Chinese Astrology

So, if anyone knows anything about the 4 Pillars method of Chinese astrology (BaZi in Chinese), you will very quickly surmise that I am no expert. I’m barely even a novitiate. Maybe a tenderfoot would be more accurate description.

However, I thought it could be helpful to some - including me - to talk about what astrology really is, what it is not, and how it has been used for many many centuries, but instead of hearing it from a Chinese Master, I could post some explanation from my own level of understanding (which, again, let me reiterate, is the low level for dummies).

Astrology has kind of a hokey rap.
(he's awesome. Epidermis! But Sun/ Western astrology isn't what the Chinese used - they used the Moon, which is about a million times closer, in dog years.)

People seem to think it’s some sort of new age-y means of divination or fortune telling, but in fact it is an ancient technique, used by Emperors and Generals for centuries to predict and plan moves that affected China's foreign & domestic policy.

The technique is really more like a Farmer’s Almanac than anything, rather than something you read in the newspaper for kicks (or as Bill suggests, determining if you are a Sexy Whatever). It’s looking at seasons in a given year and determining what types of things are beneficial to act upon in that season, and likewise what types of personalities are usually the product of that season. It gets specific right down to the day and hour – just like things like solar eclipses, meteor showers and full moons.

So, all of these specific things that the ancient astronomers/astrologers (the field wasn’t really separated in those days by much and it was kind of a given, if you knew about one you were at least versed in the other) were given quick-reference names to make them easily recognizable and discussable. Like how we call the hot time of the year Summer or, more specifically July. July is still hot - it was 2,000 years ago, and it will be 2,000 years from now. BILL.

So there are 12 animals they came up with to quickly reference a given set of characteristics present at given times.

1. Rat
2. Ox
3. Tiger
4. Rabbit
5. Dragon
6. Snake
7. Horse
8. Goat
9. Monkey
10. Rooster
11. Dog
12. Pig

People always kind of moan and groan things like, “Ew, I don’t want to be a pig, gross.” But really, it’s just the name of an animal that would have been common to Chinese life and culture about 4000 years ago. All of the animals have cool, boring, fun and lame traits so none is any “better” than another to be (except Rat.)

(images property of Darku Angel, not me)

Each animal is said to represent a given set of traits, or elements. As in wood, fire, earth, metal and water. Or if you’ve ever seen The Craft --witch elements! (no offense to my wiccan readers – go sage!). Roll over each animal above to see its elemental traits.

The animals sharing elements are grouped together by season:

• Tiger, Rabbit & Dragon fall into the Spring or Wood season.


• Snake, Horse & Goat fall into the Summer or Fire season.


• Monkey, Rooster & Dog fall into the Autumn or Metal season.


• Pig, Rat & Ox fall into the Winter or Water season.

You’re probably going “ok, where’s the earth season?” Well, each Season has 3 animals – the third is often called the “storage” or “graveyard” animal, since it represents the end of the season. Those 4 animals at the end of the Season all have the Earth element. So earth is represented at different points throughout the whole year.

Feel free to begin asking me questions (either through comments to posts or email) on who you should marry /if your boss will always hate you types of stuff any time. Who knows if I’ll have the answer, but we’ll find out together!

(images property of Yuna Kagezaki, not me)

Remember – I’m a “low level for the noobs” novice, but I will try to update regularly with more information that has been helpful to me and I hope it is helpful to you!

POLITICS (oil, energy and dinosaurs)

Typically, this is a topic that I shy away from. First of all, to me, it all seems a little corrupt. Second of all, I basically follow the presidential elections (as in, I usually know who winds up getting elected) and that is absolutely it – so I’m not exactly what you could call an “authority.” I know more about politics in Ancient Rome (my favorites are the Gracchi brothers!) than our government’s current squabblings and power plays.

However, don’t think that I’m saying I’m some kind of “Don’t Tread on Me”-shouting NRA member with a tent house where they have their 4 years olds cleaning guns and telling the news they don’t need government to look after them, while an old woman guts a deer in the background

In Camo.

So last season!

Not that I’m saying anything about the NRA. Hey, look, you have every right to bear arms …but I’m just saying, we haven’t been invaded since 1812. That’s almost 200 years. And even that only happened because an uppity U.S. commander crossed the border into Canada to invade the British-occupied city of Sandwich. Which, you know, sounds pretty delicious to me, too

…but it’s not like they invaded us first. Er, well that time.

