untold journal

Luckiest Woman Alive Wins 4th Multi-Million Dollar Jackpot

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:34:00 +0000

Once, twice, three times a millionaire -- now it's four.

Joan R. Ginther, a native of Bishop who moved to Las Vegas, made her fourth appearance Monday at lottery headquarters in Austin to collect seven figures, lottery officials said.

Ginther, 63, won $10 million, the top prize in Texas Lottery's $140,000,000 Extreme Payout scratch-off ticket, pushing her total wins to $20.4 million.

It was her third time to win on a ticket from a Bishop store, and second one at Times Market at 525 Highway 77 Bypass, in Bishop.

"This is a very lucky store," said Bob Solis, store manager. The owner Sun Bae is the one with the lucky hand, Solis said. "Sun sold both the winning tickets to the woman."

The store, which sells about 1,000 lottery tickets daily, now is eligible to receive a bonus of $10,000 for the second time, lottery officials said.

"It's incredible for the store owner," said Bobby Heith, spokesman for the commission. "Most of our 16,000 retail stores have never sold a winning ticket."

In 1993 Ginther first won a $5.4 million share of an $11 million Lotto Texas jackpot for a ticket bought in Bishop. She opted for annual payments of $270,000 (excluding tax charges) for 19 years.

On year 13, while visiting Bishop to care for her father in 2006, Ginther won the top prize of $2 million in the Holiday Millionaire game. It was on a $30 scratch-off ticket she bought at Diamond Shamrock at 525 S. 14th St. in Kingsville. Ginther requested a lump-sum payment of about $1.5 million, after the 25 percent taken by the commission for taxes.

Two years later she collected a $3 million prize in Millions and Millions, another scratch-off, at the same Times Market where she won this week.

Ginther requested minimal publicity, according to the lottery commission, and could not be reached Friday.

The commission doesn't calculate the odds of winning millions more than once, Heith said.

"We have had multiple winners before," he said. "But she's obviously been born under a lucky star."

The Strange Science of Organ Transplant Memory Transfer

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Sat, 01 May 2010 12:16:00 +0000

The Strange Science of Organ Transplant Memory Transfer

Becoming an organ donor is a great way to help out a person in the event of one's death. A study has shown, however, that sometimes donor recipients take on certain characteristics or personality traits from the donor, a phenomenon that researchers are having a difficult time explaining.

Paul Pearsall, a neuropsychologist, wrote about this interesting topic in his book, The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy. In it, he provides insight into his belief that the physical heart contains within it memories belonging to its person. Part of Pearsall's research for the book included tracking several real life cases of heart transplant recipients who mysteriously inherited some of their donors' traits.

In one case, a Spanish-speaking man began using words that he had not used prior to his transplant. He received his heart from a man named David who had died in a car accident. David's wife, Glenda, when meeting the recipient of her husband's heart for the first time, used the word "copacetic" to describe the situation. The recipient's mother quickly replied that her son had begun using that word for the first time and that it did not even have a Spanish equivalent, indicating that he had adopted the word from David.

The recipient's son, who had before been a vegetarian, began craving meat and greasy food after his transplant. His music preferences also changed from favoring heavy metal to preferring fifties rock 'n' roll. All of these preferences turned out to be David's preferences as well.

In another case, an 8-year-old girl who had received a heart transplant from a 10-year-old girl that had been murdered, began to have nightmares about the donor's murderer. After several consultations with a psychiatrist, it was decided that the police should be notified. The 8-year-old recipient was able to identify key clues about the murder, including who the murderer was, when and how it happened, and even the words spoken by the murderer to the victim. Amazingly, the entire testimony turned out to be true and the murderer was convicted for his crime.

Pearsall's 73 different case studies point to the fact that both the brain and the heart hold important information about a person. According to his analysis, cell communication that occurs throughout the body on a continual basis can continue to occur after an organ has been removed from one person and transplanted into another. Information from the donor seems to install into the recipient's memory.

Critics argue that such a phenomenon is not possible, but the proof is in the cases themselves. In one case, a 3-year-old Arab girl received a heart transplant from an 8-year-old Jewish boy who died in a car accident. After her surgery, the girl asked for a type of Jewish candy that, prior to the surgery, she did not even know existed.

How to Be Anywhere in the Universe

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:31:00 +0000

By Michael Jura / Source: One Universal Mind

What happens to space/time?

According to the non-locality (bridging of space/time: Space and time does not really exist at the level of particles) principle of quantum physics that was proven experimentally in 1982 by the research team of Alain Aspect working at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Optics of the university of Paris, France, the inequality of John Bell had been finally violated and the Einstein/Poldowsky/Rosen (E.P.R.) paradox finally solved.

Hence Einstein had been wrong in refuting quantum mechanics principle of non-locality because he had conceptual problems with its extraordinary implications upon our so-called material world and the nature of reality.

To the layman this means that Einstein erred in assuming that speeds faster than light were impossible and/or that space and time did not operate at the quantum level (particle level).

By extension we can say that it seems that our phenomenal world is in reality supported by an indivisible reality, non-local (at that level space does not exist), and non subject to the restrictions of time (time does not seem to have any meaning at that level).

This is equivalent to saying that no element (alive or inanimate) in this universe is separate from another , although at the level of individual perceptions of reality it certainly seems to be so!

This correlates strongly with the Holographic model of the universe that the physicist David Bohm postulated as an explanation for the paradoxes that quantum physics raises.

David Bohm, who was one of the preferred students of Einstein at Princeton University and was part of the ìManhattan project? ( the development of the American A bomb during WW II), was considered before his death in 1992 as one of the greatest theoretical quantum physicist.

Bohm was puzzled by physical phenomenon such as the Quantum-Tunneling effect which is at the base of the semi-conductor theory and gave us the creation of the transistor, microchips, Josephson junctions in Super-Computers etc... where a particle such as an electron seems to know beforehand if a barrier that it will encounter is strong enough to repulse it back, and if this is not the case, the particle literally vanishes (dematerializes) itself before encountering the obstacle and rematerializes itself on the other side of the barrier.

For Bohm who took his clues from the model of the hologram, if as quantum physics suggests our universe is non-local and infinitely interconnected at some deeper level of reality, instead of viewing a particle as a material object traveling through space, it might be better to view it as something that unfolds out of a deeper level of reality that he coined The Implicate Order: a gigantic multidimensional holographic reality (outside of the realm of space/time) made out of vibratory light carrying information that would encompass the totality of Creation.

This Implicate Order would spread its tentacles to every sentient unit of Creation as it goes through a constant dance of unfolding itself into its mirror image as the Explicate World (i.e the reality perceived by our senses) and projects to each observing individualized piece of consciousness the illusion of a material world out there at the level of conscious awareness.

The implicate order ( let's call it the web of life) is where all possibilities are there and time/space has no meaning.

And the Implicate Order keeps on projecting out onto the consciousnesses witnessing the explicate world what we perceive as reality in a step-by-step fashion.

After each unfolding, there is an enfolding back onto the Implicate Order (while the sentient unit of mind become unconscious again) and the fetching of additional pieces of information that will unfold back holographically to the same unit of consciousness (as that unit becomes aware -- conscious -- again of the next step of the show of Creation).

So that in effect what a unit of consciousness considers a flow of situations is but a succession of discontinuous sensory imagery being projected on-and-off to an entity.

Therefore all an entity is, is a processor of information filtered through his senses that it translates as its reality. And that allows him/her to act upon (co-create) it by choosing the next step.

This would explain the reason, if we accept that reality at the macroscopic level is discontinuous under the illusion of continuity, why in Quantum Physics according to the uncertainty principle only the location of a particle at the microscopic level can at any point be precisely described but that its real trajectory cannot be known and remains ìfuzzy?.

It is the contact with the Higher Self (interfacing with the Implicate Order) that allows one to bridge instantly space/time.

