Thirsty for More?
Mood:  happy
Check out Carlo's Blog for a really thought-provoking post. I figured out how to link directly to this particular post so I don't need to tell you the date or anything like that. So, just follow the link and you can check it out. I totally agree with what he says, and if I haven't written about it before, I definitely have told people in person the exact same thing as Carlos when he talks about how humans have been performing the act ever since they formed cities.

A shift in when posts will be posted
Mood:  happy
Topic: Site Info
Ok, I'd like to thank those of you who keep coming back. At least there's a pretty constant number of people who visit the site. Almost consistently there are about 40 people who visit daily. Sometimes it spikes to 100 people and sometimes it's 30, but for the most part it appears that at least 40 people always show up. So, I feel that since you've been such loyal fans that I owe you advance warnings about any changes to the way things are done on this blog.

To reflect the fact that I'm slowly getting back into a sleeping pattern that will allow me to get up for class and the fact that I will be VERY busy at school with my classes, I will be slightly changing the "post structure", for lack of a better term.

First of all, for the past two to three weeks I've been posting pretty consistently from 1 to 3 am each day. So if you show up after that time you've seen everything I'm going to write for the day. Well, this is going to change so that I'll be writing stuff whenever I get a free moment. Maybe in the 10 minutes between a class or something like that. Therefore, when you check my blog from now on you should always check the previous day to see if I made any posts since you last checked.

Second, I will probably be posting less once classes start. My goal will always be to have at least one post a day, but school has to come first. And after that my girlfriend, family, etc. So, hopefully it won't be as bad as once a week, but just check in regularly and there'll be posts whenever I can.

Third, as you've already noticed, there will probably be either less posts per day or shorter posts. This is again a reflection of the fact that I will have a lot less time.

Thanks again for coming and continue to enjoy!

Prozac Attack
Mood:  chatty
It seems nowadays that people want to live in a complete fantasy world. Commercials ask, "Do you feel stressed? sad? do you sometimes lose track of what you're doing?" They may as well be asking, "are you alive and do you interact with other humans?" I believe that the drug companies are verging on unethical behavoir with their ads. They spent billions to convince us that our life is very unfulfilling the way that it currently is. If we feel any negative feelings then we should make sure to pop pills as if we were in Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World going on soma holiday. It's truly sickening!

Let's take stress, for example. If you think about it, there's nothing wrong with stress at all. In fact, stress is what gets us out of bed in the morning. If we didn't have the stress of hunger, the need to urinate, or the stress of not having any money to pay for anything, what incentive would we have for getting out of bed? Social interactions are only undertaken so that we don't have the stress of those people feeling ignored. Preventing stress is what makes me study because I know the stress of failing an exam.

So stress itself isn't bad at all. It's how you deal with stress that matters. You may think that it's just a cliche saying, but it's very true. Basically, it's all based in science. When you get a stress signal your body releases a ton of chemicals into your body. One of the chemicals is adrenaline, but that's not the only one. The main purpose of these chemicals is to prepare one for the hackneyed term "the fight or flight response". Why is this so and what does it entail?

Well, unfortunately when Man and Woman came into being, they didn't have the great weapons we have now. If you believe in evolution, unfortunately the new brain capacity wasn't enough for them to develop weapons outside of a spear. If you believe in creationism unforutnately Genesis doesn't read: "And then God created man and it was good. Then God created the gun and commanded man, 'use this gun to smite all animals which may try to eat you'" Therefore, we didn't have as easy a time with predators as we do now.

So you're a prehistoric man and you come across a tiger-like animal. If you were to sit there and think, "hmm...what should I do? Do I run away? Perhaps I can try to build a trap for him. I don't know. Hmm..." then you would be dead very quickly. Thus one of the functions of the chemicals released during a stress response is to shut down your brain. It doesn't want u busy trying to figure out what to do. It just wants you to pick an answer to a two choice question. Do I run or do I attack? Second, the adrenaline enhances your muscles, eyesight, and heartrate so that you can do things that you normally wouldn't be able to do. So then you can maybe run faster than the tiger for a long enough time to get to a safe place or lure him to your hunting party or something. Or you can have the strenght to hurl a spear into him.