Um. There was a point here somewhere.

Oh, right – this whole BP thing. OK, so…it’s obviously a disaster, but can I be "straight-talkin' Dad" honest?

I’m a little bit glad it happened. Obviously, the loss of life is tragic and it's destroying so much of the gulf, but perhaps a minor disaster to wake people up before an even bigger disaster to come?

OK, I'll detail in "of alls."

First of all – we have got to investigate alternative fuel sources (ethanol doesn’t count – it’s too expensive for some reason and we eat it. Read your labels!) and there’s just no urgency being given to that requirement. When the last drop of oil gets used…what are we going to do with all these highways? And more importantly, how are you going to get two cars out of your garage if you can’t even turn them on?

Second of all – the stuff is running out. Fast. Do you know how many people there are in China? According to my latest calculations, roughly 47 GRILLION. You know how long oil is going to last when they all start driving? About two weeks (a fortnight!) And with China’s sudden involvement and interest in the WTO and other things with capitalistic tendencies, their interest in cars (not just making them anymore, LOLZ) is going to go through the proverbial car-interested roof. Oil is running out and fast.

Oh, but Alaska! Alaska! some of you may say. My guess is after all this, the government is going to be too afraid to Tick off their constituents after the massive amounts of wetland and ecological damage the current oil problem is creating? There are people in Louisiana who will oppose drilling in Alaska just out of spite now! Plus, it’s a band-aid on the overall problem, not a solution.

Not to mention, oil is not a renewable resource. Picture a dinosaur, with its blood-dripping fangs and beady black eyes and lashing tail.

That dinosaur is in your car! Why do you think oil is so awesome – it’s dinosaurs. We are driving to Wal-Mart (PUKE, I don’t care) on prehistoric thunder lizards’ corpses. And yes, yes, I’m sure there were many dinosaurs – but there are way more people (remember, we are in the Grillions now) and even though Brontosaurus was the size of at least 17 city blocks, its body can’t power your Hummer for 80 years.

Can’t be done. It’s science. You’re practically getting this info from Galileo, so you know, believe it.

Third of all – I hate cars! They get hot in the summer, they take forever to warm up in the winter and anyway, I like horses better. This is usually the point in my oil argument where my dad goes “Trust me, you don’t want to be riding Mr. Ed to work in the rain while it’s pooping five pounds of oats and slipping around on the wet asphalt.” No doy, Dad.

In the old days, when we relied on horses (which worked for thousands of years) if it was raining – guess what? You weren’t going into work. And neither was anybody else.
Rain Day!

These days, we are so driven by that urgent urgency of our success-crazed global economy, no one can even think of living their lives according to the terms of nature once again. If you don’t come into work on days when it’s snowing outside, people think you’re a slacker. I’m just afraid for my life, okay? So I think this whole oil argument is touchy because (obviously) it is really forcing us to think about our entire system of living and how horribly short-sighted it has been for the last 50 years.

So back to my original statement – I shy away from politics. I’m not going to call my congressman and say the government should take the hint this is giving us and start investing in solar technology...because I don’t even belong to a political party because I’m not a registered voter (plus, I’m not in the Electoral College so it doesn’t even matter!). But I do care what happens with this oil spill business. But politics and politicians in them...ehh. So…the quandary. What are we going to do?

And I guess I mean this whole BP thing (awful and terrible though it is) could have positive repercussions– since it’s forcing the issue to be discussed with the urgency it deserves.

For now.

Chibi of the Week

(of the Wibi?)

Some have undoubtedly noticed by now, that the depiction of the most rad dinosaur ever, Tyrannosaurus Rex that is this site’s mascot is not exactly the most chibi thing you ever saw.

Let me explain.

In Japanese culture (mainly via anime and manga, Japanese comics/graphic novels), chibi indicates something that is cute, small and childlike – often connoting the super deformed style of drawing/animation that makes characters that are “normal” into caricature versions that are short, stumpy and adorable.

This is often done to express extreme emotion – typically rage or having a big crush on something. (images property of the radical Kentaro Muira, not me).

