Happy Birthday! [then, not now]

For the Snider's birthday we headed down to Myrtle Beach, SC, for a night of the Carolina Opry House's "Good Vibrations" show, which was actually kinda cool, and gambling the next day on a boat that goes out into international waters, allowing the full range of indecent gambling immorality.

Of course, no trip to a city of sin is complete without an inexpensive all you can eat buffet.

Witness the New China restaurant. And their 120 item buffet.



You haven't lived until you've seen a black man in a cowboy hat help cover the Oakridge Boys' Elvira.



Dancing Girls! Always a plus.



No 70s retrospective is complete without Cheech and Chong impersonators.



Wait for it... that's right... a KISS cover band, in full makeup!



Hands down, best pic of the night... Mom dancing to YMCA!





[Now I know where Sandy learned to dance while sitting down]

The gambling boat extravaganza!



[Fun, but some of those gambling "regulars" were downright scary.]

Mom's $65 dollar bottle of water. [Her gambling losses.]

Touchdown NC.

After delays in Tokyo and Detroit [computer failures in Japan led to missed flights in Detroit], we finally hit Raleigh and then the parents drove us that last 2 1/2 hours down the home stretch to J'ville. Only there about 5 hours later than we should have been. All things considered, the fact we got there the same day was impressive.



Mom decided to break out the decorations from Sandy's Hawaii themed bachelorette party from nearly a decade ago to welcome us home.



Aloha, indeed.

With full forethought and preparation, and in anticipation of returning home and wanting to take full advantage of Amazon's free shipping [shipping to Japan is a bi&*h], I spent the last 2 months or so buying and having stuff shipped to Jacksonville.



Christmas in July.

We're off to see the wizard...

Stage one of the trip back to the states... Riding the Nishitetsu Train to the airport...



Hard to believe this was just over two weeks ago.



Oh, and this right here... this is why Asians will conquer the world. This kid, maybe 10 years old, during summer vacation, working on math on the train.

Too cute? Too scary? Take your pick.

And a new obsession is born!

Sandy playing with her brand new, ice-blue Nintendo DS Lite.



I may never hear from her again.

Ah, sweet, sweet laziness...

The Lazy Way to Success: Hard Work versus Smart (and Rich) Laziness:

Almost everyone has been brainwashed to accept (and pay lip service to) the fallacious premise that hard work is necessary in order to be successful. But the overwhelming evidence suggests the contrary, that hard work has nothing to do with success and is actually counterproductive. If hard work is supposed to produce success, then it would stand to reason that everyone who works hard should be successful. But that is far from the case. Most people who work hard never come close to being successful. In fact, most hard workers have a much higher incidence of non-success than they have success. Financial strain, stress-related disease, and lack personal fulfillment are at epidemic proportions, while wealth, health, and happiness are rare in comparison.

... delicious and highly effective ways of doing less reveal themselves when you are blissfully avoiding work. You can avoid work in any number of fruitful ways. Doing that which you are passionate about is a wonderful way to avoid work. Another recommended method of avoiding work is having a ball “playing” with a concept or a project.

...These hard work advocates refuse to entertain the possibility that another approach may be better... They apparently see no difference between slaving away at a mindless, pointless, stultifying job and advancing an exhilarating, laugh-filled, creativity-stimulating enterprise. Both situations require hard work, they conclude without a flicker of deep reflection.

When folks lump play, fun, and passionate pursuits in with rat-racing, boring tasks, and hard labor and then insist hard work is the key to success, you can be sure these folks have zero insight into what it takes to be successful.

Cognitive Bias, Seeing what you want to see, and the Open Source Model.

Fascinating analysis...

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - A closed mind about an open world:

"Over the past 15 years, a group of scholars has finally persuaded economists to believe something non-economists find obvious: “behavioural economics” shows that people do not act as economic theory predicts.

...We rely on heuristics to frame problems but cling to them even when they are contradicted by the facts. Some of these patterns are endearing; the supposedly “irrational” concerns for equality that persist in all but Republicans and the economically trained, for example. But most were simply the mapping of cognitive bias.

...Studying intellectual property and the internet has convinced me that we have another cognitive bias. Call it the openness aversion. We are likely to undervalue the importance, viability and productive power of open systems, open networks and non-proprietary production."

NBC: Hair-gel terrorists posed no risk last week

Wow.

I'm so shocked and surprised I've pissed myself.

Honestly.

[Okay, not really. Those fear-mongering schmucks.]

Boing Boing: NBC: Hair-gel terrorists posed no risk last week:

"An anonymous 'senior British official knowledgeable about the [hair-gel bombers]' told NBC that there was no threat to airplanes last week, that the terrorists had been under surveillance for over a year, and that UK government didn't plan on arresting these guys until they'd surveilled them a while longer, but moved when they did because of US pressure..."

