dig it, a dancing queen!

Seems I'm not the only queen who had to get one of those new iPod Mini! Glad to hear that she's still "keepin' it real."

Warning: Close the door

Warning: Close the door
Originally uploaded by Robbie1.

I am loving flickr's photo search feature. It's so much better than Google for finding quirky images for the office. This one will confound and entertain anyone who walks past my door. (I prefer to keep it shut.)

sexy infection

Great. Now I have something else to worry about.

There's a newly discovered bug in town. And let's face it: with my checkered and paisley past, I'm probably so infected.

It's a newly discovered mind-altering parasitic infection that can be caught from cats and squirrels.

I've often wondered why the French behave the way they do. The world center of fashion and fragrance also has a very high percentage of people infected with toxoplasma gondii. (Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)

People infected with the virus seem to go through a sort of "sex kitten" effect, "becoming less trustworthy, more desirable, fun-loving and possibly more promiscuous," according to the BBC science news.

Wait a minute -- desirable, fun-loving and slutty?!? I think I've had this disease for years!

At least it's a sexy infection, right?



Wraaarrrr! Bad kitty!

Let this be a warning to you all: don't cross me or I'll CUT YOU!

dilF brekkers

PETER BRADY
Originally uploaded by theherocomplex.

Got a nice surprise this morning. I passed DILF #381, walking down the hall. He was bending over, retrieving a soda can from the drink machine. "Oh, starting the day off with a healthy breakfast, I see!" I told him.

That pretty-lipped young thing blushed a little bit and admitted that he'd pressed the wrong button. (Obviously, he was a looker, not a thinker.) And he handed me his unwanted can: a nice bit of classic Coke.

I bat my eyes and gush a "thank-you" in his direction, while sashaying down the hall.

A quick Google Image Search revealed nothing close to an actual dilF. However, a flickr beta search revealed this tasty entry. Mmmm-mmm!

The morning got even *better* when another parent gave me a hu-normous chocolate chip cookie. Nice combo! I'll be on a sugar high until noon~!

Hugs and kisses,
Jblend

Pi's tiger, my great white

"I am sitting in a downtown café, after thinking. I have just spent most of an afternoon with him. Our encounters always leave me weary of the glum contentment that characterizes my life. What were those words he used that struck me? Ah, yes: 'dry, yeastless factuality', 'the better story'. I take pen and paper out and write:

Words of divine consciousness: moral exaltation; lasting feelings of elevation, elation, joy; a quickening of the moral sense, which strikes one as more important than an intellectual understanding of things; an alignment of the universe along moral lines, not intellectual ones; a realization that the founding principle of existence is what we all love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineluctably.

I pause. What of God's silence? I think it over. I add:

An intellect confounded yet a trusting sense of presence and of ultimate purpose.

I can imagine an atheist's last words: 'White, white! L-L-Love! My God!' -- and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, 'Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain,' and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story."

- from Life of Pi by Yann Martel





Striking, these words of Pi Patel... They story of Pi catching the spiritual tiger by the tail does force me to mull over my own spiritual thoughts. In the novel, Pi must take care of a Tiger. And wrestle with his beliefs at the same time.

Pi's words, above, call to mind, in the resonant voice of one who has seen Life not only through the eyes of the living, but also the very nearly dead. I have to pause, look up from the text and allow my surroundings to go soft focus, as if someone has smeared petroleum jelly over the lens of my camera. Will I be doubtful and distant, to the end, like Pi's proverbial atheist, only to embrace, in my final moments, the reality of Kifflom? Or will the metaphor be slightly different, the nature of my comprehension a few shades off? Will I come to grips with Kiff during those final moments? "Embrace" suggests loving, worshipful arms that reach out to wrap myself around an idea -- the Idea of Kifflom -- whereas "coming to grips with" Kifflom suggests a shrugging, doubting Thomas, rubbing his shoes in the dust absent-mindedly while reluctantly shaking hands with The Divine. Which of these will I be during those transcendent moments?

Or might there be a different transubstantiation of the food of the soul, or, as we Southerners call it, "soul food"? I do not know. Maybe the dark chocolate cake of the soul will occur well before my post-mortem.

During a moment of bliss, will I again see that mythical Great White that visited me, so many years ago? Note to reader: The Great White is not a creature of the deep. But the memory of it does consume me deeply. The Great White is my nickname for the spiritual experience I had on the 18th of September morning, 1996.

I remember it so clearly. I went to bed the night before, just like any other night. I set down the steaming cup of hot ginger tea onto the little kerosene stove right before bed. I was reading a book of philosophy. I sipped the tea occasionally while going through a particularly interesting chapter on eschatology. I was brimming with questions, my mind utterly focused on the book. After a half hour, I realized that the stove was working a little too well. Even on the low setting, it was heating the room too much. I shut it off. After finishing the chapter, I set the book down on the stove and drank the tea to the dregs. I paused to savor the last sip and gently drifted off to sleep.