This is why Remote Viewing is only possible and effective when one operates from the perspective of the higher levels of the subconscious mind.

If this level of merger with the higher level of the subconscious mind is not reached, too much static (noise) interferes in the viewing and one might fail while attempting to view a remote site in the present, past or future.

New Earth like Planet Discovered Gliese 581c

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:06:00 +0000

For the first time in history, an Earth-like planet has been discovered orbiting a distant star. The planet resides in the star’s “Goldilocks Zone” where liquid water –and life could occur. The team of Swiss, French and Portuguese astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 m telescope to make this incredible discovery.

At only one and a half times the radius of Earth, Gliese 581 C is the third and smallest planet to be discovered orbiting a Red Dwarf star located 20.5 light years away in the constellation Libra and the first one to approach the Earth’s size

Quantum Consciousness

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:05:00 +0000

Learn How to Use the Alpha Level to Think, Create, Innovate and Pull Ideas Out of Thin Air!

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 12:23:00 +0000

Learn How to Use the Alpha Level to Think, Create, Innovate and Pull Ideas Out of Thin Air!

We hope that you’ve had an amazing experience listening to The Silva Centering Exercise, where you learned to enter deep levels of relaxation and meditation.

This lesson will show you that by opening your mind to a flood of creative ideas and inspiration, you will be able to .

By simply meditating daily you gain immense life-long health benefits. This is commonly called passive meditation.

But there is another type of meditation that we teach at the Silva Seminar. We call this active meditation.

Rather than going to your alpha level and simply remaining there in a state of relaxed meditation, we teach you to use this level of mind to accomplish anything you desire.
Now the real fun begins.

You can use this level of mind to:

* gain inspirational ideas and thoughts,
* program your brain to kick bad habits,
* accelerate your natural healing process,
* develop your intuition.

You can even use this level of mind to create coincidences to move you toward your goals.

Today, we’re going to focus on teaching you how to use this level of mind to gain creative ideas or inspiration.

Perhaps you’re looking to write a term paper, create a marketing plan for you business or compose a song – you’ll learn how to tap into your inner source of creativity to guide you.
Gaining Inspiration From Within

Jose Silva used to demonstrate an experiment on creativity with kids in his hometown of Laredo, Texas. He would ask kids to think of solutions to a particular problem while they were at the beta, or waking, level of mind.

He would then guide them to the alpha, or meditative level of mind and ask them to think of further solutions. The children were always able to come up with more ideas while at alpha.

Does your mind function more creatively when you’re at the alpha level of mind?

There is surprising evidence for this, both from first-hand experiences and laboratory evidence. Napoleon Hill, the best-selling author of Think and Grow Rich and The Laws of Success believed that the human mind was capable of tapping into universal fields of intelligence to access ideas and inspiration.
Napoleon Hill writes:

The great artists, writers, musicians and poets became great because they acquire the habit of relying upon the still, small voice that speaks from within, through the faculty of creative imagination. It is a fact well known to people who have keen imaginations that their best ideas come through so-called “hunches”.

Hill talks about how one inventor from Maryland, the late Dr. Elmer R. Gates, used this technique to come up with over 200 patents. Gates would sit in his soundproof laboratory equipped with a pad of writing paper.

He would shut off the lights and ponder on the known factors of the invention on which he was working. He would remain in this position until ideas began to “flash” into his mind in connection with the unknown factors of the invention.

On one occasion, ideas came so fast to Gates that he was forced to write for almost three hours. When the thoughts stopped flowing and he examined his work he found that they contained a minute description of principles that had no parallel among the known data of the scientific world. Moreover the answer to his problem was intelligently presented in those notes.

The greatest inventor of our time, Thomas Alva Edison, used a similar technique. Edison was known for taking frequent naps in the middle of the day. It’s likely that during these naps he was entering the alpha level. He would often come out of these naps with the solution to problems that had been bugging him. Edison was awarded 1368 distinct patents and invented, among other things, the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the film projector, and the first motion picture.

Edison was known to have said, “Ideas come from space. This may seem impossible and hard to believe but it’s true. Ideas come from out of space.”
Where Do Ideas Come From?

Where do creative ideas come from? The brain? The mind?

For best-selling author Richard Bach, a Silva graduate, the idea came from a bird. Bach said this in an interview quoted in the November 1972 issue of Harper’s Bazaar.

“I was walking along one night, worrying about the rent, when I heard this voice say, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. But no one was there. I had absolutely no idea what it meant. When I got home, I suddenly had a vision of a seagull flying along, and I began to write. The story certainly didn’t spring from any conscious invention on
my part. I just put down what I saw.”

Silva Instructor Wingate Paine told us the rest of the story during an instructor training session in Laredo not long after the book became a bestseller.

Wingate said that Bach had written the first two-thirds of the book from a “dream-like” experience where a big seagull appeared to him and said,

“Take dictation, I have a story for you.“ But the bird faded away before the completion of the story. Wingate said that Bach told him he did not know how to get the bird to come back so that he could finish the book, until he took the Silva course.

Then he knew how to get to that “dream-like“ level and how to invite Jonathan Livingston Seagull to this creative level to tell him the rest of the story.

Bach said in a Harper’s Bazaar article that even before taking the Silva training, he’d come to assume that “there are certain ‘hidden’ capacities and powers which can be taught. I think there is a terrifically pleasant principle behind existence – do what you love to do and you’ll be guided. It’s a lot like flying a plane: You have to trust what you can’t see.”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull was an immediate hit. The book was a bestseller, and the movie based on the book was a huge hit. In fact, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and the books that Bach wrote afterwards helped to bring about a spiritual awakening on the planet, by helping people to understand and accept their own spirituality.
Intuition in the Business World

Does this concept have applications in the world of business?

Professor John Mihalasky, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineeringat the New Jersey Institute of Technology, seems to think so. In experiments he performed with company CEOs he observed that the CEOs who performed best in tests of intuition also tended to be the ones with the best success rates at running their business (measured in terms of 5 year profitability growth).

Prof. Mihalasky’s experiment results are summarized in the table below.
% Profitability Increase of the CEO’s company over the last 5 years CEO Intuition Test Score
Above Chance Chance Below Chance
Greated than 100% 81.5% 25% 27.3%
50% – 99% 18.5% 50% 18.2%
Below 50% 0% 25% 54.5%

Note that the CEOs with the greatest profitability increases (100% or more) also had the greatest number of correct “guesses” in intuition tests. 81.5% of them performed above chance results. On the opposite end, of the CEOs with the poorest results, none scored above chance in the intuition test. Of CEOs with mediocre numbers the results were consistent with statistical chance results.
What does this mean?

Perhaps Napoleon Hill was correct when he suggested in his book “The Laws of Success” that the most successful people of his time, had learned to tap into their sixth sense.

“A genius”, Hill said “is a man who has discovered how to increase the intensity of thought to a point where he can freely communicate with sources of knowledge not available through the ordinary rate of thought”.

This concept of tapping into a universal source of ideas also has applications in the world of science and technology.

A research director at NDM (New Foundations in Medicine) took a Silva course while working on a project to develop artificial arteries. He had come up with 4 different formulas while at beta, but none of them worked. Silva instructor Ken Obermeyer explained what happened next.

The NDM researcher used a technique he learned in class and programmed himself to have a dream that would contain information that he could use to solve the problem he had in mind—the best formula for artificial arteries.

“He awakened sometime during the night,” Obermeyer said, “and wrote out a formula,” then he went back to sleep.

“When he awakened in the morning, he saw the formula, went into the laboratory, put a sample together, and found that the human body would accept his plastic.”

“One interesting note about this creative solution,” Obermeyer continued.

“The chemist said that if he had considered this formula on his beta information, he wouldn’t have believed it to be a formula the body would accept. He would not have come up with this solution through reason and logic.”