So flash-forward to 2004. There are no tiger-like creatures running wild in most of the industrialized world. So when you get stressed from too much work, your body still gives you the same response. However, this is horrible! Since you don't have to run away or anything your heartrate is increased unnecessarily. Also, since you're at work, you actually need your mind to be fully-functional. So you pop a pill, right?

Actually, that's the cowardly way out. Basically there are two things you need to do. First of all, don't dwell on the feeling because you'll cause more chemicals to be released into your body. Second, you need to neutralize the chemicals. The way to do this is to exert yourself. Afterall, that's what the adrenaline is there for. At work you probably can't just change into some sweats and do a marathon, but you can get out of your seat and go for a brisk walk through the building or around the property. Then when you get home you simply need to remember to work out in some way. Do some aerobics or lift weights.

If you do that, then the stress shouldn't be to such a level that it needs a pill. Of course, life isn't always so simple and you may need more techniques. Other helpful stress dischargers include massages, meditation, prayer, and water-discharging of stress. However, all of these techniques that I just mentioned only have positive side effects. When you meditate or pray you get connected to a higher plane of existence which has many benefits for the body and mind. Massages also help repair muscles and can potentially help your social life if the person doing it is someone you care for. However, pills have many bad side effects. They erode your stomach lining, imbalance your body chemistry, cause diahrrea, pain, sun sensitivity, and a host of other problems. Therefore, doesn't it make so much more sense to try and not use a pill? Doesn't it seem worth the time investment?

Eventually somethings gotta give. If the politicians don't start ignoring all of the money given to them by the drug companies and cause them to be accountable we're going to be in for some trouble. They've even got a lot of doctors in on the scam. Before you know it we're going to be a nation of people who spend their entire lives stoned out of their minds just to "cope" with life in the US and to reach some fictional ideal life.

I don't mean to be a prophet of doom, but a country where there are more people dying of gluttony (eg obesity) than people dying from having too little of the necessities can't continue that way for long. If we don't make a change towards true health, we may end up falling behind and losing our superpower status to countries that are close to matching our economy, but have a much healthier populace.

We have become Rome, but perhaps there's hope before the Visigoths come knocking on the door.

Other blogs and my comments
Mood:  chatty
Go read Carlos' blog(13 Jan) and then come back to read my response.

I'm not going to answer the question that he posed there. The place for that is on his "comments" page. Rather, I'd like to talk about what he's proposing. We all know The Matrix angle so I'm not touching that either. Rather, I'd like to comment based upon what I once read in The Dilbert Future along with some of my own opinions interjected.

Basically Scott Adams argued that once we came up with a virtual reality machine that realistic (he used the one on Star Trek as his example since The Matrix hadn't come out yet) it would be the end of society. You see, we already have problems with addiction in our society. What's the point of getting drunk or doing drugs? To escape reality. So if you could have your fantasy playing out in very realistic VR, what would be your incentive to ever end the program? In other words, you would probably starve your real life body by just staying in the VR all the time. What if it was a pay-per-view type of thing? Once you wasted all your money and lost your job you'd probably turn to crime as drug addicts do. So it would be a horrible idea to invent such a thing. As Scott Adams puts it, "there's no way you could convince me that I should be anywhere else than in the [machine] getting an oil massage from my twin Cindy Crawfords."

Now, go and read Dan's Blog (same date as above) and come back for my response.

I've always wondered about the whole skipping on paying for a meal thing. There have been plenty of times where the waiter or waitress took so long to come after we'd received our meals that we could have eaten and left and no one would have been the wiser. In fact, I've said a few times that if they didn't show up soon that I'd leave. Only my conscious kept me from doing it.

There was a story a year or two ago of a girl working as a waitress and her customer walked out without paying. At that restaurant if that happened the check came out of the paycheck of the waitress. When she chased them out of the restaurant to get the money they killed her. I can't remember if they ran her over or shot her, but it was really sad.

So this is not as trivial a subject as it seems.

Body Painting
Mood:  chatty
Body painting is an interesting form of art. There are a few different techniques. One technique is to make it seem as though the person is wearing clothes. Another is to make it seem as though the person is just a canvas. Finally, a technique simply to use the body in creative ways.

