Hubris

What gumption, right?

Seriously, folks- we're all God
'hubris' definition: wanton insolence or arrogance resulting from excessive pride or from passion.

I've got passion, but I'm not insolent or arrogant, no?

Definition of a Vampire

I wrote this, back when I was into vampires

Vampire
blood-sucking foul demon of the night, fanged fiend of the dominion of darkness, satan's minion, lord lucifer's lapdog, the devil's depraved demon of death and darkness, creature of the night, beelzebub's beastly brethren, monster of madness, evil enemy of everyone, hateful hound of hell, ruthless unstoppable merciless killing machine, immortal judge of the unworthy, vicious vanquisher of vapid victims, on the prowl for a gal pal, death incarnate, savage satanic slaughterer of souls, rotten revenant of wrath, crafty cruel craven killer.

kind of funny, I think

Good Books with God in the title

From 2 books of 'best reads'

I read '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die'. Here's the (16) ones from that list that have God in the title:

-Arrow of God, by Chinua Achebe
-On Love, Alain de Botton
-A World of Love, Elizabeth Bowen
-The Lover, Marguerite Duras
-City of God, E.L. Doctorow
-Loving, Henry Green
-Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood
-Women in Love, D.H. Lawrence
-The Apes of God, Wyndham Lewis
-Love in the time of cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
-Enduring Love, Ian McEwan
-Love in a Cold Climate, Nancy Mitford
-The Pursuit of Love, Nancy Mitford
-Love's Work, Gillian Rose
-The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
-God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut, jr.
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

I have a list of other recommended books from a source whose title I didn't keep...
Anyway, here are the (35 more) book titles:

-Altered Loves
-Are you there God, it's me Margaret
-The Art Lover
-Beloved
-Brotherly Love
-Child of God
-Dale Loves Sophie to Death
-Geek Love
-God's Pocket
-God's Snake
-The Good Mother
-Good News About the Earth
-Good News from Outerspace
-Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
-Good Times
-Kitchen God's Wife
-The Last Good Kiss
-Love in the Ruins
-Love is Strange
-Love Medicine
-Love Nor Money
-Lovingkindness
-Man who Loved Children
-A mother's Love
-Mother Love
-Nothin' but Good Times Ahead
-Pangs of Love
-The Republic of Love
-The Savage God
-So Far from God
-Surpassing the Love of Men
-Their Eyes were watching God
-The Volcano Lover
-What we talk about when we talk about love
-Women in Love

Virgin birth

I think I've got it figured out

Heard of sleepwalking? Well, there's also sleepsex.

If BOTH partners had sex while they were asleep, well there you have it.
Pretty unlikely, I'll give you that.
With God, all things are possible, lol.
God is all about mind control.

Some (more) good quotes

17 quotes (from my Godfather's 2009 calendar)

-"The big secret in life is there is no secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you're willing to work." -Oprah Winfrey

-It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -J.K. Rowling

-We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. -MLK, jr.

-Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.-Bill Gates

-It's not enough we do our best; sometimes we have to do what is required. -Sir Winston Churchill

-I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with freedom. -Bob Dylan

-There's more than one way to look at a problem, and they may all be right. -Norman Schwarzkopf

-Ability is what you are capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. -Lou Holtz

-To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when no one else will -Sugar Ray Robinson

-Fools live to regret their words, wise men to regret their silence. -Will Henry

-Keep high aspirations, moderate expectations, and small needs. -H Stein

-Failure is an event, never a person. -William Brown

-Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. -Satchel Page

-The most important political office is that of the private citizen. -Louis Brandeis

-Forget injuries; never forget kindnesses -Confucius

-A warm smile is the universal language of kindness. -William Arthur Ward

-Your expression is the most important thing you can wear. -Sid Ascher

Christ set a bad example

According to the Relaxation and Stress Workbook...

Irrational Idea number 8 is:
-You need something other or stronger or greater than yourself to rely on.
It goes on to say,
This belief becomes a psychological trap in which your independent judgement, and the awareness of your particular needs are undermined by a reliance on higher authority.

Plus, you don't want to suffer for other people's sins.
Passion should be full of ecstasy and loving emotion, and nothing like being nailed to a cross.
Right??

The other (20) irrational ideas are:
-It is an absolute necessity for an adult to have love and approval from peers, family and friends.

-You must be unfailingly competent and almost perfect in all you undertake.

-Certain people are evil, wicked, and villainous, and should be punished.

-It is horrible when people and things are not the way you would like them to be.

-External events cause most human misery- people simply react as events trigger their emotions.

-You should feel fear or anxiety about anything that is unknown, uncertain, or potentially dangerous.

-It is easier to avoid than to face life difficulties and responsibilities.

-The past has a lot to do with determining the present

-Happiness can be achieved by inaction, passivity and endless leisure.

-You are helpless and have no control over what you experience or feel.

-People are fragile and should never be hurt.

