..and did not have a conspiracy theory

A good portion of us Americans believes in a conspiracy theory or another.  Some believe Elvis is still alive, the moon landing was a hoax and that aliens live among us.  The number one conspiracy theory, based on the number of websites dedicated to them is..drum roll: mind control.

The basic concept  of mind control, the way I understand it is that forces outside of us, such as governments and powerful corporations are in cahoots, and aim to achieve total mind control of the masses.  The motivation is control.  However, control to what end is unclear and depends whom you ask.

Well, I have an opinion or two about that.  As you have noticed, I have an opinion and a point of view about lots of things.

If anybody, tells me that their mind is controlled and the government is listening, I say this: What arrogance!  What is it that you have to offer?  Your dumb ass thoughts about conspiracy?  You really think that you are that important that satelites are orbiting at exactly YOUR location.

Very intelligent people believe in that, and lots of them and there is much heated debate about all this.  The drug companies, media, and major government agencies are just so powerful and we have such little power.

There is one if not many problems with all this.   What are they really controlling, our minds?  And what for?  The last time I checked, pretty everyone is in charge of their thoughts, unless one suffers from mental illness, for which meds are available from the above evil drug companies.  So unless you watch endless television and let yourself be influenced what brand sneekers or beers you might prefer, this theory holds no water.

But why is it so popular?

We like to think that the human mind is so complex and life is a hard nut to crack.  But when really thought about it with an open mind this and many issues are quite simple to explain.  Told you I have the answer to everything.

We are humans, with bodies, emotion, characters and maybe a soul.  It is within our nature to screw up, fall down and make some poor choices.  Some of us get back up, brush off the dust and give it another try. And some of us, namely the demographic that we are talking about and then some, point at someone or something to blame.

I once saw a cartoon strip where a redneck looking guy was watching the game and the wife asked, rather yelled: "Who left the toilet seat up?" and he replies:"The government"

Scientist are dying to find life on other planets.  If little green men were found they can proclaim, life on other planets means chances of the big bang creating life accidently is a truth, ergo no God, ergo no moral responsibilities, unless we decide to design some moral code.  Yeppe!!

Theorists want to be eaves dropped, mind controlled, abducted by aliens, and have our next door neigbhor be a shape shifter from planet Zorg.

It will finally unburden them from the responsibility of their own lifes, with their own mistakes, desicions and regrets.  They can point to those outside powers and say it made me do it.  It put it into my kool aid.  The media made me who I am.

Those are not the kind of people that promote meditation, introspection, joy de vivre, and above all the posibilities of the human potential.  We hear from them how limited and unfortunate their life is because they have no control what so ever.

The most unbelievable conclusion I come to is that you can believe what ever you want and live or not live accordingly.

As you can see from this and the previous post I am slowly claiming my life back.  There is no one responsible other than me

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      

Who made your crop circles?

Post your creative answers in the comment section below.

..and did not blame my problems on others

For as long as I know myself when the sh*t would hit the proverbial fan, I at least partially, would share the blame, the cause or root reason on something else than myself.  There was never a a pure accounting on my part that said:" I am the sole responsible for this"

As a kid I would hear my father and mother say things why me?  That little saying, why me, is more poisenous than a toxic mother-in-law!  It implied an external force other than me uttering this sayings, is involved in my day to day decision making.

Maybe luck, pedigree, life style, background or something else is out there that makes all those dumb decisions for me and then evolves into even dumber results.

"I would have never decided for this if I would have known that this is going to be the outcome".

Michael, wake up it was you  that made this decision.  It might have been a poor one, but it was you and nobody else.

How about: "that alway happens", "it's my life's story", "They said, did, made, pointed...",  "all I did is follow his advise..",  "I am not good enough"  "two steps forward, four steps back".

Where is all this crap coming from?  What kind of a believe systems is that?

I don't know, is what I used to say.  But no more!  I take full responsibilty for my actions.  Gone are all these misterious forces.  What a freedom to know that it is me that I can blam and it is me that I can thank.

Well, waking up is sometimes can take a long time, even years.  Am I awake yet?

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      

Who is to blame?

Post your creative answers in the comment section below.

