Saturday, April 09, 2005
Take a chance
Normally, when someone says that to you, it's a manipulative ploy to try to get you to do something you know better than to do, with its implied suggestion that you don't take chances (although you almost certainly DO), and that not taking chances is a bad thing (when in fact it's NOT, as most chances include the likelihood that you'll lose something); the new button in my sidebar that says this often-loaded phrase, however... well, why give any hints, after going to the trouble of putting up a mysterious button, right? Try it and see for yourself.
... did you try it? Cool, huh? :-)
After my triumph over the timepiece equivalent of the Gordian knot a couple of nights ago, I'd have thought it was too soon for another victory over technology, but that button represents one: As is usually the case, I found a site that had it, and of course *I* wanted it, so I brought up the source code and started looking for the javascript that generated it; it wasn't hard to find, as the button originally had the word "earthquake" on it, and all I had to do was find where that word was used... and, in case you're wondering, I didn't set MY button up that way, first because it'd be insensitive to do so after the horrific ones we've had in recent months, and then after I thought of the 1st reason it occurred to me that it'd be more fun to have people not know what to expect when they clicked on it.
Given the amount of struggle I've come to expect with every addition to the template, I figured I'd have to have to go through an endless round of failed attempts no matter what; to make matters worse, I was SURE that the code as I found it was fully HALF unnecessary, despite the fact that I know nothing whatsoever about javascript programming... it just seemed certain to me that a whole function was being defined that was never USED, and it bugged me to think of having it in there-don't ask me why, lol. Furthermore, the code was set up to center the button, and I knew from painful experience that I did NOT want anything inserted in the sidebar that was other than right-justified (there's nothing like seeing a chunk of text or a graphic right up against the main body of the blog to ruin one's whole day), so I had to yank that out... even though I had no way of knowing if that would somehow mess something else up. AND, I had to change what the button said, and hope that it would resize itself to fit; I had no idea what I'd do if it didn't.
So; I took the totally unfamiliar code that I couldn't "read," and had altered and removed almost half of, stuck it in my template, republished the blog, and scrolled down with my breath held... and there was the button, exactly as it was supposed to look. With my fingers crossed, I clicked it... and it WORKED!! I couldn't believe it; for the first time since I've had this blog, I did a new technical thing and had it be PERFECT the first time around. :-O
Ahhhhhhh, it's gonna be a lovely weekend.
... did you try it? Cool, huh? :-)
After my triumph over the timepiece equivalent of the Gordian knot a couple of nights ago, I'd have thought it was too soon for another victory over technology, but that button represents one: As is usually the case, I found a site that had it, and of course *I* wanted it, so I brought up the source code and started looking for the javascript that generated it; it wasn't hard to find, as the button originally had the word "earthquake" on it, and all I had to do was find where that word was used... and, in case you're wondering, I didn't set MY button up that way, first because it'd be insensitive to do so after the horrific ones we've had in recent months, and then after I thought of the 1st reason it occurred to me that it'd be more fun to have people not know what to expect when they clicked on it.
Given the amount of struggle I've come to expect with every addition to the template, I figured I'd have to have to go through an endless round of failed attempts no matter what; to make matters worse, I was SURE that the code as I found it was fully HALF unnecessary, despite the fact that I know nothing whatsoever about javascript programming... it just seemed certain to me that a whole function was being defined that was never USED, and it bugged me to think of having it in there-don't ask me why, lol. Furthermore, the code was set up to center the button, and I knew from painful experience that I did NOT want anything inserted in the sidebar that was other than right-justified (there's nothing like seeing a chunk of text or a graphic right up against the main body of the blog to ruin one's whole day), so I had to yank that out... even though I had no way of knowing if that would somehow mess something else up. AND, I had to change what the button said, and hope that it would resize itself to fit; I had no idea what I'd do if it didn't.
So; I took the totally unfamiliar code that I couldn't "read," and had altered and removed almost half of, stuck it in my template, republished the blog, and scrolled down with my breath held... and there was the button, exactly as it was supposed to look. With my fingers crossed, I clicked it... and it WORKED!! I couldn't believe it; for the first time since I've had this blog, I did a new technical thing and had it be PERFECT the first time around. :-O
Ahhhhhhh, it's gonna be a lovely weekend.