-Good relationships are based on mutual sacrifice and a focus on giving.

-If you don't go to great lengths to please others, they will abandon or reject you.

-When people disapprive of you, it invariably means you are wrong or bad.

-Happiness, pleasure and fulfillment can only occur in the presence of others, and being alone is horrible.

-There is perfect love, and a perfect relationship

-You shouldn't have to feel pain, you are entitled to a good life.

-Your worth as a person depends on how much you achieve and produce.

-Anger is automatically bad and destructive.

-It is bad or wrong to be selfish.

G-D

Green Day

Sunday is of course yellow, so Monday is Green, Tuesday blue, Wednesday violet, Thursday red, Friday orange, Saturday whatever (white, black, grey?).

There's also Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days. Grateful Dead. Gray Davis. And Guns-Drugs.
God can be lots of things. G'day, mate. Gandolf, General Disarray, Genetic Drift, the Great Demon, Gadolinium, the Gangster's Disciples, General Dynamics, the Great Depression...
Game of Death, Good ol' days.

There's a Gods, God's Lake, and God's River in Canada. And a Ghod in India.

In South Korea, there's two G-D's: Gyeongsangbuk-do and Gyeongsangnam-do.

Begin Being

The same letters, for a reason

Startup you're godhood, I say, right away.
"Big up yo'self" as Ali G might say.

Too bad about the loveparade tragedy, in Germany.
They say it's cancelled, now.
Since God is love, start a godparade.

Pro and Con

God is for good: happiness, comfort, love
and
against bad: suffering, poverty, evil, war, ignorance, illness

Truth is good. Only God is good.
but, suppose:
There is no God. Therefore, there is no good. Everything is a lie.
how bout that.

om
First, identify what (factors) leads to happiness, and what leads to suffering; then cultivate and eliminate. That is the way, according to the dalai.

The Berkeley Bills

Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, that is

each gave a talk to the UC Berkeley community, which I conveniently provide links to as follows:

Clinton: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/wp/wp/2010/02/24/president-clinton-live-webcast/

Gates: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?seriesid=075f2f0f-71d0-4c37-8af9-b2d044afa8e6&p=1&ipp=15&category=

BILL =2933=8

Ron Haviv

I just watched 'Ron Haviv: Freelance' on the Documentary Channel

He's a war photographer, a World Press Award winner.

It's SO sad what happens..
And what happened. In places like Somalia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Vietnam, etc.

The main thing I took from the documentary is the description of what it's like for him to return to American society and how he feels like a misfit because of people complaining about relatively incredibly stupid problems, in a world full of gossip. I would add the obsession with celebrity culture is also incredibly retarded in the face of Reality with a capital R in which the most important topics are swept under the rug and forgotten.

A commentator in the movie says war photographers are compelled to return to these situations to find 'something', and will do so until they find it or they die, whichever comes first.

I already wrote about James Nachtway.
One of Ron Haviv's websites is http://www.photoarts.com/haviv/bloodandhoney/

I hate the military. I hate all of them. I hate war. I don't care if the US commands its forces under the title 'Department of Defense.' War is offensive, period. God is a man of war, but only the psy war against war in the first place. You dig?

To appreciate peace, it's unfortunate that we have to vicariously experience war through war photographers, who sometimes pay too high a price for their moral ventures.

MJ

Michael Jackson, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan

I'm dating myself.
Anyway, now that a year has passed since the gloved one's passing, I thought I'd mention that he has a song called:

I am love

which, of course, should be mentioned in a blog like this.
enter it www.grooveshark.com

Evil Personified

Satan, Mephistopheles, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Antichrist, Devil
Jinn, Eblis, Azazel

People reason that if good is personified as God,
then evil must likewise be personified.

I enjoy The Rolling Stones' -Sympathy for the Devil

Just as every cop is a criminal
and ALL the sinners saints..

I go a little further..
We all wield unbelievable power
but most of us don't know it.

do a good turn daily
it is better to do nothing than to do evil

Hi. God, here.

Update on my life

I'm currently reading Witnessed, by Budd Hopkins

My other library book is The Demon-haunted world, by Carl Sagan.

Witnessed is about a 1989 ufo abduction, that occurred brazenly near Brooklyn Bridge around 3:15 a.m., and the aftermath for it's viewers and participants. I think Carl Sagan didn't believe in ufo's, which should make for an interesting contrast.

I went to a SBC (Southern Baptist Church) last weekend, because I'm sampling different religious services (denominations and religions). They are at http://www.bellroad.org/.

I helped kill a rattlesnake, using a shovel. I feel kind of bad about that. A beautiful animal.

Anyway, my wife and I are watching a lot of Chelsea lately and Family Guy at night.
My pandora online radio experience is a mix of: Grateful Dead, Zappa, Talking Heads, Fiftycent, Beatropolis, Don Caballero, Bob Dylan, Ozric Tentacles, Beethoven, Lou Reed, and Flaming Lips.