Not surprisingly, people LOVE this style of art. Seriously, just type “Naruto” into google and you’ll see a chibi version of one of the characters in the first 5 images or so.

I, too, am highly addicted to all things chibi (and kawaii, but more on that later).
A few more examples for ample cuting out over.(images property of the amazing Shirow Masamune, not me).

So, back to what I was saying, my T-rex isn’t that chibi. It’s sort of cute, and kind of smallish but really it’s just a crap version of a good T-Rex drawing.

This is due to my own shortcomings as an artist – don’t blame Chibisaurus!

DON'T BLAME HIM!

One of my main goals right now is to learn to draw and well. So I hope someday soon to have a much more stylistically adroit version of Chibisaurus that I'm unembarrassed to flaunt all over the world. But, until that day, we’re all stuck with “5 year old tries to draw their dog then changes it into a horse, then changes it into a dinosaur” Chibisaurus.

And, with that – a toon! Chibi has a life, a very weird, naughty life and that probably should never be shared, but too bad. Without further ado, the first Chibisaurus Toon:

CONFESSIONS

I intend this to be an ongoing admission of many embarrassing quirks (or outright LIES!) I have allowed myself to get away with for most of my life and would like to leave behind. It's time to go to Confession:

1).Trying to force myself to be ambidextrous.

Since the time that I was very young, I have always had a problem remembering the diff between left and right. Not because I couldn’t tell which side was which, but giving them names seemed …pointless. And I am a visual learner and unrecognized genius, so after a few months in 1^st grade of my parents going “Why don’t you get this, jackass?!” (I’m paraphrasing) I realized I was going to start having to fake it and fast or I would never get to be the next Jeanette (see: The Chipmunk Adventure). So telling my parents I used both interchangeably seemed a good way to convince them that my confusion was founded in some kind of harmless genius confusion.

Now, I will say this: I have always found it easy to switch between right and left for most tasks– teeth brushing, phone handling/dialing, juice drinking, peanut butter spreading – which is I think why I had a problem distinguishing between them early on because I had no reason to know which one I was using. Both my hands seemed so eager to help get the job done, I just let them take turns; I was always very fair.

But the one major exception to this was writing. It’s not that I can’t or couldn’t write with my left hand – in fact I’ve always been able to, but the cramped serial-killer scrawl that fills up the page (in addition to completely tiring me and my wrist the CRAP out) is just too scary to use unless it is an emergency. Like on the phone while peeling an orange and trying to beat your own score on Brick breaker. So you need to write out that phone number some annoying "friend" is giving you with your left hand. I’m not saying I’m ambidextrous, but … I do have the proclivity. It just gives me the feeling like, when you’re in a dream and you’re trying to run away from a huge horde of King Koupas and somehow Beebop & Rocksteady join the gang and they’re all chasing you down with maces and battleaxes with their 80’s punk flare and you can’t friggin get your body to run.

It’s like trying to get yourself together in a Bounce House. You just can’t do it – too much excitement, too much bubblegum flavored icing, too much blue drank (I don’t know quite what this is, but it always managed to be the beverage du jour at birthday parties I attended between 2^nd and 5^th grade, leaving a huge blue stain around everyone’s disgusting child lips), too much bouncing! And that is how I am with writing with my left hand. Other stuff – piece of cake (with bubblegum-flavored icing, please) but if I have to so much as write my own name, my whole wrist just panics. And within three minutes, I’m holding the pen so tight I have to consciously tell my thumb to relax, the Back Store.

The only way I’ve actually been able to get away with it, is when I’m taking notes that only I have to decipher at a later date. So in class, my wrist/thumb actually chill out enough to realize, hey, serious situation here involving grades and my future so no time to fart around and act like you’re too chicken to write a run-on sentence about this professor’s horrible description of right ascension & declination. Wrist-thumb pep talk. Wrumb-eptalk. (isn’t that a Star Trek character?) And that’s how I use my not-quite ambidextrousity. But I think I should stop telling people I’m ambidextrous. Because that auto-implies “Yes, I am Leonardo Davinci’s equal – tremble before my intellectual MIGHT!” and really…not the case. CONFESSION!

But if you need someone to open a jar for you or help you tie your shoelaces with their left hand…I’m just saying I could help. For $50 an hour. “Will work for Bounce House time.”

