is filled with stories of loner geniuses. But I've never fancied that kind of life very appealing myself. I love people too much. I think i love people as much as I love knowing things. In fact i know i do. Which means I spent the first quarter of my life being ridiculed for being a brainiac or nerd, the second quarter of my life playing dumb to fit in, and luckily over the last few years I've managed to find that ever so slight nearly invisible line between being a someone who knows a lot and being a socially acceptable and appealing fellow human. I consider myself very lucky for this.

Of course I still get attacked now and then and accused of being a know it all, or someone who "always has to be right all the time." But at this point I'm too aware of how utterly meaningless it is to care about such things. Knowing that you know you know is simply too valuable a commodity for oneself and the world around us to care more about fitting in than knowing a lot. In the end you and most others around you will begin to recognize how much more important you are to the world because of what you know versus how well you fit in. In fact as "Mr. Tipping Point" himself pointed out in his last book "Outliers", if you've got what it takes to endure those first few decades of ridicule, there's a good chance your knowing will contribute considerably more to the world than your fitting in ever will.

The main point to always remember is that only YOU know if you really know that you know that you know. With the right amount of courage and confidence, you can either ignore or overcome the objections of others and use this gift to make the world a better place for all of us.

Happy New Year?

2012-01-01T07:33:00.001-05:00

Saturday night or sunday morning 3AM depending on how you look at it. January 1st, 2012. Yep. Its no secret. Except maybe to folks in Hawaii. Weve finally wrestled free from the viscious grip of 2011 and in the last 3 seconds of the game we managed to dive into the endzone of 2012. Thank God. As more than one good friend family member or innocent passerby commented over the last few weeks, "2011 sucked". I tend to agree. So I'm more than a little happy relieved and excited to leave that number behind once and for all. Talk about change and challenge. If 2011 offered anything, it was a lot of change and a whole hell of a lot of challenge. Let's agree to get into that some other day. It's late now and I'm tired. Besides the fact that I'm attempting to write this post in the pitch black of night on a tiny ass little iPhone keyboard.

I've been married now for almost two years. I've got friends who've been married for twenty. So I get that two years isn't a long time for such things. But long time friends fans and readers know that the ongoing saga that recounts the romance between me and Princess Little Tree has been a long slow steady natural and very organic evolution. It started with a bang. An impossible love at first sight -- nearly ten years ago. And slowly over time it eventually evolved into one of the most super-natural and magical Hollywood ending like weddings I've ever had the priveledge to be a part of. The fact that it was my wedding made it that much more incredible.

I'd just about given up on "finding the One" when I realized I already had. Princess Little Tree had always been there. Right under my nose all along. Sometimes at the forefront of my wild life. And at other times more in the background. But always an active and willing character in the never ending "Adventures of Fishy" (that's me btw for new readers; and it also happens to be the title of the series of novels which a very small part of you are now reading).

Marriage is a rocky road. I don't lie anymore. It's too damn hard to get away with both literally and karmically. So you won't ever hear me utter the words "marriage is easy." But one good thing I have discovered about marriage is this: if you committ to your committment, such as the sentiments you expressed in your wedding vows when everything was all hot sex and fireworks, and you're willing to not only allow your partner to change as they see fit, but also change along with them, marriage offers an amazing array of benefits that very few other things in life seem to. I've done just about everything a human being should be allowed to in my short life thus far and more even. In that i am very very blessed. Or just really damn lucky. And I've gotta admit, marrying the fairest purest kindest most beautiful girl in all the world has so far been the most rewarding experience I've ever had.

Having waited for over twenty years and making sure that I more than sowed my wild oats was the strategy as any faithful reader or friend of mine knows. I wanted no regrets when I was older. Neither did I want any midlife crisis leading to divorce as more than 55% of Americans experience. Just didn't see it in the cards for me. Besides, there was no real reason as far as I was concerned to rush into marriage. I never saw marriage as an accomplishment as a lot of middle Americans seem to, rushing into it in their early to mid twenties as if marriage and children in and of itself was some kind of goal or acheivement. Girls were plenty. And rushing into anything that lasts "forever" seemed to me at least to be a damn risky venture. So I looked at marriage as more of a "well if I ever really feel that strongly about a girl where the actual thought of marriage doesn't make me feel sick and frightened then I'll be happy to do it." But until that time if it ever arrives, I'm just as happy being single and enjoying the heck out of what singlehood has to offer.

But then along came PLT. From the moment I met her I couldn't put her away so to speak. Couldn't shake her. No matter how hard I tried. And truth be told not only was she the best friend I'd ever made in my life, she also happened to be the most kind sweet caring unique generoous neat cool sexy fun loyal and special girl I'd ever known. Once I let my guard down, after almost seven years of on again off again mini romances wirh her, I felt something with her that I'd never truly felt before: YES. I felt YES everytime I thought or prayed about marrying her. It just took me a while to realize that sometimes what we think we are looking for may not appear from the outside looking in to be what we originally plan on when we're young and idealistic to the point of living in a fantasy world as we artists tend to do for better or worse.

So I took the plunge. Princess Little Tree had waited for me her whole life. She knew from the moment she laid eyes on me that she'd never feel as much love in her heart as she did for me. She wrote to me daily in her personal diaries for seven years. Without my knowledge. And more than that she stayed my best friend through those seven years as I dated hundreds of other girls in my quest to find Mrs Right or just have a good time as a single man with an irresistably controversial reputation.

Fast forward three years and here we are. Husband and wife. Pigs do fly after all and hell has officially frozen so said Duckie, one of my formers and still a good friend since high school when she first heard the news. I was surprised how easy it was -- proposing, allowing her in all the way, letting the invisible wall come down brick by brick that sheilded my heart of hearts from anyone but myself and my God. Being married to Princess Little Tree is easy. I've got to admit it. It would be unfair to her not to. Surprisingly easy.

On the other side of the token being married in general is challenging. No matter who u marry. Surprising even more for me was the discovery that as perfect as she seemed as a friend and girlfriend PLT has her own special set of imperfections. We all do. God knows it can't be easy to be married to me. It's nearly 4am in the morning now and I'm sitting here writing in bed next to the beautiful princess who's been sleeping since 1. She'll wake up for her day sometime around 5 to 7 AM. I'll sleep till noon if she let's me. That can't be easy. I get it.

But the real point to it all for me at least is that for all the chalenges that day to day married life throws in our way, once we overcome them we find ourselves even more in love with our spouse than we were before. And I wholeheartedly mean that. It's the reason I'm writing this post. It's the major theme of the film. It's the aria of this particular opera.

For three days or more I have found myself falling more and more in love with PLT than I ever felt before. And that says a lot. As a hopeless romantic as these Diaries attest to time and time again when I fall in love I fall hard. Earth shattering hard. And yet there seems to be no bottom to hit as you fall. No limits. If you're married to the right person I assume.

Tonight we drove thirty minutes away from our own home to stay in a posh hotel in downtown Seattle, to share dinner together at a five star restaurant and attend a concert by the Seattle Symphony performing Beethoven's 9th Symphony as a way to bring in the New Year. She looked ravishing. As always. Dressed all in black. I am always so proud to be seen with her. Because Princess Little Tree is a drop dead gorgeous to look at woman when it comes to pure beauty. And yes that's a very nice thing. But it's not THE thing.

The real thing, the ultimate thing, about PLT as far as I can tell, is who she is inside. The only word that repeatedly comes to mind is "special." Like a fairy princess out of story book, she often looks and speaks and acts overtly magical or other worldly. She's happy when we do big things. Like this evening's grand adventure. But she's just as happy doing simple things. She'd never been to a symphony before. It was an honor to accompany her to her first and to observe the looks on her face throughout. She is almost never without appreciation or gratitude. And hence I am never without a longing to please her or make her happy.

After the symphony we joined a thousand others for a raucous champaign soaked dance and New Years Eve countdown. We toasted each other numerous times recounting our various new years resolutions to one another. Each and every one a shared goal. As if what is most important to either one of us is equally important to the other. Words can not do justice to what a remarkable feeling that is. To share that unity of vision with another. Each toast was puncuated with a kiss or two or three. Eventually we made our way out into the streets to head back to our hotel. She took her heels off because her feet hurt and walked back in her barefeet and stockings in 35 degree weather and smiled and laughed the whole way.

You see, when you are lucky enough to find yourself married to a girl like that, a real live in the flesh princess, there is no end to how much love you can feel for her. It is boundless. So yes, indeed, so far it has been a very happy new year. But alas the new year is only four hours old. Something tells me that this new year has the potential to offer more incredible opportunities for all of us than any other year of our lifetimes. It's just a hunch. Call it "2012 superstition." I also see that this new year may pose more challenges for those of us striving for peace on earth and love and light than we've experienced in decades. It's in the air. A new Renaissance is just around the bend. Many have been feeling it for months now.

What gives me hope, what makes me smile as I sit her writing, is that regardless of how crazy or challenging things may become as the climax of this grand battle between good and evil on earth reaches it's zenith, I've got this knowing inside that everything is going to be ok. Better than ok. True love can do that to us if we let it. I now know and understand the power of true love on a personal level. PLT has given me that. And so much more. And not even deliberatly. It wasn't a conscious decision I don't believe anyway as much as just one of rhe many benefits of allowing her into my life and allowing her to be her incredible beautiful self.

No matter how tough things get in a marriage -- and they do at times -- there is refuge in the fact that if youre married to the right person and you stick it out things will turn back around and become even better than they were before. This is an amazing phenomenon. Just one of the many that true love between two people has to offer us.

The Real Origin of Thanksgiving...

2011-11-24T17:56:00.001-05:00

Like several other American "holidays" -- such as Columbus Day Christmas and Easter, Thanksgiving as it is celebrated today is barely recognizable when compared to the events that led to its formation many years ago. When taking the plight of the Native American people into consideration, Thanksgiving is an especially vexing and bitter pill to swallow for historians and students of fairness truth and justice studies. A human rights nightmare for a variety of complex reasons and issues, Thanksgiving poses many challenges for those who are familiar with the actual events that transpired during "the Pilgrim years".

Even today it's a challenging mission for those of us who long to participate in celebrating the noble values now associated with the newly revised national holiday and at the same time still want to honor the truth... and acknowledge the many who suffered and died through the centuries in respect to this particularly dark moment in American history.

Sometimes it may feel as if everything around us is myth and Matrix. And indeed in the end we may just discover that this is more fact than we could even imagine now at such an early stage in our evolution. This we do not yet know for certain. What we do know however is that our numbers are exponentially increasing, those who long for more fairness beauty truth art peace love liberty justice and freedom in the world. Very soon it will come and all will be well.

In that spirit, Happy Thanksgiving to all.

http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/archive/turkey/index.htm

The Coming Inevitable Irrelevance of Facebook

2011-11-13T03:04:00.001-05:00

Mazzini it kinda sounds like you and ES don't quite get what's goin on. I don't use Facebook Notes. News goes to our various websites and views go to our blogs. Normally they feed Facebook. Both our profiles and our fanpages. THRU the fb notes feature. But we never actually USE Notes. Why would we? Its not our real estate as one of u insightfully pointed out. But Fb is now dismantling this system. Forcing everyone to do one of either two things: add content directly to Facebook (which is what they are requesting/suggesting we do)... OR copying and pasting our website and blog links onto our Facebook pages and profiles every single day.
Theyre trying to get people and companies to spend more time on Fb specifically and directly rather than just "feeding" facebook from our own real estate. Dig? The problem is that people are just too busy for that. Small to large companies even busier. No one (person or company) is going to sacrifice their own website or blog to dedicate more time to "work Facebook".
The truth is that the visionaries and early adapters are already migrating to Twitter like birds to the South in Winter and using Sensable to automate facebook content on a weekly basis, rendering facebook even less "real logged in time." (This comment will post 14 hours after I actually wrote it. But no one will ever know that.) Only what Godin calls "the Laggards" who are always the last to adopt new tech and are still new to Fb are excited about it and attempting to "work it". Good place to advertise, gain brand exposure and fans in order to steer those people to your own real estate. For sure. For now.
Just as rickipedia said, They got too greedy. Homogenized. Boxed inside their own shell. For some dumb reason they cant seem to see outside their own windows anymore. Monopolized as rickipedia says.
The moment they did away with boxes and tabs and that open architecture and friendliness to third party apps was the signal that they were on their way out and towards irrelevance. Like MySpace they'll stick around for awhile. Well funded and plenty of capital. So they'll keep trying to stick their heads in our fridges to see what weve got to eat; but they're relevance is shrinking. Twitter is making sure of that.
In addition, as they INCREASE their demands on users, forcing users to post content directly in rather than "feeding", and trying to get inside our mobile devices and cell phones, and email us all the time with their silly notifications, the public is entering an information overload phase and the pushback is frightening the hell out of the Zuckster.
I can't quite yet tell you EXACTLY what's going to happen or what it's going to look like, but what I'm feeling is that it will have something to do with YouTube meets Twitter meets Wordpress meets Google+ and Gmail. Especially if Google and Wordpress maintain thier open ended architecture, and Twitter continues to allow users to use various third party apps to access the service they provide. And all of this happened really fast. Literally within weeks. Why? Because people want freedom. They only want to "Occupy" where they're not allowed to. Now that's funny. But unfortunately for Facebook it's entirely true.
But hey, stay tuned because this all may change and be very five minutes ago by the time we wake up tomorrow. But to hammer the final death nail in the Fb coffin, we won't hear about this change on Facebook. We'll learn about it on Twitter. So see ya there manana. Ciao for now. Ambassador out.