Here’s how you can use this technique.
The Basic Technique

Go to your alpha level using the meditation techniques you learned in part 2 of this lesson.

When you have reached your alpha level, think of the problem you wish to solve.

When you quiet your personality during meditation you open the channel for higher wisdom and guidance to come to you through your intuitive mind.

Analyze the problem from all aspects and bring to mind all points of information or data you have on the problem. Frame the specific questions in your mind.

Now let your mind wander. Jot down any interesting ideas or thoughts that come to you. The answer may come to you through words, mental pictures or feelings.

The Illusionist Of Brad Christian-Ninja 2 : Weapons

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:15:00 +0000

D.R.C- I Only Bleed For You

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:04:00 +0000

what does it mean to be a man?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:08:00 +0000

viewed one way, one could say that a boy becomes a man by undergoing
coming of age rituals that society deems necessary. traditionally, we
recognize this in many ways: religiously (bar mitzvahs or confirmations
for jews and christians), legally (age of majority), educationally
(graduation from school), sexually (losing one's virginity*) and a whole host
of other ways.

these are, of course, completely useless when speaking of individuals,
and that's what i want to talk about here.

i have a great fondness for coming of age stories: one of my all-time
favorite movies is stand by me, and not just b/c it happens to have a
kick-ass soundtrack. it speaks of friendship and the transition from
innocence to experience--or if you prefer, from boyhood to manhood. and
while maybe the four aren't men at the end of the story, they're no longer
really boys anymore, are they?

as i look around, i see a lot of folks who may legally be men, who may
chronologically or physiologically be men, but they're nothing but
little boys transplanted into bigger bodies, and really, it all comes down
to one word: responsibility.

responsibility is the trait of being accountable for what you do and
say, at its most basic level. but we all understand responsibility in
that way--i won't insult your intelligence by droning on and on about it.
no, what i want to talk about is the ramifications of responsibility,
because there are a few:

what you say
the things you say make up half of what people know about you. and i
regularly see people who physiologically or chronologically might be
called men but ultimately fail to be men. this bothers me, and it should
bother you, too.

i'm talking about being man enough to say "i was wrong: i screwed up
and i will fix this" when you've been or done wrong. infallibility,
despite what the vatican says, is simply not possible for humans. we're all
of us flawed and therefore, we all make mistakes: of inattention, of
ignorance, of just plain being wrong, whatever. so if you find yourself
in such a position, own up to it.

i'm talking about being man enough to say "i feel this way" about
things that matter. don't let society or culture tell you that it isn't
"manly" to talk about the things that matter. be man enough to lay it on
the line. be man enough to see a person hurts and give that person some
compassion. it costs you nothing, and you might need that yourself some
day. be man enough to say that you don't care how it makes you look: if
you can't be true to yourself, you can't be true to anything.

i'm talking about being man enough to say "my mistakes are mine, not
yours". don't try to hang your screw-ups on someone else, least of all
the people you claim to care about. it doesn't matter if someone provoked
you, or if something pissed you off: you and only you have
responsibility for what comes out of your pie-hole. don't make excuses--"o, i was
drunk", "o, i was tired"--that doesn't wash. you know it doesn't. don't
try to make it sound like you believe it for a nanosecond because we
don't believe and deep down, neither do you.

that's what i mean about taking responsibility for what you say.
anything less is the province of little boys. don't be a little boy.

what you do
the things you do make up the other half of what people know about you.
again, i regularly see people who i would expect to act like men
behaving like little boys. and that doesn't just bother me: it pisses me
off. and it should piss you off, too, because it's easy to say things:
it's usually harder to do them.

i'm talking about being man enough to confront your fears. don't be
afraid to see the doctor because you're afraid the doc is gonna tell you
[x]. you don't know what the doc is gonna tell you. of course you don't:
you aren't a doctor. and even if you are, you know that self-diagnosis
is impossible. so go see the doctor. get off your butt and go. people
in your life need you not to be hospitalized because you ignored
something when you knew something was wrong. because if you do, you've just
let fear steal your manhood, and will continue to let it rob from you
every time you make excuses. conquer fear. that is being responsible for
what you do.

i'm talking about being man enough not to put things off that matter.
are you happy with your job? no? then go and find a new one, or make the
current one better. there's hundreds of jobs out there. you might not
have found it yet, sure--hell, i know i haven't. but it's there and
it's waiting for you. have you been putting off taking care of things
around the house? close the browser and do it now. all this will still be
here. have you put off doing something nice for that special person in
your life, or your kids? then why the hell are you wasting your time
reading this? go and make the arrangements now. that is being responsible
for what you do.

i'm talking about being man enough to not to need to control
everything. is there someone you're sharing your life with? wife, girlfriend,
fiancée? hell, significant other, boyfriend? do you spend your evenings
doing things that you want to do, or doing things that you both want to
do? think real hard about that: maybe that person in your life doesn't
want to tell you what she wants to do because you always say no. is that
you? if so, i say to you: be man enough to say, "look, let's do what
you want to do: whatever you want. maybe i haven't wanted to before but
it's time we do what you want to do". and for the love of pete: don't
make it a one-time thing. that is being responsible for what you do.

and that's what i mean by taking responsibility for what you do.
anything less is the province of little boys. don't be a little boy.

in closing
take responsibility for the things you say and do. these are how people
know who you are. everything you say or do is an indelible part of who
you are.

ladies: if you're going to print this out or send the link to someone
you think needs to see it--and i invite you to do so--tell 'em to
register. i will knock some damned sense into him and i know i can rely on
quite a few of the others to do the same.

men: what say you, men? can the ladies--or men, for that matter--count
on you to knock some sense into the little boys out there masquerading
as men? cuz i've got a cluebat here just waiting. how about you?

so: think i'm completely full of it? am i making sense? tell me: i'm
man enough to take it.

ed

*losing one's virginity is of course is the coming of age ritual that
means the very least. how did such a meaningless thing come to take on
such importance? the mind boggles.

10 Things I Hate About Being Sick

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 08:06:00 +0000

I have no energy.
I wake up with a throat coated with gross filmy mucous.
My throat is also "coated" with pain.
I can't concentrate on the work I do need to get done.
I'm grumpy because I have no energy and can't concentrate.
I have no appetite.
Taking a nap during the day throws off my sleep schedule, which makes me even more grumpy.

Predator as Protector

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:50:00 +0000

Yesterday, I posted about my experience with an intruder in my motel room during my move to Mexico. At the end of the story, I told how I remained somewhat traumatized for a while after that happened, and because of my fear, I let my new boyfriend move in with me, because I felt safer with him in the house. That got me to thinking about other times in my life when I've relied on a man's company to protect me or give me a sense of security in the face of danger (real, perceived or potential) from another man or men.

For example, I wanted very much to go to Morocco the first time that I traveled to Europe, but I'd heard that it was very unsafe for women traveling alone, as I was, so I didn't go. Years later, I finally got to go with an old boyfriend, and we had a great time. But I think I would have had to deal with a lot of harassment, or worse, if I didn't have him with me.

I'm probably not the best person to be writing about this, because I don't often turn to men for protection. But my point is that many women do. We live in a world that is much more dangerous than most men can even imagine. Sure, men get mugged, and murdered, etc., too, but women are much easier prey when you consider the relative sizes and strength of the average male and the average female, so we get attacked much more often, whether on the streets by a stranger, or in our homes by a "loved one." And when a man is attacked by another man, his strength is usually more evenly matched with his assailant's and so, he's at least got a fighting chance, unless there's a weapon involved. When a woman is attacked, it's usually by a man, and any woman who's taken a decent self defense class can tell you that even the smallest of men is harder to fight off than the largest woman.

