Blog of Shadows

BoA Comes Through

Mon, 11 May 2009 19:32:31 GMT

Wow. Got a letter from Bank of America that they were crediting the $90 in fees they took out.

Awesome.

BoA, for doing the customer service thing right by me.

Thanks,

- Brian

F'in Bank of America

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:25:07 GMT

South Park - Margaritaville - Watch the first 2 minutes (at least) for a great example of our current banking system.

Today I called Bank of America to inquire about an IRA I had put $100 in twenty years ago (I was poor and in college). Thanks to the miracles of compound interest, I figured it would have at least doubled by now.

Imagine my delight to find out the balance, after 20 years of compounded interest, my $100 was now worth....

wait for it....

$86.19.

Total.

After 20 years invested with the bank, in a zero risk IRA, automatically reinvested, I had a loss of 13.81% with Bank of America.

How, possibly, could this happen?

Well, for some reason, Bank of America decided that between 2005 and 2007 they would start charging a $30 per year "Custodial Fee" on the account to defray the costs of sending out statements. Quarterly. Which I never even received since the address they had on file was 15 years old. In 2008 they decided to stop charging this fee, for again unknown reasons.

So despite never agreeing to the charges, they decided that printing out a sheet of computer paper and paying bulk rate postage came to $7.50 per letter.

And fees on the account total 90% of the original deposited balance.

I thought that South Park bit was pretty funny.

Yesterday.

- Brian

PS: I sent them an actual hand-written letter on lined paper and everything requesting that they reimburse these fees and reammortize my account. We'll see if they have any customer service sense at all. I'm sure they will do right. :-)
--
Brian Gallagher - Diamondsea.com / VirtCert.com - 800-604-1476
brian@diamondsea.com - 888-411-8144 Fax - www.DiamondSea.com

Ritual Creation Worksheet - Questions Answered

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:58:26 GMT

This was written in response to a person who wanted more information on these sections of the Ritual Creation Worksheet:

I'm glad to hear you've found the RCW handy and I'd be happy to help out however I can. My definitions aren't necessarily perfect, but I'll at least give you a sense of what I was thinking when I wrote it.

Energy to be Used:

There are a number of sources of energy that people can tap in magical work. Depending on the kind of work you're doing, your personal preferences, and suitability to a task. A summary of how I personally view these options:

Personal energy is using the energy that resides within you, your Yin and Yang energies, your sexual energies, your intellectual or physical abilities.
Divine energy is calling on the energies whatever God/dess force you relate to and either having them give you energy to work with or having them work the energy themselves.
Elemental forces are be the natural energies of the primal elements, either by requesting an action of them or directing the energy yourself. Chinese systems often use a five-element view of the Universe (metal, wood, water, fire, earth). Japanese uses five elements (earth, water, fire, wind, void). European systems typically use a four-element view (earth, air, fire, water).
Ancestral energy represents the requesting or directing the spirits of your deceased ancestors (family) to perform something for you.
Planetary / Celestial involves using the energy of the earth, other planets, moons or other bodies within our solar system to perform some work. It may also be seen as utilizing the symbolic representation of the planets (ie: Venus represents Love, Mars represents War, etc) to channel or direct other energies.
Cosmic / Universal energies represent using energies that are prevalent throughout the Universe (not just our planet or solar system). Different people will have their own interpretations of what this may mean. Some people consider Reiki to be a Universal energy, while others consider it a Personal or Divine energy, for example. Others may not consider God/dess(es) as discrete beings, but as personifications of Universal energy.
Fairy / Fey is working with the fairy (also called Fey) realms or fairies or other Fey entities either by request, bargain or direction (making them do what you want)
Mythical Being is working with other classical and non-classical creatures and entities described in the worlds' mythologies.
Other would be anything else that can cause change. Demons, ghosts, your magical head of lettuce you found outside, whatever. (Though some of those could be classified as one of the above categories).

How will energy be raised / focused / banished:

For performing any type of work (magical or otherwise) you need a "motive force", some form of energy that will be used to initiate change in the world around you.

As a mundane example, if you want the computer to type words, the typical motive force is physical, using your fingers to press keys. Alternatively, there are alternate input devices available that will allow you to type words by moving your eyes and blinking, using your tongue, pressing keys with a pointer in your teeth and now even purely mental devices you can train to control a computer using nothing but your thoughts and electrodes on your head.