Dreams

Weird dreams last night... I blame jet lag. They were clearer a few hours ago... should try keeping that notebook by my bed again...

The first had me, an assistant - that I think was both male and female - and the assistant's dad [played by some character actor I've seen everywhere but can't for the life of me remember now] being terrorized in an old castle by some shape-shifting werewolf monster. It, at various points in the dream, took on all of the protagonist's aspects. The only way to kill it was to cut off it's head, remove it's heart and burn it. Standard vampire mythology there, despite the wolf aspect.

We eventually killed it, with a sword I think, and after I removed the heart I kept trying to slice it apart, but it kept regrowing and regenerating. Until it didn't. And then we burned it.

I remember waking up and thinking it had something to do with the shifting nature and assumption of identity, and the need to transcend that to assume an authentic personality, instead of simply mirroring others.

Maybe.

Seemed profound at the time.

The other had me as a teenager raised by a single mom [who was actually my mom, I think] in a high rise apartment. I idolized a real-life flying superhero as a father figure, until I meet him, then he's confronted by another superhero, who IS my actual father.

Woke up early from that one. Not sure what it might mean... other than I've spent more time with my dad in the last 2 weeks than during the previous year...

America - Land of the Fear, Home of the Dismay

Having just been back in the states for a couple weeks, I still can't get over how much of a country and culture of fear the U.S. has become since 2001. Watching only one evening of prime time network TV gave me two hours of [okay, adequately produced psuedo-melodrama] evil Al Quaeda plots showing us how terrible brown people are ready to kill us RIGHT NOW!!! IN OUR HOMES!!! and THERE'S NOTHING WE CAN DO!!! and another hour of YOUR CHILDREN!!! being abducted and killed [and probably abused] by that seemingly normal guy who LIVES RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!!

And don't even get me started on the that half hour of concentrated despair, anxiety and depression that is network television news. When I was in Virginia working my security gig, and CNN was constantly running in the background, their fear mongering paranoia was at least occassionally offset, given that there is not enough news to fill a 24hr news network , by meaningless filler absurdity that took the edge of off the intelligence insulting "news".

No wonder at a full 10% percent of folks are poppin' antidepressants like candy. And the figures keep on risin'...

Be afraid America.

Somebody wants you to be.

Kung Fu Monkey: "Wait, Aren't You Scared?":

"Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc."

"Sack up, people."

Never gonna happen. American culture thrives off fear and paranoia these days.

The monkey's kung fu is hella strong, and despite the lengthy excerpt here [too much comedic insight to choose from] well worth following the link and reading in full.

Kung Fu Monkey: "Wait, Aren't You Scared?":

"Osama Bin Laden got everything on his Christmas list after 9/11 -- US out of Saudi Arabia; the greatest military in the world over-extended, pinned down and distracted; the greatest proponent of democracy suddenly alienated from its allies; a US culture verily eager to destroy freedoms that little scumfuck could never even dream to touch himself -- I would like to deny him the last little check on the clipboard, i.e. constant terror. I panic, they win. To coin a phrase, Osama Bin Laden can suck my insouciance.

I am absolutely buffaloed by the people who insist I man up and take it in the teeth for the great Clash of Civilizations -- 'Come ON, people, this is the EPIC LAST WAR!! You just don't have the stones to face that fact head-on!' -- who at the whiff of an actual terror plot will, with no apparent sense of irony, transform and run around shrieking, eyes rolling and Hello Kitty panties flashing like Japanese schoolgirls who have just realized that the call is coming from inside the house!

I may have shared too much there.

To be honest, it's not like I'm a brave man. I'm not. At all. It just, well, it doesn't take that much strength of will not to be scared. Who the hell am I supposed to be scared of? Joseph Padilla, dirty bomber who didn't actually know how to build a bomb, had no allies or supplies, and against whom the government case is so weak they're now shuffling him from court to court to avoid the public embarassment of a trial? The fuckwits who were going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches? Richard Reid, the Zeppo of suicide bombers? The great Canadian plot that had organized over the internet, was penetrated by the Mounties on day one, and we were told had a TRUCK FULL OF EXPLOSIVES ... which they had bought from the Mounties in a sting operation but hey let's skip right over that. Or how about the "compound" of Christian cultists in Florida who were planning on blowing up the Sears Tower with ... kung fu?

And now these guys. As the initial "OH SWEET MOTHER OF GOD THEY CAN BLOW US UP WITH SNAPPLE BOTTLES!!" hysteria subsides, we discover that these guys had been under surveillance, completely penetrated, by no less than three major intelligence agencies. That they were planning on cell phones, and some of them openly travelled to Pakistan (way to keep the cover, Reilly, Ace of Spies). Hell, Chertoff knew about this two weeks ago, and the only reason that some people can scream this headline:

"The London Bombers were within DAYS of trying a dry run!!!"