So, what do we do with this fear that we live with, on some level or another of our consciousness, on a daily basis? A lot of times, we turn to men for protection. Like me having my boyfriend move in with me, or finding a male travel partner. And when I lost my virginity in a date rape, who did I turn to for comfort and consolation? .... the guy who had just raped me. I'm sure the rest of you can think of plenty of other examples from your own lives.

Why am I writing about this? Because it makes me so angry! When you think about it, here we (women) are living in a world made dangerous for us, largely by men. And who do we turn to for protection? Men. In other words, our oppressors are also our protectors? How sick is that? Did you ever think that the world is set up in this way just for that very purpose... that men create this dangerous world for us to live in, specifically so that we will turn to them for protection... so that we will need them?

Yes, yes, I know that there are no board rooms full of men, sitting around deciding these things. But that's not how social institutions are created over the long run anyway. Do you think that there is something deep in the male psyche that tells them to create a world in which they might be considered indispensible to the female of the species? (and this was the only idea they could come up with?) Could it be a survival mechanism, because science will soon make them obsolete (for reproductive purposes), and, somehow, that knowledge was programmed into primitive man? Okay, that was a little tongue in cheek, but seriously,

If you are a woman, do you rely on men for protection from other men, and if so, does it make you angry?

If you are a man, what thoughts do you have on this. Can you see how our world is different from yours because of our (typically) physical disadvantages? How would you deal with it if the shoe were on the other foot?

Cheap Psychological Trick #1

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:48:00 +0000

I once found myself in the International Airport in Mexico City with a hankering for something to eat. There were plenty of restaurants in the terminal, and I was particularly attracted to one that had big pictures of their entrees on the outer wall facing some of the seats in the waiting area by my gate... sizzling seafood, fajitas, hamburgers... it all looked so good. My mouth was just watering.

I checked out the prices on the menu posted outside the door, and I guess I wasn't surprised that they were about three times what I would pay on the street, but cheapskate that I am, I just refused to pay those prices. The bastards think they've got you where they want you, just because you're in an airport terminal, and you can't go anywhere else to grab a quick bite. But I wasn't having any of it.

I went into one of the little shops in the terminal and bought myself a couple of bags of Cheetos. Then, I sat myself in one of those seats facing all the pictures of the restaurant's mouth watering entrees, and I ate my Cheetos, savoring every one, letting it melt in my mouth, while I looked at the pictures. By the time I was done, I felt just as satisfied as if I had sat down to one of those meals, but I'd paid a fraction of the price. (okay, yes, I did pay three times as much for those Cheetos as I would have on the street, but it was a lot less than buying one of those meals).

So, next time you find yourself in a similar situation, try out this cheap psychological trick and let me know how it works for you.

When a Woman Cries

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:45:00 +0000

Just a week after I moved into my new place, I was hard at work, writing lesson plans for the marathon English lessons I was going to be giving at the airport form my new job. It was exhausting work, mostly because it just involved so much thinking… and pondering, and hesitating, and re-thinking. Oy! Because I hadn’t worked in five years, and because I was going to be observed the first day on the job, I wanted to make sure that everything went absolutely perfectly, and that meant timing everything just right, integrating all the specific needs of the air traffic controllers into the lesson plan, including some relevant grammar points, preteaching new vocabulary, and tying everything up with a production exercise at the end. (I’ll bet you never thought that teaching language was so complicated, did you?)

By 11 p.m., I still had a long way left to go, and only one day left to do it in, but I was so exhausted that I thought I could do a better job if I went to sleep and got up early Sunday morning to finish it off. So, that’s what I did. Not 15 minutes after I turned the light off, I heard my flatmate, The Transformer (TT) come home from work. She banged around in the kitchen for a few minutes, and I was too tired to even get annoyed about it. Then, I heard her knocking softly on my door. There was no way I was getting up to chat when I was so tired, so I just kept quiet and ignored the knock, hoping she would get the idea that I was asleep. That’s when I heard my door open.

I couldn’t believe it. I’ve lived with a lot of people before, and nobody has ever breached the sanctity of the closed bedroom door before… and if you know anything about me, it’s that you just don’t fuck with my sleep. That’s sacred. So, I was already annoyed when I gave out a little grunt, hoping she would take the hint, realize I was sleeping and go away. But no. She ventured a step or two into the room and asked if I was sleeping. I got up and staggered toward the door to see what she wanted.

“I’m lonely,” she said. I felt a sudden urge to pee and motioned her into my room while I went to the bathroom. When I came out, she had gone back to her room, but I was awake now, and my curiosity was piqued. I also felt like I wanted to be a good friend, and honor my commitment to the Most Important Person in the World. So, I went and got her, and brought her back to my room to talk. I sat on my bed, and she surprised me by sitting on the floor, even though there are about three or four chairs in my room.

“I’m lonely,” she said, and began to cry. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be in there… alone. I don’t want to sleep alone. Can I sleep with you?”

I knew what this was about. She’d told me that her reason for coming to Prague two weeks ago was that her girlfriend of 10 years had broken up with her. She still worshipped this girl. And, in spite of that, I felt from the beginning that she was developing a crush on me, and her request to sleep with me more or less confirmed it.

I have to admit that I had been toying with the idea, but wasn’t inclined to rush into anything for what I considered a very important reason. Anyone who has had a ten year relationship, and especially someone who is on the rebound from said relationship is not suitable dating material for me. I’m a menace to people like that. I am a confirmed commitment-phobe, not only with relationships, but with everything. I get bored with jobs, with homes, with cities, with countries.. I can’t even commit to a selection off the menu in a restaurant! So, when I recognize that someone is looking for the long haul, I back off, unless I’ve gotten to know that person very well, and think that I might be able to finally make a go of it, but I’ve never had a relationship last for more than a couple of years, and most of them have been seriously shorter than that. So, to just experiment with my sexuality (I’ve never been with a woman before) at the risk of her getting emotionally attached when it might not have staying power for me, would be emotional irresponsibility in the extreme on my part. I just wasn’t willing to do that.

And now, with her sitting on the floor of my room crying, all of the sexual tension that had been building up during the week I’d known her, dissipated instantly. That confidence that had initially attracted me was gone. That can happen to anyone, but this was way too early in our “friendship” for me to take it all in as a part of the whole. Suddenly, to me, she was her neediness. Suddenly, I felt pressure, obligation, all the things that make me suffocate. I didn’t want her happiness to depend on me.

I tried to talk to her about how she was feeling and why she was feeling so lonely. She remarked that I am all in my head while she is all in her heart. I nodded with recognition. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. It always feels like a criticism, whether people mean it that way or not, because I’d rather be a more feeling person. But I’m better with words.

She felt awkward and got up to go. I got up to, and she threw her arms around me in one of those A-frame hugs that women are wont to do. I knew she was holding herself back, and because I hate the A-frame, and I feel like, if you’re going to hug, you might as well hug, I pulled her closer to me and hugged her back, rubbing her back and trying my best to comfort her, but I felt clumsy and inadequate as she stroked the back of my head. I couldn’t find it within myself to turn this into a romantic encounter… not only because I didn’t feel it, but also because I didn’t want to take advantage of her vulnerability. And then, there was the feeling of hugging a woman… even this woman who claims to be a man trapped in a woman’s body. S/he just felt like a wisp of smoke… no substance… weak… like a child. And I felt like a man. Here it was again.. maybe lfbno7 was right?

I invited her to sit next to me on the bed so we could talk, even though talking wasn’t what she wanted to do. I told her that I felt like I was the man and she was the woman.

“I was born with this body,” she defended herself.

“It’s not that,” I told her. “It’s your energy. You have the energy of a child.”

She was surprised to hear it. I told her that I didn’t always feel that way with her, but in this moment, I felt like a mother comforting a child, or like a man comforting a woman. Mind you, this entire conversation took place in a combination of Polish and Czech, neither of which I have any handle on, so communication was sketchy at best.