This section lists a few of the options available in motive forces that can be used in a ritual:

Chant / Song - Singing, chanting, hymns or other vocalizations that raise energy though vibration, harmony, resonance or trance-inducting effects
Dance / Movement - Raising energy through physically moving your body with the intent to either raise your own personal energy or to channel other energy through you
Meditation - Allowing your mind to focus on a particular point, or nothing, depending on the type of meditation you are doing. This can open you up making you more receptive to working with personal or external energies, allow you to better focus the energies you are working with, or provide you with a place of focus or stillness from which you can being your magical work.
Guided Visualization - Similar to meditation, but typically involves another person providing directions or telling a story that guides your mind to a particular mental, physical, emotional and/or spiritual state.
Prayer - Requesting of divinity attention or assistance with a particular goal. It can be worshipful energy directed from you to divinity as a sign of respect, gratitude, supplication or whatever reason may apply.
Calling on Another Energy - Requesting or demanding the work or energy of anything other than you (see above list of energies to work with)
Physical Movement - Similar to Dance / Movement, but more general, often associated with mimicing an animal whose energies you are trying to get in sync with, physical trials or challenges, or ritually significant movements that are associated with energies or mental states.
Screaming / Emotional Release - Similar to Chant / Song, but typically involving more primal emotional releasing. Typically involves combinations of physical activity and emotional expression at the same time.
Music - Using sound and vibration to raise or alter the energy of people or environments.
Drumming - Similar to music, but such a popular ritual element it is broken out separately. Accentuates the percussive instruments of music over other forms. Does not always use typical musical instruments, any may involve percussion of the body (yours or someone elses's) or banging any types of things together (hands, rocks, wood, etc).
Sexual / Tantic - Using sexuality and sexual energies for ritual act. May involve imagined, real or simulated sexual acts. May involve orgasm, orgasm prevention or denial. As varied in application as people are varied in sexual tastes. Obviously, consideration for legal, moral, ethical and medical issues must be taken into account.
Other - Any other way of raising energy. Walking peacefully around in natural settings, attending a NASCAR event, going to a concert or opera, or any other activity which changes your level of personal energy or your connection with external energies would be suitable here.

Just like after cooking a nice meal, when your cooking work is done you need to clean up. After you're done using the energy of the oven to cook your food, you need to turn the oven off so that the oven can return to it's natural "neutral" state of being a normal temperature, no longer consuming lots of energy and converting it into the heat "energy" you needed for your cooking "ritual".

During a ritual, energy are raised, After ritual work is done, you need to return things and people back to a functional state. This means physically cleaning up the area (putting stuff away, putting out candles, etc), grounding participants and releasing any entities that assisted in the magic.

Failure to do this results in a messy ritual area, owners of the ritual space won't invite you back if you leave a mess, people who are left ungrounded can be become spacey, sick, pass out and be otherwise unsafe to drive or operate heavy machinery, sometimes for days. Failure to release entities who assisted you can result in angry god/dess(es), pesky fairies, dangerous elementals and other unpleasantness.

Dissolving Circle / Protection

Taking down / Opening circle - If you form a protective circle of energy at the beginning of the ritual, take it down. How you do this varies by the group you are working with. Some say to undo things in the same direction as you created them, others say to reverse the directions and "unwind" it.
Releasing those Invited / Invoked / Summoned / Called - Depending on who/what you brought in and how you brought them in, request, allow or demand that they return or leave.
Thanking God/dess(es) / Divinity - If you've requested assistance from divinity, thank them for their attention and assistance. It never hurts to be polite to those much larger and more powerful than you!
Breaking Wards - If you have used protective runes or other magical symbols to secure your magical area, break them when you are done so you are not leaving any unwanted barriers lying around. Nobody likes walking into an unseen energetic "glass wall" unexpectedly.
Cleaning Up - Physically clean up. If was spilled, scrape it up. If you got glitter all over the carpet, vacuum it up. Whatever you physically have done to the space, physically undo it (unless you are intentionally leaving it there for ritual reasons).