Friday, April 08, 2005
So, I saw a porn movie
Technically, I saw PART of one; my husband was checking out what was on the various HBO channels, and one of them had a sex scene going on... so naturally he called ME in to see it. I took one look and said, "What is THAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!!," although, despite many years of marriage, I DO still have a vague memory of what "that" was, lol. As soon as he grasped that I was going to watch the movie, my husband went off to work on his computer; I know, it seems un-masculine for a man to not want to watch a porn movie, but he can produce flatulence that'd melt chrome off a bumper, so his manhood is secure.
The most amazing thing about the sex scene was how quickly it got boring; the "actors" had their mouths hanging open to supposedly simulate passion, and all they did was assume a position, bounce together a dozen or so times, then switch positions and bounce some more... it had all the eroticism and charm of 2 dogs doing it on the front lawn.
It'd been a long while since I'd seen a porn movie, so the things that stood out the most visually were the ones that had changed from how these movies used to look; the enormity and obvious fakeness of all the boobs, and the total lack of pubic hair on everyone. Obviously, the men for whom these movies are made don't get "ew yuck" reactions from these things, although I can't imagine why, since hairless genitals and unnatural breasts are NOT part of what they're biologically programmed to be turned on by, but *I* sure found them disturbingly icky.
Some things NEVER change about these movies, apparently, because some aspects of the one I saw looked very familiar: They got their soft furnishings from some sort of warehouse that the stuff in all the colors and patterns that no one on Earth would ever put in their homes goes to, and they threw it together at random to create sets whose purpose must be to keep your eyes from wandering from the action... because they're just too painful to look at. The wardrobe for the women consisted of garish spandex outfits that'd embarrass a hooker, worn with towering high heels that they never took off... and mind you, it's HARD to throw your legs up in the air when you're wearing 10 lbs of shoes. Makeup-wise, they wore the sort of pale pink, frosted lipstick that no one over the age of 13 wears in real life, and freakish, 70's-style multi-hued eyeshadow, and I had to wonder; since when are modern men fantasizing about women with their faces painted that way? Why do they DO that in these movies-how does it add to the fantasy for the women to wear outdated makeup? And, last but far from least, there was the most basic element of straight porn; hot babes eagerly doing it with men who are average-looking at best.
One thing about the movie was particularly interesting, given how brainwashed we are about what a human body is supposed to look like; these women were all under 25, I'd guess, and all slender and fit... and every last one of them had cellulite. In the midst of all that unrealistic nonsense, it was refreshing to see a dash of reality.
The most amazing thing about the sex scene was how quickly it got boring; the "actors" had their mouths hanging open to supposedly simulate passion, and all they did was assume a position, bounce together a dozen or so times, then switch positions and bounce some more... it had all the eroticism and charm of 2 dogs doing it on the front lawn.
It'd been a long while since I'd seen a porn movie, so the things that stood out the most visually were the ones that had changed from how these movies used to look; the enormity and obvious fakeness of all the boobs, and the total lack of pubic hair on everyone. Obviously, the men for whom these movies are made don't get "ew yuck" reactions from these things, although I can't imagine why, since hairless genitals and unnatural breasts are NOT part of what they're biologically programmed to be turned on by, but *I* sure found them disturbingly icky.
Some things NEVER change about these movies, apparently, because some aspects of the one I saw looked very familiar: They got their soft furnishings from some sort of warehouse that the stuff in all the colors and patterns that no one on Earth would ever put in their homes goes to, and they threw it together at random to create sets whose purpose must be to keep your eyes from wandering from the action... because they're just too painful to look at. The wardrobe for the women consisted of garish spandex outfits that'd embarrass a hooker, worn with towering high heels that they never took off... and mind you, it's HARD to throw your legs up in the air when you're wearing 10 lbs of shoes. Makeup-wise, they wore the sort of pale pink, frosted lipstick that no one over the age of 13 wears in real life, and freakish, 70's-style multi-hued eyeshadow, and I had to wonder; since when are modern men fantasizing about women with their faces painted that way? Why do they DO that in these movies-how does it add to the fantasy for the women to wear outdated makeup? And, last but far from least, there was the most basic element of straight porn; hot babes eagerly doing it with men who are average-looking at best.
