The great prayer of Loving Kindness from the Buddhist tradition 

May I be peaceful, happy and light in body, spirit and mind.
May I be safe and free from any harm.
May I be free from anger, despair and fear.
May I regard myself with understanding, kindness and acceptance.
May I recognise and nourish the seeds of loving kindness within myself.
May I live peacefully.
May I understand my interdependence with all beings and my power to affect them positively.
May I honour the sacred.
May I be well and happy.

Now thinking of those we know:

May you be peaceful, happy and light in body, spirit and mind.
May you be safe and free from any harm.
May you be free from anger, despair and fear.
May you regard yourselfself with understanding, kindness and acceptance.
May you recognise and nourish the seeds of loving kindness within yourself.
May you live peacefully.
May you understand your interdependence with all beings and your power to affect them positively.
May you honour the sacred.
May you be well and happy.

Let us turn our minds now to all the living beings with whom we share our world, turning our minds to the East & West, to the North & South, without exception:

May all beings be peaceful, happy and light in body, spirit and mind.
May all beings be safe and free from any harm.
May all beings be free from anger, despair and fear.
May all beings regard themselves with understanding, kindness and acceptance.
May all beings recognise and nourish the seeds of loving kindness within themselves.
May all beings live peacefully.
May all beings understand their interdependence and power to affect others positively.
May all beings honour the sacred.
May these words benefit us and all those whom our lives touch.

The idea of putting down all the verbal diarrhea in my head into written word reared its undigested head again when I finally wrote my penpal as part of my Buddhist sangha's Insight on the Inside prison penpal project. As writing one's thoughts often is cathartic, this was no exception. The idea that I might have a captive audience (bad pun unintended) reading my unenlightened words appealed to my inner ham, and I thought that the general missives generally reserved for letters might be appropriate for this blog that no one reads. If one person reads this semi-private blog, then I am flattered and pity the fool for suffering enough boredom to read this.

Reading through my last few entries was both painful and refreshing. The last entry was right before the last presidential election, and I again turn garrulous right before this next election. Thus, 3+ years have passed, I am again voting for Obama, albeit this time with a divorce and engineering degree under my belt and titanium hardware in my left arm. Discussing politics with close friends has proved onerous, so I try to avoid the subject as much as possible. I think this might be a reflection of the disenchantment I and perhaps other Obama supporters have had with his promise of "Hope" and "Change." I still don't understand how a President who fights wars in 2 countries can be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during his term in office. Also how he has not only continued, but extended Bush-era domestic and foreign policies. This only convinces me even more that the whole Presidential race is merely a sham created for the non-Electoral College general public to think they have choices about their leaders when in fact everyone in the upper echelons of power are in on the joke and have all agreed on the same strategy to keep themselves in power. I sound bitter and somewhat Libertarian, don't I? I am so convinced of this sham that I didn't give a crap which party affiliation box I checked when I registered to vote this year.

I have recently acquired an admiration and obession with Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, Space X and Tesla Motors. How can I not fall in love with a man who says he would like to be someone born on Earth but dies on Mars? He has the utmost faith in American innovation and human space colonization. I am making it my goal in life to live this dream as well.

So many visitors, and those itinerant fame-seekers who find themselves ungracefully settled here, find themselves saying how much they dislike Los Angeles - the smog, the traffic, the crowds, the flakiness, the lack of seasons, and on and on. I'm ok with that, because the worse the reputation, the fewer people will want to come here, and we have plenty enough people here, thank you very much.

I myself didn't appreciate the eclectic charms of my hometown until I left it for the snowy delights of Canada and the southern hospitality of Georgia. While my peripatetic forays into the climactic extremes of the continent were valuable additions to my catalog of (mis)adventures, my heart always came back to beaches, warm weather and forests of California. I also came to appreciate authors and artists who celebrated the tumultuous history of this state: John Steinbeck, John Muir, Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and my current literary love, John Fante. His sophomore contribution to the canon of California literature, Ask the Dust, chronicles his alterego character Arturo Bandini struggling as a writer in mid-193o's Los Angeles. "Humor and... pain were intermixed with a superb simplicity," describes Charles Bukowski in an intensely personal and resplendent preface to the book. Upon discovering Fante's book in the public library while avoiding his landlady, Bukowski was "like a man who had found gold in the city dump." John Fante succintly yet languidly describes his little room in an upside-down hotel on Bunker Hil, racing down Western Avenue in the warm summer evenings, and the horrors of experiencing his first earthquake. I fell in love with LA all over again from his perspectives.

Another celebration of Los Angeles in the 1930's is water-rights murder-mystery Chinatown (1974), starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Roman Polanski artfully portrays every stratum of Los Angeles society, from wealthy con men to humble Chinese grocers to working-class stiffs to Faye Dunaway's emotionally oppressed fashion maven. And her hats! Evelyn Mulwray must have the premier milliner in the country supplying her headwear.


