Saturday, June 04, 2005
SQUIRREL BABIES!!!!!!!!!!
After over 2 agonizing months of waiting (see my post of 3-29-05), of watching my little angel girl become the Pamela Anderson of the squirrel world with enormous, bloated teats (TWELVE of them!!), of knowing that she was, in fact, a female (we'd always thought she was a boy, lol) and nursing a litter, I finally, FINALLY saw the babies today!! They are, without a doubt, the cutest creatures to ever walk the Earth!! :-)
Here's the progression of events:
A couple of weeks ago, we had some loud and protracted construction here, and the squirrel, which had been coming every day forever, was obviously freaked out, and first didn't come at all for several days, then just came along on the fence (where she'd take food from me if offered), then vanished again for 5 days... right at the time we were expecting the babies to show up, GRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Last night, I non-coincidentally had a dream about a squirrel; it looked "wrong," as its body shape and color were "off," but it smiled at me (yes, SMILED), and I knew it was "mine"; when I woke up, I wondered if that meant I'd be getting a squirrel visit today.
Late this afternoon, I walked into the kitchen, looked out the window, and saw a sweet furry face; my 1st reaction was "there she is!!", but almost immediately I saw a 2ND face, and thought "she's brought a baby!!", instantly followed by, "they're both far too small to be her... this is 2 babies here withOUT their mother."
My EXTREME excitement at seeing the little darlings (which are about 2/3 of adult size, and so technically are more like adolescents than babies) was mitigated by 2 unpleasant realizations:
1) The unexpected absence of their mother might mean that she's abandoned the territory to the babies (or, in theory, that she's hurt, or sick, or worse), and thus that it might be a long while before she returns, or that we might never see her again; she's utterly irreplaceable in our hearts, so, no matter how many babies there are, it's not worth it if we lose HER, both because we love her and because she's semi-tame and I can pet and hand-feed her.
2) It's normal for ground squirrels to have EIGHT babies (and given how bloated the mother was with milk, and how swollen all 12 teats were, with the fur rubbed off around them, it seems as if she MUST have nursed a sizable litter), if it turns out that the ones I saw today are all there are, that means that it's likely that the other babies, which only had a 10% chance of reaching adulthood according to what I've read, are... are...
{dead}
... well, let's hope that they're in my neighbors' yards eating THEIR ornamental plants and staking out new territories.
Without their mother's example to follow, the babies we've got won't have the incentive to come and be hand-fed, so I'm looking at a potentially lengthy taming process before I can have close squirrel contact if my angel girl doesn't return soon; I hope I don't have to do things the hard way, but I'm not counting on it... I'm launching right into acclimating them to me with the goal of getting them to take food from me as soon as possible.
I'm certain that the mommy has been bringing them to my yard (as opposed to their wandering in by accident), because the babies knew where to dig up her nut caches, and, more importantly, knew to climb up onto this one big pot and drink mud out of it like she does; I'd have given ANYTHING to have seen those visits, but most of the day neither my husband nor I can be standing at the window looking around, so for all we know they've been coming for WEEKS, just not at times that we're available.... and maybe there were more babies then, sigh...
Although what we've got is far from the mob of babies we'd hoped for, and we have to worry about when we'll see our angel girl again, the 2 newcomers have already charmed us with their curiosity, playfulness, and the sometimes-clumsiness of creatures that're still trying to grow into their limbs. One of them is significantly larger and more aggressive than the other, and has exhibited mounting behavior with the smaller one, so naturally we're assuming that they're a male and a female; we've been fooled before, though, so we're keeping an open mind. If they ARE of opposite sexes, we then have to wonder if, relatedness notwithstanding, they're going to be a breeding pair; animals naturally do what's right, mating-wise (with humans as the glaring exception), so it must be ok if that's what's up, and it'd have the bonus of meaning that neither of them will be taking off in search of its own territory.
Despite the sudden onset of never before encountered camcorder problems (naturally), I got some priceless footage of the little darlings nuzzling each other and even wrestling a little, as well as climbing and eating everything in sight; still, my husband would of course like to see them live, and I'm dying to see more of them, so we've laid out enough food to feed an elephant, of every kind we could think of, to lure them in and see what they prefer, and... now, all we can do is wait and see what sort of squirrel visits we'll get next.
I'm going to be climbing the walls tomorrow until I see some fuzzy, elfin faces; I'm so excited to be a "grandma" at last, to have the chance to watch squirrel babies up close, and of course there's still hope of seeing more babies, and their mother... keep your fingers crossed for me!! :-)
Here's the progression of events:
A couple of weeks ago, we had some loud and protracted construction here, and the squirrel, which had been coming every day forever, was obviously freaked out, and first didn't come at all for several days, then just came along on the fence (where she'd take food from me if offered), then vanished again for 5 days... right at the time we were expecting the babies to show up, GRRRRRRRRRRRR.
Last night, I non-coincidentally had a dream about a squirrel; it looked "wrong," as its body shape and color were "off," but it smiled at me (yes, SMILED), and I knew it was "mine"; when I woke up, I wondered if that meant I'd be getting a squirrel visit today.