Me and my daughter:

..and didnt get up.

You know it's Sunday morning, and the alarm clock didn't go off, not that I own one.  Went to bed very late Saturday night, goofing around on the Internet, adding jewelry items to my wife's website http://blingandthingsbyesther.com/, and watched Entourage.

I love that show for many reasons.  First, whatever shenanigans these guys get into, somehow it always works out for them.  Also, it gives you a really clear idea of the L.A. life style and showbiz culture.  Girls fawning over the characters in hopes of getting a piece of the Hollywood fame.  Materialism and egos the size of Texas are accepted and applauded.

But that is all games and fun, but why did I not get up this morning really?  Well, I have to reluctantly say, if I must be brutally honest that what is the result of not getting out of bed in the morning?  My conscienceless  presence in my day.  I might as well be heavily inebriated, checked out.  What am I afraid off?  It seems that some of the things are going my way, and I think that I am afraid that they will actually work out.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      

What is going to work out for you today?

Post your creative answers in the comment section below.

..and some guy gave me $5.25

As I past my written test for a commercial drivers licence I was directed to the window where they actually hand you the updated license.  So the lady does all her computer stuff, checks  my social security card, green card (it's real), looks up and says that'll be $25.25, sir.

I looked at her in horror, and said that I paid all the fees already for the licensing.  She goes, well the hundred and twenty was for the permit, the twenty five is for the license.  I had only a twenty in my back pocket!

The construction looking guy behind me said: "here is five bucks, it's on me!"

I told you that this world is a good one!

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      


Who will you give a buck or two today?

Post your creative answers in the comment section below.

..and wanted the President to clean my house

Great movements and revolutions were only possible with thousands if not million of people participating in a common cause.  Yet, after many such events, things did not change into an Utopian live.  The Russian revolution went from one controlling government to another.

Let's say you have a cause.  You really want your party to be the majority, someone else to be the President,  finally get a grip on illegal immigration.  Or, legalize marijuana to end the drug war.  Cure AIDS, cancer, autism overnight.  Peace in the middle east.

Close your eyes and imagine a you are holding a magic wand in your and.  All you have to do is wave it three times and your wish is granted.

Your favorite is President, no more cancer, and the Jews and Arabs are shaking hands.  At the end of the day you'll lite up a joint on your front porch and watch guy with a real green card mow your lawn.

The next morning you wake up and all of it really did happen.  You shuffle your sorry ass over to the bathroom to start your day.  You look yourself in the mirror and see your beautiful mug.  Now what?  What am I going to fix now.  What war can I wage now?  Do I have to look at myself?  Please no, give me something else to fight for!

People are so hung up on the external causes of how to fix the world.  If only all the above causes would be fixed and come true, then we could really start living.  

I want to start a revolution right here and now.  The cause?  

YOU.

Let millions and millions of people have themselves as their cause.  You are overweight, find out why and work on it.  Unhappy?  Unresolved childhood issues?  Chronic relationship issues?  These and countless other personal issues are the causes of humanity that we can champion right now.

Today, everybody in the whole world starts looking inside and decides that they want to be fulfilled, happy and content.  Fixing the real issues of ourselves.  You wouldn't see such long faces at the mall.  People would be healthier, happier and kind.  Kind to themselves and to others.

After all when your guy is President, he aint coming over to balance YOUR bank account.  Hit the treadmill to lose YOUR weight.  Call up old acquaintances to make peace, or reconnect.  It is YOU!

The question is really, why are people rather concerend with external causes and sort of neglect their own cause?

Answer is simple:  Curing a disease or getting someone you like elected is much sexier to start.  Looking inside and facing your own needs and becoming the conqueror of your own existence is much more frightning.  

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      So, what are you so afraid of?

Post your creative answers in the comment section below.

..and the Arab world too

I can see it so vividly; Robin Williams leaning into a vintage microphone yelling:

GOOOOD MOOORNING EEEEGYPT!

Oh, come on you are smiling, we all are.  First Tunisia, heads of state running out of the country into the safety of their offshore accounts..  Then in Jordan the King sacks his entire parliament!  And Egypt, the entire country is in the streets screaming for change, reform.