She eventually offered to let me get some sleep, and I took her up on her offer, explaining how much work I had to do, and how I was going to be observed on my first day. She had apparently given up on the idea of sleeping with me. After she left, I turned my light off and lay down to sleep. She was banging around in the kitchen some more, and I couldn’t really interpret the sounds I was hearing, but at first, it sounded like she was rattling around in the utensils, and then it almost sounded as if she were moving furniture.

My mind was filled with memories of my early days in Mexico… my young boyfriend and his propensity toward suicide. For nearly two months straight, I had gotten nearly no sleep, between waking up in the middle of the night to literally wrestle the knife out of his hands (and he fought back so much that it often took hours), or to chase him down to the river and stop him from throwing himself off the bridge. I told myself that I was projecting. I told myself that I wasn’t responsible for her actions. Then, I told myself that I had to get up and check it out. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t.

Her door was closed, and I knocked hesitantly. She bade me to enter, and I did. She was sitting in front of her table with some food. I told her I had heard some sounds and was afraid that she might be doing something bad. She laughed and said that she’d been opening a can of peas. (Yet another house without a can opener… and the knives here are dull!)

We chatted for a while, and she noticed that I was standing and invited me to sit down next to her on her bed, which I did. She said that it was better when our eyes were on an equal level. I agreed, and asked her, why then, had she sat on the floor in my room. She said she didn’t want to sit on my bed. I asked why. She said,

“Because you’re lovely.”

She added that she would have wanted to kiss me. Then she asked if she could kiss me, and I told her,

“Not now.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know. Maybe sometime when it’s more natural.”

But to tell the truth, I didn’t know if it was ever going to be natural enough. The tension had been broken. She’d gotten to easy. She wasn’t a challenge anymore. Once lost, could that ever be regained? I doubted it. And what do these thoughts say about me? What would I say or think if a guy expressed the same thoughts?

I went to sleep and didn’t see much of her for the next few days because of our conflicting work schedules. There was a night when she wanted me to go out to watch country dancing with her, but I had taught all day and then done some apartment hunting, so I was beat, and I declined. Instead of going herself, with the friend who had invited her, she stayed home with me, for the little bit of time I could give her before I had to turn in.

Last night, after my second day on the job, I was exhausted again (I have to get up at 5:45 am to get there on time). She invited me to go to a club, but in addition to being really tired, I’m just really not into clubs. She told me it was not a typical club and that I would like it, but I just couldn’t get myself awake enough to think about going out. So, she suggested that we stay in and make our own club… with our own music, etc. I told her okay, as long as it was quiet music. I didn’t really feel like doing anything. Just wanted to be alone. I didn’t like this feeling of obligation to spend time with her all of a sudden. Doesn’t this seem ironic after I spent the whole summer feeling so lonely and chasing after all those pirates to no avail? That’s pretty much how it is with me. I need to be completely in charge of my own life. Can’t stand to have to live up to other people’s expectations.

She told me to relax, and that she had a surprise for me. Later, she came in with a bottle of wine and poured us two big tumblers full (we don’t have wine glasses). I told her she was crazy to give me so much, and that I wasn’t going to drink it all. I went to get a smaller glass to pour it into. She also brought in a bowl of crackers. I recognized that this was all a financial sacrifice on her part, and winced at the thought of how important she was making me.

While we sat there and talked, she remarked that I was mysterious, and that I had many secrets. I laughed and told her I didn’t have any secrets. She could ask whatever she wanted. Instead of asking questions, she brought in a small painting canvas stretched over cardboard and suggested that we do some art therapy. She told me to draw something. What on earth was I going to draw? Anything, she said.

While she busied herself looking at my Czech language book, I started sketching, and what came out was a drawing of my cat with a halo around her head, and a ray of light slanting off to the right from the halo. She had angel’s wings and I drew a heart on her chest. Then, I drew 17 different kinds of flowers, to represent the 17 different varieties of wildflowers that I buried with her. I’ll have to explain the symbolism of all this in another post, but I explained it to TT, and told her how my cat had sacrificed her life so that I could have my freedom. It brought tears to TT’s eyes. For myself, I knew that if I let myself feel the story, I would be in tears, too, but I didn’t want to get vulnerable with her, so I kept my thoughts divorced from my words.

TT told me that she was experiencing so many feelings after hearing this story. As usual, she didn’t want to express her feelings with words. Words, it seems, are not her thing. Then, she went on at length about how much she was attracted to me, and that I was like a magnet for her. She couldn’t tell me why. She added that she felt like a teenager around me, and that she usually isn’t like this… that she’s usually just the opposite. She said she was falling in love with me, and I told her that she doesn’t know me. She said she recognizes my energy. I didn’t encourage her, and I could feel her pain. I don’t want to be responsible for her pain. I’m not responsible for it, but I feel like I am, and I don’t like the feeling of obligation that comes along with that.

She asked if I wanted to go to sleep, and I told her I did. The wine had hit me like a ton of bricks. She asked if we could sleep together, and I told her no. I felt her pain again, but she was a man about it. She went off to brush her teeth, and I got ready for bed. I opened my door to wish her goodnight. I wished we could go back to the way things were the first night we met and we had so much fun and just enjoyed each other without any expectations. I guess you can never go back.

I’m going to have to find a way… soon… to tell her directly, but gently… that it’s just not going to happen for us. And I’m going to have to take a look at why I’m only attracted to a back walking away. I spend so much energy whining that there’s not any love for me… but when it comes my way, I question it, and I reject it. Is it my destiny to be alone in this world? It sure seems that way. But still, being alone is much more palatable to me than feeling suffocated. Isn’t there a happy medium? God, do I miss Pegleg!

Can You Feel Compassion for a Cockroach?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:44:00 +0000

The first time I ever saw a cockroach, I was 16 and staying in the dorms at the University of Houston. I got up off the toilet and turned around and there it was! That sucker was a good three or four inches long and it could fly! Eeeek! I don’t think I slept a wink the whole five days I was there. I just sat in the middle of the room, on top of my suitcase (as if that could stop them from reaching me), with the light on, playing cards all night with my roommate.

I didn’t see another one again until I moved to Florida about 15 years later. Because of the hot, humid climate, they were everywhere. Only, they gave them the cutsie name of Palmetto bug. It didn’t help. I still screamed the first time one brushed against my bare foot while I was feeding my cats. Fortunately, they only came in when it rained hard, because the apartment management came in and sprayed every month.

I soon learned that it didn’t pay to try and smash them, because they were so hard that they usually didn’t die anyway. So, I just got in the habit of scooping them up on the dustpan and throwing them outside. I eventually got to the point where they didn’t particularly bother me anymore. Then, I moved to Colorado and didn’t have to worry about them for a long time, but when I moved to Mexico, there they were again.

By then, however, after living with three cats for about 15 years, I had developed a different attitude toward the animal world. The longer I lived with them, the less I wanted to eat them or kill them. (I should qualify that… I do still eat meat, but I am moving steadily toward vegetarianism). I had long since stopped killing ants, spiders and mosquitos, and I no longer had the inclination to squash or poison someone just because they were bothering me or invading my space. Yes, I realize I said “someone” and not “something.” There’s a reason for that.

When I looked into the eyes of my cats, I saw a person, that is to say, a soul. And I felt compassion for those souls. Now, I know that isn’t unusual. A lot of people feel compassion for cats, dogs and other cute, furry creatures, especially their own pets. But what about the critters that ain’t so cute? Let me tell you about my pet cockroach.

This happened at a time when I only had one cat left. I was living in Mexico, and in spite of the humid climate, I didn’t get many roaches, because I lived on the second floor. But one summer, we were getting huge amounts of rain, and it wasn’t unusual for me to have to scoop one or two of them up every day and toss them out the door. After a while, the rains stopped, and I didn’t see many any more.