The Occupy Revolution: Collateral Damage

2011-11-08T02:52:00.001-05:00

I feel it is necessary to recount something that was spoken to me on Sunday. In of all places the food storage pantry of our church where we store all the canned goods for our "feed the homeless" program called Sharing Table. After my recent 6 week absence from nyc, a good friend passed me an arms full of canned green beans to shelve and looked me in the eyes; "I only have one thing to say about your newest activism Eddie... The more money that you all pull out of the banks in your 'Occupy movement', good people who work at those banks are losing their jobs: tellers and lower income earners who only make $20,000 to $25,000. That's who's being affected the most by your actions. You need to be aware of that." Her comment took me by surprise. Indeed we do need to be aware of this. And now we are. Something for us all to be aware of. And to ponder. I found myself disturbed. But only for a breif moment, as I recalled that BECU the WA based credit union hired over 100 new employees last week in order to meet the demand created by how many of us who transferred our money to them from Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Of course there is so much more to this story.... And together we shall cover it all in our continuing dialogues. But at the least let us remember that where we are presently in our various 'Occupy Revolution' tactics there are going to be some innocents who get affected by our actions. And that surely is not our goal. To each of them we offer our apologies and hope that in the long run this will be a peaceful and successful shift for the better good for us all.
Interestingly about an hour later someone else said to me in response to this comment "Then they too will recognize that they are part of the 99% when they get laid off while the owners and officers and directors at these banks keep their jobs and continue to be paid tens of millions of dollars a year. It's sad. But it's true. And they will soon join the cause once they see that even they are not immune to the rampant greed of Wall Street and Big Banks." Perhaps I thought this is the only way for all of the 99% to truly come together. When the only people left standing are the 1%, then we can begin the transformation to a more fair and equitable system for all 100% of us.

A Blueprint for Achievement

2011-11-04T15:08:00.000-04:00

Believe while others are doubting.
Plan while others are playing.
Study while others are sleeping.
Decide while others are delaying.
Prepare while others are daydreaming.
Begin while others are procrastinating.
Work while others are wishing.
Save while others are spending.
Listen while others are talking.
Smile while others are pouting.
Commend while others are criticizing.
Persist while others are quitting.

Too Busy to Stay Connected to Friends & Family? Remember the Five-Minute Rule

2011-11-01T19:42:00.000-04:00

For almost all of us at this point and in this economic climate, staying in touch with our friends and family seems next to impossible. It's not that we don't love them or care. We do. No doubt about it. I don't think anyone -- no matter famous or unfamous, or how busy, callous, cynical or even jaded -- would claim that staying connected to their good friends and family is not important to them. But let's face it: it feels hard right now. Difficult. Challenging. Facebook seems to help. Twitter seems to help. Texting for sure. Emails not so much. As stated a few weeks (or perhaps even months) ago here, email has become that "best friend we just loved so much we invited to sleep over and now they won't leave." Necessary for work. But by the time we're done with how much email we need to read, address and reply to for "work related issues," the last thing we want to do when we get home is sit down and do more email for friends or family related issues. Especially if it's "just to say hello." Unless someone is just absolutely rich as hell and wealthy to no end and therefore never needs to use email for "work," email now is just as challenging to keep up with as anything else in our lives. Think laundry, dry cleaning, making dinner for the family or mowing the lawn for that matter. What was once a fun novelty has now turned into a verifiably challenging and time consuming chore or task.

Me? I'm still feeling the "texting thing" is the most private, personal, efficient and fastest way to shoot out some love to my friends and family.. But I've got plenty of friends and colleagues who feel the same way about texting as I do about email. One friend of mine, The King, absolutely refuses to text me back. He likes to "book appointments to have conversations." He says he finds texting too much work when he's spent all day "talking" for work. That just makes no sense to me. But it's his world, his life. If I'm going to stay friends with him forever I'm just going to have to abide by his contradictory illogical logic. But I'm still hoping that one day he'll wake up and realize that daily texting is a hell of a lot more personally fulfilling in friendship than nothing at all.... Because honestly, I just don't have the ability to guarantee that I'll be able to have a conversation at "8:45 PM" when he wants to make these appointments. Furthermore, making an appointment to speak with a friend, as opposed to just keeping it open, feels too much like work to me.

So what DO we do to stay connected to those we love most? Besides flying into town and showing up for an annual holiday, birth, graduation or death in the family... all very rational and reliable ways to assure that we will see our loved ones at least once a year. But again, who wants to grow up only to realize that we're only going to see our friends and/or family once a year? That's not staying connected. That's fulfilling our duty. What about the rest of the year? Read on...

Solution? The Five-Minute Rule. The foundation of the Five-Minute Rule came from a brainstorming session I held over a period of weeks with several hundred friends attempting to discern WHY we don't stay better connected to our friends and family more often. The conclusion was "if we don't communicate with someone for a long period of time, we tend to assume that when we finally DO re-connect with them that we're going to feel obligated to play a lot of catch up and that the call is going to take a long time. Being as busy as we all feel we are, no one feels that they can spare the time. So we put it off. With the best intentions, we still just tend to put off calling so and so...." It's a fear based action, or non-action as the case may be.

After many people expressed the same final conclusion as their "primary reason for putting off staying in touch with others", I realized that I tend to agree with this conclusion. I too suffer from this same fear, and therefore do the same thing: procrastinate calling someone I just KNOW I should be calling. And that's the thing: we are all prone to it and we are all perfectly justified in feeling this way. We ARE busier than we've ever been. And time really does feel like it's speeding up. Scientists tell us that it isn't in our imaginations; that time really is "speeding up." For all of us on planet earth at least. If you've got friends who don't live on planet earth, or perhaps not even in the Milky Way galaxy, perhaps you're world looks and feels a bit different than the rest of ours. Hats off to ya. But for the rest of us, Mission Control, we've got a problem.

So what to do? Well, it's actually quite simple: let go of the belief that "if I reach out and call so and so, it's going to take forever to catch up and I just simply do not have the time for that right now.... I'll call them when I get a little less swamped." Problem there is that none of us can truly predict or guarantee that we're ever going to get "a little less swamped." Who knows? Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what "being an adult" looks like. G2 and I have tried everything. We used to work in the same building. One of my most successful companies, he downstairs and me upstairs. We KNEW we were going to see each other almost every day. But then he moved to Chile. Since that move, our communications have become less and less frequent. And we've tried everything! Facebook, Skype, Viber, Twitter, Echofon, emails, texting to email addresses and vice versa. Nothing seemed to work. Though Twitter seems to be helping the most.

So imagine my surprise the other day when out of the blue he just called. There he was. His name blinking on my iPhone like a five alarm fire. Normally I don't pick the phone up because I'm either already on the phone with someone else, or about to be; or out; or in a meeting; or about to enter a meeting. I have so many friends now who actually become annoyed if I DO pick up the phone. "Oh man, dude, I didn't think you were going to pick up. That's why I called. I just wanted to say hello." Funny but true. "Ok....? Should I hang up so you can call back and leave a message?" Sometimes that really is the best answer. Though sometimes it's not. The reality is this, if everyone just remembers and agrees to adopt the Five-Minute Rule, we don't have a problem.

My wife is by far the person I know personally who practices this rule the best out of anyone we know. In fact she just came home and told me that her brother says "hi." I'm like "Did you talk to him?" "Yes." "How long did you two speak?" I asked. "About ten minutes, maybe less." "See! The Five-Minute Rule works doesn't it?!" To which she replied, "You mean that idea that we talk more frequently but keep it short?" "Yeah... I was just writing about it in the Diaries..."

And in short, that's basically it. Simple and effective. Talk more frequently but keep it short. Don't be afraid that the conversation is going to last forever. It won't if you don't allow it to. Say hello, how are you, I'm this or that, how are your kids/parents/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/job/hobby/etc.? And that's that. Five to ten minutes is plenty. Especially if you plan to speak again in a few days or a few weeks. If you practice the second half of the rule, i.e. "keep it short", chances are you WILL actually speak again sooner than later. And we all want that. No life is worth much without regularly connecting with all the friends and family we've worked so hard at bonding with through the years. No matter how much money we are making or how little; and no matter busy we are.

Five minutes. That's all it takes. Pick up that phone. Dial the number and have a chat. Keep it short. You'll be surprised how fulfilling real live talking with someone who loves you can be. I find that it makes a big difference in how I feel each day. Of course I'm still not very good at the Five-Minute Rule. Mainly because I haven't mastered the first part, "Pick up the phone and call more frequently." But I'm working on it. If you've one of the many friends or family members that I'm blessed to call my own, cut me some slack. I promise you I'm sincerely working on this.

This is What Relentlessness Looks Like

2011-11-01T03:27:00.001-04:00

Right this very minute, as I sit here typing, over three-hundred and fifty college and non-comm (public access etc) radio stations across the United States are listening to and playing various songs from an album entitled All Your Heroes Become Villains. The group responsible for the creation of this dark moody eclectic and conceptual work is now called Ed Hale and The Transcendence; which brings things full circle right back to where they began nine years ago when a group by the same name released their debut album entitled Rise and Shine. Rise and Shine was a utopian dream; filled with hope, faith and optimism. Ed Hale was known as The Ambassador. He sang in multiple languages and believed every positive-message that entered his mind and sprung from his heart. The world was a stage where all we need do is believe to create our lives any way we desired or preferred. For a good long while, life really appeared to operate like this.

Songs from the album began spinning on radio stations all over America and in Europe. TV shows and movies picked some up as well. Life was good. My God was it good. At least in the insulated private world that The Ambassador and company kept themselves wrapped up in. Hale had created a fortune for himself at an early age as both a musician and as an entrepreneur. Early-retired before the age of thirty, it was hard not to feel that life was good. But that was soon to change.

Soon it became apparent that it wasn't going to be all peace signs and roses once the band hit what is called "national status". For every music critic who applauded the group for its experimental modern-rock meets world-music fusion, there were always a few who derided Ed Hale for his blind and naive idealism. As if there were something inherently wrong with being positive minded, trusting and optimistic. Two years of club and college gigs, articles, CD reviews and interviews, road trips and "music business meetings" quickly jaded the once jolly Ambassador. Indie-rock sprang up and the new cool was to not give a shit and look like it. The Bush-Cheney White House made life in America seem somehow ugly and corrupt. Cynicism was the new calling card of "bands in the know." It didn't help that Hale's long-term fiance and business partner, Naomi Balcombe -- often nicknamed Cleopatra Ecstasy in the Transcendence Diaries, walked away with every cent Hale owned in a deception so fraught with fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, phoney bank transfers and endless lies, that it took every ounce of hope the once optimistic Ambassador held in his heart not to turn bitter and lifeless.

So when The Ambassador wasn't dressing up as The General to protest the illegal occupation of the sovereign nation of Iraq, he was quickly morphing into The Libertine. Booze, pills, parties, girls galore and invitation only fetish clubs. Now he sang of guilt, lies, deceit, drugs, and one night stands. Being a "guys name and a band name" kind of band didn't fit any more. And neither did most of the players in the band. So the band changed its name to the shorter Transcendence to reflect the casual we don't give a fuck attitude that began to fill the halls of the School of Rock.

And in walked two new players. Fernando Perdomo was the first to join. He was the most creative and inventive guitarist South Florida, or any other city for that matter, had ever seen. He was early-twenties and was eager as hell to prove himself. In a band like Transcendence he could. In Ed Hale's Libertine persona Perdomo found his other half, a singer who could pull off vocals as wild, eccentric and unpredictable as his own guitar histrionics. Hale didn't just jam with Perdomo. Nor did he just jam off of him. Instead he nurtured and helped shape him, spending hours upon hours in the recording studio demanding grueling re-takes until both of them felt that what they laid down was as "transcendent" as humanly possible. There were times when Hale had Perdomo so tired and frustrated that he would fall to the ground and refuse to get up. Instead of getting upset, Hale just simply continued to force Perdomo to keep re-taking his parts lying down. Occasionally they yelled. Occasionally they stormed out of the studio. But more often than not, they were able to stay inspired enough to record all their parts for each successive album.

Ed Hale and Fernando Perdomo were cut from the same mold musically. McCartney's Wings, France's Phoenix, America's cheesy but irresistible Hall and Oates. Both longed to do nothing but make music for a living. Both spent their childhood as outcasts. Both thought the other was a genius. But to add just a bit of tension to the mix, as seems to be always necessary for the perfect singer-guitar duo, Hale and Perdomo couldn't be more different in their upbringing; and in the ensuing personalities they'd developed since their school days.

Bring in new bass player Roger Houdaille. A mere 18 years old when he joined the band, he never even formally auditioned. They met at Miami's infamous Churchill's music venue and based on a ten minute conversation, Hale told Houdaille that he "was in." Roger remembers his first meeting of the rest of the band was in the recording studio where the band was doing a photo shoot, giving an interview with New Times magazine, and half way into recording their second album. Ed Hale and The Transcendence now looked and felt like Transcendence. And for the next seven years and five albums that's what they were called. Roger Houdaille not only added more youth to the group, he also added a Monty Pythonesque sense of irony to the group's mentality. No more overt messages allowed. Which at first was challenging for Hale who was still attempting to capture a brutal Lennonesque honesty in his lyrics. Houdaille added as much to the band in what he didn't say as he did with what he did say with his bass.

The band's second album Sleep With You captured Hale's Libertine character as well as Rise and Shine captured The Ambassador. For their third album, Nothing Is Cohesive, the band was in full indie-rock form and decided to leave the professional confines and comforts of a "real" recording studio, choosing instead to record the whole album in Perdomo's mom's garage.