That's my super-exciting life.
Rest in peace, for Molly, my wife's mom's English bulldog.

What is God?

God is love, one, a man of war, good.
God is me, you, everyone, everything.
God is jesus, buddha, allah, krishna..
God is the father, son, and holy spirit
God is the wind, the four directions
God is time, space, light, dark
God is Nature

God is...whatever you want him to be.
God is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent
God is IT: immanent and transcendent
God is joy, happiness, bliss, nirvana
God is peace, harmony, health, wealth
God is life, and God is death
God is kind, merciful, loving, caring, beneficent, good
God is truth, knowledge, enlightenment
God is dance and romance

God is a word, a concept, an idea
God is
I am
You are

"oooh, God you are so big!" -Monty Python

-And the word was God.
go do good
omg
all in all is all we are
love your neighbor
love all, serve all
what's love got to do with it?

Be all you can be. Kind.
An army of one. Aim high.
The few, the proud.
(Pride is a sin, but all is vanity.)

"Trying to win hearts and minds, but willing to splatter them occasionally."
Thou shalt not kill, remember?
geez.

Anyway, being God is not just a job, it's an adventure.
God is a role to play, and the more, the merrier.
Be good, only God is good, so be God then
Come on, join the fun -a unified multiplicity
plus, maybe only the good go to heaven, right?

Or, don't. (do NT?)
just as dog is god backwards, bad evokes 'dabble.'
It might be good to be a little bad, then..
But purity sounds better, to me.
If God is everything, maybe it really is all good.
Be bad? Live evil? (I think there is a difference)
"Keep the arguments clean, but the sex dirty"
God is a smile.

God's Two Favorite Christian Bible Quotes

John 3:16 and Philippians 4:6-7

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
-John 3:16

Do not worry about anything, But pray and ask God for everything you need, always giving thanks, and God's peace, which is so great we cannot understand it, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
-Philippians 4:6-7

commentary
re: John, somewhere else it says to believe in his name, as if it were a mystical word, and you didn't have to believe in anything else, like his preachings (although Jesus does mean 'God saves'). It's still not clear what "believe in him" means. In? And also, I thought the 'everlasting life' might have been a trick statement, as if HELL could sneak in there, under the radar. But in light of Philippians, i guess that's nothing to worry about. Personally, I believe everyone has everlasting life, regardless of whether they believe in Jesus, because everything is equally alive (or dead, if you want to look at it that way; we're all just things).

re:Philippians, I suspect that 'God's peace' is the oblivion of death. Death and Jesus are both 2, in english, according to that wacky numerology I find myself doing. We cannot understand death because we are all alive. But maybe by clearing our heads of all the subconscious noise and external distractions, we approach the calmness of death, which should be how meet our deaths; i.e. calmly.

Life After Death

Decomposition

Autolysis is when the body's cells consume themselves, through the action of the digestive enzymes released by the lysosomes into the cell's cytoplasm. Enzymes, however, are not alive. Autolysis is aseptic (free of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites- which ARE alive).

oops. later date insertion here: "Is a virus a living thing?
Not really. A living thing has seven features of life. These are feeding, respiring, excreting, growing, moving, breeding and responding to changes in the surroundings. When a virus is outside the body it does none of these things. In fact viruses can be stored in jars just like crystals of salt or sugar. When the virus is in the body it only breeds and this is just a process in which the DNA is copied. It does not even grow its case. The cell makes that for it. "

The party starts -your "life after death"- when, after autolysis creates an anaerobic (oxygen-free) environment, your body's normal bacteria consume the body's carbs, proteins, and lipids. Bacteria are life-forms. (Btw, A "synthetic" bacterial life-form, whose parents were a "computer", was just created by Craig Venter (in wikinews).) It is estimated that there are 500-1000 species of microbiota in the human gut, and the same on the skin. Bacterial consumption of a corpse is called putrefaction.

If the body is outside,
Flys, especially blowflies, lay their eggs on the body so the young can consume the rotting flesh, to get a proper start on life.

Scavengers: Coyotes, dogs, wolves, foxes, crows, rats, and vultures all eat carrion.

And if the body is on the ground or in the soil, there is considerable activity by:
arthropods ("joint-legged" with exoskelotons, such as insects, spiders, etc. -over 1,170,000 described species; a study says there may be up to 5-10 million extant species) join in.