I wonder if the Egyptians are going all the way with this and institute freedom of speech.

But why did they wake up?  What took so long?  All of these years under autocratic rule?

I have a theory: Technology.  Back in the seventies, eighties and nineties, even the first decade of this millenium, facebook, tweeter, social networking and world wide access to all forums and platforms was not so wide spread.

They woke up alright.

They saw that people around the western world, do what they want, say what they want and don't disappear into the desert or get their right hand chopped off.

They realized that the Emergency Law that has been instituted for decades is just a power play to keep corrupt officials in office.

In France, Italy, Britain, USA, Spain, Norway, Japan, Australia and countless other countries you have full freedom of speech.

How did the Egyptians find out?  Social Networking.

It is no surprise that the Egyptian government shut down most of online access as a first attempt to control the masses.  Too late.  Every one of the Egyptian people has spent hours in internet cafes if not in front of their laptops and soaked up ideas other than the canned propaganda being fed by their government.

Arab world, we westerners feel still threated by you, with a bad aftertaste of Islamic extremism.  But today you woke up and are tearing down the Berlin Walls of the minds.  One brick at a time and maybe we are going to achieve world peace!

What, surprised?  It could happen!!!

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      What are you going to do with new found freedom?

Send your creative answers in the comment section below this blog

LINK OF THE DAY:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cqoZlpNmgI 

..and the moon landing changed the world?

As I was waiting at the checkout at my local grocer, the front page of a glossy Time Magazine "millennium" edition caught my eye.

100 Events that the changed the world.  There was a collage of events such as the moon landing, JFK's assassination, Mahatma Gandhi and so on.

The moon landing.  Did it really change the world?  For that matter you can ask that even events such as WWII, the atom bomb, cell phones, pc's, which certainly changed our ways of doing stuff, did it change the world?

Great events like the fall of the Berlin Wall, did that change the world?

From the down of civilization, when agriculture was introduced, to the iron age, Jesus, Rome, Galileo to present day super technology in every aspect of our lives, what has changed?.

As the human race we have not changed!  An event like the black plague or the fall of Apartheid, does not change the human being.  It affects the human race.   For change to take place it is up to the individual to make that decision go deep within, decide how he/she is going to change their relationships with himself and the people around him.

Great events, have a great impact.  We live in the computer age and have changed the way we communicate.   But have we changed how and what we communicate ?  And why we communicate?

So we have 100 events that "changed" the world.  We can read about them and marvel at the historic significance.

Look around us.  We are basically still the same sons of bitches like 50 years ago, 500 years ago and probably 5000 years ago.  We get up, try to make it work in this world, if we are moral people, good.  Some others will use power and force to subjugate others.  We still wage war.  We changed how we wage it.  But we still wage it.

We still have not recognized that we are the human race and we are all the same.  We continually try to categorize every country, culture and color into another category and group.   We still operate like the kings and emperors of old.  Live in castles to keep others out.  Every country still has their enemies. If not without then from within.

So tell, me what world event changed how we as humans have changed?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

QUESTION OF THE DAY:      What changed your world?

Send your creative answers in the comment section below this blog

LINK OF THE DAY:

http://pinguy.infogami.com/blog/vwm6

..and coined a new term

It seems that when a product gets really popular the brand becomes a verb.  Google such and such, Xerox this, have the letter fedexed and so on.

Well, i am going to coin a term before I am immensely popular.  The new term is: a Thinks.

A thinks is a unit of knowledge or thought.  It is not a full thought, it is the least amount of information that can become part of a thought.

Today is cold out.  Is a full thought.  A thinks however is the initial thought unit once your eye glances outside and notices  the snow pilled up.  Before you can even formulate the thought that it is called outside there is a mili second of recognition/observation.

Or when you walk into the room and notice the flooring.  A thinks was created and stored into your brain. Only later once you discuss the flooring are you retrieving the thinks and formulating  thoughts about it.  But until then the information is stored as a visual thinks in your brain.  Get it?

We see, hear, smell, touch millions of things on a daily basis.  Do we think about everyone of them? Everytime you see a car and its license plate, do you have a thought about it?   Yet the unit of thought, the thinks, gets stored in the brain for possible later retrieval.