Resolution

Energy Release - Most commonly, whatever form of energy raising you used, use the same thing in reverse to bring levels back down within your group. If you used drumming to raise the energy by starting slow and quiet and becoming louder and faster, drum again starting loud and fast and move back to slower and quieter. Just as you want to leave the environment physically in the same or better shape as it was before you started, you want to do the same with the energy.
Grounding Leader - In many rituals the leader of the ritual is tasked with focusing or channeling the energies being worked with. This can be either totally exhausting or leave them high as a kite. Either way, you want to bring their energy levels back up or down to roughly what their energy level was. For a good reference on this, read Ritual Maladies and Psychic Triage (In the RCW I'm using the generic term 'grounding', meaning 'get them back to a normal level', not the literal term described in the Psychic Triage section) .
Grounding Participants - Just as you did for the leader of the ritual, check with everybody else present that they are also okay and take appropriate steps to get them back to normal if they aren't.
Breakdown of Ritual Space - The mundane act of putting all your ritual tools and stuff away. Redundant to "Cleaning Up", but important enough to put in twice.
Other - Anything and everything else needs to be done after your ritual is complete.

Hopefully this answered all your questions. If not, let me know and I'll send some more.

Peace,

- Brian

Fairly Take, Fairly Give... duh

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:08:41 GMT

Thanks to sabrinamari for the thread, and to sadys_stage for the post that had the piece of wisdom I've been missing in my current (and ongoing) struggle for dealing appropriately with others, and it was in the Wiccan Rede all along.

"Fairly Take, Fairly Give".

Duh.

I've always seen that line as meaning "Don't take too much, Don't give too little".

However, I hadn't looked at it from the flip side: "Don't give too much, Don't take too little".

Fairness works both ways, and I've been shortchanging myself by not enforcing fairness on the flip side.

As part of being a "responsible person", part of that duty is to enforce fairness towards yourself, not just others.

It's not selfish... it's responsible.

sabrinamari sadys_stage Thanks for the kick to the head!

A Christmas to Remember, or, A Visit from Mr. Hanky

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 06:05:39 GMT

I don't know how your Christmas holiday has been so far, but this has been mine:

My daughter got a frog to replace her other frog that had mysteriously disappeared out of it's tank from Santa. The kids had an early Christmas at their mom's house (they are with me for Christmas Eve & morning).

Apparently Santa wasn't too thrilled with having to make a second trip, because the frog he gave her died the following morning.

So, Mom took her out to get a new new frog, and an extra "backup" frog just in case.

Seemed like a great start, but hey, we were having my entire family over for Christmas Eve Dinner tonight, so Nat & I cleaned up the house all nice for everybody to enjoy, and got cooking with food.

After having he turkey cook for 2.5 hours, I started making all the side dishes to go with it so it would all be ready at the same time at the 3hour mark.

Then my daughter comes in distraught saying her frog jumped into the heater. Okay, I never heard that one before. Go into the room and she points to the radiant water heaters along the walls (it's an old house, think of it like a radiator all around the room at the baseboard). As far as I know, the covers on these things are unremovable, being screwed in somehow with multiple coats of paint over all of it. So I ask my brother to take over getting the turkey out, delegate the mashed potatoes to Nat, and start trying to hack out the many coats of paint from the mouth of the screw-heads so I can try to get the cover off to rescue the hopefully net yet dead frog. Having two Christmas frogs die in the same day might be too much for her 6-year-old heart to bear.

Anyway, after sort of hacking enough paint out to get the screw to turn a quarter revolution with the screwdriver, I ask her where EXACTLY he jumped (there's about 12 feet of this heater on the wall). She says that she thinks it went under the heater, not into the slot where they had originally said.

Please, please, please! I feel around under the heater, pull out (mysteriously) two different milk-top plastic lock-the-lids-on thingys, assorted other bits of crap and lots toy bits, and feel a sort of wet squishy dust bunny. The wet dust bunny tries to squirm away, and I manage to get it between a finger of both hands and work it out without breaking anything.

Yay! Hero Daddy! I take it into the kitchen (the only faucet I know it can't get sucked down) and go to rinse the dust bunnies and carpet bits off of it. I turn on the sink and feel scalding hot water hit my hand. And the frog. I pull out hand and frog, say to the frog "that'll teach you not to jump away again" (I was trying to be witty in the face of unexpectedly hot water) and turn the faucet to cool, let it run a bit, and then rinse off the frog and return it to it's home/cage.