Late this afternoon, I walked into the kitchen, looked out the window, and saw a sweet furry face; my 1st reaction was "there she is!!", but almost immediately I saw a 2ND face, and thought "she's brought a baby!!", instantly followed by, "they're both far too small to be her... this is 2 babies here withOUT their mother."
My EXTREME excitement at seeing the little darlings (which are about 2/3 of adult size, and so technically are more like adolescents than babies) was mitigated by 2 unpleasant realizations:
1) The unexpected absence of their mother might mean that she's abandoned the territory to the babies (or, in theory, that she's hurt, or sick, or worse), and thus that it might be a long while before she returns, or that we might never see her again; she's utterly irreplaceable in our hearts, so, no matter how many babies there are, it's not worth it if we lose HER, both because we love her and because she's semi-tame and I can pet and hand-feed her.
2) It's normal for ground squirrels to have EIGHT babies (and given how bloated the mother was with milk, and how swollen all 12 teats were, with the fur rubbed off around them, it seems as if she MUST have nursed a sizable litter), if it turns out that the ones I saw today are all there are, that means that it's likely that the other babies, which only had a 10% chance of reaching adulthood according to what I've read, are... are...
{dead}
... well, let's hope that they're in my neighbors' yards eating THEIR ornamental plants and staking out new territories.
Without their mother's example to follow, the babies we've got won't have the incentive to come and be hand-fed, so I'm looking at a potentially lengthy taming process before I can have close squirrel contact if my angel girl doesn't return soon; I hope I don't have to do things the hard way, but I'm not counting on it... I'm launching right into acclimating them to me with the goal of getting them to take food from me as soon as possible.
I'm certain that the mommy has been bringing them to my yard (as opposed to their wandering in by accident), because the babies knew where to dig up her nut caches, and, more importantly, knew to climb up onto this one big pot and drink mud out of it like she does; I'd have given ANYTHING to have seen those visits, but most of the day neither my husband nor I can be standing at the window looking around, so for all we know they've been coming for WEEKS, just not at times that we're available.... and maybe there were more babies then, sigh...
Although what we've got is far from the mob of babies we'd hoped for, and we have to worry about when we'll see our angel girl again, the 2 newcomers have already charmed us with their curiosity, playfulness, and the sometimes-clumsiness of creatures that're still trying to grow into their limbs. One of them is significantly larger and more aggressive than the other, and has exhibited mounting behavior with the smaller one, so naturally we're assuming that they're a male and a female; we've been fooled before, though, so we're keeping an open mind. If they ARE of opposite sexes, we then have to wonder if, relatedness notwithstanding, they're going to be a breeding pair; animals naturally do what's right, mating-wise (with humans as the glaring exception), so it must be ok if that's what's up, and it'd have the bonus of meaning that neither of them will be taking off in search of its own territory.
Despite the sudden onset of never before encountered camcorder problems (naturally), I got some priceless footage of the little darlings nuzzling each other and even wrestling a little, as well as climbing and eating everything in sight; still, my husband would of course like to see them live, and I'm dying to see more of them, so we've laid out enough food to feed an elephant, of every kind we could think of, to lure them in and see what they prefer, and... now, all we can do is wait and see what sort of squirrel visits we'll get next.
I'm going to be climbing the walls tomorrow until I see some fuzzy, elfin faces; I'm so excited to be a "grandma" at last, to have the chance to watch squirrel babies up close, and of course there's still hope of seeing more babies, and their mother... keep your fingers crossed for me!! :-)
Friday, June 03, 2005
"Beauty and the Geek"
Amazingly for someone who mostly ignores what's on regular TV unless it's a movie, I saw ANOTHER interesting show today (it came on after "Blue Collar TV" on the WB, and I got sucked in before I could find something else to watch from my endless digital cable listings); it sounds like yet another romantic hookup type program, but it's not... or so they're claiming for now. It starts out with a group of men that, as the title implies, are smart, of varying degrees of unattractive and poorly-dressed, and totally socially inept (ie have never been on a date, never kissed a girl, are virgins at nearly 30), and women who are, not just beautiful, but dumb as rocks; the premise is that they pair up, the women try to make the men socially acceptable, the men try to stuff some knowledge into the women's heads, and competitions will show who's done the best at it... and of course, eliminations occur at the end of each show based on who the winners nominate and the others vote for, and the winners get $250K.
Time will tell if there's a built-in twist, but even if they didn't intend one there still is one: Dr. Joyce Brothers once said that if you put ANY straight man and woman on a deserted island together, a romance WILL eventually develop, as that's how we're programmed to behave; that concept operates everywhere men and women spend alot of time around each other, and so is bound to become a factor even with such shy and awkward men and picky women. In fact, it already IS a factor, as one of the women has developed an obvious interest in one of the men (NOT her game partner, which livens things up even more), and has started to pursue him... and I'm betting that that won't be all the romance that blossoms during the course of the show.
