Doing Tai Chi to Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley", ouch...

Friday March 9, 2007 - 04:22pm

You know, I really didn't know Tai Chi was that demanding on the body. I've been trying to do some type of cardiovascular exercises, like riding a stationary bicycle or jogging, to reduce my weight for awhile now. I took up Tai Chi again as a meditative basis or foundation to help me become a bit more... balanced, I think that would be the proper word.

However it looks like I've seized the proverbial bull by the horns. Tai Chi can make you toned and can really get the heart pumping! Talk about a work-out, I damn near couldn't walk straight today after finding my proper breathing pattern within the Tai Chi movements. That "pulling the bow" exercise can really make your legs and hips ache if you're not used to squatting in that fashion.

Getting back to the balance thing, most of my current study in metaphysics has been Quabbalistic in nature. It's been study, not practice for the most part. Exceptions to this always include Tarot, a wonderful tool in all things. "Tool," I said mind you, "tool". I do understand divination practices based on this tool, but they can be explained with known science and commonly held metaphysical laws.

I would like to backhand the great many people who tarnish the reputation of this great tool, and study aid, by using it for cheap parlor tricks or claiming it's all "divine" inspiration in a strictly deitific(of or pertaining to a god or goddess) sense. Any tarot reader who tells you he/she reads his/her deck based on what the cards mean to him/her is full of crap.

Tarot is about archetypes and symbolism. Read Carl Gustav Jung's work on Archetypes and The Collective Unconscious and then re-approach the Tarot. Aleister Crowley seemed to understand this. As far as tarot readers at psychic fairs who've been studying tarot for oh so many years and thus know what they are talking about when they say they "feel" the card means something: Tote that banner somewhere else, I've moved on.

... Sorry, that was a bit angry wasn't it? *shrugs* Oh well, forgive my outburst then.

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Mahatma Gandhi

And now something completely different!

What Fictional Vampire Archetype are You?

You are the Final Lover. Romantic, honey-tongued romeo, you are the master of love's last kiss. You woo the young ladies, pluck them from light's caress and give them a smile as they sink into death. Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

Yay! I can start gardening!

Wednesday March 7, 2007 - 04:45pm

Yay! I got to play in the dirt today! We planted three lilac bushes, two purple(Syringa Vulgaris) and one yellow(Syringa Vulgaris Primrose), right next to our east facing bedroom windows. I wasn't satisfied with just that much gardening, so I went through and started digging up the chives that are scattered about our yard for transplanting into our garden this year.

I wondered why our lawn always smelled like onions after it was mown, my wife and daughter found out last year by picking some chives out of the lawn for me to use in cooking. They were good... if you ate around the twigs and pieces of crabgrass. My blessed spouse and children, how hard they do try to please. I'd like to try transplanting all of the patches I find this year. I like chives. They taste good and have pretty purple flowers, at least some of them do.

And now, it's time for "Fun With Blog Games"!

What would the album tracks be if your life was a movie?

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool... and a lot of the songs fit with the setting

• Opening Credits: Alice Cooper - Go to Hell
• Waking Up: Arthur's Really Rockin' Music Mix - DW's Brass in Pocket
• First Day of School: Dance Dance Revolutions - Operator
• Falling in Love: PBSkids - Arthur Theme Song
• Fight Song: Alice Cooper - Department of Youth
• Breaking up: Sesame Street Platinum - Sing
• Prom: StrongBad - Techno
• Life: Sun Tzu - The Art of War Book on CD
  
• Mental Breakdown: Ozzy Osbourne - My Jekyll Doesn't Hide
• Driving: Alice Cooper - He's Back (The Man Behind The Mask)
• Flashback: Hootie And The Blowfish - Closing Time
• Getting back together: Rob Zombie - Sinners INC.
• Wedding: System of a Down - Prison Song
• Birth of Child: Trans-Siberian Orchestra - After The Fall
• Final Battle: t.A.T.u. - Gomenasai
• Death Scene: Alice Cooper - Poison
• Funeral Song: Rob Zombie - Super Charger Heaven
• End Credits: Rob Zombie - The Beginning of the End

I'm not sure how accurate that was, but it did amuse me. A few were appropriate, though I'll let your imagination run wild as to which ones...