Then, one night, I came into the kitchen and turned on the light, and there was a rather large cockroach sitting on the drainboard. I went for the dustpan and went for it, but he was too fast for me. He got away that time, but I swore I would get him the next time. We played this game every night for about a week or so. I tried outrunning him. That didn’t work. I tried a slow approach. That didn’t work either. I tried explaining to him that I wasn’t going to hurt him, just relocate him. But that didn’t work either.

As I looked at him from across the room, I could actually see the fear in his eyes. And it was then that I decided to stop tormenting him. From then on, when I would come into the kitchen at night and see him there on the drainboard (he was always in the same spot), I would just say “hi” and get on with my business. I would even joke with my friends that now I had two pets, a cat and a cockroach.

Unfortunately, “he” soon started reproducing, and my house was overrun. I had to do something, because I couldn’t go on sharing my house with an ever increasing number of cockroaches. I guess if I were as compassionate as I aspire to be, I could, but these are my failings. I was hopeful, though, because I had heard about a type of Chinese chalk that you could use to draw a line on the floor in front of doors and windows, and this would prevent the cockroaches from coming in. I thought, if I did that, then no new ones could come in, and I could eventually scoop up all the live ones and throw them outside without having to kill any of them.

I went to the neighborhood Chinese store and asked the store owner about the chalk. She said that the way it works is that when the cockroaches walk over it, it gets into their joints and causes them to slowly die. That sounded just as bad or worse than poisoning to me, and it was with a troubled heart that I set some traps and eventually got rid of my problem, but I was haunted by those fearful eyes and the glimpse they had afforded me into the soul that inhabited that crunchy, little body.

How about you? Could you feel compassion for a cockroach?

What is Home?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:44:00 +0000

I guess most people would answer this question by talking about a place. But it's never been that simple for me, and I guess that's why I ask, What is home rather than Where is home? I've been on the move my whole life. Before I bought my house, I had lived in 18 different places in 18 years. Different houses or apartments, different cities and different states. And since I sold my house, I lived in four different places, three of them outside of my birth country, before I took up a permanently nomadic existence. So far, this year, I've slept in 36 different beds, and there will be more before year's end. I usually feel quite at home wherever I am, but is that the same thing as having a home?

So, home as a place has been a constantly changing notion for me, and I can't think of my parent's home as my home, because I have been more or less estranged from them for most of my adult life, and they've moved around a lot in recent years, too, so I've never lived in or even seen the house that my parents live in now.

I used to have the romantic notion that I could find a feeling of "home" in another person... a soulmate. When I got married, I wanted to have Billy Joel's song You're My Home sung during the ceremony, because that idea of finding a home in someone while still clinging to my gypsy soul really appealed to me. That song expressed what I was looking for in a marriage. But my husband objected, because he thought that some of the lyrics..."use my body as your bed"... "You're my castle, you're my cabin, and my instant pleasure dome"... were too risque' for the relatives. Hmmmm, choosing decorum over romance... could that be one of the reasons the marriage didn't work out?

Anyway, I never have found home in the form of a person, because I've changed relationships even more often than I've changed homes. And not just romantic relationships. Friends tend to drift in and out of my life. Some are more tenacious than others. There is one ex-boyfriend that I visit on occasion. I refer to him as my emergency contact, because he is listed that way on my passport. He's probably the one person in the world that I would probably come back to if I ever decided to settle down. He's the closest thing I've found to a personified home. We're very comfortable together. We are equally weird. He makes me laugh. He likes me and I like him. We count on each other. But we've known each other for less than seven years. Where will our friendship be in another seven?

I've never considered my job to be a home, either first or second, the way some people do. And I've changed, not only jobs, but careers, almost as much as I have houses and relationships. And now, I've given up working (for a living) altogether. So, that doesn't do it for me either.

As I wander around in the world at large, I do feel that I am looking for something, and I've never known what that something was. But now I think I've got it narrowed down, and that is that I am looking for home. Whether home will turn out to be a person, place, thing, sight, sound, smell, taste or memory, I have no idea.

But this feeling of home does come to me in little glimpses once in a while. It doesn't wait to be invited. It just comes into my consciousness. Sometimes it's the smell of a freshly mown lawn... sometimes a light spring breeze coming in through my bedroom window in the morning... the sun dodging behind a cloud... a light spring rain... my favorite Christmas movies... a letter from an old friend... the taste of chocolate. Perhaps these bits and pieces are all I will ever have to call home. And maybe I've made a mistake in going to look for it. Maybe I just need to be patient and let it come to me.

What does home mean to you?

The Empire and You

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:43:00 +0000

Empires do not suffer

emptiness of purpose

at the time of their creation.

It is only after they have become

established

that aims are lost

and replaced by vague ritual.

Diary of the Princess Irulan

Frank Herbert – Dune

What is Your Definition of Heaven?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:42:00 +0000

Aw, come on... you knew this was coming, didn't you? So, tell me... what is your definition of heaven? Whether earthbound or celestial, what is the one experience you're just dying to have? I'll be back later to post mine, once I've seen a few of yours.

What Is Your Definition of HELL?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:41:00 +0000

This post was inspired by some of the responses to my recent post, What Is Your Greatest Fear? Changing tacks a little bit, what is your own, personal definition of hell? Hell on earth... hell in the hereafter... what's the one thing that, knowing you'd have to face it for eternity in payment for your "sins" would scare you into being a good little boy or girl? I'll share my definition after I've seen some of yours. I'll give you a hint though... part of it bears a resemblance to the theme of the movie Groundhog Day, and the other part has something to do with a certain someone with a suitcase fetish.
Okay... see you in hell!

Would You Sell Your Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:38:00 +0000

I just read this article in Yahoo! News about a guy who sold his life on eBay. The sale, which went for a hefty sum, included his "name, phone number and all his possessions, including clothes, CDs, a surfboard, a laptop, a wonky pushbike, childhood photos and a "nice lamp" given to him by an ex-girlfriend." as well as dinner with his parents, introductions to women he might date, and a couple months of follow-up support. What a crazy idea. When I read this, I of course thought,

"Who would want to sell their life?" I guess a lot of people would, especially the parts they're not happy with. But more perplexing is the question,

"Who on earth would spend almost $6000 to buy somebody else's life?" I guess that would depend on whose life it was.

So, let me ask... would you sell your life? Would you sell part of it? Would you buy somebody else's life? Whose life would you buy if you could?

Life's Too Short

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:35:00 +0000

Well, I finally committed to leaving this place. Life is just too short to stay where I’m not happy. It took a while to come to this decision, mostly because I’ve left so many unhappy situations in the past year, that I was beginning to blame myself for being intolerant or unable to get along with other people. But I finally came to the conclusion that that just wasn’t the case. Or even if it was, the end result was still that I’ve been unhappy here, and there doesn’t seem to be any other hope for resolving the situation other than to pack my bags and leave.

So, now that I’ve made the decision, even though I haven’t told Boss Lady yet, I feel so free. I may still be working for Boss Lady through the end of June… that remains to be seen. But I’m not terribly invested in the outcome. If she agrees to my terms, I’ll go ahead and finish out the school year with her. If not, I go my own way, and a lot of options open up.

I’m moving to the other side of town and will have my own room in a student apartment shared with four other girls. I’m sure this new living situation will bring its own share of challenges, but it has to be better than where I’m at now. And it’s just a three month layover while I’m deciding what to do with the rest of my life. I’ll be living with my friend, Magda, who helped me make the videos for the Little Box. I’ve met her roommates, and they all seem pretty nice. And their English is minimal, so I think it’ll be a good environment for improving my Polish conversation skills. And it will be fun just to have people in the house that I can feel comfortable talking to.