This "reality" series will be far more interesting than any of the various combinations of hotties that've been thrown together for other shows, or the one (one?) with an "average" guy with hot babes (can you imagine it ever being done the other way around?); super-hot women and men just short of the absolute bottom of the dating food chain, with the former forced to get to know those they'd never spare a minute to in real life, and the latter in a situation where they're guaranteed extensive contact with those they'd never dare approach, much less get to know... stay tuned, folks, human nature will be clearly on display in the weeks to come.
Time will tell if there's a built-in twist, but even if they didn't intend one there still is one: Dr. Joyce Brothers once said that if you put ANY straight man and woman on a deserted island together, a romance WILL eventually develop, as that's how we're programmed to behave; that concept operates everywhere men and women spend alot of time around each other, and so is bound to become a factor even with such shy and awkward men and picky women. In fact, it already IS a factor, as one of the women has developed an obvious interest in one of the men (NOT her game partner, which livens things up even more), and has started to pursue him... and I'm betting that that won't be all the romance that blossoms during the course of the show.
This "reality" series will be far more interesting than any of the various combinations of hotties that've been thrown together for other shows, or the one (one?) with an "average" guy with hot babes (can you imagine it ever being done the other way around?); super-hot women and men just short of the absolute bottom of the dating food chain, with the former forced to get to know those they'd never spare a minute to in real life, and the latter in a situation where they're guaranteed extensive contact with those they'd never dare approach, much less get to know... stay tuned, folks, human nature will be clearly on display in the weeks to come.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Childhood clothing oddities
Throughout my entire childhood, my mother's clothing philosophy, at least for MY clothes, was to wait until stuff was WAY out of style and on the mega-clearance racks at K-Mart, and then she'd get it. Do you remember in the early 80's when a white shirt with a rainbow across the front was the hot item, soon to be followed by an endless variety of other styles of rainbow clothes? As always, my mother ignored my frenzied pleas to have something cute while it was "in," but as soon as it was OUT she got me a bunch of different ones on sale. When mesh shirts over t-shirts were in for about 5 minutes, she managed to get me a couple of dorky shirts with ATTACHED mesh, and I got stuck with several sailor shirts when those made a similar brief appearance in stores; when patterned jeans, including those that looked like flowers had been painted on them, made it to the clearance racks, there was my pants wardrobe for college and beyond. The strangest example of how she went out of her way to make me look as weird and different as possible was with the terry-cloth shirts; I had at least TEN of them, all cut the same way (indented waist, low scoop neckline, cap sleeves), and of 3 different varieties (plain, with shiny stripes, and with designs on the front), and I've never seen any evidence that those shirts ever existed other than in my closet... I never saw them advertised, or in stores, or on anyone else, or in any of the retrospectives that've been done on 80's clothes-and that's not a hyperbole, either, I mean NEVER. Were they something that some local company made by mistake and fire-saled off to K-Mart, where only my mother bought them?
I cringe to contemplate what people must have thought seeing me wearing that sort of stuff, especially since it was ALL I had, and thus all I wore... and I wore those things until my mid-20's, too (because I couldn't afford to complete the process of replacing my entire wardrobe until then, and I had to wear SOMETHING), how grim is THAT?
What's even worse, in a way, is what happened the one and only time in my entire life that my mother actually got me clothes that were still in the stores on the regular racks; this wasn't due to generosity on her part, but because I'd had such a huge growth spurt that, even though she was perfectly happy for me to go to school with high-waters, even SHE couldn't deny that I needed all new pants for the 8th grade school year. We'd moved at the end of my 7th grade year, during which I'd been sent to school in patterned polyester stretch pants and turtlenecks layered with short-sleeved polyester shirts (none of which my peers were wearing, needless to say, and you've gotta wonder what sick train of thought led her to design this uniform for an innocent child), and I was faced with being able, wonder of wonders, to get proper clothing with which to meet my new schoolmates for the 1st time.
The central garment in this story is Dittos jeans, which is what every girl except me was wearing in those days. The closest I'd gotten was a pair of pants with that same sort of seam over the butt (aka "saddle seat") that my mother had gotten me as a concession to my endlessly pointing out the total lack of overlap between my clothes and anyone else's; she ripped out the tags with the no-name brand on them, and instructed me to tell anyone that asked if they were Dittos or not, "Why do you ask, can't you tell?"... which, as you might imagine, despite how clever SHE thought this was, did NOT fool anyone, so she might as well have saved what little $ she spent on them and not bothered. In our new city, there wasn't any polyester child's clothing in the stores, and there WAS an abundance of Dittos in every color of the rainbow; in fact, unless you wanted to pay more and get actual bluejeans like Levi's, which of course wasn't an option, Dittos were all there was for school pants... and thus the previously undreamed-of process of buying clothes that weren't already 6 months out of style began. I can close my eyes and still see them; red, hot pink, green, dark purple, lavender, and sky blue, some with the saddle seat and some with the double-barred back seam. When I started school in the fall, ready to strut my stuff in my Dittos wardrobe, I looked around at my classmates at the private school I'd be attending from then until college, and...