Proportional Munchings

EATING eating chomping.

I’m so hungry right now, you guys. I have two bananas that I got at Costco, and they were so flipping green that I thought, oh great – finally I won’t have 1 or 2 bananas that go bad and therefore waste thousands of cents on nothing, these will definitely be eaten while they are ripe. Well I waited. And Waited. And it’s now Tuesday at 4:39 (I got these on Saturday) and these bananas are so green I could use them to hammer siding. Seriously, it’s bad. So my eating for the day has consisted of…juice. This morning. At 8AM. Yeah. I’m freaking starving. I’m probably going to eat someone’s face off on the way home. I just emailed the Ace (all spirit animals have smart phones) and was like “Food ME inside my stomach chewing. Can you do that please now?” Engrish is my third language.

And I was like so serious in the email trying to express that it was essential I eat right as soon as I get home, and then I read it after I sent it (just to make sure there were no typos or anything because I’m that neurotic) and that was basically what I typed. Stellar.

My stomach feels like two pieces of plywood rubbing against one another and sawdust is flying all over the place making people cough. Similar to that.

And I have the Home Improvement theme stuck in my head. Curse you, Tool Man! When I hear the home improvement theme song that means it is 8PM on a Wednesday night, I’m in 7^th grade and I’m enjoying a Healthy Choice spaghetti and peas dinner with my mother while she indulges in a microwaved baked potato with some fat free salsa. And maybe a slice of light wheat bread with light margarine. And NOTHING ELSE. If you want something else, you can have a piece of fruit, you don’t need any more bread.

So, you can see why HI is making me feel slightly delirious – on top of my ravenous-ness.

GAAAAH, I would crawl across hot coals for some of those Healthy Choice peas. TV Dinners are the equivalent of eating salted crude oil and I wouldn’t pass one up right now. Why?!

Let's all just pretend to be space sailors to drown out the hunger growls.

Weather Channel...?

A Commentary

I was curious as to what the weather would bring this weekend and so yesterday I went to the Ace’s least favorite weather-information website, (which he calls one big ad and “bedmate of Monsanto”) the Weather channel online, or Weather Channel.com. Very quickly, I was bombarded with questions and vague assumptions that made me feel a uncomfortable and offended, which completely eclipsed me noticing that apparently it is going to be a monsoon weekend and I should bring an umbrella and dinghy wherever I traverse.

What are you trying to find out here, Weather channel.com? I’m not shopping per se…but I do like to furnish my home or office with Ikea-like goods. So I suppose you could refer to those as “Enhancements,” but what has that got to do with it probably raining this evening? Hm, perchance Saturday holds a more reasonable weather prediction for me.

Flu activity on Saturday…What are you trying to say? You’re making a lot of assumptions I don’t feel comfortable with and I feel like you need to be checked before you get wrecked. By yourself. Wait, are you hexing me, witch style? You’re giving me the flu on Saturday? Crap, I was going to watch the World Cup!

Maybe Sunday will be better…

Okay, now you’re asking me questions?? You’re the Weather Channel.
You’re supposed to be the one who knows if pollen translates to an early spring (and I thought it was a groundhog, but maybe the Weather Channel.com is from a different country than us where they use a particle of pollen to check its shadow instead…). Not me!

And BT DUB, it’s freaking summer and it has been for like a month (although not according to the solstice, so don’t bother trying to sound smart by telling me that, I already know). Whether or not we had an early spring is frankly irrelevant, Weather Channel.com.

Fine, the Ace – you win. NOAA it is.

Yes, they’re not the sleek privatized weather watching entity that Weather channel.com once was, but at least at NOAA I’m not attacked like Kim Kardashian leaving the plastic surgeon’s office by a group of manic, paparazzo-like questions about home décor and allergies. Also, what is with your abbreving, WCdC? I know “Thunderstorms” is kind of a long word, but maybe if you weren’t hassling people about their private lives, you’d have enough room to write out the full words for things like, you know, weather.
Consider yourself served.

SECOND

This is a long one. Apologies upfront for my shamefully childish imagination. And stream of consciousness typing. Also, if you need to reference it again as you read on, Hippie - body/heart; Ashram - reality, experiencing reality; Teacher - mind/wisdom, superhero, mindheart.

