A meme I answered back in 2007... goodness... I need to pull together an original thought!

1. What is your set of your 5-ever-favourite books(or films) and why?

Funny... I have a hard time coming up with a top five books. The thing is that I'm always reading something. To pick out a top five would do the remaining hundreds of books some measure of injustice. That said, here is a list of books that shaped my life:

“Only Dance There Is” by Ram Dass
The first conscious raising “metaphysical” book I read.

“Das Energi” by Paul Williams
Conscious raising prose

“Awareness : A De Mello Spirituality Conference in His Own Words” by Anthony de Mello
Get this book if you are at all interested in being aware.

“How to Make Your Life Work, or Why Aren't You Happy?” by Ken Keyes
An examination of happiness, habits, and preferences

“Anatomy of the Spirit : The Seven Stages of Power and Healing” by Caroline Myss
A modern holistic look at awareness and the connection between biography and biology. Excellent!

“The Wisdom of Insecurity” By Allan Watts
A wonderful examination of “I” and “me”.

“Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse
A big favorite of mine


2. What are the top beautiful places in your city/area you live?

I am continually struck by the beauty of the trees in my region. I speak of most any trees. They have a majesty that man made constructs struggle to attain and maintain.

3. Do you believe in angels?

Yes. I suppose I see them as another form of guide/protector/entity that exists in the pan dimensional spaces.

4. What's the best way of spending time?

It depends on what I'm doing. At work I am focused on things directly or tangentially connected with my employment. At home I am focused on relaxing and working on my own projects/interests. When I'm with my lovely mate I focus on fully appreciating her love and affection. Each of these instances has a "best" quality. My life would be incomplete if I did not have all these ways of spending time.

5. If you had a chance to have (even magic) ABILITY, what would it be?

I thought this was a great question. Here is the funny thing, I've already experienced what people would call "magic" abilities. The world of healing and prophecy are part of of my mundane reality. The thing I would really like to have now is sanity and the ability to constructively focus on the opportunities in my life. I would like to have closer relationships with my friends. I would like to have less anger, grief and guilt. I would like to be able to talk to my family. I guess I've gotten to the point that abilities are not enough. I now crave a quality of life that abilities, even magical ones, cannot directly manifest.

“If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.”
― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

I came across a fake (hopefully) newspaper article about a young lady and a bass player.



It inspired me to create my own newspaper article!  Mine featured the coming together of the dance worlds of swing and contra!

My first attempt at a mock protesting meme...  I need to tweak the fonts. 

I saw a meme today that said “Where’s the Justice? – A human person blocking a construction of a Tar Sands pipeline for 10 hours can receive up to 2 years in jail – A corporate person spilling 1 million gallons of Tar Sands and causing $1 billion in damage gets ZERO jail time”.

I reviewed the comments of this meme and saw incredible outrage that include obscenity. I also saw comments that basically said “it is about the intent”. So true, and I believe that our society is larger clueless about intent.

Observation of intent is a powerful tool that’s not used often enough. The person blocking the construction did so with an intent to cause harm, no matter their justifications. The person / people who spilled the oil did so accidentally and without malicious intent. I suspect that the oil spillers were punished in other ways, perhaps as much as losing their jobs and getting a black mark on their career. Is this all fair? No, but an awareness of intent is not about fairness.

On the topic of intent, the creators of the meme fully intended to spark outrage and rally people to their cause they embrace. The creator of this meme does not want to hear about intent or have their audience think about intent. Instead they want burning rage, along with the promotion of some larger agenda. Shame on us for going along with their mind games. Think about intent when you see memes on FB. Think about intent when you hear about people doing stupid things. The “rest of the story” may surprise you.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.

I took the "Which D&D Character are You?" test and got some interesting results. This was a rather long test with an exhaustive list of questions that resulted in an analysis of my being lawful/neutral/chaotic and good/evil. What am I?

( The Test Results... )

Pretty neat stuff and accurate (enough) too...

( Read more... )

From moonvoice ...

Comment on this post. I will choose seven userpics from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are using them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so others can play along. (if you so desire)

OR

Choose seven of my own userpics. I'll explain them.

( My Challenge... )

I'll pick 7 interests of yours that I'd like to know more about, and you will write a journal entry about them in your journal and invite your friends to comment and so on and so forth. Don't just tell me about your interests in a comment to my journal...you've got to play fair and put it in your journal, so others can play along.

Tagged by shinaraz

cat juggling: Two words... The Jerk. Another two words: Steve Martin.

"Good Lord - I've heard about this - cat juggling! {juggle, meow meow, juggle juggle juggle, meow meow meow, one handed juggling! meow! Thunk!} Stop! Stop! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! Good. Father, could there be a god that would let this happen?"



lava lamp: One of the coolest inventions ever. Just don't cook one on a stove top. Mythbusters found that these psychedelic items could become deadly munitions.

lovecraft: H. P. Lovecraft, the master of cosmic horror. I am a BIG fan of all his work. Let's go to the Mountains of Madness!

hojojutsu: Japanese method of restraining people with ropes. Typically associated with the military and law enforcement, there are no writings in English about this ancient art.

perpendicular buildings: It is a handy thing eh? At this time I am the only person who has this as an interest. My contribution to originality!

shibari: Though this art of rope restraint did originate from hojojutsu, the bondage techniques are far gentler, and great care is taken to avoid injury. I seen artists perform this technique before... it is quite a sight to witness and experience. (grin)

vba: Visual Basic for Applications. I've programmed in this application scripting language for several years and have a neat bundle of tricks for whipping up a kick-ass database.