... no one but me was wearing Dittos.
That's right, I was in the one school in America where the girls totally ignored the current fashion; instead, they were wearing "Salt of the Earth" jeans, which I'd never heard of, never saw in any ad or store, and which a Google search of comes up blank... I don't know what store they were all shopping at, or what it was about that brand that made it the only acceptable one, but I DID know that, after all my high hopes, I had the wrong clothes AGAIN, and had been instantly branded as an outsider AGAIN.
Given the nightmarishness of my early-life clothes experiences, perhaps it's not a coincidence that now, when I'm pushing middle age and can afford to wear pretty much anything, all I wear is basic jeans and thrift-store t-shirts... while eagerly reading Vogue every month. As long as everything I wear is clean and hole-free (which it always is, of course) and my socks match, I'm in the upper 5% of my peer group (geeks), so, although I greatly enjoy the artistry of couture, in my actual life clothes have become pretty much a non-issue, which is really how it should ideally always have been.
I sure hope that that old saying about how clothes make the man (or woman) doesn't apply to what I wore in my formative years, though, lol.
I cringe to contemplate what people must have thought seeing me wearing that sort of stuff, especially since it was ALL I had, and thus all I wore... and I wore those things until my mid-20's, too (because I couldn't afford to complete the process of replacing my entire wardrobe until then, and I had to wear SOMETHING), how grim is THAT?
What's even worse, in a way, is what happened the one and only time in my entire life that my mother actually got me clothes that were still in the stores on the regular racks; this wasn't due to generosity on her part, but because I'd had such a huge growth spurt that, even though she was perfectly happy for me to go to school with high-waters, even SHE couldn't deny that I needed all new pants for the 8th grade school year. We'd moved at the end of my 7th grade year, during which I'd been sent to school in patterned polyester stretch pants and turtlenecks layered with short-sleeved polyester shirts (none of which my peers were wearing, needless to say, and you've gotta wonder what sick train of thought led her to design this uniform for an innocent child), and I was faced with being able, wonder of wonders, to get proper clothing with which to meet my new schoolmates for the 1st time.
The central garment in this story is Dittos jeans, which is what every girl except me was wearing in those days. The closest I'd gotten was a pair of pants with that same sort of seam over the butt (aka "saddle seat") that my mother had gotten me as a concession to my endlessly pointing out the total lack of overlap between my clothes and anyone else's; she ripped out the tags with the no-name brand on them, and instructed me to tell anyone that asked if they were Dittos or not, "Why do you ask, can't you tell?"... which, as you might imagine, despite how clever SHE thought this was, did NOT fool anyone, so she might as well have saved what little $ she spent on them and not bothered. In our new city, there wasn't any polyester child's clothing in the stores, and there WAS an abundance of Dittos in every color of the rainbow; in fact, unless you wanted to pay more and get actual bluejeans like Levi's, which of course wasn't an option, Dittos were all there was for school pants... and thus the previously undreamed-of process of buying clothes that weren't already 6 months out of style began. I can close my eyes and still see them; red, hot pink, green, dark purple, lavender, and sky blue, some with the saddle seat and some with the double-barred back seam. When I started school in the fall, ready to strut my stuff in my Dittos wardrobe, I looked around at my classmates at the private school I'd be attending from then until college, and...
... no one but me was wearing Dittos.
That's right, I was in the one school in America where the girls totally ignored the current fashion; instead, they were wearing "Salt of the Earth" jeans, which I'd never heard of, never saw in any ad or store, and which a Google search of comes up blank... I don't know what store they were all shopping at, or what it was about that brand that made it the only acceptable one, but I DID know that, after all my high hopes, I had the wrong clothes AGAIN, and had been instantly branded as an outsider AGAIN.
Given the nightmarishness of my early-life clothes experiences, perhaps it's not a coincidence that now, when I'm pushing middle age and can afford to wear pretty much anything, all I wear is basic jeans and thrift-store t-shirts... while eagerly reading Vogue every month. As long as everything I wear is clean and hole-free (which it always is, of course) and my socks match, I'm in the upper 5% of my peer group (geeks), so, although I greatly enjoy the artistry of couture, in my actual life clothes have become pretty much a non-issue, which is really how it should ideally always have been.
I sure hope that that old saying about how clothes make the man (or woman) doesn't apply to what I wore in my formative years, though, lol.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
"Strip Search"
You can imagine what I THOUGHT this TV show was going to be about, lol, but the premise for this VH1 program turns out to be, "Men compete for a contract with a traveling male strip revue troupe." That sounded promising (hey, I'm married, not DEAD), so I watched it... and ran head-on into human nature.
Everyone knows what male strippers look like; tall, tan (or non-white), muscular, handsome. Everyone also knows what strippers need to be able to do to allow them to BE strippers rather than, say, models; dance and exude sexual energy. Why, then, were the applicants for this competition primarily homely, flabby, pasty, sporting guts and love handles, unable to dance, and with no clue whatsoever as to what to do with their bodies to project a sexual vibe? What went through these men's heads that made them think that, although they possessed NONE of the qualifications to be male strippers, they still had a shot? Are they CRAZY?