-Sarcophagidae ("flesh-flies") lay eggs, larvae, which are maggots that live 5-10 days.
-Formicidae (ants),
-Muscidae (house-flies),
-Sphaeroceridae (dung-flies/lesser corpse flies) of which there are over 1,3oo species, all in the section schizophora.
-Silphidae (known commonly as carrion or burying beetles)
-Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies; more than 180,000 species)
-Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, ants, sawflies)
-Histeridae (clown-beetles; 3900 species)
-Staphylinidae (rove beetles; 46,000)
-Piophilidae (cheese flies; they do not take residence in a human corpse until 3-6 months after death)
-Araneae (spiders; 40k species)
-Sepsidae (black scavenger flies/ensign flies; 250 species)

and after bloating comes the 'black stage' of putrefaction, which has:
-Gamasid mites (most mites are microscopic; 48,200 species are described (an estimated 5% of the total)
-Ptomaphila
-Trichopterygidae (aka ptiliidae; 630+ species, found in rotting organic material)
-Dermestes (feed on dry dead animals and vegetable material)
-Tyroglyphid mites (mold mites)
-Tineid larvae (clothes moths)
-and Diptera larvae "in almost all cases" ("True" flies, with only 1 pair of wings; a large order, containing 240,000 species of flies, mosquitoes, midges, and gnats)

Wikipedia's article on decomposition also details all the types of life that can be found around or near a corpse on the ground, as well.

Fungi, too, get some action.

That's a whole lotta Life After Death! A regular city, I should say.
which sheds new light on the expression "are survived by," lol.

The Chemistry and Physics of God

Oxytocin and the Higgs Boson

Now you know.
-Oxytocin is the chemical that washes your brain after sex, and is responsible for bonding with your partner. God is love, and love is oxytocin (?)

-The Higgs Boson is, well, I dunno exactly. Look it up. It's nicknamed "the God particle."
I don't know why. The folks at the lhc (large hadron collider) are hoping to find evidence for it soon, when the machine is up and running.

Codex Sinaiticus

For those of you who are into this sort of thing:

(the oldest version of the New Testament, in greek)
www.codexsinaiticus.org

Harold and the Purple Crayon

A good book for young Gods

It's about Harold, who creates his own reality with a purple crayon.

Yale has an improvisational comedy group called The Purple Crayons.

'Augmented Reality'

i can't wait for this supercool future technology

(like in the movie Minority Report)
It would be glasses or goggles or maybe even contact lenses that

would give data about what you're looking at. I've always imagined little balloons popping up over people's heads saying their names or whatever information I want. Imagine a complete lack of privacy, lol.

It's all a part of our universal wish to be Godly omniscient.
Of course, I could always try just talking to people, right?
Still, this tech sounds fun.

Slavery

It's a sin

I don't want anyone to be my slave, even if you should be, or are willing.

There's a passage in the bible, "do you not know that you are not your own?" or some such thing. I say you are. You own yourself.

Anyway, there are, according to this TED LECTURE (Link), 27 million slaves in our modern-day world (2010). That's quite a number. I'm a slave to eliminating slavery. And they can all be freed -and maintained free- for 10.8 billion dollars, according to Kevin Bales of __.

There is hope.

slaves are "dirt cheap" (as low as 5 bucks, averaging $90) Historically, 40k.
40B dollars of the global economy are derived from slave labor.
We have to do it right this time, not "dumped" like America's botched 1865 emancipation.
India still has hereditary slavery.
Kevin Bales thinks we aren't truly free unless all humanity is.

$10,800,000,000 divided by 27,000,000 slaves is only 400 bucks a person.

For the Priests

God the Father

1) Catholic priests are called Father and Pope means il Papa (regardless of whether they have sired a child)

2) Fathers (either those who have inseminated a mother, or those who take care of their -adopted?- child)

and
3) "our father in heaven", some pie in the sky idea of a (possibly alien?) Creator of the heavens and earth.

So priests are God, too.

Supreme Being

SB, some body

Sara Brown
Sandra Bullock

Movies with 'God' in the title

Apparently, there's over 200

City of God
The God of Small Things
Children of a Lesser God
The Gods Must be Crazy
Gods and Monsters
Letters to God (2010)
God (aka Dogma) ('99)
Oh, God ('77)
Oh, God. Book II ('80)
Oh, God! You Devil ('84)
God's Army
God on my side
Wrath of God
Playing God
Hey, God
God's Early Work ('04)
Phone Call to God ('05)
God and Dave ('06)
Conversations with God ('06)
Oh, My God ('08)
The God Complex ('09)
God Calling Rachel ('04)
God Has a Rap Sheet ('03)
God is on Their Side ('02)
Gohbi and God ('99)
In God We Tru$t ('80)
Dear God ('96)
Agnes of God
In the Name of God ('07)
The Godfather ('71)
God is my co-pilot ('45)
God's Little Acre ('58)
For God and Country ('43)
And God Created Woman ('56) ('88)
Godspell ('73)(the word is an archaic form of 'Gospel.' It came out as a play around the same time as Jesus Christ, Superstar in my birth year, 1971)