-- was because MI-5, MI-6, and Scotland Yard let them get that close, so they could suck in the largest number of contacts (again, very spiffy police work). The fact that these wingnuts could have been rolled up, at will, at any time, seems to have competely escaped the media buzz.

This is terrorism's A-game? Sack up, people."

Six Lessons from the London Airline Bombing Plot

Well said...

Six Lessons from the London Airline Bombing Plot:

"First, what stopped this plot was law enforcement. Law enforcement. Not a military invasion of Pakistan, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, or Iraq. Old-fashioned surveillance, development of human sources, putting pieces together, and cooperation with foreign police and intelligence services.

Second, the conspiracy—if it resembles the London bombings of last summer—will likely be home-grown, another of the growing jihad 'fashion' in Europe that comprises the new street gangs of this world. It is not a religious movement, it is not fundamentalism. These are thin veneers. It is at root sheer violence undertaken by young men resentful of many things (not least the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon) and ready to kill in return. Under different cirucmstances, it could be Tamils or Red Brigades or Michigan Militiamen, and has been.

Third, if al Qaeda was involved (allegedly from Pakistan), we can thank the failure of the war in Afghanistan and the cozying up to Musharraf to destroy them.

Fourth, there was no involvement by any American-based “cells,” according the FBI Director Robert Mueller. As many of us have been saying for nearly five years, and as the 9/11 Commission Report showed, there is virtually no plausible American jihad organization at work, and never has been.

Fifth, the plot again reveals how ill-equipped the U.S. Government has been in anticipating plausible attack scenarios and taking steps to prevent them. Liquid bombs were so hard to figure out? Al Qaeda already tried it...

Sixth, and most important, we must end our involvement in Iraq and sharply refocus our presence in the region. The war president’s approach is not working. It’s a diversion from the real threat. It’s a spur to bitter revenge. It’s a big feedback loop that will endanger us for years, if not decades."

Western values 'are causing mental illness' [in Japan]

'Course there's no such thing as crazy, just behavior that society has deemed unacceptable. So, obviously, when cultural norms begin to change, "crazy" increases in those unable to adapt...

[Via Warren Ellis]

Western values 'are causing mental illness' - World - Times Online:

"THE rapid spread of Western business practices in Japan has caused widespread mental illness and is responsible for a deepening demographic crisis, government officials say."

Sandy is rather clever.

Apropos of nothing in particular, Sandy made a rather insightful observation...

Paraphrasing - "Of course Christians think if you talk about condoms it leads to sex. [As a prosyletizeing faith] they think that just talking about Jesus leads people to Christianity."

I'd never thought about it that way, but it has a feel of "truthiness" about it, I think. And, obviously you've got to have that Christian sex=evil body-hate thing going on...

Of course, it only works that way on easily influenced and led automatons, but hey... who's to say that's not most everybody?

Napping on Bachan's 2nd floor cures headaches and assists with jet lag.

I just thought the world should know.

You're free as soon as you decide. Or realize. Your call.

Matt Thornton speaks wise.

Thornton's Guerilla_Blog: Fortunate Son. . . . .:

"..all spiritual practices are illusions, designed by illusionists, to escape illusion. And the illusion is that you are not already free."

Patton Oswalt once again confounds Religion through the magic powers of thinking and logic.

blog.myspace.com/pattonoswalt:

"There's a lot of religious types excited these days about what they perceive as the coming Apocalypse, as foretold in The Revelation of St. John.

They're especially excited about the whole Israel/Lebanon thing. They think that'll cause The Rature, where the souls of the righteous are called up, and the assholes left behind get raped/eaten/both by demons.

But if you ACTIVELY wish and hope for something like that, then aren't you wishing death upon your fellow man, which is a sin, which means you WON'T be called up? So does no one get called up in The Rapture? Or only the believing Christians who don't WANT The Rapture to happen?

However, if you are a believing Christian, then doesn't that mean you're excited and accepting of God's plan? And, if you are, then that DOES mean you want The Rapture, which means you want the death and destruction of your fellow man, which means you're a sinner, which means no Rapture for you.

But if you're a devout and believing Christian who DOESN'T want the Rapture, then that means you reject part of God's plan, which means you are lacking in faith, which means no Rapture.

Pret-ty sneaky, God."

The Huna concept of Responsibility.

"I'm sorry" and "I love you". All you need, apparently.

Joe Vitale Is "Mr. Fire" for Copywriting, Promotion, and Marketing Consulting:

"...a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients--without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate's chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person's illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.

When I first heard this story, I thought it was an urban legend. How could anyone heal anyone else by healing himself? How could even the best self-improvement master cure the criminally insane?

It didn't make any sense. It wasn't logical, so I dismissed the story.