Newcomer Bill Sommer joined the band as a fill-in drummer for longtime member and cofounder Ricky Mazzi who started the band with Hale. Mazzi wasn't out. He was just too busy to do both life and band full time. Bill Sommer was also young. After rehearsing a few songs with the band, he asked Hale when he thought they might possibly record these cool songs they were playing. To which Hale replied "Dude, we ARE recording them. NOW. Those three songs already went to tape. Let's power up the next one mutha-fucka!" Young William, as Hale called him, recalls that that was just about the strangest thing he had ever heard. No rehearsals. No planning or talking it out. Just jamming and recording simultaneously. But Young William must have not been too turned off by the crazy antics surrounding the band and their questionable methods, for he is still in the group to this day.

More road trips, tours, club gigs, articles, interviews and CD reviews both good and bad. Transcendence was on a roll. Nothing is Cohesive, titled as an inside joke by the band about the music critics and their insistence that the band needed to create more cohesive albums sonically, did just that. And it paid off. A+ and five star ratings and comparisons to everyone from the Beatles to U2, David Bowie, Lou Reed, the Kinks... One "tastemaker" music blog called the album "one of the most important albums of the year." Three albums in and the band finally achieved both "the street cred" and the commercial success they had been going after since their formation. Of course like all good stories, this is precisely when the shit hit the proverbial fan for the group. A sinister cabal of greedy leech-like despots disguised as the band's distribution company, Synergy Distribution is what they called themselves, owed the group tens of thousands of dollars and decided to go bankrupt overnight. Leaving the band penniless and without a viable way to distribute their music to their fans.

Rather than break for business, or even recognize that he was headed down a long dark road to extreme poverty, Ed Hale maxed out every credit card he owned and then some to begin what was to eventually become the All Your Heroes Become Villains album. If Nothing Is Cohesive was effortless in its creation, AYHBV was it's antithesis in nearly every aspect. The band went back to Dungeon Recording Studios to have Fred Freeman produce them. Their sound had matured. It had also darkened and gotten much heavier. Indie-rock was so "in" that it was the last thing in the world the guys in Transcendence wanted to create more of. Instead they opted for something more conceptual. Many of the songs were inspired by movies or musicals or plays. "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Becket, "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem, "Last Stand at the Walls of Zion" alluded both to the Matrix Trilogy and to the literal land of Zion, namely Israel. "We Are Columbine" is just that. The story in song-form about the Columbine massacre.

The AYHBV album cost tens of thousands of dollars. Hale traded penny stocks in the early morning to augment the maxed out credit cards he was using to pay for its recording. He also sublet his Manhattan apartment out and lived on couches and beds at various friends' houses to save more money for recording. He also slept in the recording studio often. Month after grueling month Hale and the band hit the recording studio every day to try to get a handle on just what the hell they were crafting. Hale flew a trance-hop DJ in from San Francisco named Kamran. Perdomo resisted the idea vehemently. Hale and Perdomo also came to blows so many times that Perdomo walked out one day for good he claimed after Hale taped one too many signs to the walls of the studio saying things like "Stop playing like BB KING!" or "NO SPRINGSTEEN ALLOWED!" Of course these were insults to Perdomo who prided himself on his originality. But Hale wasn't just looking for originality. He was looking for the near impossible. He wanted everyone in the band to "create something you never have before!"

Roger got it. He laid down a Bee Gee's inspired bouncy disco bass line over the Middle Eastern themed movie soundtrack-like song "Indian Princess" and it worked. On "Waiting for Godot" Roger also laid down one of the most melodic and intricate bass lines of the band's entire catalog over Ricky's, now back on drums again, reggae beat that somehow managed to "fit just enough" beneath Hale's standard 4/4 rock rhythm. In Perdomo's absence, the band called on long-time friend, singer/songwriter/producer/engineer Zach Ziskin to come lay down the still needed guitar riffs and licks the band was known for. From what Hale remembers, Zach laid down his parts on all 12 songs in less than a day. It was just that easy. Upon hearing this, Perdomo went ballistic that someone else was recording guitar on the new Transcendence album, so he returned to the studio as quickly as he had left and proceeded to carve out his own sonic space. If Zach owned the more traditional melodic guitar lines on the album, Perdomo owned the squelches and squeals from another planet. In order to make sense of the chaos that was beginning to emanate from the speakers, Hale instructed Fred Freeman to pan all of his own guitars dead center, Zach's guitar far left, and Perdomo's beautiful noise far right. Listen for it.

Hale asked DJ Kamran to import everything the band laid down into his computer and chop it up into little fragments and remix it into different songs entirely. Kamran did his work at night in Studio B, while the rest of the band either slept or pulled all nighters in Studio A. Every morning Hale and Freeman would return to the studio to hear what Kamran had created. They would then fly his chopped up speeded up bumped up bassed up little masterpieces into the songs the band was in the process of still recording and overdubbing onto. At one point, when Kamran played Hale a one minute piece comprised of parts taken from all the different songs the band had recorded -- what is now the intro to the first song on the album entitled "All Your Heroes Become Villains Part I - The Main Theme" Hale began to cry. "It was at this moment that I knew that we were actually going to create something worthy of it's name. It was drop dead genius and deserved a good tear or two."

Then of course there was Allan Gabay, the wildcard in the band. Gabay was and still is a musical virtuoso, classically trained pianist, but about as mature in his person as a five year old. Knowing full well that Hale and band were holed up in the studio all day and night starting at 9AM, Gabay wouldn't show up to record his parts until midnight or later most days. Leaving Hale little room for sleep. The good part of this aspect of the recording process was that Allan Gabay did not disappoint. All over the album you can hear why the band puts up with the rather unconventional working style of their keyboardist. On songs like "Here it Comes" Gabay's piano flourishes add something rare and unique to rock bands of the day. Hale often sang Gabay parts he heard in his head and in seconds Gabay was not only playing them note for note perfectly, he was also augmenting them with harmonic inversions that made the songs that much more orchestral.

Another experiment that worked to the group's advantage for the All Your Heroes Become Villains album was Hale's idea to invite his childhood friend and former Broken Spectacles bandmate Matthew Sabatella into the studio to sing harmony vocals over his leads. "Eddie and Matt" as they were known in their teen years in the SoFlo music scene were well known for their vocals, sometimes singing in unison, sometimes harmony, sometimes in octaves, and often times switching right in the middle of songs. Sabatella was a master vocals arranger. And Hale had since spent years taking vocal lessons studying opera. But the two had not sang together in almost ten years. "The first time I heard and saw Matt behind that microphone singing harmony over my lead vocal, the song was "Solaris," I got chills man... I couldn't believe it was really happening. It was not only sounding good. It was also just very healing for us as people. Broken Spectacles didn't really break up in a good way. Like a lot of bands, it just sort of petered out from boredom and bigger dreams. So that was big."

The band also enlisted Karen "Trophy Wife" Feldner to sing background vocals on the album as she had on every single one of their previous albums. That too is an aspect of the album that makes it something it could never be without her on it... Like all of us I believe. In addition Dee Dee Wilde the famous R&B singer was called in to sing the Pink Floyd like gospel groans over the opening track. Which she accomplished in one take by the way. And while they were at it, the band also called in Latin superstar Jorge Moreno's horn section to come in and add trumpet and trombone to the songs. Now that they had added everything but the kitchen sink to the 12 songs, they needed to be mixed. And that task was left up to Hale and Freeman. If the album took two years collectively to record, it took twenty years in effort and energy to mix it. Besides the fact that due to his desire to "create something no one's ever heard before" Hale had recorded something close to sixty different tracks on each song, including usually two or three drum tracks per song overdubbed onto one another for example, he also wanted each song to outro into the next song's intro. This involved bringing the guys back in to write and perform parts that helped shift the key of one song into the different key of the song that would follow in a manner that sounded musically appealing. It also entailed endless hours sitting in front of mastering software trying out different segues with different songs fading in and out of each other until they started to recognize what the "ideal track listing" would be.

Eventually they got it. And just in time. For Fred Freeman was days away from losing it bigtime and blowing up. Besides recording the All Your Heroes Become Villains album, the band had also recorded another full album during off hours called "The Great Mistake" which Dying Van Gogh Records will release in the Spring of 2012. They were also in the process of laying down the basic tracks to an Ed Hale solo album called L'intrigue de Femme which featured an additional 25 songs, each centered around a different girl's name, an idea originally offered to Hale from Roger. "Roger probably didn't realize that I would take the idea so seriously. But I just couldn't resist. I had already written at least that many songs centered around girls name. It was a cool idea. So why not?"

Between the arduous mixing schedule, Hale's refusal to accept anything less than perfection, the proliferate quantities of various drugs that filled the studio and certain player's insides, and the fact that Freeman was pissed that the band had recorded way more songs and albums at his studio than was originally agreed on, all hell broke lose in the studio. Freeman held the band's master tapes (and Hale's personal belongings) hostage until they could cough up an additional $4,000. The band scrambled to sell equipment and borrow as much money as they could to purchase their albums back. (And Hale's clothes). Hale escaped to Perdomo's and crashed for a few days. "I had to call my brother in Texas. I was flat broke, yes, but I had managed to record two full length albums better than anything me and the guys had ever created before. So I was happy. My brother could tell by my voice that something was up. All he said was "what do you need dog?" And I said "I need to get the hell out of here dude." He bought me a ticket right there while on the phone with me. Gabay drove me to the airport. I flew to my bro's house and cleaned up for a while."

Next up was the brutal process of facing the facts. And the facts were this. We had two great albums now recorded and no record label or distribution company to release them. This was a terrible situation to be in. Talk about a drag. But in the meantime we decided to record solo albums of our own in order to increase our over all fanbase and to stay creatively inspired. It was a weird strategy. But incredibly it worked. Fernando formed Dreaming In Stereo and recorded an incredible self-titled album. Roger formed Ex Norwegian and recorded Standby, which went on to make him a veritable indie-music critics darling. And I recorded Ballad On Third Avenue, deciding to go acoustic singer/songwriter. My longtime friend, now wife, Princess Little Tree, offered to help us if she could Executive Produce to make sure that we didn't go overboard like we had on previous albums. It worked. All three albums were released on the newly formed Dying Van Gogh Record label. And after hundreds and hundreds of calls and meetings I was able to secure a new distribution deal for the band and the new label. We were now "back in the action." Besides that, all three of our solo albums made the "Best Albums of the Year List" in New Times magazine and received great reviews.

The artist "Ed Hale" was now bigger and more well known than the artist "Transcendence" miraculously. And it was frustrating as hell to be constantly receiving emails and comments from new fans asking why I only had "three albums" for sale. The problem was that they were doing searches for "Ed Hale" and our band "Transcendence" wasn't popping up. This is why we decided to change the name of the band back to Ed Hale and The Transcendence. Same band. Just ties it all together. And frankly, I like the way it kind of brings everything around full circle. Like a new beginning that closely resembles the original beginning.

When Fernando was mixing my solo album, Ballad... I was in a rehab truth be told, for what we in the business refer to as "exhaustion". I'll never forget hearing the final mix of the song "New Orleans Dreams" for the first time. I started balling my eyes out. Tears just streaming down my face. My mom, who happened to be there in that moment, asked me "Why are you crying honey?" And I replied "Because.... listen to this... it's so beautiful... I think this is going to be the one mom. Listen to it..." I just had this feeling inside from listening to that song.

Turns out I was right. That album was the highest charting on the CMJ college radio chart of my career, debuting at #14 on their Most Added Chart and peaking in the Top 100. A little more than a year after I had recorded the album, radio promoters started calling. One wanted to take the song "New Orleans Dreams" to the Adult Contemporary format on commercial radio. THIS is PRECISELY why we recorded this album the way we did. Fernando and I had to use all of our collected strength and will power not to "over-do it" in our arrangement and production of that album. And we pulled it off. We kept it simple. As of this writing, "New Orleans Dreams" is #23 on the Adult Contemporary Chart (FMQB)(There are a LOT of charts in our business. That's another story.) But it now officially holds the record for the highest charting song of my or "our" career -- beating out "Superhero Girl" from our Sleep With You album, which peaked at #24 on the Alternative Rock Chart in 2003. Let us hope it continues to rise.

With all the new found glory and success of these solo albums that we recorded, we were finally able to afford to release the long awaited All Your Heroes Become Villains album that we all worked so hard on. This is something that I really believe that none of us ever thought was going to happen for a while there. I believe that there was a spell there where the only person who still held hope that this album was going to be released one day was yours truly. I NEVER give up. I never lose my hope. I never lose my faith. I never lose my optimism. I am, as my good friend The King likes to say, "the most RELENTLESS person I've ever known". I KNEW this album was going to be released one day. I wouldn't stop until it was.

And so here we are. Ricky who started the band with me over a decade ago calls me all the time saying he framed the CD when it arrived at his house. I think we all feel like that about this album. We'd never worked harder on anything. The reviews are coming in and they are good. Articles and interviews pouring in once again. PR Firms bigger than we've ever worked with are representing us. Radio Promoters bigger than we've ever worked with are promoting us. Product endorsements and free gear. And just like the last nine years, this new album is now spinning on over three-hundred and fifty college radio stations all over the country. Next up, commercial radio and live shows. More interviews and more tours.