It's cheap! It's easy! It's BLOGTHINGS.COM!

Tuesday March 6, 2007 - 08:11pm

Yeah, I found out that all of my mother's side of the family is now on myspace.com, so I decided I'm staying right here.

In other news, I looked at a few of their blogs and decided to play with blogthings.com's little toys. Enjoy!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Your Daddy Is Ozzy Osbourne

What You Call Him: Papi Why You Love Him: He knows best

Who's Your Daddy?

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

10% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

You Are a Henna Gaijin!

You're not Japanese, but you wish you were! You can use chopsticks with your eyes closed, and you've memorized hundreds of Kanji. You even answer your phone "moshi moshi." While the number of anime videos you've seen is way higher than the number of dates you've been on, there's hope. Play the sexy, mysterous gaijin, and you'll have plenty of Japanese meat.

What's Your Japanese Subculture?

Your Lust Quotient: 63%

You are a very lustful person - and it sometimes gets the better of you! You know how to hold back, but you hardly ever do.

How Much Lust Do You Have?

You Will Die at Age 91

Congratulations! You take good care of yourself. You're poised to live a long, healthy life.

What Age Will You Die?

You Should Be A Virgo

What's good about you: you have a quiet determination and aren't swayed by emotions What's bad about you: you are an insane perfectionist and easily find faults in others In love: you are obsessed with making your partner happy In friendship, you're: helpful and giving - eager to be a true friend Your ideal job: poet, flight attendant, or natural healer Your sense of fashion: casual, upscale, revealing, conservative - you look good in all of it You like to pig out on: a well prepared five course meal

What Sign Should You Be?

You Are 29 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

You Are 100% Psychic

You are so very psychic. But you already predicted that, didn't you? You have "the gift" - and you use it daily to connect with others. You're very tapped into the world around you... Just make sure to use your powers for good!

Are You Psychic?

You Are 52% Politically Radical

You've got some radical viewpoints, but you aren't completely nuts. You're more of a visionary than a radical.

Are You a Political Radical?

You Are a Dragon

You are very charismatic and incredibly popular. People are drawn to your energy, but you are a very difficult person to get to know. You are very active - you are usually hard at work or play. You enjoy drama, and you enjoy anything unusual or eccentric.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Your Power Level is: 71%

You're a very powerful person, and you know that all of your power comes from within. Keep on doing what you're doing, and you'll reach your goals.

How Powerful Are You?

Your Personality is Very Rare (INTJ)

Your personality type is logical, uncompromising, independent, and nonconformist. Only about 3% of all people have your personality, including 2% of all women and 4% of all men. You are Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging.

How Rare Is Your Personality?

You Are 92% Evil

You're the most evil person you know. The devil is even a little scared of you!

How Evil Are You?

You Are 93% Sexy

Your Sex Appeal Is: Off the Charts! Let's face it... you're one of the sexiest people around. And you don't let anyone forget it. You're crazy hot, and you deliver on what you promise. You are definitely one wild ride.

How Much Sex Appeal Do You Have?

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm actually busy with my Tai Chi lately thanks to a friend I met on here. Thanks for the great information and wonderful conversation Nick! I'll get back to you as soon as my head isn't as fried! Great guy, but I have to take care of real world business from time to time... *sighs* Yes yes, the real world moves on.

Medieval Torture Devices

Thursday March 1, 2007 - 10:21pm

Pictured above is the torturous gadget I playfully term "The Rack". It's an abdominal machine. You obviously sit in the seat, but the not so obvious would be how you actually use this contraption to exercise your lower abdominal muscles. You grab the two bars above your head and wrap your legs around what looks like a foot rest. After you've gotten yourself into this uncomfortable position, and hopefully remembered to set the weight prior to doing so, you proceed to contract your arms and legs towards your chest. Really, you should be using your lower abdominal muscles to do this, but I've yet to do it properly. Upon reaching your time or set goal, you fall to the floor because your lower body is now too sore to move or keep your balance. Crawling would be an option if your arms and shoulders were not dislocated and cramped to the degree of "fetal position".