There's a classic "Cathy" cartoon where she and her friends are at the pool, and see a hugely fat man in a tiny Speedo who looks relaxed and happy to have his body hanging out, unlike the women, who are agonizing over every bodily flaw, real or imagined, that they have. They express dismay that HE is fine with his body when none of them are satisfied with their own, far closer to acceptable, bodies; he, meanwhile, is looking at one of them and thinking, "She'd be cute if she lost some weight." There are several good lessons about human nature there, but the applicable one is that, even with the advent of metrosexuality, and the belated emergence of male sex symbols that actually have fantasy-worthy bodies rather than just attractive faces, lots of men still have no idea how they rate lookswise, or even that they're BEING rated on things like whether they have a flat stomach, muscle definition, or a butt.
Don't get me wrong, fellas, I don't think you have to be mountains of muscle to be hot; on the contrary, I think that a sleeker but still well-defined body is FAR more attractive, as exemplified by my buddy Wes in the shirtless photo he posted on his terrific blog
http://www.wesoteric.com/blog-archives/05-30-2005/its-time-for-another-crayon-haiku-2/
and I also think that a wide variety of male body shapes that are healthy and strong without being chiseled or lean are very attractive... but to be a STRIPPER, of either gender, you need to have blatant sexual cues in how your body looks, which means big boobs for women and big muscles for men (sadly, it also means shaving the chests, which bums me out no end).
The most entertaining thing about this TV show was what most of the guys thought of as "dancing"; when they saw themselves bobbing, flapping and stomping on video, they probably died of shame... if not directly, then indirectly from the laughter of their friends. And as for dancing SEXY... does anyone besides me wonder how the gender that's biologically programmed for sexual pursuit can be so clueless as to how to BE sexy? What is this issue that straight, white American men have with moving their hips and undulating their bodies... do they think their balls will drop off if they do those things?
Anyways, that's my latest foray into reality TV; what's next, do you suppose, a competition to get guys for porn movies, where they'll whip out a ruler at the auditions? ;-)
Everyone knows what male strippers look like; tall, tan (or non-white), muscular, handsome. Everyone also knows what strippers need to be able to do to allow them to BE strippers rather than, say, models; dance and exude sexual energy. Why, then, were the applicants for this competition primarily homely, flabby, pasty, sporting guts and love handles, unable to dance, and with no clue whatsoever as to what to do with their bodies to project a sexual vibe? What went through these men's heads that made them think that, although they possessed NONE of the qualifications to be male strippers, they still had a shot? Are they CRAZY?
There's a classic "Cathy" cartoon where she and her friends are at the pool, and see a hugely fat man in a tiny Speedo who looks relaxed and happy to have his body hanging out, unlike the women, who are agonizing over every bodily flaw, real or imagined, that they have. They express dismay that HE is fine with his body when none of them are satisfied with their own, far closer to acceptable, bodies; he, meanwhile, is looking at one of them and thinking, "She'd be cute if she lost some weight." There are several good lessons about human nature there, but the applicable one is that, even with the advent of metrosexuality, and the belated emergence of male sex symbols that actually have fantasy-worthy bodies rather than just attractive faces, lots of men still have no idea how they rate lookswise, or even that they're BEING rated on things like whether they have a flat stomach, muscle definition, or a butt.
Don't get me wrong, fellas, I don't think you have to be mountains of muscle to be hot; on the contrary, I think that a sleeker but still well-defined body is FAR more attractive, as exemplified by my buddy Wes in the shirtless photo he posted on his terrific blog
http://www.wesoteric.com/blog-archives/05-30-2005/its-time-for-another-crayon-haiku-2/
and I also think that a wide variety of male body shapes that are healthy and strong without being chiseled or lean are very attractive... but to be a STRIPPER, of either gender, you need to have blatant sexual cues in how your body looks, which means big boobs for women and big muscles for men (sadly, it also means shaving the chests, which bums me out no end).
The most entertaining thing about this TV show was what most of the guys thought of as "dancing"; when they saw themselves bobbing, flapping and stomping on video, they probably died of shame... if not directly, then indirectly from the laughter of their friends. And as for dancing SEXY... does anyone besides me wonder how the gender that's biologically programmed for sexual pursuit can be so clueless as to how to BE sexy? What is this issue that straight, white American men have with moving their hips and undulating their bodies... do they think their balls will drop off if they do those things?
Anyways, that's my latest foray into reality TV; what's next, do you suppose, a competition to get guys for porn movies, where they'll whip out a ruler at the auditions? ;-)
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Return of the karmic cartoon
If you're a long-time reader, you might remember me posting on 12-11-04 about an amazing animated short, "Bumble Beeing," that I saw on a program called "Jump Cuts" on the Comedy Channel; in it, a bug that's smashed on a windshield talks about how it had wanted to make a meaningful contribution... does that ring a bell? If not, or if you're a more recent reader, do yourself a favor and don't read any more of this post until you've watched the cartoon, which can be found here (be sure to have your sound turned on)
http://billyblob.com/cartoons/bumble-beeing/
Did you watch it? If not, I'll finish the plot to show you why I LOVE this piece, which I've discovered was shown at the 2003 Sundance Festival; the wipers finish off the bug and coat the windshield with its remains, such that the driver can't see where he's going... the car crashes into a tree, and the trunk pops open... and a little girl with a taped mouth stands up in it. The way this little work of art presents the idea of how you can get what you ask for, and then some, in a way you never thought of, blew me away, and still does.