How? Because we didn't give up. Because we believed and we refused to stop believing. We also work 24 hours a day right now. Non-stop. All through the day and all through the night. But it's paying off. And that's good enough reason for me. If that's what it takes to see your dreams turn into reality, then you've only got two choices: do what it takes, or quit when you're down and tell your grandchildren about "how it almost happened for me when I was a younger man" stories till you die. For me that just isn't a choice I'm willing to make.

Answer? Using an iPad is Equivalent to Being in Hell

2011-10-30T18:46:00.002-04:00

NOTE: I am writing this post the good old fashioned way: using a laptop. Yes I am aware of how "six-months ago" that is... but read on....

Well it was certainly a noble question, "Am I in Hell? Or just using an iPad?" One cannot be blamed for posing the question. It's an innocent and justifiable enough question. It just wasn't the right question. The right question it turns out was "Why do I feel like I am in Hell whenever I use the iPad?" And of course the answer is "Being in Hell and using an iPad are the SAME thing".

See, it all started about a week ago. I received this incredible looking device for my birthday from my even more incredible looking wife. I had been talking about getting an iPad for months. I had gotten used to the iPhone -- bear in mind if you do NOT have an iPhone that there is a VERY large learning curve to using one. iPhones do not have regular keyboards - they are virtual, not tactile; and because they are an Apple product they are just about incompatible with every known device, website, app, software in the known universe. But still... there is a feeling one gets from using an iPhone -- (scientists have actually just finished a small clinical trial that showed that using an iPhone elicits certain endorphins in the brain that are similar to the feelings we get when we are in love or being loved or being made love to by another. This is true. Look it up).

So i had gotten used to the iPhone after about a year of using it. And no, the marriage still wasn't perfect. To this day I still cannot use more than half of the applications or tools that I use on my traditional PC-based hot-rodded laptop (mind you this thing is a monster if you're a tech-geek. Custom designed and hand-built with a quad-core processor, ultra-high resolution screen, more ports than a space-shuttle, more RAM than is humanly fathomable, the most expensive video card money can buy along with the best sound card humanity can invent). So it should be fine, right? Well for the most part it is. Only problem being that it is still, alas, a laptop. In other words, it's significantly larger and heavier than an iPhone.

Seeing that my job entails hunching over some kind of "content creating" device for hours at a time, there was a real need for me to be able to invent some kind of system to still be able to create content and not do real damage to my health. My back and neck are already severely compromised due to how many hours I have hunched over this thing. A Vegas book-maker could gamble that "yours truly has spent 20 hours straight hunched over his laptop without moving except to take bathroom breaks" and win 100% of the time. Unfortunately the statement is easily true. It is the nature of how much the industry I work in has changed. The music-making industry that is. But that's another story. So... over the last few months I had begun realizing that I could do quite a bit using my iPhone. No it's not easy, and it's certainly not comfortable. But once you've hit the bed at 4AM and you've just put in an 18 hour day and you're dead tired to the point of your eyes being crossed, finishing up that "last bit of work before you wake up in 3 hours to start the process all over again" is best accomplished on a smaller device with a less trauma inducing screen than a laptop. Hence the iPhone. I could write a three page blog post in less than an hour on the iPhone. No kidding. I have mastered that virtual keyboard. But again, it just doesn't feel that comfortable, nor healthy. Not much does anymore in this high tech world. But again, that too is another story.

So my mind began to fantasize about the iPad. Not as large as a laptop and not as small as an iPhone. Should be the perfect solution. Right? Well golly Wally how I wish that statement were true. But it just has not been the case. It didn't take that long to set up. Only about an hour. (yes, laughter is perfectly acceptable at that juncture in our story). What would one want to do first with this sleek slick high-priced and fancy device? We can't use it as a phone, and it turns out that we also cannot use it to text. (Yes I know, we "can" use it to text if we want to text from our google GMail account... but that isn't texting if you ask me. That's IM'ing or chatting. I'm referring strictly to good old fashioned cell phone to cell phone test messaging, and it's just not something one does on an iPad).

Ok... so what about surfing the internet? It must be good for that, right? Well, yes and no. If you want to just poke around and look at stuff, then sure, the iPad is a very expensive way to do that. It's also not a bad tool for video conferencing like we do with Skype. And yes they finally added a dinky camera so we can take pictures with it. (Far be it from me to be the last man standing over the last two years pointing out how ridiculously short sighted it was for Apple in release a tablet device with no camera as they did with the iPad #1. My God what a stupid move. But surprisingly many, many people still ran out and bought one. I'm not sure what they actually did with it... A reviewer journalist from Time magazine said it best when he said "I haven't actually found a use for the iPad, so I still need to carry my laptop around with me everywhere for work. But the iPad looks so cool that I find that I always have it with me, usually just sitting on the passengers seat of my car." And this is what I had already guessed about the iPad when I first read about it. Hence the reason why I never bought one.

But the iPad 2 was supposed to change that. And so here we are. I've now owned one for about one week. I tried going to Facebook. But quickly realized that the iPad doesn't work too well with Facebook. There are so many problems with it that you just get fed up and leave. Worst of them being that you cannot upload photos from your iPad to Facebook. Nor to anywhere for that matter. Why? Well no one seems to really know. Apple employees seem to think that it's Adobe's fault. And if you go to Adobe's website, they seem to blame it on Apple. As a "regular Joe" consumer, I could care less whose fault it is, I just want to be able to upload photos. The solution we are told by Apple and/or "Apple afficianados" (of which there are plenty -- and for good reason -- I also own a badass Macbook and I must say it is everything they say it's cracked up to be. it is for lack of a better word, "the BOMB!") as I was saying, both will tell you that "you need to download the iPad Facebook app" if you want to upload photos or do other things on Facebook that you are accustomed to doing on a regular laptop. The only problem is that the iPad Facebook app is about as functional as attempting to use Facebook using Morse Code. It just isn't a viable app. No need to go into the details. Just trust me on this. You'll bail on it in less than five minutes. It truly is that useless.

Well, ok... that's a drag. What about blogging? I do plenty of that for my job. I personally use two primary resources to blog: Wordpress for the majority of them, and Blogger for one of them. This post that you are reading here in the infamous pages of the long-running Transcendence Diaries is currently being hosted by Blogger and has been for about five years now. Before that we had tried numerous other platforms. (The Diaries, as they are often called, are in their ninth year believe it or not for those who've been with us from the very start). At first I tried the obvious. I went to the Safari browser and opened up Blogger, logged in, and started writing a new post. Within five minutes the fiery smell of Dante's sulfuric Inferno was so strong in the room that it was obvious that I was literally steps away from falling into the pit of hell forever and ever. Why? Because writing a new post in Blogger on an iPad simply doesn't work. You can't upload photos. You can't adjust your settings. You can't view your blog in a non-HTML standard form. And worst of all, you can't actually publish the post you've just written. Worse than that, once it tells you that and displays a giant ERROR message on its bright shiny screen, it deletes the post you just spent an hour writing. That's right. GONE for good.

"Oh man, that's because you need to download the iPad for blogging app bro" Apple people will tell you. It's true. You can't actually blog using an iPad on Blogger or Wordpress in a browser. You have to download yet another app. OK fine. Done. I first tried the tantalizingly titled "Blogger for iPad" app. No dice. You can only blog for as many sentences that fit above the virtual keyboard. Then you're screwed. Besides, that's ALL you can do. No editing, no formatting, no photos, etc. I then tried something called BloggerHD. Big price tag, but it promised the moon. And remember, promising the moon in the world of the iPad just means that you'll be able to do the normal things you do everyday on your laptop. Not much moon there. But worth a try if it works I figured. Unfortunately it didn't work. I typed a respectable one page post on a subject that I cannot even remember now only to hit publish and see it disappear. That was last night. I gave up and went to bed early, discouraged and disillusioned with my original fantasy that the iPad might somehow hold some saving grace for me or my health.

Next up was an app that looked even more promising. They call it BlogPress. Meaning that it will enable you to use your iPad for both Blogger and Wordpress blogs. Oh what a beautiful morning. I jumped up and paid the fee and download it, logged into my account and began typing away. As a simple safety measure I hit the "Save" button just in case when I went to Publish the post it disappeared, and the app proceeded to close. I tried opening it a few times and it will now not even open on the iPad. Frantically and desperately I opened Safari to see if at the very least it saved this post i had worked so hard on for a little over an hour only to be reminded that when you log into Blogger on the iPad using the Safari browser, you cannot actually see a list of your previous posts. Not kidding. You also can't access your dashboard. It is as if the iPad's operating system, something they call "iOS," is only capable of seeing or displaying about 50% of any given website's content. God only knows why, but unfortunately it's the truth.

So with a long face and an even longer sigh, I got up and walked a few feet over to my trusty old laptop. Blogger opened fine. It opened fully. And it functions perfectly. Just for good luck, on the rare chance that a miracle may have occurred, I checked my posts, both published and drafts. Unfortunately neither the post I wrote last night, nor the one I typed this morning exist. It is as if I had never typed them. So that, as they say, is that.

There may one day be an iPad app for those of us who want to actually do something with our iPads besides look at pictures or watch videos on YouTube. But I'm not holding my breath. I've just typed a blog without any trouble or error messages using my laptop in a short period of time and that's fine with me. As far as the iPad goes, the thing that bgles my mind more than anything else is how could something so useless become so popular, at least in terms of "topical"... not many people actually own iPads. It's more that just everyone likes talking about them and dreaming of owning one eventually. But like many things, the dream is far more fulfilling than the experience. What's puzzling is how a machine ten times the price of your average iPhone not even be capable of accomplishing the same tasks as your average iPhone.

Last night, after hours and hours spent trying to salvage aforementioned blog posts or tens of futile attempts to use Facebook on the iPad, I eventually gave up and just pulled out my iPhone to do said tasks. There I was, 2AM, in bed, comfortably interacting with people all over the world on Facebook, through text messaging, and yes, even blogging, on my two year old $100 iPhone; while the $800 iPad sat lifelessly on the floor next to us. The irony did not escape me. I stared at it for a few seconds and all I felt was disgust. Outrageously priced, sleek, slick, and fancy looking but no actual use and incapable of being trusted. A lot like the people we dislike the most in this world. For them of course there is hope. I always hold out that each and every one of us is evolving, slowly, at our own pace, but human potential is remarkably surprising. After one gruelling week of trying everything imaginable in hopes of discovering something useful about the iPad, I don't hold much hope for it. Too little too late for far too much money.

But I will say this. The iPad for as useless as it is does provide one invaluable benefit. It shows us that regardless of how utterly worthless something is, with the right amount of promotion and hype, we can find a way to sell it to others and make a fortune. And as a lifelong entrepreneur, that idea inspires me. Like "the Pet Rock" before it, the iPad is an anomalous entrepreneurial success story. If Apple can profit from it simply based on its beauty and hype, so too can you and I and everyone else profit from things we invent and bring to market and no we do NOT need to concern ourselves with how well they work. Functionality is optional. Much like our Senate or Congress.

Am I in hell? Or just using an iPad?

2011-10-29T23:24:00.001-04:00

My God what a mess of an invention this thing is. Pardon any spellings mistakes that you might see here. See, the problem is I am doing some clean up on my laptop and since I was just gifted with an ipad2 for my bday recently, I figured I\'d give it a spin instead of using my iPhone as I usually do for such things. The problem is that the iPad -- as my good friend Sir Richard pointed out on Facebook last week -- is great for perusing media such as books magazines and music websites I guess... But it\'s a bloody nightmare for any kind of content creation. Even

Current Screening: CINEMA VERITE

2011-10-28T03:06:00.001-04:00

Life following art following life, The movie stars Tim Robbins and Diane Lane and is a dramatization of a documentary made back in 1971 called "An American Family" which aired on PBS for five episodes and was the very first reality TV series. Don't want to spoil it for you. Just watch it. There was something really intense and moving about watching a real life "perfect" American family implode right in front of film cameras way back in '71. Lonf before reality tv came along and made "family drama and conflict" a normal du jour form of entertainment, even when it's fake and scripted. This movie was not. No do overs. The real thing. And very sad because of it. Recommended.

A Few of My Favorite Things

2011-10-27T20:39:00.001-04:00

Well it very well could be a daily feature; like Current Spin, Last Screening, Latest Read etc. And indeed I promise that soon it will be. But for now in leiu of just how backed up I am with this particular Post idea, I figured that rather than working my way backwards editing each and every post from the last month just to add a line or two for this latest feature addition, instead I'll start off with a great big data dump here, now, and from this point forward I'll just remember to add the "favorite things" feature to the bottom of each post. Easier that way. For me that is. And for you it's going to be a nice little bag of goodies all in one shot. God knows I owe it to you. I read the texts, comments, wall posts, emails, Facebook messages etc. And yes I listen to my voicemails so ive heard all ur voicemails. I know I owe it to ya. So here goes.

[Disclaimer: these are suggestions. I'm three steps away from that fine line between crazy-cool and just plain crazy. So use good sense and discernment. Dont spend yourself into bankruptcy. Its easy to do in a global economy where we now have access to anything and everything we could ever possibly desire. Unlike magazines, entertainment tv gossip shows, daytime and latenight talk shows, and even radio stations who claim to play "hit songs", I am NOT getting paid to pitch or promote these products. To be honest, I don't much like tv shows or magazine articles that recommend or feature products only because "promotional consideration has been given to the following products." There actually is no such thing anymore as a true unpaid honest to goodness hit song or hit tv show or a real product recommendation. It's all pay to play now. They just don't want the public to know this. They'll even use the phrase "Here's your morning sleaze" as if they're going to fill you in on some really juicy gossip, when instead what they're actually doing is just telling us "pitched stories" that they've been paid to repeat live on the radio. It's fake gossip if you will. How the hell can we trust a product if the person recommending it is being paid to do so? We can't.