Panoramic Views and Scenes at the Garden of the Gods (1903)
God's Country and the Woman (1916)
God's Law and Man's (1917)
God's Country and the Law (1921)
Man's Law and God's (1922)
Without Reservations, aka Thanks God, I'll Take It From Here ('46)
Les Miserables: Gods and Demons ('50) Japan
The Legend of Gods and Goddesses ('67) Hong Kong
Of Gods and the Undead ('70) Brazil
Bamboo Gods and Iron Men ('74)
Thank God It's Friday ('78)
Gods, Gangsters, and Gamblers ('90) Chinese
Thank God I'm a Lesbian ('92)
The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils ('97) Hong Kong
The Lion and the Zebra Make God's Raw Jewels ('99)
Gambling, Gods, and LSD ('02)
Thank God for India ('02)
Of Men and Gods ('02) Haiti
Gods and Generals ('03)
Of Dogs and Gods ('06)
Star Trek: Of Gods and Men ('07)
What Poor Gods We Do Make: The Story and Music Behind Naked Raygun ('07)
Of Gods and Men ('10) french
Of Frogs and Gods ('10)
Gods and Rats ('10)
Gods and Kings ('11)
Vicky and the Treasure of the Gods ('11)
The Man who Sued God ('01), australia

Ancient Astronauts: The Gods from Planet X
God Send Me a Man ('09)
Selling God ('09)
Godkiller ('09)
And God Spoke ('93)
In the Hands of the Gods ('07)
Takra: A Man's Fear of God
Dying God ('08)
Maybe God is Ill ('07)
God of Vampires ('10)
God Money ('97)
God of Wonders ('08)
...And God Spoke
The House of God ('84)
One Nation Under God ('93)

God is Brazilian

and, out in theaters May 11, 2012: God Bless America (by Bobcat Goldthwait)
7-19-13: Only God Forgives
God's Pocket (PSHoffman's last film)
God is not Dead (2014)
White God (2014 Hungarian drama)

...to get you started.
There's a lot more movies where God is a role. Check out imdb.com for more.

If you believe God is love, then you might want to look for movies with 'Love' in the title, too. It's a different post I compiled.

Making Love

is Making God

weird, eh?
Link

If God is all-knowing (in the biblical sense), He has sex with everybody.
Mind blowing sex
spiritual sex
we're all fuct, lol

Acts of God

It's a legal term for (what I'm responsible for??)

The cause and effect linkage is a bit tenuous.

Here's the wikipedia link to 'Acts of God'

Here's a list of things I might have caused (since 1971):

-'71 N. Vietnam Hanoi/Red River delta flood (100k deaths)
-'72 Iran blizzard (4k)
-'73 Bangladesh tornado (681)
-'74 Pakistan earthquake (5300)
-'74 Bangladesh famine (26k-1m)
-'75 Typhoon Nina (210k)
-'75 China dam failure (231k)
-'76 Guatemala earthquake (23k)
-'76 Tangshan earthquake (242,419)
-'78 U.S. blizzard (54)
-'78 Iranian earthquake (15k)
-'81 on, Aids epidemic (25,250,000)
-'83 Mexico earthquake (10,153)
-'84 Cameroon limnic eruption (37)
-'84 USSR tornado (400)
-'84-85 Ethipian famine (1m)
-'85 Columbia volcano (23k)
-'86 cameroon limnic eruption (1746)
-'87 Chinese wildfire (213)
-'88 Armenian earthquake (25k)
-'90 Iranian earthquake (50k)
-'93 Indian earthquake (7928)
-'95 Japanese earthquake (6433)
-'95 Kazakh blizzard (112)
-'96-98 North Korean famine (1,200,000)
-'99 Turkey earthquake (17,217)
-'01 Gujarat India earthquake (19,727)
-'03 Bam Iran earthquake (26,271)
-'04 Indonesian tsunami (230,210)
-'06 Phillippine mudslide (1126)
-'08 Chinese earthquake (68,712)
-'08 Afghani blizzard (926)
-'08 Chinese storm (133)
-'10 Haiti earthquake (230,000)

God is kind of a mass murdering serial killer.
The price of sin is death.
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the lord.
Thou shalt not kill
Shit happens

misotheism link

devil inside, devil inside -every single one of us, the devil inside..
"it's all good"

"...I bring prosperity and create disaster: I, Yahweh, do all these things"
(I'm not Yhwh, though; I'm Jesse)
G.O.D. only stands for Gulf Oil Disaster coincidentally, I might add. It looks like the Gulf of Mexico could turn out to be a regular "lake of fire." Ugh.

Playing God

It's a movie

Playing God is a 1997 film directed by Andy Wilson. It starred David Duchovny in his first starring role after achieving success with The X-Files, Timothy Hutton, and Angelina Jolie.

I haven't seen it.

Is PG PG?
Who decided? Maybe I, God, should have. They edited out the two sex scenes between Angelina and David Duchovny.

Sharing

Share a

Shara a what?

TE.

Click on 'Te' (for the Wikipedia enlightenment)
Just some more of -what's in a name?- (Teshara)

Shara is similar to sharia, too.