The roiling, complex underbelly of this film noir just keeps you asking for more. Screenwriter Robert Towne says he took the title, and the famous exchange, "What did you do in Chinatown?" / "As little as possible", from a Hungarian vice cop who had worked in Chinatown. The cop explained to Towne that the complicated array of dialects and gangs in Los Angeles's Chinatown made it impossible for police to know whether their interventions in Chinatown were helping victims or being exploited by criminals, so police decided the best course of action was to do as little as possible. (from Wikipedia)

I love LA series, to be continued...

To be witness to the exponential acceleration of the development of the microchip and all its applications brings tears to my eyes.

First ever computer mouse demo

My first computer needed to boot DOS 2.0 off of 5 1/4" floppy disks and display on a black and orange Hercules monochrome monitor. Now I'm eagerly awaiting the prophecy of touchscreen surfaces and datapads to come through, as they are portrayed in Star Trek and Minority Report.

Did you see what CNN used during the election coverage? It's well on it's way...

CNN ‘Magic Wall’ Helps Explain Caucus

The article states that before CNN used in it, "Previously, all the users of the touchscreen were in the intelligence community." Or Joe and LJane Schmo of the Microsoft family looking at pics of their kids who are about to destroy this tabletop with sticky fingers...



Can't wait!

So many times Fashion can be Trash and Trash can be Fashion, literally:





From the glamour_autopsy blog:
On June 13th, the TRASH project began in Harlem - The point is to raise waste awareness and add a little flare to the sidewalks via ARP (art related product). Artist Adrian Kondratowicz is responsible, and has been replacing piles of garbage bags with his own hot pink polka-dot version. He runs a blog with videos, photos, and information about the project here.

= 944,211 Tress Cut Down in 2006

And because coffee cups are plastic-coated to retain liquid, they are NOT RECYCLABLE!

My recent crusade against the degradation of our environment is about the proliferation of billions of single-serve coffee cups at local coffee shops. Here are some stats from Papercalculator.org and the Environmental Defense Organization:

Coffee Cups used in the USA, 2006 = 16 Billion
Tons of Wood Consumed = 951,579
Tress Cut Down = 6,568,421
Amount of Water Wasted = 4 Billion Gallons
Solid Waste Created = 253 Million Pounds

The city of Toronto is considering a BAN on disposable coffee cups. "As part of Toronto's plan to be diverting 70 per cent of its garbage from landfill by 2010, the city is examining ways to limit items that have a bad reputation for filling up landfills."  While that doesn't seem too practical, a tax and deposit options seem more likely. Read about it at TheStar.

These bloggers have put it much more eloquently than I, so please check out their efforts to keep cups out of our landfills:

KeepYourCup.com - a small grassroots blog from a Brit named Clive Andrews

SmartSense - "a blog on politics, economics, the environment, and other things that shape our world"

Sustainability is Sexy - boiling all the the arguments down to the hard, cold numbers of our laziness

Wikipedia also has an entry with factoids on the impact of drink cup use.

So besides getting all preachy in a blog read by as many people as I have brain lobes, I have decided to get on with it and help spread da werd:

- I am buying this particular reusable drink cup for myself and my husband to test-drive it before we buy a  whole bunch more as holiday gifts.

Contigo West Loop Mugs
16 OZ, Contigo West Loop, Sliver, Travel Mug, Patented Autoseal Button, Press To Sip, Release To Seal, Lid Prevents Leaks & Spills, Stainless Steel Double Wall Vacuum Construction Insulates, Keeps Beverages Hot Or Cold For Hours, Fits Any Standard Cup Holder.

I ordered it from LiquidPlanet, but they are relatively common at other retailers like Costco and Amazon, so I hear.

- I am in making little flyers to go with the aforementioned gift educating the recipients of said waste. Logo to be designed, with the great tagline "Drink Responsibly - Bring a Coffee Cup"

- If these little flyers are up to snuff, I may make them into stickers and distribute both around coffee houses wherever I go

Am I being that annoying, preachy tree-hugger? Yes, she's back, after a 5-year hiatus =)

You all-powerful God, Brahma to all men, Your thoughts are able to influence the aesthetic appeal of water crystals. Read about it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoto

I try my hardest not to hate people, but I cannot find compassion in my heart for people who deliberately mislead and spread pseudoscience to the world. The fact that he has sold over 2 million of his books about "messages in water" speaks volumes about the kind of ego-stroking pandering the world wants to hear about their miserable little lives. Seriously, if you think you can change how water crystals form just by thinking about them, you have bigger problems.