I searched all over online for that clip after I saw it on TV, and all I could find was 30 seconds or so of it on the Comedy Channel's website; I looked again today, and it was GONE... so I did a new search, and found that its creator, Billy Blob, now has a website with the longed-for clip as well as several others of his. I'd highly recommend that you watch "Karma Ghost," located here
http://billyblob.com/cartoons/karma-ghost/
because it gives a very clever explanation of how karma works; there are little "karma ghosts" everywhere, and every time the main character interacts with anything in a negative way, be it with a human, dog, car or trash can, a "ghost" leaves the victim and jumps to him, putting on a shirt that describes the wrong he did over its old shirt which described the wrong the victim had previously done... interesting idea, isn't it, that you can directly inherit some of another person's, or animal's, or even an object's karma (which is nothing more than energy, remember), and have it undergo a change to customize it to your situation? That's a reasonable way to see how karma moves around, once you remove the actual ghosts; we MIGHT be getting it from whatever we interact with, rather than creating it, at least some of the time. The other cool concept in the cartoon is that once the man collects enough karma ghosts, they work together to "get" him, thus causing his death; while most people obviously don't die from bad karma, it certainly happens that backloads of karma, + or -, can and do all descend on us at once.
Mr. Blob seems to be a kindred soul; I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.
http://billyblob.com/cartoons/bumble-beeing/
Did you watch it? If not, I'll finish the plot to show you why I LOVE this piece, which I've discovered was shown at the 2003 Sundance Festival; the wipers finish off the bug and coat the windshield with its remains, such that the driver can't see where he's going... the car crashes into a tree, and the trunk pops open... and a little girl with a taped mouth stands up in it. The way this little work of art presents the idea of how you can get what you ask for, and then some, in a way you never thought of, blew me away, and still does.
I searched all over online for that clip after I saw it on TV, and all I could find was 30 seconds or so of it on the Comedy Channel's website; I looked again today, and it was GONE... so I did a new search, and found that its creator, Billy Blob, now has a website with the longed-for clip as well as several others of his. I'd highly recommend that you watch "Karma Ghost," located here
http://billyblob.com/cartoons/karma-ghost/
because it gives a very clever explanation of how karma works; there are little "karma ghosts" everywhere, and every time the main character interacts with anything in a negative way, be it with a human, dog, car or trash can, a "ghost" leaves the victim and jumps to him, putting on a shirt that describes the wrong he did over its old shirt which described the wrong the victim had previously done... interesting idea, isn't it, that you can directly inherit some of another person's, or animal's, or even an object's karma (which is nothing more than energy, remember), and have it undergo a change to customize it to your situation? That's a reasonable way to see how karma moves around, once you remove the actual ghosts; we MIGHT be getting it from whatever we interact with, rather than creating it, at least some of the time. The other cool concept in the cartoon is that once the man collects enough karma ghosts, they work together to "get" him, thus causing his death; while most people obviously don't die from bad karma, it certainly happens that backloads of karma, + or -, can and do all descend on us at once.
Mr. Blob seems to be a kindred soul; I look forward to seeing more of his work in the future.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Freedom
What better topic for Memorial Day? Freedom is indescribably precious, and we have it because of the men and women of the American armed forces, past and present; today, and every day, my gratitude goes out to every person who has served, or is currently serving, in our military... everything I have, I have because of their willingness to fight to protect us and our country.
Most people who've always had freedom take it for granted; it's hard to imagine what it'd be like to NOT be free when you're used to having a wide range of choices for everything in your life. Throughout history, and in the present day in some cultures, people have been restricted as to what sort of work they could do, what clothes they could wear, whether or not they could go to another town, and on and on; the degree of freedom of action that we enjoy would have been unimaginable to most of the people who have ever lived on this planet.
As I've gotten older, though, I've seen more and more that having freedom in the legal sense isn't enough; that feeling of freedom needs to get inside of you for you to be FULLY free... and conversely, since people such as monks and others of dedicated religious focus have been known to say that they feel totally free despite the lack of freedom of action they actually have, that it's possible to be free from the inside out. Who do you think is freer in the deepest sense, then; an American who because of fear, trauma or whatever doesn't feel free even though technically they are, or someone living under a totalitarian regime with no outer freedom whose spirituality or mental state allows them to FEEL free even though technically they're not?