And therein lies yet another example of bad-capitalism versus good-capitalism. This alone could be an entire blog post. People are busy. They don't have time to anylize whether or not a product is honestly being promoted because it's good or if it's just another thinly disguised advertisement. But here you'll never have that problem. Unless i specifically announce that it's one of the product endorsement deals Im contracted to promote. And even then ul still be safe. Because I don't do endorsement deals for products that I don't totally adore. Cool? Cool. So let's get on with it.]

Recent Favorite things:
- Spybot Search and Destroy. Best damn spyware malware virus protection on the net and it's free. Download it today.

- Origins Peace of Mind cream. Like Tiger Balm it burns. But just a little. Nice way to perk up or relax. Rub a little on your temples.

- Phillip B Chai Latte shampoo and shower gel. LOVE IT! Smells just like a chai latte but you shower with it. The smell is in incredible. Yum!

- Tetris for the iPhone. Addictive! Download at your own risk. It can be a major time waster.

- Franz Salted Caramels. Handmade in Seattle using all natural ingredients. The most delicious caramels I've ever found anywhere. They make a milk chocolate one and a dark chocolate one. Best of both worlds - have a box of each and eat them one at a time switching each time. Don't blame me if you fall in love or get addicted. They're expensive. I'm warning you now. But worth every dollar.

- Modern Family. The tv show. You don't start laughing from the moment it starts till the very last line.

- Ciao Bella Blood Orange sorbet. In the last two years I've tried every brand and every flavor on the market. Blood Orange by Ciao Bella is so damn good that it's become a ritual for me to eat a full pint every night right before bed. Incredible!

- Viinyl.com. If you're a musician you can build your own promotional page online to stream any of your songs along with a full screen picture, as well as provide links to ur website and social network profiles. It's easy, free, and has a nice clean simple look to it.

- Sunday morning news shows: Face the Nation, Meet the Press, McGlaughlin Group, and Chris Matthews. Unlike CNN these shows aren't trying to turn their news anchors into celebrities. They're real journalists having real conversations. CNN, Fox, and MSNBC all have a partisan agendas, as well as a thirst for fame, and thus what you get is Anderson Cooper playing clips of himself giggling over and over again. Or even worse (cud it get worse than that?) very slanted and spun puff pieces disguised as news whose sole mission is to convince you to lean far left or far right. Neither side is one-hundred percent right one-hundred percent of the time. Big deception, and a big waste of time.

- CNN now has Piers Morgan. And I must say that compared to "Uncle Larry" King that is, Piers actually studies his guests before the show airs and asks real honest and sometimes tough questions. So far so good. Not bad Piers. Just please don't get lazy and stop. We respect you.

- X-Factor USA. Simon's new mutli-million dollar alternative to American Idol has more real talent in Season 1 than Idol had in ten Seasons. It's great to see Simon and Paula again. And LA Reid is a REAL music biz maven. Allegedly each show costs 3.3 million dollars to produce. And it looks that way. But most of all it doesn't come off like a high school talent show like Idol does. It's totally Pro. Music lovers or musicians will love it. Because you always learn something from it. From the importance of song choice to how essential it is to get a stylist and always look good if you're showcasing your talent in a public forum.

- Twitter. Yep it's old news. To some. To millions of others it's a new phenom and the reason to like it is because unlike Facebook where you're just bombarded by irrelevent updates and pix by the loudest friends with the least amount of self control, Twitter allows you to choose what you read and what you talk about. You may not get that aw-shucks homey vibe that Facebook offers, but the potential for intelligent conversation about subjects you actually care about is very high. My Twitter address is Ed_Hale@Twitter.com. Connect with me when u can.

- Bop it! The game. Just found one and boy is it fun! Talk about a time waster. The only good thing about it is that playing it regularly helps exercise the brain to keep you sharp.

- UGGs boots and slippers. My UGGs slippers are soooo confortable. And my fur lined boots I will literally wear every day until the very last day of Winter.

- L'Occitane Cade Anti-fatigue Gel. Frankly I like L'Occitane anything! Much like Fresh, they just know how to make very clean fresh all natural and best of all uniquely scented products. So here's the deal. L'Occitane makes a ton of products. But they have a very small line of signature fragrances with accompanying products such as moisturizers gels and shampoos. IMHO their very best signature scent is from the Cade tree. It's bold woodsy spicy and masculine smelling similar almost to the smell of pine. Try their Anti-fatigue gel. It's got that increible Cade smell but it's also great for refreshing and stimulating your face when you've been working all day. It works. It regenerates.

- Olay Regenerist Anti-Aging Wipes. They're just like wet wipes -- in fact they are wet wipes, but the difference is that each wipe contains 7 different anti-aging ingredients. Think moisturizer, anti-oxidants, and skin toners. You can carry a few around with you in ur breifcase or purse and always have access to some. What I like best about always having some around is that it encourages you to wash ur face more often. Which is always a good thing. Even better? A smidgeon of anti-aging ingredients besides just cleansing.

- John Varvatos Artisan Black cologne. Owning over 180 bottles of different colognes makes me a conniseur of sorts I guess, and probably a wee bit insane; but regardless of all that, John's new Artisan Black is one incredible smelling and irresistable scent. The girls love it too.

- Tommy Hilfiger's entire 2011 line. Very very unique and different. See if you can still get your hands on some still. You'll probably get a big discount.

- The iPad2. Sleek slick thin lightweight slightly mysterious; a fascinating architecture combined with the intuitive and smooth I-OS makes it quite addictive. With that said it's not easy to type on yet. And it won't work with Adobe Flash, which means you can't upload photos to the Internet because most uploaders now use some form of Flash. What this means is that if you have a blog or two or just enjoy sharing photos on Facebook you will NOT be able to do so unless you download the ipad app for that website. No app, no uploading photos with ur ipad. Def time to make nice with Adobe guys. This is a major bummer and greatly diminishes how often you are able to use your ipad. Sir Richard put it perfectly: if you're a content creator the iPad is just not good enough for you. But if you're more of a content addict you'll enjoy using the ipad rather than your computer or phone or Kindle. Ipad just blows the competition away in terms of pure tactile enjoyment.

Want more? Well worry not. Because there are hundreds more. This is just a taste. Tune in daily and you'll find this new feature towards the bottom of every post here in the Transcendence Diaies.

OccupyMyWeekend

2011-10-24T04:46:00.002-04:00


Ed Hale at Occupy Seattle

Well there goes another weekend.
Yes. Adventures indeed. "Occupy" is spreading like a wildfire, with over 1500 different cities around the world presently being "occupied." Future generations are going to have a blast trying to figure this one out... Just this odd word. "occupy," cropping up out of nowhere... Like Sovereign or Suferegete or Abolitionist or Segregation (sorry to throw off the aliteration there) in times past. Strange foreign sounding words. But eventually we all had to learn what these words meant as we grew up and studied our history. So too will future generations; and they\\\'ll have "occupy" to add to that list. Of course that depends on what we actually accomplish with the Occupy Movement.

The Tea Party Movement will be learned and studied because it\\\'s here to stay for better or worse. And the reason it\\\'s here to stay is because it sold out to big corporate interests very quickly (see Koch Brothers, et al...) and is now less a grassroots peoples\\\' movement as it started out as and much more a sub-group or branch of a political party, the Republican political party. Strictly right wing. Strictly radical and extreme, which is what the word "Conservative" has turned into when it\\\'s used in political contexts. Strictly organized and corporate funded. As in strictly American.

There\\\'s not a chance of this happening to the Occupy Movement. And as good as that is for the movement itself and for the world, it\\\'s also one of the problems. In order to make it through Winter or just even this Fall the Occupy Movement is going to need money. Or so we assume. And without turning into something organized and corporate it may not last very long. But let\\\'s see what happens.

Right now it\\\'s a wild phenom. I\\\'ve not marched in crowds this big since the WTO, NAFTA, and Iraq protests years ago. So theres hope there. Just in size alone. There is also something happening with the Occupy Movement that we\\\'ve not seen since the anti-BushCheney Wars in \\\'03 where the whole world came together to march in solidarity against those wicked invasions of sovereign nations. Millions of human beings from all walks of life in countries all over the planet marched to protest a few men and their mission to break international laws. It was an amazing thing to witness. The worrisome issue is that the entire human population could not stop these mad men from doing exactly what they wanted to. And ten years later America is still fighting those wars.

They\\\'ve bankrupted the country AND killed hundreds of thousands of people, these wars. But we can\\\'t see we didn\\\'t try. Because we did. We just weren\\\'t successful "enough."

We\\\'re in the same situation again now. And no one can be sure if it will head anywhere... Or lead to anything. But it\\\'s good to see it happening. Wicked crimes against ordinary people have been commited all over America by large financial institutions and it\\\'s affected the entire world economy. Record profits, and requisite salaries and bonues, are being reported during a time that the entire world is calling "bad economic times," It just doesn\\\'t smell right. Smells even worse when we recognize that Wall Street occupies half the White House administration and appears to completely control the US Congress and the Senate.

The question is "how far will we the people have to go in order to initiate real change and reform that will stop these schemes cons and deceptions? Will we have to take up arms to defend ourselves and our rights not to be lied to used and consistantly deceived? Are we willing to die in our revolution the same way others have throughout history? Or will something miraculous happen and change will just begin to occur from within as more and more of the 99% begin to recognize that almost all of us are at war with a very very small group of greedy selfish heartless people?

My preference would be for the latter option. No doubt. But I\\\'d be perfectly ok with dying for the cause if it meant we had a chance of taking America back from this small cadre of greedy war mongers and bankers. It\\\'s a cause worth fighting. Therefore we OCCUPY. it\'s a cause worth getting beaten hosed pepper-sprayed shot at arrested and even dying for. That\\\'s why we KEEP OCCUPYING no matter what the governent says or does to us until the make the changes we ask them to. It\\\'s really that simple.

Faith

2011-10-20T05:40:00.001-04:00

There is a fine line between having faith and being a fool. Faith is believing you are wealthy when you aren't quite wealthy but know you will be soon. Fools spend money as if they are wealthy when they just aren't even close to being so. I've walked the tightrope between faith and foolishness my whole life. Sometimes, one could say, I've been the perfect faithful fool.

Regardless of what anyone tells you, feeling wealthy is all in the mind. If you wake up everyday excited and optimistic and grateful for what you have, expecting great things to happen in your life, you are surely wealthy. What that bank account reads is almost entirely irrelevant. If you're living life in faith, feeling grateful for all the bounty you've got. I've spent countless afternoons at the finest cigar stores from New York to San Francisco listening to grumpy old men worth millions, sometimes even billions, bitch moan and complain about how shitty their lives are, how much they hate their ex-wife, disapprove of their children, and despise everything from the mayor of the town they live in to the US Congress. This is not wealth. And this is not living a wealthy life.

If you ever want to see how the better half lives, or just get a good education in all things finance and money, take up cigar smoking for a few months. If you're female and feel that taking up smoking cigars is too distasteful for you, then tag along with your husband, boyfriend or a good friend and force them to do it with you. They won't be sorry. Besides the fact that there are very few things as satisfying as a good handmade cigar, what most people just don't know is that the richest men in the world hang out in these very quiet and private cigar stores all over the world. Every city in America has at least two or three of them. And there isn't a poor or middle class person in there. Except maybe for the employees themselves, who are always very decent fellows. The reason for this phenomenon is simple. Cigars are expensive. Not only does it take a lot of money to smoke them regularly (I spent $85,000 on cigars in the year 2004; yes I slightly regret it now, but it also brings a smile to face and make me laugh a little) but for whatever reason, once a man begins to acquire a lot of money, he just inevitably feels an inner need to take up cigar smoking. So as with all things temporal there is a cause to this effect.

Before both of us got married, Tomcat and I used to spend every Saturday afternoon after a good long brunch hanging out at De La Concha on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan smoking cigars and talking the good talk with all the older men that frequent this landmark hotspot. On any given day we'd bump into everyone from Rudi Guiliani to Jerry Springer (not as bad a guy as his television antics imply) to Mike Tyson to Reverend Al Sharpton to Donald Trump (he loves cigars more than he loves women and only second to his love for money...). There was a small group of us, I'd say about ten to fifteen, all men, who used to frequent this establishment with such regularity that we all knew each other by our first names, exchanged gifts during the Christmas Season (yep you guessed it, either a cigar, a cigar accessory, or a bottle of fine Port or a Single Malt), and asked about one another with a relatively sincere concern if we didn't see one or the other of the group for more than one "off night" out of every single day of the week. That's how cigar smokers are. It becomes quite a habit. And quite the gentleman's club.

The real teachable moment of this hair-raising adventure story is this though: Tomcat and I used to love hanging out and listening to this one old codger named Mel bitch about everything liberal; just because he was there I guess. It was familiar, often times entertaining, and occasionally educational. (There's nothing quite as entertaining as listening to a nasty old far-right conservative bitch about how "compassionate people" make them sick. It is just such a twisted viewpoint to have that the mere shock of it entertains; much like a horror movie I suppose). Of course we also enjoyed smoking with Mel because he was so wealthy and we liked picking up the odd tip or trick for money making that he'd inevitably let loose with now and again. But I will never forget the day that old Tomcat and I heard Mel complaining about the tax he had pay on the twenty-eight million dollars that he earned that year compared to the year prior where his accountant had gotten him off with a much smaller tax burden. Now remember, this man doesn't work. He is "retired." A New York Jewish man in his late fifties who lived right smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, the most expensive real estate on planet earth. (presently $1,300 per sq. ft. if you're into real estate and curious). Tom and I still talk about this amazing moment in our memory.