This move comes at a great time. Spring is on its way. The beer gardens are going to open up. It’s a great time to go for bike rides in the park and road trips with my friends. And in the mornings, while my roommates are all at school, I’ll have the apartment completely to myself, and I may even get some writing done during that time. Either that, or some meditation or yoga. Or some cooking. Yeah…. cooking! I can finally make my own meals! I’ll be healthy! God, this is going to be great. One more week and I’m outta’ here. Life is just too short. Why did I waste the last six months?

Vampires at the Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:30:00 +0000

I recently found a treasure chest of online videos… a stockpile of episodes of the old seventies soap opera… Dark Shadows. You know the one, featuring our favorite fanged fiend, Barnabas Collins… a sexy New England vampire. Watching a few of those episodes threw me right back to my early adolescence. Not that I ever spent much time watching Dark Shadows… that was a special treat that only seemed to happen while visiting my older cousin, Lulu, who was a die-hard fan (pun intended).

But what it brought to mind were all the Saturday afternoons spent down at the Garden Theater, watching double feature vampire movies. All the kids from school seemed to have the same idea. Our parents probably thought it was a good idea, too… getting rid of the kids for four hours at a crack for really cheap… I think it cost 30 or 50 cents to get in back then. My, how times have changed.

My memories of those Saturday afternoons are somewhat fuzzy, but I can recall with crystal clarity the taste of the many root beer barrels and lemon drops that I consumed in that old-fashioned theater… not to mention boxes of hot buttered popcorn.. with real butter, no fake coconut oil that the concessions staff have to tell you each time you ask for butter that the coconut oil tastes just like butter. If it really did, they wouldn’t have to keep telling you that. I guess, these days, they figure, if they just say it often enough, we’ll eventually believe that it’s true. After all, it works for George Bush.

But I digress. They were always vampire movies. Two vampire movies, back to back, week after week, and we never got tired of them. My favorite one was called, “The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth are in My Neck.” When I saw that movie, I think that was the first time that I ever saw garlic that didn’t come out of a jar. The villagers were wearing big strings of garlic bulbs around their necks to ward off attacks from vampires. Since then, I’ve always enjoyed buying garlic by the bulb and chopping my own for stir fries.

I couldn’t really tell you what the appeal of all those vampire movies was, but I must admit, they got into my blood, and I ended up reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Quite the gothic horror, that. Imagine how surprised my young mind was to discover that it was a love story of sorts. Imagine trying to make sense out of that at the tender age of thirteen or fourteen… right about the time when blood takes on a huge significance in the lives of young girls who are getting their first period. Finding a man who likes to drink our blood would eventually take on a whole nuther significance, but at that time, we just saw it as a vague hope of getting out of gym class.

Fast forward a few decades, to where I had left my interest in vampires far behind, or so I thought. Then, I started dating a man, an artist who seduced me by showing me my own reflection (I guess he was trying to avoid having me look for his). Yes, he seduced me by showing me my own reflection, by liking me and admiring me for all the things that I had always wanted someone to recognize in me… the things that I had always wanted someone to love about me… by seeing who I really was, and celebrating that.

And no sooner had he succeeded in seducing me, and in winning my heart...than he took that heart and ripped it out of my chest and left me for dead. He shattered the mirror that he had created. Now, everything that had reflected back at me so beautifully was just so many shards of glass floating in a bucket of muck. The things that he had so recently admired in me became the objects of his ridicule and scorn. He reveled in his own cruelty.

But this man had many mirrors at his disposal, and he hurried to replace the old one so that I would not be left with nothing to remind me of him. The new mirror that he held up to me was cloudy and spattered with mud and the shredded bits of my own heart, still palpitating in sorrow for the loss of my beloved illusions. His supply of crystal clear mirrors seemed to be infinite, but I knew that I would never gaze upon my own reflection in one of those mirrors again. Those were reserved for the new women in his life.

And each time he unveiled one of those crystal clear mirrors to a new lover, he secretly wrote her name on its clouded and vile counterpart. I saw him do this many times from my new vantage point of “friend,” until one day, when I relayed my tale to a friend, she gasped and said,

“He’s a vampire.”

I smiled my confusion.

“Oh, yes,” she continued. “He’s a vampire, alright. But he’s not after your blood. He’s after your energy. He can’t live without it. And when he’s drained you of all your energy, he goes and looks for it somewhere else. This man will never be satisfied with anyone.”

Well, I have to admit, it struck a chord. Hadn’t I stopped eating for two weeks after he shattered my beloved mirror? Hadn’t I almost died as a result? And after I revived myself, no thanks to him, didn’t he keep chipping away at me until I no longer knew who I was or believed that anyone could ever see the things in me that he had seen… the things I used to be able to see in myself before he ever came into my life?

I became curious about vampires all over again. I wanted to understand the correlation between the mythic, bloodsucking creatures that inhabited the fog and gloom of misty mountain villages in Transylvania and the real-life, energy sucking creatures that inhabit the fog of my self-image in the misty nether regions of my consciousness. I still had that same copy of Dracula that I had read so many years ago. I read it again, and I began to understand.

I had been surrounding myself for years with people who drained my energy. It was no wonder I was always depressed… always running on empty. I had nowhere to go and get recharged, and if I did, I worried that I might be doing the same to others… Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, right?

I can’t even begin to say that I’ve eliminated the energy vampires from my life (although I did give the boot to that artist about 8 years ago), but at least now I’m able to recognize them sooner rather than later. But perhaps not soon enough. After all, since coming to Prague, I’ve met and lived with so many different people… the people who have peopled the pages of this blog. Some of them have been pirates, and some of them have been vampires. You know who the pirates are… they have pirate names… Pegleg, Sinbad, Jolly, Ms. L, Cabin Boy (not quite up to pirate rank, but in the same general category), and Molly Bly. You can probably guess who the vampires are… the Transformer, and the Fugitive. But they didn’t get vampire names, because I didn’t recognize them as such until just now. I really should carry a mirror around with me at all times.

There’s yet another character, who has played a double role in my life… half pirate, half vampire. But that’s the subject of the next post…

Buletin Utama/17 Jan 08 - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:44:00 +0000

The one & only program which highlights and conduct extensive coverage on the country’s recent weekly crime cases.

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:35:00 +0000

America's Revolution and the Bible

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:04:00 +0000

Prior to the American Revolution, the American colonists were the most enthusiastic royalists in the English-speaking world. Why that changed is a fascinating story and a fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

In September 1761, the colonial Englishman Benjamin Franklin, on tour in the Low Countries, eagerly anticipated a return to his home in London to attend the coronation of George III. With his invitation secured, he reached London in time for the festivities, but a storm delayed his arrival at Westminster Abbey and he had to content himself with watching the pageant from a distance."

So begins an article in the August 2007 edition of History Today magazine. "The American Monarchy" was written by Frank Prochaska, who teaches history at Yale. For students of British and American history, it is fascinating. It should also be of great interest to those who understand the biblical truth of the modern identity of the tribe of Joseph.

"Franklin's admiration for his monarch had few limits. After a dinner at Versailles hosted by Louis XV in 1767, he reported that 'no Frenchman shall go beyond me in thinking my own king and queen the very best in the World and most amiable.' As a frequent guest at court, he attended George III's birthday festivities in 1771, and the following year wrote to his son of the King's 'great regard' for him."

Pointedly, the American author writes: "As Franklin's devotion to royalty illustrates, it was no easy matter to break with so universal a system of government as monarchy, especially for colonial subjects who thought of themselves as patriotic Englishmen and their King as a guardian of the Protestant faith and the 'father of his people.'

"George III was no less revered in America for being so remote. Distance made him a more difficult target and enhanced the monarch as symbol. With an ocean between them, few colonists ever set eyes upon a member of the royal family, but they demonstrated their allegiance through ritual celebrations of royal birthdays, coronations and marriages."

Uniqueness of the American Revolution

If it was "no easy matter" for the colonists to break with the British monarchy, why then did it happen?