Until then it's a THINKS.


___________________________________________________
QUESTION OF THE DAY:      What is your term?


Send your creative answers in the comment section below this blog

LINK OF THE DAY:

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/jesse_eisenberg_monologue/1279517

..and was happy?

Pursuit of happiness.  What a concept.  The Declaration of Independence states every individuals right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  I like the idea that the declaration promotes an esoteric notion such as happiness.  


There is one problem though: What the hell is happiness?  


We all want it, everybody sells it.  It comes canned, bottled, as a cream, in a weight loss book, a DVD, podcast or even in the shape of a car.  Oh, and let's not forget all the happiness that can be found between pegs.  


Have your parents said, do whatever makes you happy?


Unless you are fortunate to have hippies as your predecessors, happiness was probably not a round table discussion.  But why the hell not?  Why are we going to school, get jobs, seek mates and do all kinds of shit to accumulate knowledge and wealth?  I just said to my nineteen year old college daughter, that it is likely there is no one on record ever that has as his / her last breath said that they were happy with all their accumulation of materialism.  Imagine some old geezer, 99 years old, sucking up the last liters of oxygen, pointing to his kids and grand kids, saying:  "Thank God i have $4.5 million in liquid funds, two homes a slew of cars and art, I am ready to meet my maker"!


Every book, movie and play that has had a death bed scene in it always had the dying guy find closure with a long lost relative, his own spouse or kids that he has not talked to for years.  You can picture it:  The 'enemy' brother walking through the hospital room and just hugging and caressing his dying brother, saying, "I always loved you, man".  Guy dies, fade out.


THAT is the stuff of happiness.  Emotions, relationships, connection to a fellow human being.  Our soul demands it like our body demands air.  


The worst punishment in the American penal system is solitary confinement.  A human in a ten by ten cell for a year, is a broken vessel, never the same again.


I always confuse and mislabel my need for connection and not having enough. When i have limited connection to friends, my own family, my curtain just comes down.  But don't be fooled.  that alone is not happiness.  I need fulfillment, positive self image, physical health and attention, just for starters to have my soul balance on the beam of happiness.


I love pontificating on this internet thing.  Remember in the nineties we used to call it the "information super highway"  what a bunch of crock!  You should see me with this eyes half open know it all, 55 words per minute look..


Very funny guy check him out his Vlog: http://www.youtube.com/user/RayWilliamJohnson

and got a new bed!!

As i groggily peeled my face of the blow up mattress next to my wife's bed, she came bouncing in and informed me that I get to pickup a queen bed for FREE!  All I have to do is get up cover myself with jeans and black sweater, the uniform of the world, and go out an get it.

Since Al Gore invented cold fusion and now this Internet thing, something extraordinary is taking place, besides this very blog.  You can go online and get shit for free.  People are giving it away, just to make room for more stuff. 

It is as if the American consumer has an unwritten formula to live by: 

First, make money so you can buy rooms / homes.  Then make more money and get stuff.  Bring stuff home clutter the rooms / homes.  They call it decorating.  Once you have a lot of stuff and friends ask why so much, say you collect.  These days collecting is a cover for people who don't know what to do with their stuff.  Then as you grow older and have too much stuff, you can give it as gifts for Christmas and Hanuka depending on what denomination your stuff is.  Once the good stuff is gone, have a garage sale to make a buck or two on the stuff that you paid top dollar for at brand retail stores.  If there is stuff that you cannot sell even for one dollar, you post it online so a stuff picker upper can come and unburden you.

Enter me.  I am a stuff picker upper.  Just occasionally.  I like getting stuff for free or almost.  I am the yin to your yang.  You buy expensive stuff and a couple of years latter I come and pick it up.  I love the Internet.

So as you stand in your rooms/ homes  and enjoy a moment in an empty one you do what kids do, yell your own name and hear an echo bounce back from your empty walls.  For a short while that is, for now you are scheming where to get new stuff and do it all over again.  Can't have no stuff, do we now?

Oh, i get to go and pick up a free queen bed with headboard, frame, mattress and box spring.  That's what the lady said. 

I am so excited to go out and buy stuff for my new bed and accessories it!!