And it's really Tom who deserves the credit for this observation, more than I. And the observation was this. "Fishy do you remember Mel from De La Concha?" "Yeah, that nasty old rich guy who used to smoke the Cubans?" "Yeah." "What about him?" "I'll tell you man, how can someone be that miserable all the time? Do you remember how angry and bitter that dude was?" "Yeah, I guess now that you mention it I do... I haven't thought about him in a while actually. But yeah, dude, you're right. What was wrong with that guy?" "I don't know bro... but if I had that kind of money I think I'd be happier than that." "Well, see, that's what we all think isn't it? And yet there he was. He didn't like his wife. He didn't like the mayor. He didn't like the President. He hated almost everyone who came in to the cigar store..." "I don't know why he always let us sit with him..." "Probably because we posed no threat to him. I mean we were just young guys who sat with him and didn't say much and dude honestly, we never spoke up against him, no matter what he said. You know? I mean I don't think I ever agreed with one damn thing he said. I just wanted to listen and learn from him, as far as the business kind of things he talked about, investing and all that. It was insightful at times...." "What a miserable prick he was though," Tom commented laughing..

And there it was. A perfect example of how unwealthy one can be regardless of how much money they're sitting on. And there we were, not poor by any measure, but certainly not rolling in millions. At that time in my life I was financially comfortable. In other words, I didn't "have" to work for a living. I had already done that, early in life; I was lucky I suppose. But I also worked my tail off. And I also took a lot of major risks that would scare the bejesus out of most people. So by age 30 I had reached a comfortable place financially where I didn't "need" to work to make money as much as I just "needed to work." To keep my sanity. And to satisfy my craving for accomplishment. And though I wasn't a multi-millionaire, I was happy. I was content. In that I was a much wealthier man than old Mel from the cigar store.

Of course things changed for me once Cleopatra Ecstasy took everything I owned and more right out from under me. But that's another story and has already been written about extensively in previous entries of previous years here in these same diaries. Only thing I think that can be added to that story now is that even then, even after waking up one day a wealthy man, as I had for so many years prior, to discover that I was flat ass dead broke and that it happened to me literally "overnight" and worse yet the deed was perpetrated by someone I thought I loved dearly and vice versa, someone I lived with for six years and was engaged to be married to... even after all that, I was still happy. Maybe even "happier" I sometimes think to myself. From hero to zero literally overnight to the point that at the lowest point of my "poverty stage" I found myself collecting aluminum cans to trade them in for $5 a pound. And yet all the while I was still happy. I remember my friends and family occasionally asking me "how the heck can you walk around so happy all the time with everything you've been through over the last two years?" My answer was always "I'm not quite sure. I mean, I'll tell you one thing... I can't quite describe it... but before when I used to have a lot of money, I felt a little isolated from everyone around me. As if there was something wrong with me for being so rich. And now at least I feel sort of "at one with the people."" Not many people understood what I was talking about of course... but I did. It was true. Truth was speaking. I'd trade that big bag of cans in at the local grocery store for ten to twenty bucks and man you just can't feel any closer to "the people" than that. By "the people" I mean the every-man on the street. The old ladies wheeling the little roller of grocery bags behind her on her way home from shopping. Or the cashier who used to weigh my bags of cans. No more Mr. Bigshot wondering why that cashier seemed to look so down on me when I shopped there. Nah, not me. I was no different than she was. We were united in our brokeness. And the same went for all the musicians that I'd hang out with. No more pulling up in a convertible BMW or a black limo. I became a subway guy. A bus riding guy. Just like everyone else. And in that simple change of circumstance came a profound change of my mental state.

But here's the catch in case you're now thinking about giving all your money away to a charity so you too can feel that sense of oneness with the people. That wasn't what made me happy. Hell, I hated being that poor. And after a few months of it, I realized that being one with the people isn't all it's cracked up to be. No, what really kept me happy was the fact that I had one hundred and ten percent conviction that no matter how broke I was during that period that it wasn't going to last that long. I just knew that I was destined to re-gain my financial wealth again. I blamed God for my predicament for a while there. Until a voice in my head told me that "God didn't do that to you; another human did that to you. God is the one who's providing all these generous people who have come to your rescue over the last year or two. That's God." And of course, that idea just made me even happier. I had faith in that. A strong faith. Blind faith? Maybe. But I've never met an unhappy blind person. So that label is fine with me.

So here we are. Six years after the anti-christ disguised as an innocent young femme fatale stole everything I own and I'd be a fool not to declare loudly and confidently that I've had one humdinger of a great time these past six years. I've traveled all over the world. Learned a few new languages. Made a ton of new friends. Solidified deeper connections with a ton more older friends. Created some awesome music with so many beautiful people. Married the woman of my dreams. Own a home twice the size of any I owned before. The list goes on and on. Money comes and goes as an issue. But good times never cease to appear. And I don't expect them to. I wake up everyday in expectation of good things, just an inner knowing that today is going to offer me and mine something incredible. Something to "Yippee!" about at least once or twice or three times. Today offered plenty. Yesterday too. Tomorrow won't be any different. In fact, being that it's my birthday, I'm expecting an even larger payload of good news to come my way.

Call it faith, hope, optimism... call it stupidity or foolish idealism. But if this is what being a fool feels like, I think I might just like being a fool. For it doesn't get much more ideal than this. And sure, I am very aware of the fact that my beautiful new wife and I do not currently possess the kind of money we desire or even need at present. And to that I say "baby please just try to hang on. Whatever it takes, we're gonna make it happen. I don't want you to "wait and see." I want you to "see it now." See how blessed we are. All around us, blessings. More blessings than we could possibly ever care to count. Feel how in love we are. My God are we blessed in love. Is there anything better than being blessed in love? Or being blessed to be in love? Our money will come. It always does. But love...? Well that's not something we can make happen no matter how hard we work. That's the wait and see game that can make even the richest person in the world feel miserable. But we no longer have to wait and see when it comes to love in our lives. We've got spilling out all over us from all sides. How lucky are we?

Well since I asked the question, I'll answer it. We're so darn lucky that I can guarantee you that as rich as we feel in the way of love we will soon be in the way of how much money we have. I can taste it. I hear it ringing in my ears. And I see it just behind my eyes when I close them to pray. We'll make our money Princess. There's no doubt about that. So let's enjoy this ride on the way to financial prosperity just as we did on our way to the alter. When in doubt, just close your eyes and say a little prayer. Not for money mind you. Because that's not really what you're looking for anyway. Pray for faith. Pray for our happiness. Pray for the world to become just a little bit safer and a little bit kinder and a little bit gentler. Have faith in it. All of it. If you do that, I promise you that no matter how much money we have or don't have on any one day or another, we'll have something much more valuable than all the money in the world. We'll have happiness. As we always have. Ever since we first laid eyes on each other. Is there any happier memory that either of us can recollect than that moment? And how big a part did money play in that? Exactly. It didn't. And truth be told, it shouldn't. Because our happiness didn't come from money. It wasn't dependent on money. Our happiness came from our meeting one another finally. After years and years of having money and still wanting. But we're not wanting any longer are we? How could we be? When in just a few hours we're about to once again wake up in each others' arms thanking God for this incredible gift called love. We can't buy that. And we don't have to try because it's right here with us, between us, surrounding us, within us. Love. Real love. Pure love. True love. And with this much love around me, I have all the faith I need and then some. So if you need a little now and then, I understand. Just hold me a little tighter and squeeze some out for yourself. I don't mind. The universe will make more. Good night my love. And good night my friends. Things may seem a bit rocky right now. But hold strong to your faith and I promise you that we will all be the happiest wealthiest bunch of fools that the world has ever known.

I love my dog

2011-10-18T06:03:00.001-04:00

I've heard people say this before. I love my dog. I've read it. Read about it. Seen it on tv and in movies. I've had friends who've uterred those exact words to me. I never understood it before. Before I had a dog of my own that is.
Don't get me wrong. Intellectually I got it. Dog is mans best friend and all that. And I also got how kind and obedient And loyal dogs are and how that might appeal to a certain kind of person. Besides that I also just always felt this intuitive knowing that dog people were warmer and somehow more down to earth than cat people; even though I myself was a cat person for most of my life.
Until five years ago when we picked a copper colored little fox like looking puppy out of a cage at the animal shelter. She was so scared from being abused in the first few months of her short life that she wouldn't even walk. We had to carry her everywhere. She also wouldn't look any of us in the eyes.
But all that changed eventually. Over time Penny, as she was simply called due to her color, slowly became more and more like a normal well adjusted family dog. Love is what did it. Just a lot of love. From all of us.
She's been with us now for over six years. And there isn't a day that goes by that I don't get down on the floor and wrap both my arms around her and give her a big hug. All 65 pounds of her.
Lately Penny has been sick. Not acting like herself. Turns out she has something called Pancreatitis. High blood levels of lipase. The vet says she will recover fully and heal on her own. Though each day she acts more like herself, we can tell that Penny doesn't quite feel like herself yet. So we worry a bit still. It's 3:00am in the morning here on the West Coast; which means that many east coast friends fans and family are just starting to rise and shine to get ready for their work day.
Penny isn't allowed on rhe couches or on our bed. It's just the way it is. But she spends all day following us around from room to room and at night all I have to do is say "penny c'mon and slap my hands against my hip or even just snap and up she comes to fall asleep wrapped up in a small circle that belies her large frame in her own bed down on the floor at the foot of our bed. She's been sleeping in our bedroom every night since we got her.
I've noticed that all night tonight I keep listening to her or for her just to make sure she is breathing. If she's too quiet I get up out of bed and walk over to her here in the dark and kneel down to pet her and check up on her. Past 3:00 am now and I still feel a bit concerned for her. A few minutes ago I got up out of bed to face the freezing cold of our room just to make sure she's still breathing. She made a kind of groaning or grunting sound and it was enough to assure me she's ok. But it also prompted me to attempt to make this note, despite how exhausted I feel right now, just to say "i Iove my dog." Because I do so much. More later. There are plenty of Penny stories to be shared. And those will come soon enough. But right now all I can muster the energy for is to report how wonderful it is to have her in our lives. I need to take a clue from Penny and go to sleep myself now. So sleep well Penny. We'll see you in the morning.

Crisis in Syria - WTF are we meant to do about this?

2011-10-11T20:44:00.001-04:00

This came in recently... An all time low. Using ambulances and "healing the wounded" as a way to lure protestors in so they can capture or kill them. The question that comes to my mind as a very staunch NON-imperialist is this: Are we supposed to help the people in Syria? Or not? America I mean. We help people all over the world. This is true. Sometimes we "help" when our help has not been asked for or even desired by the people. This is also true. (see Vietnam or Korea or Iraq or Grenada or Chile or Cuba etc etc...) Most of the time it appears to be only for political or strategic gain. True again. Every now and then we've been known to help "just because we should." That's true too. And that's some good feeling stuff. The American government isn't all bad. True again. But of course there are numerous examples of the US Gov not doing a damn thing in these cases because there's just no "benefit" to the current administration's agenda. Rwanda and Somalia and Darfur are all good examples. Not to mention the whole "Blood Diamond" crisis in Northern Africa. Nor Colombia where it appears we actually made things worse. Or Mexico. Or the whole Iran-Contra Affair... (not only did the Reagan Admin command and fund Iraq to attack and take over Iran (killing 200,000 Iranians); but after seeing that Iraq wasn't going to win the war after six years, they then started secretly funding Iran too, figuring that regardless of "who won" we could then befriend that winning country and gain cheap oil in the process AND an additional security foothold in the Middle East to help us "protect Israel" -- which still to this day I just do not understand the logic of... (unless of course these people are hard-core "christian fundamentalists" and actually believe that it's "God's will to protect Israel so Jesus can appear in the sky one day..." That's some scary Shiite if you're more of a humanitarian than a religious nut) -- but of course they also got behind the wrong team in Colombia -- "the wretched Contras" -- in order to oust that country's democratically elected leader, Sandinista). Truth be told, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to America's imperialist history. My God what a mess poor America has been in since WWII...

But let's forget about all that for a minute and just turn our attention to Syria... I'm not a techy. Nor am I much of a pure-aesthetic's kind of person -- we're all too busy at this point in today's world for that... so I am going to do what my techy-friends consider "the unthinkable". I'm going to copy and paste the content of an email into a blog. Yes it will look messy as all hell and contain tons of code that will fuck up all kinds of search engines. But honestly, compared to getting the word out, I really just couldn't care. So see the below. And let me know what you think we should do about our brothers and sisters in Syria.
Sincerely,
The Ambassador

Dear friends,

Syrian death squads are killing protesters in their hospital beds, whilst Russia arms the regime and blocks international action to end the carnage. But pressure is building in the region, and if enough of us speak out now, we could persuade Turkey and Germany to use their leverage to get Russia to stop propping up this murderous regime. Sign the urgent petition and tell everyone:

The Syrian regime has reached a new low, its death squads have begun using ambulances and hospitals to lure and kill wounded protesters. To end this carnage, we urgently need to bring global pressure on Syria's key backer and arms supplier -- Russia.

German Chancellor Merkel and Turkish President Erdogan both have strong inclinations to global leadership, and a great degree of influence in Russia. If we make a massive and public call to them to act, they will press Russian President Medvedev to stop blocking UN Security Council action on Syria.