Back to dinner. Briefly.

I manage to get the steamed veggies out of the steamer with minimal fingertip burns and one of the kids comes up from the basement and says "I think the cat peed on the carpet". Well, as our cat has never peed on the carpet, I am somewhat confused as to what must be happening.

We go downstairs and see squishy wet footprints and the kids jumping on the carpet and little splashing things coming out of the carpet. Hooray. And it smells like cat pee.

Well, unless my cat drank a hundred gallons of water before peeing it out, it wasn't him.

Searching for the source of the pee, we look in the other unfinished part of the basement and discover about 2 inches of water on the floor, also smelling like cat pee.

Not good.

My brother dispatches his wife to get their wet dry vacuum while we call the landlord and a plumber. Surprisingly, most plumbers are not readily available at 6pm on Christmas Eve.

However, I called Roto-Rooter (I saw their commercials enough as a kid, it's about time they got there money's worth from me) and they had someone there in about an hour and a half.

However, he took one step in the room and said it smelled like a septic line was backed up. Kinda suspected that, but at least the water was clear. My brother's wife had already returned with the wet vac and we had already sucked up over 150 gallons of smelly septic water and dumped it down the drain, which at least made it go away for a while before backing back up again.

If you want a good way to liven up a Christmas Eve dinner with your entire family, one way I don't recommend is to fill your basement with 150 gallons of sewage. While it keeps it lively and makes for great stories later, it sort of throws the festive mood a bit.

[next chapter, coming soon]

How to Get & Stay in "The Zone"

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:58:55 GMT

Exerpts from Effortless Success – How to turn work into play and succeed on a massive scale:

So, what is flow and how do you get it?

Csikszentmihalyi identifies the following fairly universal experiences while in a flow state:

Working toward a clear goal with a well-defined process – The task, big or small, must be as defined as possible and the steps needed to get there must be laid out in detail or at least highly-delineable along the way. Getting there does not have to be easy, but you need to be able to see, even in the distance, where you are going.
Cultivating deep-concentration – the nature of the job must require an intense sense of concentration. Examples would be a fast-moving game like ping-pong or a gymnastic routine. In a work setting, leading a high-stakes, face-to-face negotiation, drafting a document, writing a blog post (ha ha ha), creating a detailed artistic rendering or coding of a computer game, animation or program would qualify.
Lack of a sense of self-consciousness – you become so engaged in the nature of the work that are no longer aware of yourself, but, rather feel a sense of total absorption in the task. It’s like that old sports adage, “be the ball.”
Altered sense of time– time seems to either stand still or literally fly by in the blink of an eye.
Ongoing, direct feedback – either through people or the testable nature of the task, you need regular enough feedback to be able to constantly adapt, correct course and make progress toward your goal. For example, when writing a computer program, you can constantly compile, test and de-bug the ensure you are on the right track.
Task is highly-challenging, but doable – the task must be hard enough to finish that it requires a significant investment of your attention, resources and energy that lead to the sense of absorption. But, it also has to easy enough to allow you to believe that a solution is, in fact, possible, or else you’d just give in.
Control over the means – you must have the ability to harness the resources to get the job done.
The activity is meaningful or intrinsically rewarding, by the very nature of doing it – while the end result might entitle you to a big outside reward, like a bonus, raise or high sale-price, the essential nature of the activity is so rewarding that you would do it at the same level, even without he extra motivation of some kind of external prize. For example, most great artists don’t paint for a paycheck, they paint because the very process of painting is so woven into who they are that not painting would be akin to not breathing.

Do all of these elements need to be present? No. But, the more the better, the deeper the flow and greater the sense of effortlessness.

---and---

Deliberate practice – the connection between flow and greatness.

It’s so easy to look around at people who reach the pinnacle of any career or activity and say, “oh she succeeded on a level I never could, because she’s got a gift, it’s just in her genes.” Saying this makes us feel better about the massive gap that lies between those uber-achievers…and us. But, increasingly, research is proving the gift-theory wrong.

In fact, a growing body of experts now argue there is no such thing as a natural gift, leaving something else to explain extreme success.

In late 2006, British researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda revealed, in a massive study, “The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [conclusion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.”