One thing about the movie was particularly interesting, given how brainwashed we are about what a human body is supposed to look like; these women were all under 25, I'd guess, and all slender and fit... and every last one of them had cellulite. In the midst of all that unrealistic nonsense, it was refreshing to see a dash of reality.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Me: 1 Husband: 0
Almost a year ago, I saw an ad for a very unusual digital watch that was on sale for a good price, and my husband agreed to pick it up for me on his way home from work; as is often the case, the watch came in packaging that you need power tools to get into, probably made by the same people who put the wrappers on CD's, so I asked him to wrestle it from the box and set it for me... little knowing what doom was about to befall us.
Normally, setting a digital watch takes less than a minute; with this watch, though, quite a few minutes went by, and he was still struggling with it, despite the fact that he'd broken the sacred code of manhood and was looking at the instruction booklet... and we now know that it's a BAD sign when a watch is so complicated that it needs a BOOKLET to show you how to set it. My husband is a whiz with technical things, and this watch was meant for teenagers (I don't like "adult" watches, so shoot me), so it just didn't seem POSSIBLE that he couldn't get it set, but the battle went on and on and ON; finally, he pronounced it done, and all seemed well... until the top of the hour, when the stupid thing let out a loud beep.
To many people, I'm sure, this wouldn't matter, and might even be desirable, but an hourly beep would drive me NUTS, would be rude to have going off at social gatherings, and would wake me up every hour if the watch were in my room where I'd naturally expect to store it. My husband went back to work, and eventually announced that he'd turned it off; at the next turn of the hour... beep. He went at it again, and pronounced it fixed; at the turn of the next hour... beep. Day after day, round after round, he tried to shut the feature off, and failed every time. Weeks, and finally MONTHS, went by. The watch sat in its box in one of his work areas, aka the guest bathroom, and he kept promising to work on it some more, but of course never did, because he'd already been through the entire booklet countless times and tried every control sequence countless times... or so he said.
Eventually, the cool new watch that I'd never been able to wear dropped off my radar, as our lives are busy and there are always 50 emergencies to contend with on any given day, and that brings us to today, nearly a YEAR later. I'd gone into the bathroom to deal with an unflushed toilet (my husband apparently believes that every time he flushes it shortens his life, sigh), and I saw that tauntingly-cheerful box, and the urge to give it a shot struck me; I didn't hold out much hope, as I have no ability at all with this sort of thing, and my husband had essentially declared it un-doable, but he was asleep and wouldn't see my efforts, so I sat down with the watch and the booklet and started pushing buttons.
The booklet contains instructions for setting a long list of watches made by this company; that shouldn't be an issue, but it turns out that the instructions for each function have been randomly distributed among sections, so I had to try the button sequences for EVERY model of watch to find what worked for whatever aspect of the functions I was trying to alter. I managed to reset the day and date, and the minutes, without any difficulty, after stumbling unexpectedly onto the set mode for them; that was the only progress I made for some time. Weirdly, the stopwatch kept turning itself on, and sometimes paused before running again; eventually, I figured out how to stop and clear it, which I needed to do a bunch more times. Even more weirdly, the alarm started turning itself on, which was freaky as it had never been SET. When I finally had both of those things off at the same time, I was about to return to my search for the elusive kill-the-chime control... when I saw that the darned watch had switched itself to 24-hour time!! Another protracted trudge through all the button combos ensued, until I discovered, quite by accident, that the claims for every model that you could toggle back and forth between 12-hour and 24-hour time were LIES, and that in fact the only way to get from one to the other was to keep advancing the hour until you got through the entire day, at which time it would switch to the other system; this means that in the fall, when the time changes, instead of having to go through an entire day's worth of hours to reset the watch, I'll have to go through TWO days... VERY poor design, even by the standards of the rest of the functions.