To continue with the linguistic multicultural magic: on Asherah, (from Wikipedia)

The archaeologist William Dever commented "We do not know for sure what the belief in the god Yahweh meant for the average Israelite. Although the biblical text tells us that most Israelites worshipped Yahweh alone, we know that this is not true... The discoveries of the last fifteen years have given us a great deal of information about the worship of the ancient Israelites. It seems that we have to take the worship of the goddess Asherah more seriously than ever before."[13]

God can be annoying

You know, let's get to the real nitty gritty basics, here. What is prayer? Prayer is telepathic communication with "God", if it, and God, exist. Personally, I think 'God' is just a jerk in my head who won't leave me alone, and despite being evicted from my head (surely my body is private property?!), is a presence who invades my privacy, and is therefore a criminal. Just because everyone says God is good and love doesn't make it so. He's ANNOYING is what he is. Either atheism or self-deification seems a comparatively friendlier mental experience.

that was my entry on an article on prayer I submitted to the Washington Post online awhile back. "God" (aka the man in my head who hears my "prayers") is annoying so I'm (attempting) taking over the God function in my head.

Schizophrenia can be a bitch.

God's God is now Himself. Are my thoughts my own?

Heaven and Paradise

it's in the linguistics

Heaven is ha, even
It feels good to get even

Heaven is also Neva, eh? (backwards)
Maybe because there are so many slights in life - you will never get even.
Or, simply, because there is no afterlife.

Paradise is a city in California, near Chico. They have a library and public pool.
Heavenly is a ski resort.
Heaven is a nightclub in London.
Hell is a village in Norway.
Anyway, if you win at a toss of the dice, that's Pair o' dice!

Amor, Amor, Amor

Put a little love in your heart
People can you feel it- love is in the air!

http://www.bartleby.com/ has both love quotes and emily dickenson poems on love

I'm busy reading Emily Dickenson and Ernest Hemingway's short stories.

Que te goza!

The Diamond Sutra

Read it at http://www.diamond-sutra.com/ .

It's what Jack Kerouac had brought with him up to his mountaintop. I'm reading his Desolation Angels.

Aside: The three men I admire most: the father, son, and holy ghost, packed their things up for the coast the day the music died... Kerouac is said to be the son, from that song lyric.

In chapter 49, he says he is God, he is Buddha.

William Burroughs warning to Jack Kerouac

From Joyce Johnson's introduction to Kerouac's Desolation Angels:

"A man who uses Buddhism or any other instrument to remove love from his being in order to avoid suffering, has committed, in my mind, a sacrilege comparable to castration."

Galt

Greg And Liz Teshara, that is

Congrats on your nuptials, bro (and Liz!)!
May your life together be happy, healthy, long, loving, and blessed!

aside
Galt is (also) a place in Canada, as well as Mongolia, as well as 5 places in the U.S.A.
Ayn Rand famously opens Atlas Shrugged with 'Who is John Galt?'
Her philosophy is called 'Objectivism'

Objectivism rejects belief in "every 'spiritual' dimension, force, Form, Idea, entity, power, or whatnot alleged to transcend existence."

She says,
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

She chose "objectivism" as the title for her philosophy because,
"The name "Objectivism" derives from the principle that human knowledge and values are objective: they are not created by the thoughts one has, but are determined by the nature of reality, to be discovered by man's mind. Rand chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence, existentialism, had already been taken."

Haitian earthquake possibly an Act of God

Sorry. I was jumping rope to get healthier. I enjoy skipping rope.
I mean, was it me, really? I hope not.
I may have also caused the quake in Northern California.

Jump up, jump up and get down. Jump around.



http://www.redcross.org

Mary Moran

"German Gullon es Dios"

If you're out there, Maria, contact me!
-Chuy

God and Nature

People believe God created Nature, and God is in Nature

God IS Nature
Nature is Everything...it encompasses Humanity and Human Nature (we're animals, too). Nature created God, in that it created humans, who speak..

"and the word was God"
We use words, our minds, concepts to "create" the world, our inner worlds...
"The first step to knowing something is to give it a name"
So if God is all-knowing, then "omniscience" is God.
Of course, omniscience is impossible
(Even for me)
lol

God is IN nature, if you believe nature, red in tooth and claw, is pervaded by "love."

Parmenides, Sheryl Crow, and Dr. Bronner

Parmenides was the original Dr. Bronner
Sheryl Crow sings "Love is All There Is" on her 2008 Detours album

All-1, says the shampoo bottle. Parmenides conceived of everything as...

"The single known work of Parmenides is a poem which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides describes two views of reality. In The Way of Truth (a part of the poem), he explains how reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and unchanging."

Unfortunately, Grooveshark doesn't seem to have the song available for me to provide the link to it. Ack! It probably does: it's called Love is All There Is, not Love is Everything..

CCC Comment

Catechism of the Catholic Church, that is

What, exactly, is the God of the Catholic church?
Well, Prologue, Chapter 1, Verse 1 of the CCC (written by the current Pope?) seems like a good stab at it. Off the mark, though, in my opinion.