However, I heard it again a year later. I heard that the therapist had used a Hawaiian healing process called ho 'oponopono. I had never heard of it, yet I couldn't let it leave my mind. If the story was at all true, I had to know more.

...His name is Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len. We probably spent an hour talking on our first phone call. I asked him to tell me the complete story of his work as a therapist. He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years. That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous. Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.

Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.

"After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely," he told me. "Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed."

I was in awe.

"Not only that," he went on, "but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed."

This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: "What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?"

"I was simply healing the part of me that created them," he said.

I didn't understand.

Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life - simply because it is in your life--is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation.

Whew. This is tough to swallow. Being responsible for what I say or do is one thing. Being responsible for what everyone in my life says or does is quite another. Yet, the truth is this: if you take complete responsibility for your life, then everything you see, hear, taste, touch, or in any way experience is your responsibility because it is in your life.

This means that terrorist activity, the president, the economy--anything you experience and don't like--is up for you to heal. They don't exist, in a manner of speaking, except as projections from inside you. The problem isn't with them, it's with you, and to change them, you have to change you.

I know this is tough to grasp, let alone accept or actually live. Blame is far easier than total responsibility, but as I spoke with Dr. Len, I began to realize that healing for him and in ho 'oponopono means loving yourself. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life. If you want to cure anyone--even a mentally ill criminal--you do it by healing you.

I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients' files?

'I just kept saying, 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' over and over again,' he explained.

That's it?

That's it.

Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, your improve your world."

"Bush doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t know about people." People don't like to be meddled with.

Fred Reed, GWB, logic, and why the President's an idiot.

Fred On Everything:

"Think about it. When he went braying into Iraq like a learning-disabled jackass, he thought people would roll over, throw flowers, and have a democratic revolution. This would start a domino effect that would make all the other Moslem countries want to be democracies too. They would climb over each other to be democracies. They would love us because democracies love each other. He just knew it.

This makes perfect sense if you have no freaking idea how human beings work.

Of course, if you have read any history, which Bush hasn’t, you will have noticed that people do not like being occupied by force. They don’t like having their cities bombed. It galls them. It can, under certain circumstances (such as any circumstances) make them hostile.

If you think in terms of abstractions too simple for Reader’s Digest, you might reflect as follows: “Democracy good. Iraqi people, love’m democracy, so love’m us. Urrrg.” Then you might be real surprised when their gratitude was exiguous after you remorselessly wrecked their cities, killed their army (which consisted of other people’s husbands, brothers, and sons: ever think of that?), groped their women when you didn’t have time to rape them, and left them without water and electricity.

...This crackpot Boyscouterine outlook runs through everything the little man does, or more correctly tries to do. He really believes it, I think: The world is just waiting for us to bring it our favorite abstractions. They hate us for our freedoms, and yearn to be bombed into having them.

People don’t work that way. Bush doesn’t know it.

Remember when he had Kind-of-Twofer Rice publicly offer help to the Syrian opposition so they would overthrow their evil dictator and become wildly democratic? Same problem. Nobody told her, the poor bat-brained thing, that people don’t like being messed with by outsiders. Nor, being Secretary of State, did she know how intensely the United States is detested by most of the world. How would she know? It’s a secret known only to eight billion select people.

Bush wouldn’t have a clue if you gave him another one.

...Let us suppose that you don’t like Bush. If the Chinese bombed your home, and killed your sister, would that make you join the Chinese and want a puppet government?

It is not how people work.

As we speak, the Israelis have pretty much destroyed Lebanon. Bush keeps the UN from doing anything to interfere, and sends advanced bombs to the Israelis so they can blow up anything that’s left. He thought—get this—that since Hezbollah is Shiite, the Sunnis would join with (yes! Yes!) Israel to fight them. Was there ever such a fruitcake? (I like to think of a fruitcake in a raincoat.)

He had no idea how people work.

It’s breathtaking. He has occupied and made rubble of two Moslem countries, and heavily supports Israel, hated by all Moslem countries, in turning Lebanon, a third Moslem country into rubble, and is threatening Syria and Iran, two more Moslem countries, with attack, possibly nuclear. By doing this he is going to inspire Moslems with a passion for American democracy, change the Mid-East into Fifth Century Athens, and make them love us.

God Almighty, what a fool. What a bus-station clown. It isn’t how people work.

...He has no faint idea of how people work. The man is an idiot."

Deepak Chopra and Grant Morrison: The Seven Spiritual Laws of Super-heroes

Virgin Comics presents literary icons Deepak Chopra (How to Know God and co-founder of Virgin Comics) and Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman) in a far-ranging discussion about Dark Knights, Devis, and the development of tomorrow's mythologies in this special Comic-Con exclusive event.

I Am Returned!

Let the Rapture commence!

No.

Wait.

That's Jesus.

Not me.

Pics, pontification and linkages to resume over the next few days...