Ideally, of course, we'd be free inside and out... but how do we achieve that? How do we take the fullest advantage of the freedom that so many men and women have died to provide us with? Some people have had easy enough lives that it's natural for them to feel free inside, but for those of us who grew up under the regimes of parents that made Stalin look like a piker, or who've been victimized in ways that make fear a constant roadblock to internal freedom, is there a way out other than becoming a monk or a nun?
In the bad old days of zoos and circuses, animals like lions and tigers used to be displayed in tiny, bare cages that left them with nothing to do but pace back and forth on their little patches of concrete. When they started taking the poor creatures out of the cages and putting them in more proper enclosures, they discovered a terrible thing; the animals continued to pace back in forth over an area the same size as the cages... the cages had become internalized, and their minds couldn't accept that their level of freedom had increased, or, worse, simply didn't WANT to alter their familiar, dreadful patterns to take advantage of their greater freedom. In an odd parallel, some friends of mine recently adopted a couple of cats that had been kept in cages for a few weeks, and the animals freaked out so much over being turned loose in a house that they had to be penned up in a small bathroom at 1st, and then gradually introduced to bigger areas of the house until they felt ready to roam all around.
Humans have a tendency to react to increased freedom by pushing the new limits, and leaping beyond them if possible; the escapades of teens with their 1st driver's licenses, and college students in that 1st quarter out from under parental supervision, are ample proof of that. Some of us, though, "internalize the cages," probably as a survival mechanism to keep from being crushed emotionally by unbearably restrictive circumstances, and our minds keep us trapped in them long after the actual "cages" are gone; in my case, for example, since my parents were more like wardens than family, I spent my entire childhood and early adulthood doing nothing but reading and watching TV during non-work/school hours, and, if you stretch that to include working on the computer, that's all I do NOW... the urges that "normal" people have to go out, to see new things, to hang out with people, to travel, simply don't exist for me. As another example, I have a friend who's an incest victim, who from an early age tried to eliminate anything attractive or feminine about herself in order to deflect the abuse; over 2 decades after the molestation ended, the only thing that's changed is that she was recently able to start carrying a purse.
I'm luckier than my friend, because, while she still has the suffering along with the "cage," I've always been able to "escape" via my imagination and my love of learning, and so suffered fairly little in the past, and of course not at all now; does that make me more "free" than she is, though, just because I'm happier? I don't think that freedom and happiness or misery are necessarily related, so... I'd say no. How CAN someone with an "internal cage" become free, then, if a good life doesn't do the trick?
There's an old saying that "the truth will set you free"; by leaving the spiritual desert of my earlier life behind, and seeking not just truth but Truth, am I becoming free in the way that matters most, the sort of freedom that the dedicatedly religious lay claim to? Is the pursuit of spirituality, the opening of the mind, the embracing of the unknown, the acceptance of the energies that create reality, a path to true freedom? As recently as a couple of years ago, I'd have scoffed at the idea, but now, as I see myself moving beyond the things that had previously been dark clouds on my emotional horizon as my spirituality deepens, I have to say... yes.
Will I need to grasp all of the truth before being fully free, or will I have to achieve inner freedom in order to see the truth? I hope I find out soon...
Most people who've always had freedom take it for granted; it's hard to imagine what it'd be like to NOT be free when you're used to having a wide range of choices for everything in your life. Throughout history, and in the present day in some cultures, people have been restricted as to what sort of work they could do, what clothes they could wear, whether or not they could go to another town, and on and on; the degree of freedom of action that we enjoy would have been unimaginable to most of the people who have ever lived on this planet.
As I've gotten older, though, I've seen more and more that having freedom in the legal sense isn't enough; that feeling of freedom needs to get inside of you for you to be FULLY free... and conversely, since people such as monks and others of dedicated religious focus have been known to say that they feel totally free despite the lack of freedom of action they actually have, that it's possible to be free from the inside out. Who do you think is freer in the deepest sense, then; an American who because of fear, trauma or whatever doesn't feel free even though technically they are, or someone living under a totalitarian regime with no outer freedom whose spirituality or mental state allows them to FEEL free even though technically they're not?
Ideally, of course, we'd be free inside and out... but how do we achieve that? How do we take the fullest advantage of the freedom that so many men and women have died to provide us with? Some people have had easy enough lives that it's natural for them to feel free inside, but for those of us who grew up under the regimes of parents that made Stalin look like a piker, or who've been victimized in ways that make fear a constant roadblock to internal freedom, is there a way out other than becoming a monk or a nun?
In the bad old days of zoos and circuses, animals like lions and tigers used to be displayed in tiny, bare cages that left them with nothing to do but pace back and forth on their little patches of concrete. When they started taking the poor creatures out of the cages and putting them in more proper enclosures, they discovered a terrible thing; the animals continued to pace back in forth over an area the same size as the cages... the cages had become internalized, and their minds couldn't accept that their level of freedom had increased, or, worse, simply didn't WANT to alter their familiar, dreadful patterns to take advantage of their greater freedom. In an odd parallel, some friends of mine recently adopted a couple of cats that had been kept in cages for a few weeks, and the animals freaked out so much over being turned loose in a house that they had to be penned up in a small bathroom at 1st, and then gradually introduced to bigger areas of the house until they felt ready to roam all around.