That study showed, across a wide array of endeavors, most people learn quickly at first, but then peak out and eventually stop learning, even though they continue to engage in the activity. But, an exceptionally small percentage of people never peak. They continue learning and improving for years of decades. And, it’s those people who become the biggest successes, who reach true greatness in any field.

Surprisingly, though, it’s not some natural gift that lets them continue to excel long after others have peaked.

What makes people great is practice, but not any old practice.

Rule number one—to get great at anything, you need to work hard, very hard. But, the way you go about that work or practice is the difference between good and top-of-the-heap great.

Let look at golf, for example. If I go out and play a round and hit three buckets of balls every day, that’s a lot of work, a serious commitment to practice. But…it’s not good enough to become the best in the game. There something missing. And, the experts call it “deliberate” practice.

According to prominent greatness researcher, Professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University, it takes a serious commitment to intense work and lots of hours and adds in a relentless drive to improve with every repetition of every element of every task.

That means, for a baseball player, hitting every pitch with a specific intention, responding to each swing and correcting with each repetition. So rather than having a goal of just hitting 100 balls, each swing would be aimed at a specific point in the field and the batter would not move on until that point was hit 20-times in a row.

If this sounds a bit brutal, for most people, it is. And, it is completely unsustainable for very long. Which is a shame, because the research also reveals something a bit disconcerting about how long you have to engage in this deliberate practice to become truly great.

The 10-Year Rule.

Even if you have the drive to develop a deliberate, daily practice, for hours a day, seven days a week, it will take a good 10-years before you can expect to become a rock-star in your chosen pursuit.

In fact, in a 2006 article in Money Magazine, John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University revealed, “The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average.” The more complex the activity, the longer it takes to become great. Which is why most of us become pretty darn good at a lot of things, but never become truly great at much of anything.

10-year rule detractors point to people like Tiger Woods, who won his first Masters at the age of 21, but forget that Tiger was on late night television with Johnny Carson hitting golf balls when he was just 3-years old. So, by the time he hit his late teens, he’d already had more than 15-years of deliberate practice.

Which brings us, finally to the critical link between effortlessness or flow and extreme success. How does this all come together to create Effortless Success?

Do you owe $4.5 Billion this year?

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:00:59 GMT

Here's a stunning example of what is wrong with copyright law:

As University of Utah law professor John Tehranian points out (PDF) that mundane activities like downloading, copying, automatically replay to, or forwarding e-mails could be read to constitute copyright infringement. That’s right -- almost all emails are copyrighted. Tehranian points out that just copying and replying to 20 emails could lead to $3 million dollars in statutory damages. So too are such things as forwarding family photographs or pictures of the company holiday party that you didn’t take, singing “I Wish You a Merry Christmas” at the party and videotaping the singing of the song, or posting the latest “Dilbert” comic on your cubicle wall. All create potential civil and criminal infringement liability.

Indeed, Tehranian notes that his hypothetical infringer, doing nothing more than the average person does, and not including any peer-to-peer file sharing, could have potential annual statutory civil liability of more than $4.5 billion. And, of course, that is just in the United States. The Internet, being a transnational medium raises the specter of infringement liability in many countries at the same time.

- from http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/460

FSA Beltane Theme Song

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 19:10:13 GMT

I hereby nominate this as the Free Spirit Beltane Theme Song:
First of May by Jonathan Coulton

Freedom of Expression - The Trademark

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:47:05 GMT

Kembrew McLeod
Conceptual, 1998

In 1998, Kembrew McLeod trademarked the phrase "Freedom of Expression" and created a zine with that title. He enlisted a friend, Brendan Love, to pose as the publisher of an imaginary punk rock magazine also called Freedom of Expression, whom he then pretended to sue. McLeod hired a lawyer and didn't let her in on the hoax. The lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Love:
We represent Kembrew McLeod of Sunderland, Massachusetts, the owner of the federally registered trademark, FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION ... Your company has been using the mark Freedom of Expression ... Such use creates a likelihood of confusion in the market and also creates a substantial risk of harm to the reputation and goodwill of our client. This letter, therefore, constitutes formal notice of your infringement of our client’s trademark rights and a demand that you refrain from all further use of Freedom of Expression.
Shortly thereafter, the Daily Hampshire Gazette ran an interview with McLeod. He played it straight, telling the paper, "I didn't go to the trouble, the expense and the time of trademarking Freedom of Expression just to have someone else come along and think they can use it whenever they want." Two years later, when McLeod asked to reprint the Gazette article in his book Owning Culture, the paper denied him permission.