Now I remember shutting off the stove, so that it would not automatically come on the next morning at sunrise. I normally had it set to warm the place up before I hopped out of bed. But this time, I know that it was off. This is important, as you will soon see, so that I can be certain that what was about to take place was not "the result of f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain" (as Pi put it).

What was about to take place is this: simply the most vivid and beautiful feeling that I have ever experienced. Take the best orgasm you've ever had and multiply it to the power of googol. (That's the inconceivably large number google, not the search engine Google, mind you!) Then add the complete peace and liquid existence of floating in a sun-basked pool mid-summer. On top of this, subtract any problems with high chlorine or sun damage to your skin. Also, subtract the pruning of fingers, toes and elbows. Finally, add that peculiarly exquisite weakness of waking up in the morning after an usually good night of sleep. This is what I experienced for several hours before waking up the next morning, that morning in September 18th, 1996.

I floated in joy-filled cloud of extreme bliss for several hours but somehow also seemed like mere nanoseconds. And it was the all-knowing, all-seeing bliss of experience as well as innocence. Pure joy. Unadulterated.

It was as though I'd walked through a doorway to another place... as though I were back with Guinan, wrapped in joy, as if joy was something tangible that you could wrap yourself in, like a blanket.


(joy shown smaller than actual size)

Upon waking, I went into the emotional equivalent of the dry heaves: I wanted to weep an oceanful of tears at the soul-crushing fact that I no longer existed in that Perfect Place. My entire body, down to the last cell, longed to return to this incredible place. "Why, why, why did I have to leave?" I asked. No answer. But I also felt thankful that I got to visit. I did not move for an hour, not wanting to disrupt the feeling that lingered, like the ozone smell after a lightening strike. The feeling of that great, perfect, white emotional place, that Great White space, just filled me with a feeling of such love and joy that I felt lucky to even hear the distant echoes of it. It was just that amazing.

As a writer, I am filled with humility at not being able to capture the feeling in words. I suppose that it's because of the incredible contrastive elements that the experience brought to me. I had the exhilaration I get from a 50 yard dash on a cool fall morning, the scarlet leaves of the forest path waving me along like the flag at the Daytona 500, along with the utter and complete calm of an hour's meditation, the quiet ringing of temple bells caressing my ears from a distance.

I had no visions of the afterlife. There were no relatives beckoning me toward them. My Godfather, just recently deceased at the time, did not hand down words of wisdom from the great beyond. No. None of these clichés. But the feeling has stuck with me. It was that life-changing that I can imagine it to this day, nearly a decade later.

This experience is why Pi Patel's words strike me with such resonance. Pi argues that the unimaginative will miss the better story of existence. I'm forced to ask myself: Does my experience conflict with my non-belief in a higher power? Notice: I did not say disbelief. I do not disbelieve in God. I simply lack belief. Is this because I lack imagination? In every day life, I'm on a magic carpet ride of imagination. I prize creativity and imaginative fancy more than most. I write, sing, dance and draw. I use up half a hard drive on creative expression of every stripe! But why am I so unimaginative when it comes to reading the spiritual roadmap to a Higher Power? I have no idea.

Maybe Kifflom can teach me.

doe

It was my usual route: a breezy run, right through the hood and through the local Seminary gates. I was listening to Baltimore dance savant bt. The music shimmered like a new computer and seemed to lend me extra energy -- always nice.

I was about 30 minutes into it when I hit the steep, steep hill that leads from the main road to the main church. It's about 1/4 mile in length, but that actually feels like a long way with that steep gradient. I'm pounding my way up the hill, my sides aching from the heat and the strain of the hill. It feels like my own private Everest.

So I stomp up, turn the bend and I see her standing there, nibbling on something and looking at me all doe-eyed. She was beautiful. Just as peaceful as you please, not a bit scared of me, but still watching me, all the same. She stood there and let me pass, without really moving very much.

Bambi's mom was quite a site, considering that Bountiful, my parents' retirement home, is located smack dab in the middle of hundreds of miles of rural countryside and I've never been that close to a deer, whereas this little seminary is just 10 or so square miles in size. Odd that I should have such a natural encounter within the gates of a religious school, in the middle of the Alexandria suburbs. Why not on the C&O Canal? The last time I saw a deer there, it was head-first in a ditch, dead. (What a sight! A huge buck, face-down dead in a ditch is enough to make even Baby Jesus cry!)

So this was a welcome sight and it made my afternoon just a little special.

That and the George Jetson lesson, I mean.

This summer will be the last one when I have to take classes. Finishing up the second round of graduate classes will keep me busy. Luckily, it's something I can do from home. The class will be webstreamed, or in the macromedia vernacular, breezecast. It's a setup that would make George Jetson proud.



The multimedia lesson is a mix of video cameras, sound, screen sharing (for ppt presentations) and chat. I was pleasantly surprised at the professor's intellect (he's a sharpie) and the class' eagerness to chat. I suppose my expectations were low because I'd never heard of the school before. Well color me impressed -- it went well and I enjoyed the presentation.