It goes something like this:
"God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplilsh this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life."

Hmm.

-That's a lot of reference to men in there (I count 15).
-Why is God and He and Him and His, etc. not capitalized...
-"Infinitely perfect and blessed in himself" -I like that, lol.
-to know him (biblically?)
-the Church family, Mr. and Mrs. Church.

-I don't draw
-I didn't make anyone to share in my life.

You-niverse

You are your own world

Thus, you are God
comments?

A thought

All is vanity
God is everything
everything is all
God is vanity
I am

PMS

Productive Member of Society

Produce! Produce!
Make stuff!

also,
phonology, morphology, syntax
pre menstrual syndrome

God's Apology

If I am omnipotent, I apologize for not using my power(s) well enough.

At the moment,
I'm stuck at home watching/listening to television. I feel kind of ugh about this.
Oh, well.

I maintain that everybody else has the same amount of power that I do.
I kind of doubt this, though.
Oh, well.

Dogechism of the Dogholic Church

It's not all about Cats, anymore

Honda stole our intellectual property: Mr. O
That's what we had been calling Oliver. I also call him Olly, O.G., or oliguacho
(guacamole and nachos, yum)
(guapo y macho, tambien)

Pay up, Honda. Or should I say, H.

Our other dog is Marcel.

Athe is M

Hat is me

I was an atheist until I believed in myself

Church is for the Dogs

Dog and God have the same letters for a reason, you know

Sometimes I think my dog Oliver is God.
Maybe it's Marcel, though.
OMG
Or some mystic communion, thereof.

In any case, all dogs go to heaven
except for Tia, the little shit(zu), who bit me, lol.

Here's a link to an article about a church that offers services for our fine furry friends.

Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving

This book from my local library, copyright 1956, says "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."

"The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness." How to achieve union, overcome separateness, transcend one's own individual life, is the human condition, the answers to which form the history of religion and philosophy.

some quotes

"all (the reader's) attempts for love are bound to fail, uless he tries most actively to develop his total personality....; that satisfaction in individual love cannot be attained without the capacity to love one's neighbor, without true humility, courage, faith, and discipline."

He considers love a difficult and rarely seen task; an art, like that of living life itself, of which mastery must be of ultimate concern. Love is not something like a pleasant sensation, or crazy infatuation, which one "falls" into, by chance (which may only prove the degree of preceding loneliness).

A typically seen error is that most people focus on being loved, rather than loving. It's not a matter of being successful, rich, powerful, attractive, with pleasant manners, good conversation, helpful, modest, inoffensive, according to the positive mantra of books like "how to win friends and influence people." Being lovable is typically seen as a mix of being popular and having sex appeal.

Another error is love as symbiotic union, in which they need each other in a sadistic or masochistic way, a situation of dominance and submission, in fact "I am nothing in so much as I am part of him." Neither can live without the other. The sadist commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates.

Instead, what love is is a mature union under the condition of preserving one's integrity. In love, the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two. It is never the result of a compulsion. It consists primarily of joyful giving, not receiving. Giving is the highest expression of potency, of experiencing strength, wealth, and power.

Love is an attitude, an orientation of character which determines how one relates to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love. If I truly love one person I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. I love in you also myself.

Common to all forms of love are the elements of care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.

Link to the Wikipedia article on the book.

Forms of love
-a mother's love for her child. responsibility means being able to respond.
-love between adults refers mainly to the psychic needs of the other person.
the root of respect, respicere=to look at, is the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality.
-the other person should grow and unfold as he is, not as I need him to be.
respect only exists on the basis of freedom, never domination. Respecting a person is not possible without knowing him, and knowledge would be empty if not motivated by concern.
-The knowledge which is an aspect of love penetrates to the core, not just the superficial periphery. Love knows people deeply; for example you may see someone angry as manifesting something deeper, such as anxiety or embarrassment.

6 kinds of love
parental love
-motherly love
-fatherly love
romantic love
brotherly love
erotic love
self-love
love of God

love of knowledge can become cruel, "to know what life really is" in the words of a Russian officer. Violence. The desire to know can be stilled by sexual union. "I find myself, I discover myself, I discover us both, I discover man." Know thyself, the Delphic motto. ..to know, in the biblical sense.. masturbation.

In the love between man and woman, each of them is reborn.

The polarity between male and female exists within each person, as well as between the couple. The male and female poles have an attraction in character, as well as sexually (like yin and yang)
People compensate sexually for what they lack in character.