A PBS series on the subject of the American Revolution some years ago came to the conclusion that it should never have happened. An episode of the History International Channel's Global View came to a similar conclusion, with all panelists agreeing that the rupture between Great Britain and its American colonies set back the power and influence of the English-speaking world.

A&E's presentation on Benedict Arnold noted that, on the eve of the final Battle of Yorktown, most colonists were loyal to the crown. John Adams, who would become the second president of the United States, wrote that the colonies were divided into three thirds—those loyal to the crown, those who wanted a break with the crown and those who were indifferent.

Perhaps most telling is the simple fact of the uniqueness of the American Revolution. It is the only revolution in history led by people who were, on average, wealthier than the people they rebelled against! Generally, in revolutions, the poor majority rebel against the rich minority, but this was most decidedly not the case in America over two centuries ago.

As another American historian, Gordon Wood, put it: "The social conditions that generally are supposed to lie behind all revolutions—poverty and economic deprivation—were not present in colonial America. There should no longer be any doubt about it: the white American colonists were not an oppressed people; they had no crushing imperial chains to throw off" (The Radicalism of the American Revolution , 1991, p. 4).

Understanding monarchy

Over 200 years after the American Revolution, most Americans have a very vague understanding of the institution of monarchy. Eighteenth-century Americans were quite different. Colonists "looked to the King for political legitimacy." They "believed the monarchy to be the guarantor of their rights" (Prochaska).

These rights went back to the Magna Carta in 1215 when England's barons forced King John to give them rights that form the basis of the Anglo-American legal system. Within the same century, the first parliament met. Gradually, through the centuries, the power of parliament increased at the expense of the monarchy.

"Since the early seventeenth century the English had radically transformed their monarchy: they had executed one king and deposed another, written charters and bills of rights, regularized the meetings of their parliaments, and even created a new line of hereditary succession" (Wood, p. 13).

In the 17th century England had even abolished the monarchy and the country became a republic for a brief period. The republic, like the Roman republic centuries earlier, led to dictatorship. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was perceived as the necessary balance of power to guarantee freedom from the potential abuse of parliamentary power.

While he was prince of Wales, the future King George III said: "The pride, the glory of Britain, and the direct end of its constitution is political liberty" (Wood, p. 14.) This is also quoted in the History Today article, where the following words are added: "Thus have we created the noblest constitution the human mind is capable of framing, where the executive power is in the prince, the legislative in the nobility and the representatives of the people, and the judicial in the people and in some cases the nobility, to whom there lies a final appeal from all other courts of judicature, where every man's life, liberty and possessions are secure."

So why the break with England? The answer is quite simple. It had to happen to fulfill prophecy.

Fulfillment of Bible prophecy

The biblical patriarch Jacob, renamed Israel, had 12 sons. One of these sons was Joseph, whose brothers sold him into slavery. God was with Joseph who, after years of personal suffering, rose to become the prime minister of Egypt. Eventually, Joseph was reunited with his family. His father, Israel, laid his hands on the two sons of Joseph and blessed them, in one of the most prophetically significant chapters of the Bible.

"The Angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; let my name be named upon them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth" (Genesis 48:16).

"Let my name be named on them" means that Joseph's descendants now carry the name of Israel. In turn, this means that biblical prophecies about Israel in the last days generally apply to them and not the Jews in the Middle East, although the Jews may be included if the prophecy is about all 12 tribes of Israel.

Israel continued, seemingly getting the boys confused by placing his right hand on the head of the younger son, Ephraim, instead of the elder son, Manasseh. This went against established custom and precedent, but clearly Israel knew what he was doing.

"But his father refused [to switch his hands] and said, 'I know, my son, I know. He [Manasseh, the eldest] also shall become a people, and he also shall be great; but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his descendants shall become a multitude of nations" (Genesis 48:19).

The two brothers, Ephraim and Manasseh, were to become a great multitude of nations and a great single nation. Nowhere else in history can we see this more than in the British Empire and the United States.

Here we can begin to understand why ties between the American colonists and the monarchy had to be severed. Every British colony had its own parliament. All these parliaments shared a common loyalty and that loyalty was to the crown. American historian Brendan McConville described the king as "the empire's living embodiment" (The King's Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America 1688-1776, 2006).

This continues down to the present day when George III's descendant, Queen Elizabeth II, carries the title head of the Commonwealth, an organization composed of 54 former British colonies. The Empire and Commonwealth, made up of dozens of different countries, truly have been "a multitude of nations."

A remarkable story

The American colonies were destined to somehow break with the crown in order to form the great single nation that Joseph's father, Jacob (Israel), said Manasseh would become. So the severing of ties between the American colonists and the English monarchy turned out to be the fulfillment of this important prophecy in Genesis 48. The other colonies remained under the crown. It's a remarkable story, the fulfillment of a prophecy that was written down thousands of years ago and that has not been fulfilled by any other nations.

What is also remarkable is how much the British monarchy influenced the American presidency, the story of which is told in Dr. Prochaska's article. After the Revolutionary War, the new nation was in a quandary. The leaders of the revolution had demonized the king, but they still felt the British had the best political system in the world.

"The hostility to Britain and its King during the Revolution has tended to obscure the constitutional affinities between the two nations. Americans, as Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache put it in 1797, created a constitution before they 'had sufficiently un-monarchized their views and habits'" (Prochaska).

"The forms of government on offer to the Founding Fathers were essentially variations of monarchy, 'the rule of one.' Moreover, most colonists had looked favorably on Britain's hereditary monarchy before the Revolution. So too had leading eighteenth century European political philosophers" (ibid.).

Even after the Revolution, "the theory of mixed government of Kings, Lords and Commons had a compelling logic to many Americans who desired security, a just measure of liberty, and the avoidance of arbitrary rule." Continuing, Dr. Prochaska writes: "It is one of the great ironies of the US constitution that the Founding Fathers invested more power in the presidency than George III exercised as King" (ibid.).

He adds: "For all their revolutionary rhetoric Americans treated 'His Excellency' George Washington as a republican version of 'His Majesty' King George. Some Americans, sensitive to the symbolism of power, believed the President required a title and pored over the titles of the European princes to find one that had not been appropriated. Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania, thought 'Most Serene Highness' desirable.

"Washington himself was said to have preferred the style of 'High Mightiness' used by the Stadtholder of the Netherlands. The reigning Stadtholder, William V, was among the Europeans who saw George Washington as an uncrowned monarch. As he said to Adams: 'Sir, you have given yourselves a king under the title of president.' In the Senate a titles committee suggested 'His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of the Rights of the Same.'"

Fortunately for Americans, both the Senate and the House of Representatives eventually settled for the simple title of the president of the United States.

The blessing of stability

In hindsight, what is truly remarkable is that these two institutions, the British monarchy and the American presidency, have been the solid political foundation blocks upon which their nations have been built. The United States has enjoyed political stability for over 140 years, since the end of the Civil War. Great Britain's period of stability is even longer, going back to the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.

Those nations in the Commonwealth that have maintained their direct allegiance to the crown have shared in that long period of stability. The nations within the Commonwealth that look to the British monarch as the head of the Commonwealth but have become republics have mostly had a tumultuous ride since severing the direct tie. None has been able to establish a successful republic on the American model.

The blessings promised to the descendants of Joseph could not have been fulfilled without political stability. Economic progress is impossible when there is no solid political foundation.

It is amazing to see how God worked with both Britain and America to give them the solid historical foundation that has made them for some time the most stable governments on earth. WNP

Can Science Give Us Eternal Life?

noreply@blogger.com (Yap) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:03:00 +0000

The mere possibility of a scientific breakthrough of such magnitude is already raising questions and creating a stir of interest and controversy. One newspaper article on the subject posed the question, "Will we need religion any more?"