From www.illegal-art.org, and exposition of art that violates intellectual property laws.

The best worst Halloween card ever...

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:51:04 GMT

The best worst Halloween card ever:

http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/12/Pumpkins_Halloween

Podcast Episode, Now, with snazzy editing!

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:21:28 GMT

I'm loving playing with the Audacity sound-editing program.

I've used it to add various bits of music, take out unwanted breathing noises and generally tighten up the production quality of the episode I've been working on.

Take a listen and tell me what you think: How to Create Your Own Religion in Ten Easy Steps.mp3 (audio, clean, safe for work, not much in the politically correct department)

Feedback and suggestions (and editing tips if you're familiar with the program) are encouraged.

Thanks!

- Brian

Pagan Wisdom Podcast

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:08:56 GMT

I'm working on the Pagan Wisdom Podcast. I've just started getting familiar with audio editing, so it's just raw voice files up now, but they'll be replaced with something with sound and normalized voices and stuff soon. But if you're interested in taking an auditory peek and making suggestions, you can subscribe to it with this URL.

In iTunes, click on the Advanced menu, then Subscribe to Podcast and paste in this URL:

http://paganwisdom.libsyn.com/rss

I'm still working on improving my diction, cadence and intonations. Not sure how much I can do about the nasal sound since I've had allergies since I was born. :-(

Any suggestions for topics are welcome!

Anybody want to join in on some round-table discussions (via skype and/or phone)? On what topics?

- Brian

FInally, The Bible I Enjoy Reading!

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 09:02:17 GMT

From deboranter:

The LOLCATS Bible

Genesis 1:1-31:

Cieling Cat gets boreded and decidez iz good idea to create urf

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat waz invisible, An he maded the skiez An da earths, but he no eated it.

2 The earths wus witout shapez An wus dark An scary An stufs, An he rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stufs, An seperatered the lite form dark An stufs but taht wuz ok cuz cats can seez in teh dark An not tripz ovr nethin. an cieling cat sayz u mus hav da moneyz 2 git da milkz.

5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. Teh evning An morning was teh first day.

6 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh ceilingz of waterz, with waterz up An waterz down. An he maded hole in teh Ceiling.7 An Ceiling Cat doed the skiez with waterz down An waterz up, An stuff.8 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has teh firmmint wich iz funny bibel naim 4 ceiling, so evning An morning was teh twoth day.

9 An Ceiling Cat gotted all no waterz into ur base, so no waterz wus not wetted An Ceiling Cat hadz teh dry placez cuz cats dusnt lieks to get wet,10 An Ceiling Cat called no waterz urths and waters oshunz, so tehre.

11 An Ceiling Cat sayed, wants grass An stuff! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish teh good stuff, so, letz tehre be weed. (and catnipz 2, so wen i makes kittehs they can getz hai.)13 An so teh evning An the morning of the threeth day.

14 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has lightz in the firmmint for dividing day from no day.15 So tehre, lights everwaer, like chrissmass, wai.16 An Ceiling Cat doeth two greate lightz, teh most big for day, teh other for no day.17 An Ceiling Cat screweth tehm on firmmint, with big nails An stuff.18 An Ceiling Cat sawed it wus the goodz, so wai.19 An so teh evning An the morning of the furth day.

20 An Ceiling Cat sayed, letz teh waterz brings forht the loots An stuff, An phishes, An burdies, that flyeths over the no waterz An swimmeths in the waterz.21 An Ceiling Cat created big fishies An see monstrs, which wuz like big cows, except they not mooed, An other stuffs that gives the mooves, An Ceiling Cat wuz plezed.22 An Ceiling Cat sented them hais, An stuff, so letz u be happy An stuff. And0 sed all u aminals An burdiez An fishz go has baby aminals An brrdz An fishz An dont worry i wont watch u has sexxes, cept 4 SUPRIZE BUTTSECKZ!!!!!!!23 An so teh evning n the morning of the fifth day

24 An Ceiling Cat sayed, i can has mor living stuff, mooes, An creepz, An otehr animuls, so tehre.25 An Ceiling Cat doed moar living stuff, mooes, An creepies, An otehr animuls, An did not eated tehm.