The first kind is the most common. In fact, Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue a few years ago featured models who had their bikinis painted on them. The second and third ways are usually found in art books featuring nudes.

Well, my girlfriend was watching the Top Model show on UPN and one of the competitions was to do body painting. So we started looking for some good examples and I found this site.
www.publispain.com/decoratucuerpo/body_paint/
Only visit it if you don't mind nudity in the form of art. If you do visit, click on "siguiente" to go to the next page. Go to at least the second page before decide if the artwork is good or not. I really don't like any of the stuff on the first page at all.

Today
Mood:  chatty
Sorry about the lackluster posts, but I really haven't been doing much. Also, the headlines have calmed down a little so I have less new material. I even tried checking the blogs of my friends and family to see if I wanted to comment on anything that anyone had said. However, almost no one had updated their blogs. Those two that had updated them didn't have anything I could comment about.

Today I went to Zales and got the engagement ring I'll be offering my girlfriend. We've been together for 2.25 years and, thankfully, her family loves me. She has nearly every quality I'd want in a wife so I thank God for bringing her into my life when he did. I can't wait until I give it to her, but I have to wait the week left until we see each other again. Even then I have to wait until the perfect time to do it. I can't tell you my plans yet because she reads my blog too, but I'll tell you what I did as soon as I do it.

Goodnight...maybe more tomorrow

Madonna...look what you've done!
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Like a Virgin" - Madonna
Topic: News
Well, I was watching the news and apparently here's what has happened as a result of Madonna and Britney's kiss.

These two girls in HS (unless I heard wrong and it's middle school) got inspired by the kiss. They decided that they'd do it in the cafeteria and charge guys $5 to watch each kiss. The school wasn't impressed and decided to expel the girls.

On the one hand I applaud the girls for being enterprenuers. They knew that a lot of people would pay money for it and it doesn't cost anything. On the other hand, I find it disturbing that the girls were prostituting themselves in this manner. This leads me to believe that they don't hold their bodies or sexuality in high regards at all.

Artwork of the Day
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: "Money" - Pink Floyd
Topic: Artwork


New York As God Sees It
?2003 Eric Mesa @ drop the bomb productions

Enjoy, and for more artwork click on my Binary World link on the left there



A little about this piece: This is the view from the Empire State building. It was shot with a Kodak 2.2 megapixel 3600DX camera. Editing done with Adobe Photoshop 7.0

Nudity
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Tangerine Speedo" - Caviar
It's funny that the way we view nudity is affected by the context of the nudity. As one of my instructors used to say, "it's not nudity if it's in National Geographic."

The funny thing is that we see things this way. Let's take, for example a Playboy centerfold. Playboy has a pretty good reputation for having classy photos. Still, it's not quite as classy as having a nude statue or painting in your house. For example, if your religious leader were to walk into your house you would most likely be ashamed if you had a centerfold framed up in the living room, but would feel insulted if they criticized you for having a naked painting or stature in your house.

What's the difference? I think that the only difference is the intention of the person who is purveying the nudity. While a painting and a porno picture may have the exact same content in the artwork, there aren't a lot of people that engage in self-satisfaction over a painting. I think that's the biggest difference.

Of course, I'm not talking about pornography that is truly lewd; things that magazines like Hustler are known for. Those are debasing to women and the human body in general.

However, if you have a picture whose purpose is to glorify and draw attention to the body that God created for us, then I don't see anything wrong with it. Our bodies are beautiful and something that we should be very proud of. If you happen to be affected by the picture or artwork then that's ok. The human body is a magnificent thing and should indeed inspire us in many ways.

A new day
Mood:  happy
Sorry about my meager posts last night and the content of those posts. I was dealing with some important stuff last night and also I had to wake up early to go to church today and shave because I hadn't shaved in seven days since I don't have to go anywhere during the week where it matters whether I've shaved or not.

Last night's situation is solved and everything is great. A post or two should follow. It's goin to be a mild night because I'm trying to get myself back into getting to bed early so that I won't be so out of whack for when the school year starts up again. So things will be winding down a little. However, compared to some of my friend's blogs, I realized that you guys are pretty lucky if you happen to like to read my blog daily. A lot of people that I know only do it once a week or once every 3 days.