So then I was back to searching for the chime-off control; there was one button pattern that claimed to affect both the alarm and the chime depending on how many times you pushed the final button, but, although the alarm icon went on and off, there was nothing to indicate that the chime had been toggled-this was where my husband had been fooled, I felt sure. Determined to find some other reference to the chime, I gritted my teeth and went through EVERY set of instructions for EVERY feature and EVERY model... and there it was. It showed how you could view the alarm setting without having it try to reset (which should NOT be necessary), and claimed that if you pushed yet another button while in that screen, you could look at the day-of-the-week things at the top of the screen and see if the chime was on or off based on whether THEY were on or off; this was incorrect, it turned out, because if the chime was on those things at the top of the screen would already be on when you got there... but the button they'd said to push turned out to TOGGLE the chime!! I tested it, both on and off, and it WORKED!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!
That was one of the great moments of the year, but the best part of it came when my husband got up from his nap and got told the story, ending with him having to accept that *I*, with a minuscule % of his technical ability and instinct, had succeeded where he'd failed, and in a tiny fraction of the time he'd spent on failing. Hence the title of this essay. :-)
Normally, setting a digital watch takes less than a minute; with this watch, though, quite a few minutes went by, and he was still struggling with it, despite the fact that he'd broken the sacred code of manhood and was looking at the instruction booklet... and we now know that it's a BAD sign when a watch is so complicated that it needs a BOOKLET to show you how to set it. My husband is a whiz with technical things, and this watch was meant for teenagers (I don't like "adult" watches, so shoot me), so it just didn't seem POSSIBLE that he couldn't get it set, but the battle went on and on and ON; finally, he pronounced it done, and all seemed well... until the top of the hour, when the stupid thing let out a loud beep.
To many people, I'm sure, this wouldn't matter, and might even be desirable, but an hourly beep would drive me NUTS, would be rude to have going off at social gatherings, and would wake me up every hour if the watch were in my room where I'd naturally expect to store it. My husband went back to work, and eventually announced that he'd turned it off; at the next turn of the hour... beep. He went at it again, and pronounced it fixed; at the turn of the next hour... beep. Day after day, round after round, he tried to shut the feature off, and failed every time. Weeks, and finally MONTHS, went by. The watch sat in its box in one of his work areas, aka the guest bathroom, and he kept promising to work on it some more, but of course never did, because he'd already been through the entire booklet countless times and tried every control sequence countless times... or so he said.
Eventually, the cool new watch that I'd never been able to wear dropped off my radar, as our lives are busy and there are always 50 emergencies to contend with on any given day, and that brings us to today, nearly a YEAR later. I'd gone into the bathroom to deal with an unflushed toilet (my husband apparently believes that every time he flushes it shortens his life, sigh), and I saw that tauntingly-cheerful box, and the urge to give it a shot struck me; I didn't hold out much hope, as I have no ability at all with this sort of thing, and my husband had essentially declared it un-doable, but he was asleep and wouldn't see my efforts, so I sat down with the watch and the booklet and started pushing buttons.
The booklet contains instructions for setting a long list of watches made by this company; that shouldn't be an issue, but it turns out that the instructions for each function have been randomly distributed among sections, so I had to try the button sequences for EVERY model of watch to find what worked for whatever aspect of the functions I was trying to alter. I managed to reset the day and date, and the minutes, without any difficulty, after stumbling unexpectedly onto the set mode for them; that was the only progress I made for some time. Weirdly, the stopwatch kept turning itself on, and sometimes paused before running again; eventually, I figured out how to stop and clear it, which I needed to do a bunch more times. Even more weirdly, the alarm started turning itself on, which was freaky as it had never been SET. When I finally had both of those things off at the same time, I was about to return to my search for the elusive kill-the-chime control... when I saw that the darned watch had switched itself to 24-hour time!! Another protracted trudge through all the button combos ensued, until I discovered, quite by accident, that the claims for every model that you could toggle back and forth between 12-hour and 24-hour time were LIES, and that in fact the only way to get from one to the other was to keep advancing the hour until you got through the entire day, at which time it would switch to the other system; this means that in the fall, when the time changes, instead of having to go through an entire day's worth of hours to reset the watch, I'll have to go through TWO days... VERY poor design, even by the standards of the rest of the functions.
