What is the value of a day? One single day? Can a day be given any kind of meaningful value?

I've had many days I love to remember. Days that have been very valuable to me. Days spent with family and friends doing things we love to do. Or just talking. Or simply being together in peace and comfort. Or even time spent by myself doing something I like. Joyous days. How can you assign any value to such days? But then there are the days I'd like to forget. Days of failure. Days when I've lied to people I care about. Days when I've let good friends down. Days when my whole world seems to come crashing down around me. Such days don't seem very valuable at all. But they're part of my life. Living in this world, I have to accept the whole package. The good and the bad. It means I have to accept every day that comes, no matter what I may be facing.

There are certain people in India called

Category: General

this is a picture from a recent new york times article on the zoe's ark situation:

[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/weekinreview/04polgreen.html?_r=2&ref=weekinreview&oref=slogin&oref=slogin][size=18][b]The Orphans Who Didn

Category: General

here's cinci (above)...

and here's my latest post...


i just found out that pink is the traditional color used in world maps to show areas controlled by the british empire. "why pink?" i wondered. and then it hit me: isn't pink the color of that nice little antacid drink? And those tablets? coincidence?

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original saying: "guns don't kill people, *people* kill people."

variation #1: "guns don't kill people, *people* kill people. but people can also be killed by roaming herds of killer hyenas. and other things."

variation #2: "guns don't kill people, *people* kill people. and sometimes people kill other things besides people. people have actually killed a lot of things that aren't people. like harp seals and spotted owls, flies and snails that happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. they tried to kill cinci freedom, but instead of becoming so much hamburger meat, she jumped a six foot high fence and eluded her captors (both the police and the spca) for eleven days. then peter max donated $180,000 worth of his paintings so that she could live free of fear the rest of her life, grazing among the green hills of new york. if anyone understands the absurdity of gun control laws, i think cinci does!

variation #3: "guns don't kill people, termination of vital life functions kill people!"

variation #4: "guns don't kill people. they just act as a go-between, kind of like alberto gonzalez and a bunch of others we could name."

variation #5: "guns don't kill people. guns kill *guns*. i'm trying to tell you, this gun-on-gun violence has got to stop!!"

variation #6: "guns don't kill people. people kill guns. or we should, at least. aren't we higher on the evolutionary scale than they are?

variation #7:

Category: General

[quote]Amy Newlove's letter to her father as he lay dying in hospital

To Daddy

I am unable to see you right now as you are too ill but I know you can fight this as you are a strong, loving man who I know loves me no matter what. I am asking you to be strong and don

Category: General

This guy has been driving for 4 years??!! Pretty scary...

Here's a link to the NY Times article:

Six Inches Too Tall

Category: General

Yep, things just seem to be getting better and better. Thank you, our governing "servants", for lying to us and saying there were all these WMD's, and saying the US wasn't going to try any "nation building". Here we go again- Vietnam, etc., revisited with a vengance!

[quote][b]A day in the life of a security guard in Iraq

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'Outside the gate, it's the wild west. We are basically a taxi service with guns'


Four of the five British hostages kidnapped in Iraq worked for a private security firm. A former special forces soldier who returned from Baghdad earlier this week tells Audrey Gillan about his life as a 'private security detail' operating in one of the most dangerous cities in the world. He is 42 and lives in Surrey. He has asked to remain anonymous

Thursday May 31, 2007
The Guardian


The day starts at different times when you work as private security detail (PSD) in Iraq, depending on what the operation is. Certainly, if we have to go out of the GZ [Green Zone] then we can't leave before a certain time in the morning because there are curfews. We don't tend to travel at night and we always wait for first light.
We will have our breakfast - our new chef does good pancakes with scrambled eggs and I'll have some bacon and sausage if I can get it - and I'll listen to a bit of BBC Radio 7, some Steptoe and Son or another comedy maybe. We live in a five-bedroom villa in Baghdad, it's rented from a former Ba'ath party member and costs about $15,000 (

Category: General

Hi pee-pulllllllzzzz...

Time to spice up this blog network with a bunch o' fun stuffs. We got lots o' pictures and stories and all the Texas B-B-Q you can handle.

First off, here's a public service announcement for y'all. Look at this here hand-out that a buddy of mine got from the friendly state of Virginia:

After reading this incredibly insightful piece of information (to state it nicely) that the commonwealth of cured ham chooses to thrust upon unsuspecting commercial drivers, understand that the driver in question had a regulation height trailer that was less than 13 feet 3 inches in height. And yet both times he went through this stretch of highway he was told he was over-height. Do you smell something rotten in Denmark? Could Virginia beach be playing games at the expense of lowly truck drivers??!!! How could they, since such a major tourist trap (I mean attraction) relies on trucks for so much of its commerce? Needless to say, fighting an "over height" ticket would be a pretty easy thing to do. But what would really throw them for a loop is if all us truck drivers filed a class action lawsuit. Oh, if we only were more organized! Help us, Trucker Doc...