26 An Ceiling Cat sayed, letz us do peeps like uz, becuz we ish teh cute, An let min has dominion An stufs becuz tehy has can openers.

27 So Ceiling Cat createded teh peeps ish like him, can has can openers he did tehm, min An womin wuz created, but he did not eated tehm.

28 An Ceiling Cat sented them hais, so teh ballz An teh multiplyers, An haz teh dominion on teh waterz, no waterz An teh firmmint, An evry thingz An stuff.

29 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Yo, Beholdt, the earths, I has it, An I has not eated it.30 For evry createded stufs tehre are the foodz, to the burdies, teh creepiez, An teh mooes, so tehre. an cieling cat sayz u mus hav da moneyz 2 git da milkz. 50$ plez

31 An Ceiling Cat sayed, Beholdt, teh good enouf for releaze as version 0.8a. kthx bai.

Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:10:10 GMT

Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet

"Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet: 'In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence — a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is — or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language — terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.""

From Slashdot article: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/08/0340229&from=rss

N's Green Card

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 03:51:02 GMT

N, aka Wife 2.0, had her Green Card interview on Wednesday to determine if she gets to stay in the US.
All went smashingly.

Time to drive to Philadelphia: 2hrs.
Time in waiting room: 5 minutes.
Time in interview before approval of green card: 4 minutes.
Time to drive home: 2 hrs.

Atty said it was the fastest interview she has ever seen.

Hooray!

Nat was so organized that the interviewer actually stopped her and said "Okay, that's enough proof, you'll get your green card in the mail in about 3 weeks."

- Brian

Years in Review

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 04:27:35 GMT

Before going forward, I figured a nice look backwards would be in order.

I went through and read through all my entries and comments all the way back through 1/1/2006.

Wow. Lots of stuff, cool memories, loads of crap, and great friends lending loads of support, wisdom and camaraderie along the way.

Thank you, all, who have been there for me over the years.

Blessed Be.

LOLCATS

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:01:56 GMT

Okay, I admit it. I find the whole LOLCATS meme frickin' hilarious.

So here are two cat images that reminded me of it:

from this page (since I'm deep linking, I can at least give them a link, hopefully it won't end up as a goatse image someday)

And here's a hover cat from this page

If you're a programmer, check out the LOLCODE project.

This thing called "Life"

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:38:39 GMT

I've heard people talking about this thing called "Life" and the benefits of having one.

So, after much ado reorganizing my life, moving three times, getting separated, divorced, married again, and finally settling down back home in MD again, I am finally ready to have one again.

I'm looking forward to reconnecting with the friends I've missed over the last year or so and getting back into being an active part of some social networks. I'm hoping to start doing more writing again on www.aPath.org and www.PaganWisdom.com, taking classes, reading and learning, teaching and sharing.

I'm very excited to be taking life by the horns again, finally.

Yay, Me! :-)

- Brian

Local Pagan Teacher Wins Mega Lottery

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 02:58:51 GMT

Wow - since I apparently live in a cave I didn't even know this until this morning: Bunky Bartlett won the Mega-Millions Lotto for a cool $32 Million in cash after taxes.

He's been teaching down here at Mystickal Voyage in Baltimore, MD and has been quite intentional to cast Wicca and Paganism in a positive light from his bully pulpit in all the media coverage. He's also done a nice job garnering lots of publicity for the store, which is admirable as well.

Congratulations, Bunky! I'm happy for you, and you've handled all the attention fabulously and for the good of all.

Enjoy the post-media storm

Blessed be,

- Brian G.