Syria's horror hospitals are the latest in a string of unspeakable crimes against peaceful protesters. So far, Russia has faced little condemnation for its complicity in these atrocities, but we can change that. Together let's build a massive public call to Merkel and Erdogan to act and work with the Arab League to press Russian President to stop supporting Syria's brutal repression -- it will be delivered to their Foreign Ministries this week.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_horror_in_syria_a/?vl

At least 5,500 people have been killed in Syria, as many as in the entire Kosovo war. According to hospital staff and witnesses that Avaaz has spoken to, Syrian security forces have been using hospitals and Red Crescent vehicles to arrest, kill and torture dozens of pro-democracy protesters and detain doctors, blatantly defying international law.

Shamefully, two weeks ago, Russia led the United Nations Security Council in blocking global action to stop the Syrian regime's slaughter of innocents. Russia recently delivered high-powered weapons to the butchers and has given no sign it intends to stop.

But, right now, the pressure on Assad is mounting -- economic sanctions have left his army under-resourced and exhausted, and the Arab League has given him two weeks to enter negotiations with the opposition leadership. And there are two countries that can make a difference: Turkey, Syria's neighbour and emerging regional power and Germany, who is Russia's second-largest trading partner and traditional intermediary to Russia.

Both Turkey and Germany are sensitive to global opinion and vocally support the Syrian people -- and a strong push from all of us could get them to pressure Russia to stop propping up the regime. Sign the petition now and forward widely -- it will be delivered it to the Turkish and German Foreign Ministers this week:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_the_horror_in_syria_a/?vl

While some governments are despairing about what to do, Avaaz members are making a real difference in Syria. We've helped push through tough oil sanctions that funded Assad's crackdown -- Syrian activists have told Avaaz staff how crucial this support has been. We've broken the media blackout and worked tirelessly to document disappearances and other crimes, dismantling the regime's lies. Let's keep the flame of hope burning brightly and light the way to a peaceful, democratic Syria.

With hope,

Wissam, Stephanie, Sam, Ricken, Luis, Benjamin, Diego, Carol, Rewan and the whole Avaaz team

SOURCES:

Europeans spar with Russia, China on Syria at UN (Reuters):
http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/10/14/idINIndia-59902020111014

Turkey Steadfast on Syria Sanctions (Al Jazeera):
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/10/2011105134748573461.html

Syria Keeps Pressure On Protesters, Ignores Critics (National Public Radio):
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/16/141240546/syria-keeps-pressure-on-protesters-ignores-critics

Arab League Discusses Suspension of Syria (Wall Street Journal):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576634931272379572.html

Germany Russia's second largest trading partner (German Foreign Ministry website, in German):
http://www.avaaz.org/german_foreign_ministry

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Knee Deep in the Apocalypse

2011-10-11T01:20:00.000-04:00

The caveat: This may be the most important Post I have ever entered into the Transcendence Diaries in its ten year history. There. I said it. [If you want to skip all the literary mumbo jumbo and just get to the nitty gritty of this all important post, then just jump all the way down as far as you can go and read up instead of down. If you enjoy a good introductory set up with your stories, then continue from here]. So let us begin. I know what you're thinking. Well, at least I know what I'm thinking. So let me take that back about what I know or don't know about YOU. But... to me at least, Knee Deep in the Apocalypse was and still is meant to be the title of the next Ed Hale and The Transcendence album. So why then is it being used as the heading of a Transcendence Diaries entry? The answer is simple; and yet not something that I feel encouraged or even comfortable to write about. In fact my hands are shaking slightly as I type these very words we are both now reading.

It happened approximately forty-five minutes ago. We sat down to eat our dinner, and on this rare occasion decided to do so in the media room just so I could watch the Evening News. Princess Little Tree truly is a saint, despite not being recognized as such by the Pope. When I say watch the Evening News I'm not talking about sitting down to watch our favorite channel's news show, as in making a choice to watch either CBS or NBC or CNN et al. I watch them all. Simultaneously. Yep. It's true. Some are live. And some have been taped. (I DVR all of them. Every night. And every day. And then I delete them all. Only to turn around and do the same thing the following day. I know, it must sound twisted. But go with me here for a bit longer...)

Obviously the PBS News Hour is my preferred "favorite"; but in the span of an hour I will take in at least six to nine others. Six to nine different Evening News Hours all at once each and every evening. It's what I do. A method I developed many years ago. It's also just part of my "job;" if you can call "rockstar" a job then you're far more generous than I am. But God bless PLT -- she accepts the fact that we will be bombarded with story after repeated story after repeated story in my quest to "get the big picture;" slamming down evening news shows like a drunkard slamming shots of cheap scotch after a fall off the wagon.

I look at it this way. If you're going to watch FOX News then you have to watch MSNBC News. The only possible way that FOX News is ever going to come close to being "Fair and Balanced" is if one watches MSNBC at the exact same time. And vice versa. Put them together and you have a Fatboy Slim style mash up of the best and worst of far right and left partisan viewpoints. Meaning that somewhere in between the two lies the unbiased truth. And let us allow that using the word "News" here in this context is obviously more than generous, because let's face it: neither FOX nor MSNBC have ever really been "news" channels). Watching MSNBC without watching FOX is just as bad as the crusty old rocking chairs who only watch FOX. And of course the same goes for the necessity to watch the three Major Network News shows AND Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" for the same very reason. If one ONLY watches Democracy Now, they are going to get one hell of liberally skewed and biased view of the world, albeit a more compassionate one than FOX or most others for sure. But still, my goal is not to become aligned or indoctrinated by any one point of view or another. My goal is to observe ALL points of view so as to get a better understanding of where humanity as a whole is headed.

I couldn't care less about feeling aligned with any one point of view; (especially when one considers how tiny tiny tiny our world view is from the small hill top called the United States -- even smaller still from a cosmological perspective. Dig?) So we also throw CNN's Wolf Blitzer in there each night (and yes he annoys us every bit as much as he seems to annoy everyone else on planet earth, which does make you wonder "why and how do they keep him in that coveted spot then? But "liking the anchor" is not one of my prerequisites for taking in news. So too do we watch France 24, the BBC World News, Notizia Italia and Inside the Middle East.

With that said, this evening as we were watching as we always do, something terribly eerie happened. In that precise moment we were watching CBS. Nora Somebody was the anchor this particular evening. And she was reporting on the Dow Jones rally that took place today. Up over 770 points. Just a minute or two was dedicated to the old hat trick of "let's ask an expert on our panel" -- a gimmick adopted by the Major Networks in their attempt to compete with the racier Cable News Shows. And quite frankly a very unwelcome one at that. I personally miss the old days when news was news and not reality TV styled entertainment. I mean let us just for a minute ask ourselves "what on earth is Rachel Maddow?!?! Or Lawrence O'Donnel (sp?) (No I really don't care enough to verify if I spelled his name right. It just isn't important). But seriously. Who ARE these people? And what in bloody hell do they think they are doing?

Since when did the American people decide that it was OK to turn news reporting into a circus of volleying partisan politic opinions? But nonetheless now even the major networks are jumping in the game. If you can fit into a suit, manage to smile for a brief second or two, have absolutely nothing better to do with your life than sit at a desk for five minutes in hopes you'll be asked a question or two, then you're a good enough "expert" to take a seat at one of these tables and espouse your latest idea of the moment, regardless of your lack of knowledge or expertise. That just isn't an issue anymore it seems. So again, like many in our great Nation State, I sorely miss good old fashion news reporting devoid of agenda and/or opinion. Hence PBS News Hour being the last man standing when it comes to unbiased new reporting here in the United States.

So there we were. Nora reporting on the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumping up a whopping 770 points. The so called expert in the white suit spoke eagerly about "the reasons for the jump" (optimism about the Euro Zone possibly getting their shit together economically) as if it were really that easy to call the Market. (if it were, then we'd all be gazillionaires wouldn't we? So so much for anyone with half a brain believing this malarkey). But it was precisely THAT that caused this eerie sense of panic within me.

[Explanation Break: Just in case you are new to the Transcendence Diaries, or even if you're not, but have just forgotten this little known but ridiculously hard to fully fathom fact (forgive the alliteration -- I assure you it was unintentional). Get ready to choke on your Kool-Aid. For my entire life I have had a strange habit of "getting hits" as I call them, or "visions" if you will, that for ease of understanding could probably best be described as "psychic premonitions." Before you go choking to death from disbelief, disgust, shock or laughter, just trust me when I say that I spent the majority of my life in complete denial of this tendency. Yes I thought it odd, to say the least. And no I never considered myself "psychic." Not until the year 2009 that is. This should really be relegated to its own blog post, where I believe that more story would be beneficial. So let me try to sum it up as neatly and quickly as I possibly can, trusting that if interested you can do a search at another moment in time to learn more about this subject and how it came to be. Summarily speaking, in 2009 the twentieth or thirtieth (at least) psychic uttered the same exact words to me that I had been hearing all my life, that is: "You do know that you're psychic don't you?" Normally my pat response had always been to go silent and think to myself "Oh great, another one... If I were so psychic why on earth would I be speaking to you?" But this one got to me. She actually explained the phenomenon to me. And did so in a way that I found myself actually believing her. It didn't hurt that she also suggested a series of exercises for me to do every day in order to more readily tune into and perfect my gift/skill. Which I proceeded to do religiously. For months actually. Eventually I didn't need the exercises. I got it. It was as simple as recognizing that out of the eight Modes of Consciousness [see the site www.avatarepc.com for more on these ideas...], with Intuitive Mode being one of them, all of us are gifted with being more adept at one or two of these Modes more than the others; and for whatever reason I just happened to be very easily able to connect with my intuition more than most others, and for better or worse, I could connect with my intuition easier than I could with any of the other Modes of Consciousness. Bad for me if I need to "think" for example, because "thinking" is another Mode of Consciousness obviously. But that's not the point. The point is that once I had accepted this skill, a skill no different than any other I might add, such as surfing or knitting or picking hot stocks for example, I became better and better at being able to discern when I was getting "a psychic hit or premonition", and when what I was hearing or feeling was just "mind chatter." If you practice it you too can master it. Anyone can. The key to understanding this phenomenon is to understand that it isn't a phenomenon at all. It simply is a fact of human nature that we have yet to fully acknowledge in our evolution as a species. Hence the suspicion and skepticism most feel when they hear of such things. But as more and more of us are beginning to understand, I have come to fully accept this skill, some call it a "gift" -- I am not sure if that is an accurate label for it since I believe that all humans possess just as all humans possess the skill of being able to "cook" and therefore I find it hard to classify such things as "gifts." Being born 6'8" and being badass on the basketball court I would assert is more of a "gift" than being able to tap into your intuition in a manner that appears to be "psychic" to the outside world. Get it? For the last two and half years I have become so accustomed to accepting that there is a profound difference between intuition and mind chatter, and that these intuitive hits that I "get" are real and should be trusted, that my family and friends and I now take it for granted when I get one. We listen. We take them seriously. We do not ignore them or shrug them off as some people would. They have proven to be too accurate too often for us to dismiss them any longer. So there it is. End of Explanation Break]

As we watched this moment in the CBS News I got a chill all through my body. I turned my head slightly to the left and cocked it slightly down and rightward. As I always do when I'm trying to listen to or feel into just what exactly I am being told or hearing. Believe it or not, this helps. It is as if you are trying to hear a sound that is very very far away and hence trying to increase your concentration on just that sound alone. Princess Little Tree is my wife. She has been for over a year now. Before that she was my best friend for over nine years. So she is quite used to seeing this and knowing that I am "hearing" or "feeling" something that is "not right in front of us" so to speak. (Yes you could say that I "hear voices" -- except that I don't really "hear voices" -- it is more like I "hear thoughts or ideas."And yes my mind kicks in immediately sometimes and begins to argue with what I am hearing just as any rational person would. But I am slowly getting better and better at not letting my "thinking" get in the way of what I am "being told" or "hearing"). So Princess Little Tree asked me, "Honey, what is it?" She knows the look. She knows the signs by how I start to move my head and the look on my face.

I felt a profound sense of fear, sadness and panic swelling up in me. But I did my best to control it. My higher self was hearing something. My human self was reacting to it. That is perfectly normal. "My God... babe... I'm not quite sure how to explain it. It's not like usual... this one... it's hard to find the words..." She continued to look at me. Waiting for more.... As she was doing that, we continued to watch the news. Riots in Egypt. Riots in New York. And Seattle. And out and out murder and war in the streets of Libya. These images exacerbated the feeling; and the understanding of what I was feeling. "Honey it's not good..." I said, holding back an emotional reaction that was welling up inside of me that was nearly uncontrollable, "it's not good at all...." My face began to contort the way they do when we are close to tears.

"What is it honey?" she asked. "I'm not sure how to say it in words babe..." I replied. "I'm trying... it happened when that lady was talking to that man in the white suit about the stock market... it's as if I could see through it... I know that doesn't make any sense... but it was as if I were seeing ... wow... it's happening still.... even now as we're watching this" I pointed to the TV. The TV was still on but we had muted it. But we were still watching and even the commercials were eliciting the same idea in my intuition.... "OK well try. Try to explain it," PLT replied.