So then I was back to searching for the chime-off control; there was one button pattern that claimed to affect both the alarm and the chime depending on how many times you pushed the final button, but, although the alarm icon went on and off, there was nothing to indicate that the chime had been toggled-this was where my husband had been fooled, I felt sure. Determined to find some other reference to the chime, I gritted my teeth and went through EVERY set of instructions for EVERY feature and EVERY model... and there it was. It showed how you could view the alarm setting without having it try to reset (which should NOT be necessary), and claimed that if you pushed yet another button while in that screen, you could look at the day-of-the-week things at the top of the screen and see if the chime was on or off based on whether THEY were on or off; this was incorrect, it turned out, because if the chime was on those things at the top of the screen would already be on when you got there... but the button they'd said to push turned out to TOGGLE the chime!! I tested it, both on and off, and it WORKED!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!
That was one of the great moments of the year, but the best part of it came when my husband got up from his nap and got told the story, ending with him having to accept that *I*, with a minuscule % of his technical ability and instinct, had succeeded where he'd failed, and in a tiny fraction of the time he'd spent on failing. Hence the title of this essay. :-)
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Where did the nightmares go?
I've had multiple nightmares every night for as long as I can remember, right on back to early childhood... except that I've just recently started noticing that I'm NOT anymore. I'm still having SOME, but not nearly as many, not nearly as grisly, in fact not grisly at all with few exceptions, and not every night; not to sound ungrateful, because I'm VERY grateful, believe me, but what's going on here? I'm the same person, living the same life in the same surroundings... why has this lifelong pattern radically changed?
I've had that question popping in and out of my mind since I started noticing the nightmare decline, although never when I had the time to devote any real thought to it, naturally, but today I DID think about it, and it belatedly occurred to me that the only thing that's changed that could have caused this major reduction over the past year or so is... you guessed it; I started writing this blog.
Why should blogging be a cure for nightmares? One reason is that I write my entries right before bedtime, about whatever's uppermost in my thoughts, and I think that clears my mind, tones down my emotional intensity on those days when what I'm blogging about is upsetting, and reduces my stress level by making me concentrate on choosing the right words and struggling to type them properly... all of which would logically lead to less turbulent dreams. The other, and probably bigger, thing is that by having this blog, and thus being forced to focus on my spirituality by the necessity of recording its expansion and clarification, I've become vastly calmer and more grounded; I've written about the change in my emotional life (and it's a BIG change, because I've always been tightly wound and highly strung) due to my increasing spirituality before, and that process has continued, such that I keep realizing more and more often that things that would have given me a heart attack before don't bother me now, but I hadn't made the connection to the fading of my nightmares until today, perhaps because it's been such a gradual process, and because I've trained myself to ignore my dreams for the most part, to keep the nightmares from casting a pall over my waking life.
Clearly, there's something about opening yourself up to spirituality that brings positive, healing energy into your mind; the religious talk about feeling this sort of thing because God (Allah, etc) is caring for them or handling things for them, but *I* don't have a deity to point to, so it looks like just having spiritual awareness is what does the trick. This makes me think that there could be a basic goodness about karma, that on the whole it's not a neutral thing but is... nurturing? Could the engine of karma be not quite "blind," but rather predisposed to help us, at least on an emotional level? Or, does being spiritual radiate positive energy that merely draws more of the same? I'm going to go sleep on it...
I've had that question popping in and out of my mind since I started noticing the nightmare decline, although never when I had the time to devote any real thought to it, naturally, but today I DID think about it, and it belatedly occurred to me that the only thing that's changed that could have caused this major reduction over the past year or so is... you guessed it; I started writing this blog.
Why should blogging be a cure for nightmares? One reason is that I write my entries right before bedtime, about whatever's uppermost in my thoughts, and I think that clears my mind, tones down my emotional intensity on those days when what I'm blogging about is upsetting, and reduces my stress level by making me concentrate on choosing the right words and struggling to type them properly... all of which would logically lead to less turbulent dreams. The other, and probably bigger, thing is that by having this blog, and thus being forced to focus on my spirituality by the necessity of recording its expansion and clarification, I've become vastly calmer and more grounded; I've written about the change in my emotional life (and it's a BIG change, because I've always been tightly wound and highly strung) due to my increasing spirituality before, and that process has continued, such that I keep realizing more and more often that things that would have given me a heart attack before don't bother me now, but I hadn't made the connection to the fading of my nightmares until today, perhaps because it's been such a gradual process, and because I've trained myself to ignore my dreams for the most part, to keep the nightmares from casting a pall over my waking life.