Next, we have a story about the Wifi that broke all speed records. You don't believe me? Lookie here:




This is the fastest download speed I have ever had with any WiFi. It was so fast, in fact, that my computer didn't even have time to save it to the proper file name. The data was there on my hard drive alright, but the file name had a bunch of numbers and letters that meant nothing to me. This all happened at the Flying J in Tye, Texas on May 19. Just to let you all know, the speed of the downloads decreased quite a bit after that. At one point I was getting slow speeds of 7 or 8 KB/sec. So you never know what you'll get.

Finally, here's a picture I'm quite proud of:



I found a link to this little game in one of the blogs I subscribe to. This score is *way* beyond what I ever thought I could get. When I started playing this game I thought I'd be lucky to make it past the fourth level. But I kept playing and started figuring out a bunch of new strategies as things kept going along. It's a simple game, but there are some pretty complex little details that make it surprisingly deep. The post that had this link said "Try to beat -55." Good luck with that one, folks. To do that well, you would have to have no life at all. I have a life, and so I'm very happy with the score I got. One note of caution here. When you go to the website, you will be asked to install a Japanese language package. Above all, don't do it!! The game works fine without the install. Of course, you're on your own trying to figure out how it all works, since it's all in Japanese anyway, but for me that was half of the fun. And you don't want to open your computer up to potential problems. I allowed a "language package" install the other day and suddenly a couple Microsoft programs that I already had kept wanting to re-install themselves every time I started them. If my computer hadn't made an automatic restore point the day before, I would have been really hating life. So without further delay, here's the link for

Cat with Bow Golf.

Enjoy!

Category: General

Well, nobody commented on the cute little youtube video i linked to in the last post. for those who you who haven't seen it, you're missing out on something special!

From time to time i check out this blog and i'm frequently surprised in a delighted kind of way when i spot new comments. heerz one from a beloved friend:



great insight, amigo. you see, if our desires are bad, then something's seriously wrong. (i firmly believe that everything is perfectly right in the long run, btw.) but buddhism points to an important fact still: this fact is that we have desires but we can't completely fulfill them in this world. but that doesn't make desires wrong. it just means that our desires have to be postponed a little while. it's called delayed gratification, and it's the foundation of maturity. being mature means waiting for the things you want because you know you will be better off having them later. and this involves a certain amount of belief in the idea that there is some kind of existence that transcends our perceptible time/space universe. for many scientists, this is unthinkable. for some reason there is a powerful group of secular humanists who do not want to even consider the idea that anything exists outside of our perceptible realm, and so anything relating to God or spirituality is automatically shunned as irrelivant and worthless. Sadly, this leads to the kind of short-term thinking that says, "Well, I'm getting ripped off here, so everything must be against me and I'll just go buy a gun and start blowing away people because I feel so mistreated." Thank you, secular humanists. Thank you, atheists. Thank you, darwinists. Because again and again, your poisonous philosophies lead to tragedies that are unimaginable. The Jewish Haulocost came from Naziism, which was a direct result of Darwinism. The Virginia Tech tragedy resulted from a student who obviously had no moral compass whatsoever. Hellooo-oooo!! I'm sure mister Cho could easily have been an atheist and/or secular humanist. Because if he wasn't, then the things he did would have seriously conflicted with his own personal beliefs. To be honest, it's really very hard to shoot innocent people several times in a cold, calculated way if you have any kind of sense that what you are doing could be wrong. but according to the moral relativity that is propogated today, what mister Cho did was probaby completely acceptable by the rules he chose to embrace. However, there are greater rules involved here. these rules do not come from this realm. they transecnd this realm. and these rules will have their effect no matter what happens in this tiny corner of the universe. the purpose of our lives here is very difficult to determine, but the irony is that the purpose of our lives here is incredibly more important than we can understand. that's part of the reason why i seem to be so antagonistic toward middle-eastern citizens- because there is often such an overwhelming devaluation of human life. but i'm not here to promote any particular ideology (except mine, of course [ha ha]). choose your religion, and i assure you you're gonna be apologizing for something down the line. that's the nature of our limited understanding. we all have such limited understanding that we would truly be devistated by the full knowledge of our limitations. and im not just talking about a certain group here. if you're breathing, this is the truth. but my purpose here is to inspire others to look beyond the limitations imposed by those who imagine they are the rulers over the rest of us. for example:

did you know that the mighty movers in the "scientific" community have come to the conclusion that the observable universe only accounts for five percent of the effects of gravity and energy around us? how ironic. these scientists will shun any non-physical sources without the least consideration, but they're willing to put their trust in two very unknown and mysterious forces called "dark matter" and "dark energy" which have no relation to our observable universe at all. what they're really saying is that there's something out there that affects the gravity and energy in this universe, but they don't know what it is. however, they choose to believe that this is some invisible kind of matter that doesn't exist outside the physical realm, because if it did, then their own observations would become very subjective and they wouldn't get the kind of government grants that they love so dearly. scientist just hate to lose their money and power. that's how piltdown man came to be. but propaganda wins over true science, as evidenced by the fact that al gore got a prize for his incredibly unscientific lies. it's all politics in the end. it's not about what is true, but what you can make people think is true. ironically, in a few years time we're gonna all look back and see how much money we've put into "carbon control" and see how the global temperature is doing whatever it wants in spite of the paranoia that has taken hold today. did you know that our oceans are the greatest producers of carbon dioxide? so let's f*cking start regulating the oceans, dammit!!! but back to our original buddhist thoughts. buddhism isn't bad if it helps us delay our personal gratification so we can experience greater gratification in the long run. this requires waiting...

Category: General

In order to break things up a bit since the subjects discussed here have been of a pretty serious nature, I offer you the following humorous video. (My apologies to anyone who has had their kidney stolen!):

(Click on the picture to watch the video.)

Category: General

Okee dokee. thanks for both of your comments. roadhzrd, it's nice to know that someone else senses the same feelings of dislike that i sense. i tell you, if an arabic driver held the door open for me or put out his hand to shake mine i think i'd crap my pants! truly, they have an entirely different set of rules. they seem to place a very low value on human life and especially the lives of women and children. They often seem very arrogant and disrespectful. You say "the different sects have been killing each other since the start of different religions." That's so true! Do you know what the difference is between the Sunnis and the Shia? The only difference is that each group had a different opinion about who should be the successor to Mohammed. That's it! That's what all this damned fighting that has gone on for centuries is about! American soldiers are getting killed in Iraq because of a disagreement that Muslims had hundreds of years ago. Kinda sad, ain't it? Really, we don't even live in the same world as these people, and so i agree with you that we have no business being in that country (as atriz256 probably agrees:)

Now atrix256, you have some great bytes of wisdom. i gather from what you say that you believe people often use religious differences as an excuse to hate others. this is true. when it comes down to it, i think we'd both agree that it's not so much what people *say* they believe as how they treat their neighbors. (and in this respect i think many of us fall way short. i myself very much, at least...) you cite buddhism as a religion that doesn't judge others and so it would be a good way to bring about peace among the nations of the world. the one great truth about buddhism is that it recognizes that desires are the root of suffering in this world. but the one great downfall of buddhism is that it seeks to eliminate desires. you speak about not judging, but the ironic fact is that buddhism is based on judgement at its very foundation. what is the noble eightfold path of buddhism?

Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort/Exercise
Right Mindfulness/Awareness
Right Concentration
Right Thoughts
Right Understanding

these are noble goals indeed, but they all require *judgement*. what is *right* in any of these cases? right speech, right action- aren't these things incredibly subjective from our pov? who can say what is right? when we do this, aren't we making a judgement?

Furthermore:



I've never met a buddhist monk. but I have to question this, young paduwan. Jesus taught that if you look upon someone with anger in your heart you are guilty of hurting them. Do you believe this is true? I believe it because it comes from the Tao. And so the thought that *any* buddhist monk *never* had a bad feeling toward *anyone* is quite inconceivable. oh yes, i'm sure there are many monks who have abstained from doing violence to others. but then again, there are many monks who have taken up arms against their enemies.

frankly, i don't have the good of humanity in mind. i'm too busy trying to work out how to live each day in peace with my neighbors. it's a very difficult job. it's not so hard with buddhists, though. atheists aren't really that hard because you just have to avoid talking about god. mormons and jehovah's witnesses are pretty easy too. christian scientists are another matter. and fundamentalists can be a complete pain in the ass at times! muslims and hindus live in a different universe altogether. scientology isn't even a subject. blah blah, blah blah. and so we leave you all with one last question. Do you believe there are no absolutes? Are you *absolutely* sure??!!

Category: General