No, it's not really that bad. In fact after a couple of weeks you really don't seem to mind it too much. Fifteen minutes on the exercise bike followed by five to ten minutes or 50 sets, whichever comes first, on the abdominal machine and finally a fifteen to twenty minute cool down of walking laps. A dip in the pool, usually in the therapy pool, to relax my sore body and I'm ready to suck ass as I pretend I can shoot hoops on the basketball court.

I did find it most interesting that this and many other exercise machines really do resemble torture devices that were in style during many of the darkest times in mankind's history. The rack, as I had mentioned earlier, was a device that was more concerned with pulling than contracting I erroneously termed the aforementioned abdominal machine. The victim was in fact lashed to this cleverly constructed system of cranks and rollers, similar to ropes and pulleys and the torturers would proceed to turn the handle by small increments to entice the victim to confess to some unutterable sin. The victim's skin would be stretched taut during the very beginning of torture and the ropes would begin to bite into the flesh around the wrists and ankles. The process quickly dislocated joints and exposed vulnerable flesh to hot pokers or small incisions that would only grow as time on the rack continued. As the torturers progressed, popping and snapping noises would emanate from within the victim's body, alluding to the tearing of ligaments and cartilage... and breaking or fracturing of bones. Ultimately, the victim's limbs would be ripped off, leaving behind a sweaty and bloody torso to quiver broken on the flagstone floor.

For those of us with a good imagination, a trip to the fitness center can take on whole new worlds of meaning. I'm willingly putting my body through the same, not really, torture as professionals use to extract information from unwilling interviewees. I never really thought of myself as being quite that masochistic... or vain for that matter. However I can now appreciate the time and effort spent by those whose vocations fixate on either of the above vices.

Binaural Brain Entraining Software... VR drugs?

Saturday February 24, 2007 - 09:51pm

Right so I was chatting with my sister the other day and she stumbled across this program called I-Doser that simulates different drugs or mood states using Binaural Brainwave Entraining. She said she'd been playing with it for awhile and got a few of them to work. I did a little research and found another, more versitle program called BrainWave Generator and pointed it in her direction. Since then she's been glued to her computer virtually "tripping".

Now, I'm open minded and all, but I'm also HIGHLY skeptical of anything and everything unless I can prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. So I loaded it up and played with a binaural program designed to simulate LSD, though I don't really have a basis of comparison to the real thing, and let it play through my headphones with the program's visualization turned on. I got myself into a nice, comfortable lotus posistion and started meditating in front of my computer after the kids had gone to bed. Five minutes into it I damn near had a heart attack when my cell phone went off! Now I'm not saying it worked, just that I was really zoned into it at the time and was quite startled by the sudden playing of "Afroman - Because I got High".

It took me a few minutes to get my head straight after answering the phone, while the callers' on the other end of the line laughed, and I felt distinctly "odd". Again, I'm not saying it worked per say, but it did something other than make me feel stupid. Regardless, I decided to try it a few more times for the sake of proving or disproving whether or not it worked or could be put to a useful end.

So my next experiment was to load the "Learn Aid: Subliminal" preset on BWG while playing my "Subliminal Japanese" CD. I don't know if it worked. It doesn't seem to have made a difference in my Japanese vocabulary, but I've always been one who studies really hard on something and then forgets it completely for around a week and then has total recall of the subject. Memory is weird...

[Poll copied from original blog, non-functioning here]

Have you ever tried any of this Binaural stuff?

• Yes, it works great!
  
• Yes, it doesn't work. Big hoax, steer clear of it.
  
• Uh... No.
  

See results

• 1 vote for: Yes, it works great!
• 0 votes for: Yes, it doesn't work. Big hoax, steer clear of it.
• 2 votes for: Uh... No.