PS: What a bunch of pricks in the comments section of the article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-02-mega-millions-jackpot_N.htm

Cool & Creepy Disease Strategies

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:16:11 GMT

From a Slashdot post discussion thread:
I just read a superb book called "Survival Of The Sickest" that went on at *length* about parasite control of parasitized animals, from wasps that sting spiders and implant eggs, that during their development cause the spiders to weave cocoons for the hatching wasps, through the effects of toxoplasmosis on altering how mice behave so they get eaten by the toxoplasmosis host, to other things I'd never even considered. Guinea worm is this horrible disease where a worm bores through your skin with acid. It hurts, a lot, so people go find rivers and pools because the water makes it hurt less -- and the guinea worm dumps eggs as soon as it's in water, to get the next person who drinks from that water. Rabies infects brains, making animals aggressive, and also concentrates in saliva, so the aggressive animals are more likely to bite and transfer the disease. The book even went over some guidelines for predicting how lethal a disease would be, based on its mode of transmission: typically, we've thought that diseases get less lethal over time because that increases their ability to spread, but the book says it depends on the transmission path. Malaria wants -- inasmuch as a disease can want anything -- people to be very ill indeed, so that they spend lots of time not moving, giving mosquitoes a better chance of finding the people, while colds do want people to be as mildly sick as possible so they can maximize their distribution. A particularly neat case is cholera, which can be spread by human-human contact, or more usually by contamination of drinking water. In the latter case, the sicker the person, the better, because more bacteria will be voided by the person through diarrhea, while in the former case, milder infections spread more because there's longer-term contact with heath care personnel, meaning more chances to spread. Watching cholera epidemics in South America, that's exactly what they observed: in countries that were poor, where there wasn't really any official health care, the disease became progressively more lethal over time, while in countries where infected people got immediate health care, the disease got less lethal over time. It's not a bad read, although the doctor who wrote it, Sharon Morel (I believe) should've just written it, instead of hiring a ghost writer who turned it into a succession of USAToday-feeling articles.

TSA Admits Airline Safety Rules are designed to Annoy Passengers

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 20:58:09 GMT

Great quote from an interview with Kip Hawley, the head of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA):

Bruce Schneier: By today's rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they're in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you're going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station -- which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous.

Can you please convince me there's not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?

Kip Hawley: Screening ideas are indeed thought up by the Office for Annoying Air Travelers and vetted through the Directorate for Confusion and Complexity, and then we review them to insure that there are sufficient unintended irritating consequences so that the blogosphere is constantly fueled. Imagine for a moment that TSA people are somewhat bright, and motivated to protect the public with the least intrusion into their lives, not to mention travel themselves. How might you engineer backwards from that premise to get to three ounces and a baggie?

Read the whole interview with actual non-sarcastic information here...

Great line

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:18:13 GMT

This is one of the most amusing lines I've seen in print, talking about the Microsoft-manufactured warnings about buying an iPhone this week:

“Would there be this much hate for a carbon-mercury spewing autobot baby seal killing machine?”
- http://roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/34C8BD5D-E210-4A62-BE6F-FD21E046A397.html

Dihydrous Monoxide (Hydric Acid) warning site

Tue, 29 May 2007 06:24:05 GMT

Did you know the chemical Dyhydrous Monoxide is all around you in everyday life?

Here's a site discussing this chemical which can dissolve almost anything, and anything it can't dissolve it will slowly deteriorate with friction if mixed with other particles.

http://www.dhmo.org/

http://www.dhmo.org/cancer.html

http://www.dhmo.org/milk.html

Things Not to do with Lysol

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:07:56 GMT

Um, ouch. I really wouldn't recommend following this ad's advice:

http://www.mum.org/Lysol48.htm

How to Complain and Win at It

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:44:28 GMT

Blog of Shadows

BoA Comes Through

F'in Bank of America

Ritual Creation Worksheet - Questions Answered

Fairly Take, Fairly Give... duh

A Christmas to Remember, or, A Visit from Mr. Hanky

How to Get & Stay in "The Zone"

Do you owe $4.5 Billion this year?

FSA Beltane Theme Song

Freedom of Expression - The Trademark

The best worst Halloween card ever...

Podcast Episode, Now, with snazzy editing!

Pagan Wisdom Podcast

FInally, The Bible I Enjoy Reading!

Cieling Cat gets boreded and decidez iz good idea to create urf

Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet

Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet

N's Green Card

Years in Review

LOLCATS

This thing called "Life"

Local Pagan Teacher Wins Mega Lottery

Cool & Creepy Disease Strategies

TSA Admits Airline Safety Rules are designed to Annoy Passengers

Great line

Dihydrous Monoxide (Hydric Acid) warning site

Things Not to do with Lysol

How to Complain and Win at It

How to Complain and Win at It

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=3006995