Humans have a tendency to react to increased freedom by pushing the new limits, and leaping beyond them if possible; the escapades of teens with their 1st driver's licenses, and college students in that 1st quarter out from under parental supervision, are ample proof of that. Some of us, though, "internalize the cages," probably as a survival mechanism to keep from being crushed emotionally by unbearably restrictive circumstances, and our minds keep us trapped in them long after the actual "cages" are gone; in my case, for example, since my parents were more like wardens than family, I spent my entire childhood and early adulthood doing nothing but reading and watching TV during non-work/school hours, and, if you stretch that to include working on the computer, that's all I do NOW... the urges that "normal" people have to go out, to see new things, to hang out with people, to travel, simply don't exist for me. As another example, I have a friend who's an incest victim, who from an early age tried to eliminate anything attractive or feminine about herself in order to deflect the abuse; over 2 decades after the molestation ended, the only thing that's changed is that she was recently able to start carrying a purse.
I'm luckier than my friend, because, while she still has the suffering along with the "cage," I've always been able to "escape" via my imagination and my love of learning, and so suffered fairly little in the past, and of course not at all now; does that make me more "free" than she is, though, just because I'm happier? I don't think that freedom and happiness or misery are necessarily related, so... I'd say no. How CAN someone with an "internal cage" become free, then, if a good life doesn't do the trick?
There's an old saying that "the truth will set you free"; by leaving the spiritual desert of my earlier life behind, and seeking not just truth but Truth, am I becoming free in the way that matters most, the sort of freedom that the dedicatedly religious lay claim to? Is the pursuit of spirituality, the opening of the mind, the embracing of the unknown, the acceptance of the energies that create reality, a path to true freedom? As recently as a couple of years ago, I'd have scoffed at the idea, but now, as I see myself moving beyond the things that had previously been dark clouds on my emotional horizon as my spirituality deepens, I have to say... yes.
Will I need to grasp all of the truth before being fully free, or will I have to achieve inner freedom in order to see the truth? I hope I find out soon...
Sunday, May 29, 2005
An encouraging dream oddity
We all dream every night, whether we remember it or not; I've often wished to be in the "not" category, because, although I have the occasional lucid dream (which is when you know you're dreaming) in which I can do anything I want, and fairly smokin' sexual dreams a handful of times a year, a greater # of my dreams are some degree of nightmare... that's the dark side of an over-active imagination. Although I have a dismaying # of different types of nightmares, by far the most common are "pursuit nightmares," which are just what they sound like; the pursuer is generally someone unknown to me, or even unseen, but periodically it's the killer from my favorite horror movie series, "A Nightmare on Elm Street," Freddy Krueger... who one astonishing dream revealed to be symbolic of my father, which is probably why he's a recurring character. There was nothing unusual about having him in a dream, as I did last night; the new element was when, exhausted, I was hiding, and could hear him coming, then see him coming, and any moment he was going to see ME... and a force field of flickering white light sprung up between me and him. I understood instantly that this light would prevent him from seeing or otherwise sensing me, and it did; his glance passed over me without reaction, and he continued on down the... wherever it was we were, and eventually he was gone, and I was free to walk away unharmed.
???!!!
This is literally the 1st time in my entire life that an outside agency intervened to save me from harm in a dream; when the force field came on, I "knew" that it was "the white light of goodness," and I knew it was there to save me, but not why, how, or from what source... and I haven't recently encountered any new person or situation that could lead to me believing subconsciously that I'm suddenly safe, or safER, so I'm totally at a loss.
This might sound trivial to you, but I had grisly nightmares every single night of my life until recently, when they've undergone a major reduction, which I blogged about on 4-6-05; my conclusion there was that my increasing spirituality has brought me more positive energy, which has brought about many positive changes in my emotional life, one of which was the reduction in nightmares... but could it also have given me some sort of unconscious idea that something (someONE?) is exerting, or is willing to exert, a protective force over me? Religious folks often feel as if God, Allah, etc is watching over and protecting them; could there be a connection?
With these questions uppermost in my mind, I'm going to sleep now...
???!!!
This is literally the 1st time in my entire life that an outside agency intervened to save me from harm in a dream; when the force field came on, I "knew" that it was "the white light of goodness," and I knew it was there to save me, but not why, how, or from what source... and I haven't recently encountered any new person or situation that could lead to me believing subconsciously that I'm suddenly safe, or safER, so I'm totally at a loss.
This might sound trivial to you, but I had grisly nightmares every single night of my life until recently, when they've undergone a major reduction, which I blogged about on 4-6-05; my conclusion there was that my increasing spirituality has brought me more positive energy, which has brought about many positive changes in my emotional life, one of which was the reduction in nightmares... but could it also have given me some sort of unconscious idea that something (someONE?) is exerting, or is willing to exert, a protective force over me? Religious folks often feel as if God, Allah, etc is watching over and protecting them; could there be a connection?
With these questions uppermost in my mind, I'm going to sleep now...