"Well, it's like I am seeing THROUGH what we are watching right now..." I stated quietly so as not to lose the message, my head still tilted, "do you know what I mean? Oh my God, I got it... honey.... it's just like when we are at the movies! It's as if I am seeing this stuff on TV right now from the future and the future is awful and all these people talking and doing all these things on the TV don't yet know it's awful but we do because we're in the movie theater and we have a semi-good idea of what this movie is about already... it's just like THAT... do you know what I mean?" I asked. "We bought our tickets and know what's going to happen in the movie is not good, but this is the very beginning of the movie where the writer and director are kind of setting us up for the big catastrophe so they don't just start the whole movie in the middle of the major plot. But the major plot here is real. This isn't a movie. This is reality.," I said.

"So what are you saying?" PLT asked. "What I'm saying is that I think we're on the verge of a major world catastrophe and nobody knows it. It's as if.... it's as if we are on the verge of some major transformation, like a mass cleansing... but it's going to get real ugly before it gets better.... God honey, I don't want to say this... I don't even want to think about it... but if I don't I would be totally sabotaging us, just out of fear. So look, let's just remember today. Let's just remember that today I said this. OK? So when it happens we remember... we have a record of it..."

"No. Absolutely not. What's the sense in that? I don't want to just "have a record of that" as you say! I want to know exactly what you're saying. So we can take the right actions. Like we always do," she said.
"OK fine. Honey we need to collect all our cash. We need to get all the cash we have access to or saved or stored away and we need to get it here, in our own possession. Something bad is going to happen. Something we aren't seeing yet. Something that has to do with money... or... no, maybe not, but something that is going to affect all of us financially. I'm not sure what exactly it is... but we're all going to need money. As if we aren't going to have access to our own money even though it's ours if it's being held in stocks or bonds or in a bank or other investments... we need to have it in our possession. Soon. Like now. Before it's too late. And we also need to get out of New York... not because something bad is going to happen to New York...I'm not saying that. It's more just the cost of us having two homes. It's too much money to spend... we need to conserve our cash reserves as much as possible. And our apartment in New York is expensive."

Princess Little Tree replied back "Perhaps this is why we are having such a problem renewing the lease there?!" "Yes. That's exactly why we are having such a problem renewing that lease. I've known it for a few weeks..."
"Why didn't you tell me this?!" she exclaimed. "Because honey, my head gets in the way and starts rationalizing and saying 'don't be ridiculous. We NEED an apartment in New York. It's where we LIVE!"
"But Babyjoon, how many times have we promised ourselves that we would never again question your intuition?!? Why do you do this? Why do you tell us that we can never doubt or not act on your intuition again after you're proven right and then turn around and tell me that we shouldn't listen to what it's saying about the apartment in New York?!"
"Well... because... I like living in New York. It's where I live. I love it there. My whole life is there. And besides, what if I'm wrong?" I said.
"Honey you're only saying that because you want to stay there. But you're right. It costs us as much to live there than it does here. And what you're saying is true, then we should act on it. And we should do so before we renew the lease for another year," PLT said.
"I know. I can see that. Perhaps we can still keep it. Perhaps we need to do both. We need to start...." PLT cut me off. "...we need to tighten our belts fast and start conserving our money. I feel it too now. Whew! I just got chills all over my body. I can feel what you are saying..."

"Yeah, you see what I mean? The next fourteen months are going to be insane. This election... and the fact that BOTH sides of the fence are now in the streets.... it's not just the radical hippies occupying Wall Street... the teabaggers have been marching in the streets for over a year now. BOTH sides are in the streets. But this isn't Tunisia or Egypt. The American people don't stand a chance of creating a revolution here. The government here is brutal compared to those countries. We aren't going to topple our government here. Have you seen how the United States government treats protesters here? They're full on storm troopers armed and dangerous. They attack us and beat the crap out of us and shoot us with mace, smoke bombs and rubber bullets. It's brutal. They've been doing it to us since the sixties. This government is not going down without a fight. And if we the people DO decide to fight, the government is going to beat the hell out of us and throw us all in jail. There isn't going to be any "American Spring" here. You know what I mean?"

"I've seen your photos on your website. i don't know how you put up with it. It's awful. It reminds me of being a girl in Iran. I used to come home crying everyday from college after watching the military beat the protestors with batons and sticks. I was always so frightened. That's why my parents sent me here," she said, shedding a tear.

"Well welcome to Iran part two princess. Because it doesn't appear that this administration is going to act anything like Obama promised during his campaign. He campaigned as "the peace president" and he's been more militarily aggressive than George Bush in the last two years! He's using drones now to attack four or five different countries at once now, and all the while pretending to be a peace loving president. Besides the fact that he's also not going to enact any real financial or economic reform to satisfy the People's requests for all this Wall Street cronyism to end. His whole cabinet is comprised of Wall Streeters."
"I know..." PLT said.

"In other words, Obama is not going to give us the hope that we all had the audacity to imagine for a few brief moments before his election. Instead he's going to keep everything the same no matter how many people of either side take to the streets. And if they don't like that we're taking to the streets, they're just going to hose us down and spray mace in our faces and shoot us with rubber bullets and arrest us and cart us off to jail. We don't stand a chance. We haven't since the sixties. And that's the thing princess... people today don't care. They're not going to stop "occupying"... no one is going to stop protesting or marching or demonstrating... the system is too foul now... it's too screwed up and crooked. And because of how easy it is to access information now, the American people can see it. And they want to change it. But the powers that be have no intention of changing anything. We're going to end up if we're not careful in another civil war.. but this time it's going to be the People versus the Government. And that doesn't even take into account what is happening all over the world with this guy bombing little towns all over the Middle East with these drones. There is just no way that the people who live in these other countries that we are constantly attacking are going to sit around and take it. Eventually they are going to find a way to strike back. And that's what I think I'm feeling... One attack, one disaster, one major catastrophe and they freeze the banks... and the only people who are going to make it are the people who are sitting on major reserves of cash on hand. NOT in the bank. You see what I mean?"

"Yes I do..." and off she went toward the kitchen to attend to more maternal matters. I sat for a while.... in the same position... feeling it... seeing it... but mainly feeling it... "You're going to be OK Fishy," I heard in my head. "But just do what I said. Do what you said. If you follow your intuition and act on it, you all will be ok..." I heard it loud and clear. And I felt comforted. But still nervous.

So up to my office I walked to make this note. For myself and others. Today is October 10th, 2011. As many other dates prior have shown in these Diaries, this is a record of the times. And a record of things to come. Let us pay attention. And start the process of protecting ourselves and our families as quickly as we can. I don't see things getting better. I am sorry to say. In fact I believe we are at the very beginning of things becoming much worse... knee deep in the Apocalypse but we just don't know it yet. It's only deeper that we go from here. May I be eternally wrong.

Hanging Tough

2011-10-10T19:09:00.002-04:00

Wish I had more time for this. But that's part of the problem with tough times isn't it? We don't have enough time for anything. Except for work. Or not. Times can get so tough that we can't even afford the time it takes to work. Unless we're out of a job .Which means we are working harder on trying to find a job than we would be working if we had a job. But that's just tough times talk re work or no work. But times can get much tougher than that. Much tougher. Indeed that's exactly where we are right this very second. So when it comes to not having enough time, it's an understatement. Forget about "not having enough free time." We're talking "not having ENOUGH time. Period. Forget about "free time."

Friends call or text or email or Facebook. They wanna talk. Wanna hang out. Wanna find out if you have some time. I try explaining that we don't have any free time. Don't have enough time period. But I can tell they don't realize what we're talking about. That we literally don't have any time. As in none. Zero. As in even if I keep up this same pace of working around the clock 24/7 and don't stop except to sleep (yes that means working while you eat, working while you're in the bathroom (on your iPhone), and working every other waking minute of the day from six am to one am the next day, that we will still not be working fast enough to keep up with all the work that is being thrown at us.

The King calls or texts every now and then. He wants to schedule appointments to talk. Rather than just texting a hello that could then yield a pretty decent two to five minute conversation that could at least keep us communicating, he only texts to try to arrange "an appointment to talk." Which of course there's just no way I can guarantee I can keep. Not with what we have going right now. And he also refuses to use Facebook. Which is dumb because part of my job is staying on Facebook 24/7, so there's a damn good chance that if he really wanted to talk to me all he'd have to do is jump on Facebook and grab me. We could at least share a few sentences back and forth.

Craiger's much better about it. He gets it. He texts whenever he has a second. We communicate thru whatever means necessary in order to keep the fire of our friendship together. We text good morning. We text good night. It's gay, sure. But it also helps us stay in touch as well as offers us a minimal but still impactful amount of the support we derive from friendships.

Spoke with Father Bloopy this morning. Both of us work at and own a company together, along with a few other people. And even with that, we go weeks and weeks without actually speaking in person. The rapid pace at which we work necessitates that we communicate with one another primarily thru email, Twitter, Facebook, or texting. We don't question it. It's just the nature of our lives right now. This morning we were both celebrating and complaining about how busy we've become. Yes of course it's good news. And at the same time yes of course it's terribly frustrating to be working 24 hours a day and not even have time to spend any QT with your friends or family or wife etc. To feel guilty when you take the time to shower or eat dinner with the family as opposed to at the office. Truth.

But more to the point, I told Bloopy that it wasn't just that we're busy here in the West Coast office with work. That every time he sees an email or a text from me or Princess Little Tree regarding "work" it should be viewed as a miracle. Because in addition to the 24/7 seven days a week work grind, we are also: still recovering from a devastating miscarriage that turned into a medical nightmare that is still going on now, two months later, in the process of a legal battle with our leasing company for our apartment in Manhattan and are being threatened with eviction for no apparent or stated reason, reconciling the fact that and trying our best to help my mom who is about to have to file bankruptcy and short sell her house, our family house! Horrible. Not to mention the constant battle over this strange illness I contracted eight months ago which refuses to go away. So it's doctors doctors doctors all the time -- either for her, or for me. Five minutes without wearing this Scopolomine patch behind the ear and I'm in the bathroom puking followed by passing out cold for an hour or more from the headache and dizziness that go along with it. No one can figure it out. Next up are the MRIs and the catscans of my brain. That's our last resort. We've been to them all, doctors that is. No one can tell us anything. Of course there's also the fact that financially we are way in over our heads like most people and on the verge of the unspeakable -- so the only thing we can do is work hard and fast in an attempt to try to improve things as quickly as possible.

And all of the above? That's just the "super hard challenging stuff." That's not mentioning the kids, the dogs, the mail, the office, planning and rehearsing the upcoming tours, the seven hour flights back and forth between New York and Seattle, the upkeep of the houses. Life itself is busy enough. Throw all these other things into the fire and you've just lit half the northern hemisphere with the golden blaze you've created.
So yeah, times are way more than tough. And that means we are way more than "too busy to have any free time". I go to sleep at 2 AM in order to sneak some more work time in after everyone in the house goes to sleep. By 6 AM I am awake, wide awake, my mind buzzing a million miles an hour, thinking, brainstorming and strategizing all these different crises we have in our lives right now. It's impossible to fall back to sleep when dealing with any one of the above mentioned problems, let alone all of them at once. My head just gets so wired and scrambled that I have to jump up and head to the office to try to improve or fix things.

But how DO we handle life when it looks like this? When you don't have enough time to pay attention to your personal life because your professional life is too busy; but your personal life is so fucked up and filled with crises that you don't have enough time to pay attention to your professional life. What DO you do?

You hang tough. That's what you do. You put everything and anything that you can off for a while in order to battle each and every one of these fuckers till they're dead and buried. You wake up earlier and you go to bed later. You do nothing but work. Around the clock. You also do a lot of praying. Remembering the old adage that God doesn't give you anything that he doesn't think you can handle. Which means you trust. And you have faith. And you don't give up. And you fight like there's tomorrow. You keep your eyes on the prize, look at the bigger picture, realize that "this too shall pass" and one by one, layer by layer, you bring down the beasts that haunt you. And in the end you become a stronger person by having to fight for yourself and fight for your family and always believe that you're going to come out winning.

Of course if you're like us, you also most likely possess a giant arsenal full of useful tools such as Avatar, Abraham, the Sedona Method and Tony Robbins. I still to this day just don't get the people out there in the world who refuse to take continued education in self-empowerment courses that are used and proven to work by millions of people and offer nothing less than "a better and easier ride through life." You see, it's not that you aren't going to encounter any problems or challenges in your life... you will. We all do. That's life. But it's how you handle those problems and challenges. THAT's the key to living the life of your dreams. It means that life may throw you a few curve balls, or even a few dozen, sometimes all at once! But you know without a shadow of a doubt that not only will you survive these life challenges, you will THRIVE.

I told Princee the other day that "i have absolutely no doubts that we will get through each and every one of these challenges, no matter how insurmountable they seem in the moment." And this is the truth. I've experienced life blowing up in my face and crapping all over me. But I've never let it get me down or hold me down. I hang tough. I keep my attitude one of gratitude. For things could always get a lot worse. And so I am grateful as hell that this is all we are experiencing; and for all the numerous blessings that God and life are throwing our way. Believe it or not, with everything we are going through, I still feel like we blessed beyond measure. And to me that is hanging tough. Life will always have its challenges. But it's how we deal with them that determines how successful and happy we are. Or not.

If I were a betting man, which I'm not, I would surely bet that despite how many problems and crises we are presently dealing with, we are still going to continue becoming more and more successful and more and more happy. If YOU are reading this and have experience with life throwing you curve balls the size of coconuts and the explosive power of hand grenades, you already know about what I speak. More power to you. And more power to us. If YOU are reading this and are experiencing similar challenges in your own life, trust me when I say that there is absolutely nothing that can happen to you that is stronger than we are as conscious human beings. You hang tough too. And I'll see you on the other side of this mess.
Peace love truth art beauty and happiness,
Fishy