Julian Walker has written an interesting blog post about more of the misinterpretations of quantum physics for the purposes of backing up pseudoscientific theories.
http://julianwalkeryoga.gaia.com/b…

He elegantly points out that "particles at the quantum level do not have consciousness. reducing the fields of psychology, spirituality, and philosophy to observations made at the quantum level is not particularly useful - nor is it particularly spiritual, as it reduces interior consciousness and meaning to empirical exterior observation....in philosophy it's called a "category error".

again it's like trying to interpret shakespeare with a slide rule.

or trying to solve a chemistry equation with a rumi poem."

Masaru Emoto's "study" has been cited in a December 2008 Surfer Magazine article as a way of explaining why the perfect wave always seems to come to Kelly Slater, allowing him to win contest after contest. He "wills" the winning wave, of course, because he is the surf God! (This is only  half-joke, since Slater has definitely made a deal with either God or Devil to do what he has done.)

And of course, commercialization of self-justifying, self-empowering ideas appeal to the pathetic intellectual runts of the world who will fork over their hard-earned $80 for this worthy garment:


"These Creo Mundi Intentional^™ zip hoodies use the incredible Power of Intention to attract positive energy into your life. These are not your ordinary shirts! The inside front and back panels are imprinted with a trademarked, patent pending design containing over 200 positive words in 15 different languages."

I ripped this from an issue of SkyMall Magazine, where other useless QVC-type items are peddled, on the way to Detroit this month. 

I hate Masaru Emoto for creating and propagating this kind of crap.

I've been a long-time reader of Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine, not just because it has entertaining stories, but also interesting editorial viewpoints and fact articles that make science fiction fantasies sound like they could become reality any day. But the thing I love most about the magazine is how its contributors present fascinating theories and theses from established books in an accessible way, often hooking me in its references during the background or even the turning points of plots. I've added a few books from my Analog forays to my current reading list:

Dharma Punx - Noah Levine
James and I have been sitting with Noah's meditation and dharma talks for about 3 months now. He is funning and engaging in person, but I can't say that his book is as interesting, more of  paper blog about his experiences.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind - Julian Jaynes
One of the funnier, well-written psychobiological histories I've ever come across. I've read plenty of articles, but few books, and it's a relatively easy read. Given me much food for thought. Funny thing about this book is that I originally borrowed it from the LAPL, but the loan is only good for 2 weeks at a time. Every time I tried to renew it I was frustrated because the waiting list prevented me from doing so. Thus, I had to wait 2-3 weeks before it became available again. Picking up where I left off was a bit disconcerting, then off to the library again! So, I justified spending the $18 to buy a copy. And I haven't picked it up since I bought it. Figures.

The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - William Strauss and Neil Howe
History as a cycle of 4 phases. I received this from the library, but haven't had a chance t delve into this juicy volume. I suspect I will have to end up buying this one too.

Buddha - Deepak Chopra
Story of Siddhartha, in easy-to-read form. I already read it on the way to Australia this year, but left the copy with someone whom I thought needed it more than I.

Sacred Pain - Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul - Ariel Glucklich
Research for an article I am writing on this very subject for Secret Magazine.

All very juicy, wonderful reading, and entirely consuming if it weren't for me trying to read all but the first at once. I love being in school so much I assign MYSELF homework.

James and I got married late September and we haven't taken a honeymoon due to the economic crisis (read:broke), so James left his commodities brokerage job and we spent all of October on Stay-cation 2008. Yeah, this is why I love Fall in Southern California:



El Porto is our local spot, just 10 minutes away. It sucks for surf in the summer. We're just waiting for the juice to turn on for the winter.



Lower Trestles is our favorite surf spot in the world




So the rest of the country can take their fall leaf colors and go make happy arson fires with them; we've got 78 degree days on the beach and perfect surf for the week =)

My ex-boyfriend/smut producer/webmaster/loser threatened to take my site off his servers after a heated debate about whether or not I would pay him the previously-agreed $350 for my site. I have been throwing around the idea of a total site redesign for a while and this has been a big kick in the butt. I have the new look and feel, but my HTML skills are severely outdated. So now my main issues are:
- integrating a blog into my site, as previously done. Only problem is that I don't know how to install and customize Wordpress
- posting videos in popular formats
- creating the CSS stylesheets necessary to make table-free pages

I'm sure I can figure it out, just depends on how much wading through code and tutorials I want to go through. So far it's caused one sleepless night, but not unpleasantly so. This endeavor has been clearing cobwebs from the dark coding recesses of my brain that have lain dormant since say, 2000, when I worked for an HTML chop-shop.

The thing that always spurs me onto greatness or misery is my pride. Now after telling Mr. ex-boyfriend/smut producer/webmaster/loser that he can take the $350 and shove it, there is no way I can go back to him asking for help doing the more technical aspects of the site. So do I hire someone else to do it? or do it myself and risk really screwing something up or learning something really valuable? Again, my pride goads me onto doing the latter.

21st century web design, here I come.