Freud saw love as an animal instinct born of chemically produced tension, whereas Fromm maintains a need for love and union.

childhood
unconditional love for Simply Being, vs. earned love for doing
A mature person becomes his own mother and father, as it were, with both consciences incorporated within him.
Neuroses develop if one dominates..

i.e.
mother-oriented
dependant on mother, to be taken care of. lack of independence, discipline. (hysteria, alcoholism, inability to assert oneself and cope with life realistically, depression)
vs.
father-oriented
given to the principles of law, order, and authority, and lacking an ability fo expect or to receive unconditional love. obsessions are typical.

love the stranger (for you were strangers in the land of Egypt)
brotherly love between equals, helping those in need

motherly love for survival and growth, but also a love of life, "it is good!"
the promised land flows with milk and honey (the sweetness of life)
-babies should not be given honey, literally, of course-
can be narcissistic or a need for power/possession.

-Man needs to feel as the creator, as one transcending the passive role of being created.
-Mother transcends self in the infant, her love gives her life meaning and significance.
-Mothers need to know when to urge the child in the process of separation.
-"A woman can become a truly loving mother only if she can love; if she is able to love her husband, other children, strangers, all human beings."

erotic love
is pershaps the most deceptive form of love there is
is by nature exclusive, not universal
is the sudden collapse of the barriers which existed until that moment between two strangers
physical want can be mistaken for love
without brotherly love, is only union in an orgiastic, transitory sense
can make couples ashamed of, or even hate, each other, when the illusion is gone.
the exclusiveness can enlarge the single individual into two, an egotism a deux;

Because they are separated from the rest of mankind, they remain separated from each other and alienated from themselves; their experience of union is an illusion.

In essence, all human beings are identical. We are part of One; we are One. It should not make any difference whom we love. Love should essentially be an act of will.

It is a decision, a judgement, a promise.

Love thyself. It's not a selfish thing to do. The selfish person hates himself. "The selfish person is interested only in himself, wants everything for himself, feels no pleasure in giving, but only in taking."

Love of God
there are matriarchal and patriarchal religions.
God becomes Justice, Love, and Truth in mature monotheistic religions, of which God is
the nameless One.
"God is I, inasmuch as I am human."

"The truly religious person does not pray for anything, does not expect anything from God; he has acquired the humility of sensing his limitations, to the degree of knowing that he knows nothing about God. He considers all of his life only valuable inasmusch as it gives him the chance to arrive at an ever fuller unfolding of his human powers- as the only reality that matters, as the only object of ultimate concern; and, eventually, he does not speak about God- nor even mention his name. To love God, if he were to use the word, would mean, then, to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love, for the realization of that which "God" stands for in oneself.

Paradoxical logic from eastern religions is important to him, as thought can only lead us to the knowledge that it (thought) cannot give us the ultimate answer.

The only way knowledge can be grasped ultimately lies, not in thought, but in the act, in the experience of oneness. (with God)

Right way of living.
dogma and science are mental.
love of God can be a thought experience, or a mystical, intense feeling of oneness.

"If therefore I am changed into God and He makes me one with Himself, then, by the living God, there is no distinction between us..." -Meister Eckhart
and
"By loving God, I penetrate him."

discipline, concentration, patience, supreme concern
are required to become the ultimate lover...
You must practice DCP in all that you do.
You must have a sense of I=myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world.
He recommends 20 minute concentration exercises in the morning and every evening before going to bed (sitting in a relaxed position, closing eyes, removing interfering pictures and thoughts, following one's breathing).
Avoid trivial conversation and bad company (because their orbit is poisonous and depressing)
...and also zombies, people whose soul is dead, who chatter, and who assert cliches.
Live in the here and now.
Be sensitive to yourself, one's bodily processes, like a mother to her baby..

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's Narcissism (when one only experiences that which exists within oneself), and becoming as Objective as possible.

With faith in one's own convictions, rationally based on one's own experience of thought or feeling.

Having faith in another person means to be certain of the unchangeability of his fundamental attitudes, of his love, of his basic motivations remaining the same. (Fromm uses the male gender, you may have noticed)

Faith in mankind, is the culmination of faith in others. The basis of rational faith is Productiveness. Faith and power are mutually exclusive. Power is unstable. The faith in power (the willingness to throw away life because one is incapable of loving it) is the opposite of faith in life.

Loving requires faith and courage. To take the difficulties, setbacks, and sorrows of life as a challenge which must be overcome makes us stronger, rather than as unjust punishment which should not happen to us.

Don't be afraid to love, to be loved, to be loving.

"Important and radical changes to our social structure are necessary if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon. SOciety must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving nature is not separated from his social existence, but becomes one with it. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man."

How I feel sometimes

Innocence, but Gr

James Nachtwey, war photographer

Check out his site, http://www.jamesnachtwey.com/

Remember how lucky (or blessed, if that's your belief) you are,
and
Keep your priorities balanced...

I could be at an all you can eat at Sizzler tonight.
I watched the documentary 'War Photographer' instead.

We should all be allowed to enjoy life, and feel good about the choices we make.

It is estimated that you can save a life for every 3 dollars donated to UNICEF, because there are so many people dying from poverty (the inability to pay for cheap lifesaving medicines). So donate a hundred bucks and save 30 children's lives!