Clearly, there's something about opening yourself up to spirituality that brings positive, healing energy into your mind; the religious talk about feeling this sort of thing because God (Allah, etc) is caring for them or handling things for them, but *I* don't have a deity to point to, so it looks like just having spiritual awareness is what does the trick. This makes me think that there could be a basic goodness about karma, that on the whole it's not a neutral thing but is... nurturing? Could the engine of karma be not quite "blind," but rather predisposed to help us, at least on an emotional level? Or, does being spiritual radiate positive energy that merely draws more of the same? I'm going to go sleep on it...
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
The color of karma
You know the color the sky gets around the end of twilight, that deep, soft blue with alot of violet in it? That color that you virtually never see anywhere else, although we use every other color in the world in our clothes and such... have you ever wondered WHY that gorgeous blue is almost never used, not even in paintings that depict twilight? It's as if our minds just skate by it on the way to the standard sky blues, as if it wasn't quite real... or as if we've got some lingering instinctual fear of it, because it signals that the dangers of night are just a few minutes away.
I looked up at the sky at just the right moment today, and saw that color, and it gave me CHILLS. It gave the sky a look of infinite depth, and of substance, as if it were made of something that would feel plush and velvety. It suggested dreamy music full of pan flutes and windchimes. It hinted at the scent of sweet, musky flowers that only bloom at night for a few days out of the year. It was the closest I've ever come to synesthesia, and it was astonishing to get all of that from a color.
Somehow, it came into my mind after that that this was the color of karma, this rare color that has no name, that we couldn't really describe to anyone who hadn't seen it, but that everyone who HAS seen it knows what you're referring to as soon as you talk about it. I know it sounds a little goofy, but people supposedly pick up spiritual vibrations from all sorts of things, including colors... hmmmmmmmmm, I wonder what those who believe in the color/spirituality connection say about this color, or at least the colors closest to it on the spectrum... I foresee research on that topic in the near future.
I looked up at the sky at just the right moment today, and saw that color, and it gave me CHILLS. It gave the sky a look of infinite depth, and of substance, as if it were made of something that would feel plush and velvety. It suggested dreamy music full of pan flutes and windchimes. It hinted at the scent of sweet, musky flowers that only bloom at night for a few days out of the year. It was the closest I've ever come to synesthesia, and it was astonishing to get all of that from a color.
Somehow, it came into my mind after that that this was the color of karma, this rare color that has no name, that we couldn't really describe to anyone who hadn't seen it, but that everyone who HAS seen it knows what you're referring to as soon as you talk about it. I know it sounds a little goofy, but people supposedly pick up spiritual vibrations from all sorts of things, including colors... hmmmmmmmmm, I wonder what those who believe in the color/spirituality connection say about this color, or at least the colors closest to it on the spectrum... I foresee research on that topic in the near future.
Monday, April 04, 2005
What can we inherit?
Our hair color, our eye color, a tendency towards chubbiness or a quick temper... but how about a scary experience your grandfather had? I don't mean could such a thing influence his behavior as an adult, and thus his children, and thus you... I mean can the actual experience somehow be passed along to you in some way analogous to how he might pass on his high cheekbones, via some spiritual or karmic equivalent of DNA? I know that sounds freakily new age-y even for ME, but I got this from the sermon of my favorite Christian religious leader, Joel Osteen!! :-O
The full story was that a boy in a loving family started having savage panic attacks at school centering around his certainty that his parents weren't ever going to pick him up; his parents had to be called constantly, first to reassure him over the phone, and then to start coming to get him... and they couldn't figure out why it was happening. The boy's dad told his own father about the situation, and grandpa had the answer; when he'd been a little boy, his daddy had died, and he'd been so terrified of losing his mother too that he couldn't be separated from her... when she'd walk him to school, he'd cry so hard that she'd often bring him back home with her. He believed that, somehow, that experience had been transmitted to his grandson, and that that was the cause of the child's intense and groundless fears.
Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Osteen used it as an example of how things can be "passed along spiritually" down through the generations; I don't think this is a standard Christian belief, as he told the audience he wasn't trying to be "scary" rather than quoting something from the Bible as he usually would after telling a story, which makes it sound like he was NOT describing something they'd have been familiar with. Even if this IS just something he came up with all on his own, his instincts have shown themselves to be dead-on so many times that I'm willing to give some thought to the topic; I'll be asking a hard-core Christian friend about it, too, just to cover all the bases.
The Osteen sermon reminded me of an article I read a few years ago by a woman who developed an excruciating pain in her foot that no doctor could diagnose or cure. One day, she did a past-life regression, and discovered to her amazement that she'd once been a slave who had run away, been caught, and been tortured by having a hot iron applied to, you guessed it, the exact spot on her foot that she'd been getting so much pain from. She never had the pain again.
And THAT reminded me of a scene from "Stand on Zanzibar" where one African-American man, through a process I no longer remember clearly, discovers that another African-American man has a sort of "muscle memory" of the pain a slave ancestor of his had from having his hand sawed off; that novel is a work of FICTION, yes, but Brunner is making reference, I think, to the actual beliefs held by many traditional African cultures that the suffering of one's ancestors CAN cause one to suffer in some mystical way.
And THAT made me think of how some people who recall past lives say they have physical manifestations, such as birthmarks, of where they had serious injuries in those lives.
All of these things point to the transmission of something, some energy presumably, that "remembers" pain, both physical and emotional, to future generations, whether by biological descent or by hitching a ride with the soul as it moves from body to body; I see nothing that counts as evidence one way or the other, but the diversity of cultures that believe some version of this concept tells me that I need to accept that it's a possibility, and give some serious thought to how it might work... so I will.
I ask karma for additional input and/or epiphanies on this topic.
The full story was that a boy in a loving family started having savage panic attacks at school centering around his certainty that his parents weren't ever going to pick him up; his parents had to be called constantly, first to reassure him over the phone, and then to start coming to get him... and they couldn't figure out why it was happening. The boy's dad told his own father about the situation, and grandpa had the answer; when he'd been a little boy, his daddy had died, and he'd been so terrified of losing his mother too that he couldn't be separated from her... when she'd walk him to school, he'd cry so hard that she'd often bring him back home with her. He believed that, somehow, that experience had been transmitted to his grandson, and that that was the cause of the child's intense and groundless fears.
Sounds impossible, doesn't it? Osteen used it as an example of how things can be "passed along spiritually" down through the generations; I don't think this is a standard Christian belief, as he told the audience he wasn't trying to be "scary" rather than quoting something from the Bible as he usually would after telling a story, which makes it sound like he was NOT describing something they'd have been familiar with. Even if this IS just something he came up with all on his own, his instincts have shown themselves to be dead-on so many times that I'm willing to give some thought to the topic; I'll be asking a hard-core Christian friend about it, too, just to cover all the bases.
The Osteen sermon reminded me of an article I read a few years ago by a woman who developed an excruciating pain in her foot that no doctor could diagnose or cure. One day, she did a past-life regression, and discovered to her amazement that she'd once been a slave who had run away, been caught, and been tortured by having a hot iron applied to, you guessed it, the exact spot on her foot that she'd been getting so much pain from. She never had the pain again.
And THAT reminded me of a scene from "Stand on Zanzibar" where one African-American man, through a process I no longer remember clearly, discovers that another African-American man has a sort of "muscle memory" of the pain a slave ancestor of his had from having his hand sawed off; that novel is a work of FICTION, yes, but Brunner is making reference, I think, to the actual beliefs held by many traditional African cultures that the suffering of one's ancestors CAN cause one to suffer in some mystical way.
And THAT made me think of how some people who recall past lives say they have physical manifestations, such as birthmarks, of where they had serious injuries in those lives.
All of these things point to the transmission of something, some energy presumably, that "remembers" pain, both physical and emotional, to future generations, whether by biological descent or by hitching a ride with the soul as it moves from body to body; I see nothing that counts as evidence one way or the other, but the diversity of cultures that believe some version of this concept tells me that I need to accept that it's a possibility, and give some serious thought to how it might work... so I will.
I ask karma for additional input and/or epiphanies on this topic.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Odds and ends
Squirrel babies update: My little sweetheart was less skittish today than she'd been recently, and was willing to vacuum up lots of walnuts while being petted. I held the nuts high enough to get her to stand up, and, determined to find hard evidence of motherhood, began gingerly searching through the fur on her underside (ignoring my husband's comments about my being a "lesbian squirrel molester"), and... YES!! Although she didn't seem distended the way I'd expect from a lactating creature, she DID have a half-dozen clearly enlarged teats, which means that she MUST be nursing babies; HOORAY!! I wish I knew how many there are, and how they're doing, and if there are any predators lurking around, and if they're getting enough milk, and if they're warm enough, and if they'll be willing to let me pet them... I can't WAIT to see them. :-)
If you send someone merchandise through the mail that they haven't ordered, they're not legally required to either pay for it or send it back; many people don't realize this, so it used to be a common scam for companies to do mass mailings of stuff in the hopes that enough people would pay rather than hassling with returns to make it worthwhile. Eventually, these crooks, who were of course making it look like people DID have to pay for or return the merchandise, started being prosecuted, and the practice died out... until today, when I got a DVD in the mail from a charity that I seriously doubt I'll be sending any more $ to, with a bunch of paperwork repeatedly telling me that I had to send $, and sign up to get more DVD's in the bargain, or send it back. I had no intention of doing either, of course, even for a charity, and I was getting pretty worked up at the thought of the people that'd be fooled or guilt-tripped into playing along... and then I saw it. On the back page of the flashy brochure that came with the paperwork was a little one-line disclaimer that you didn't actually have to either pay or return; this protects them from mail fraud charges, but in my mind it just isn't enough.
And finally: Today, the camcorder found another use besides taking endless footage of the squirrel eating. My husband had laid down on the floor to watch TV, and, as always, was asleep within 30 seconds... in nice bright light, which caused a light to go on over MY head. I got the camera, got it running, got it right in his face, and recorded about 5 minutes of him blasting out his deafening snores, BWAHAHAHAHA!! When he woke up, I prodded him into playing it all back on the computer, and for the 1st time in his life he was treated to what *I* am all too familiar with... and turned an amusing shade of crimson in his embarrassment as he listened in disbelief to the amount of noise he generates. He said that he could get me a wav file with a sample of his snoring from the video file, so I can share it online; keep your fingers crossed!! ;-)
If you send someone merchandise through the mail that they haven't ordered, they're not legally required to either pay for it or send it back; many people don't realize this, so it used to be a common scam for companies to do mass mailings of stuff in the hopes that enough people would pay rather than hassling with returns to make it worthwhile. Eventually, these crooks, who were of course making it look like people DID have to pay for or return the merchandise, started being prosecuted, and the practice died out... until today, when I got a DVD in the mail from a charity that I seriously doubt I'll be sending any more $ to, with a bunch of paperwork repeatedly telling me that I had to send $, and sign up to get more DVD's in the bargain, or send it back. I had no intention of doing either, of course, even for a charity, and I was getting pretty worked up at the thought of the people that'd be fooled or guilt-tripped into playing along... and then I saw it. On the back page of the flashy brochure that came with the paperwork was a little one-line disclaimer that you didn't actually have to either pay or return; this protects them from mail fraud charges, but in my mind it just isn't enough.
And finally: Today, the camcorder found another use besides taking endless footage of the squirrel eating. My husband had laid down on the floor to watch TV, and, as always, was asleep within 30 seconds... in nice bright light, which caused a light to go on over MY head. I got the camera, got it running, got it right in his face, and recorded about 5 minutes of him blasting out his deafening snores, BWAHAHAHAHA!! When he woke up, I prodded him into playing it all back on the computer, and for the 1st time in his life he was treated to what *I* am all too familiar with... and turned an amusing shade of crimson in his embarrassment as he listened in disbelief to the amount of noise he generates. He said that he could get me a wav file with a sample of his snoring from the video file, so I can share it online; keep your fingers crossed!! ;-)