So how many times has your body betrayed you? You know, like those examples in psychology where they tell you about four different people witnessing a car wreck and one person says it was a green car and one person says it was a little green person driving a red car and someone else says they like turtles, which are green, so there’s sort of lots of different interpretations to events and we apparently can’t rely on our eyes or our bodies to properly interpret any of that. Really, we have to run it through our translator machine of Mind.

Spiritual teachers say the real source of peace and joy is our mind – not anything physical or bodily can truly make us happy (even green people in red cars ). The mind, not the body or even the supposed reality happening around us is the real controlling force in how our lives unfold and what they mean.

It’s as if your body is some tripped out hippie at an ashram and reality is the ashram and the mind is the spiritual teacher (or “guru” if you are still at the crazy hippie level) and everything is getting turned into this silly, deluded supposedly spiritual trip and all the while the teacher mind is like, “No, you’re just still being fake – being happy doesn’t mean being fake all the time,” and the hippie body is like, “Oh yes, wise guruji, you see right through me” (continues dancing with scarves) and then the teacher is like, “Just sit down and let’s talk about what you’re afraid of,” and your hippie is like “This ashram takes away my problems, it’s like a dream lalala…is that a baby elephant riding a go-ped? I feel so alive!” and the teacher is like, “I reaaaally want to quit you right now, but I can’t because I’m your teacher/mind, so just chill out for a second and I’ll get you some juice,” and the hippie is like “Juice! I love juice! Juicejuicejuicejuice,” and the teacher is like, “This lovable moron,” and goes to the kitchen and everyone at the ashram is like, “Juicejuicejuicejuice,” and it’s perfectly climate controlled in there so you THINK you’re not hot, but actually you’re dehydrated and so the teacher brings what he told you was juice but it’s mostly water because he knows you’re freaking dehydrated you idiot hippie, and you’re like, “I don’t need water! It’s like 68 and sunny all up in this ashram, MF,” and the teacher is like, “Trust me,” and hippie goes, “Ashram, what do you think?” and the ashram is like, “It feels cool to us, dude,” and the teacher is like, “They’re dehydrated, too, just trust me, OK, I’m trying to help,” and hippie body pouts and finally goes, “OK, I’ll take a sip,” and then your stupid ignorant body takes a drink of water that it thought it didn’t want and ashram reality told it that it didn’t want and then you suddenly feel really refreshed and hippie is like, “Wow, I was really thirsty! I didn’t even know it. Thanks guruji, I was probably close to having a freak-out! I wonder how I didn’t even realize I was thirsty…” and the ashram is like, “We were trying to tell you about the water, man,” and the teacher is like, “Let’s all just sit here and read a book,” and the hippie is like “Awww man!”

And that’s how Buddhism works.

Sort of. I may be wrong on a few points, but basically your mind is the only means of awareness – all of your senses and reality’s mirages are just Input that could be completely wrong, and Mind/Teacher is the Receiver and interpreter. Think about it – body without a brain = not reacting or interpreting much. Brain without a body = delightful science fiction movie!

So I think peacefulness in life comes first from the big brain tricking the body with watery juice to make sure it stays healthy and alert enough and then worry about the ashram. Because reality is what it is – even if it’s ridiculous or wrong (see: Darfur, the VietNam Conflict, Dancing with the Stars) – and it’s not up to us to change any of that because ultimately, no matter what color people saw, the car in the accident was only one color (sorry, I am running example wild). And our little mushy pieces of body can’t tell what any of that means without the brain.

The mind I think is something connected with the brain and the heart. So it’s sort of a cool hybrid, like a liger only not as fat and lazy. The mindheart is like the body’s superhero that has infinite powers of perception and compassion and patience and Juice-giving skills and can deal with anything! But, if you have a really annoying hippie, any mindheart is going to get a little numb from dealing with that retard after a while, and so you need a way to reset it.

Give your mindheart a spa package. And that’s where the Buddhism comes in. Or whatever you want to call it, I think it's still the same thing - compassion for yourself and others.

In our above example, Teacher Mind would NEVER have been able to deal with Stanky Hippie Body and Ashram Reality without some serious training. And a lot of us expect our mindheart to be able to deal with these ridiculous characters without any training at all, without even thinking, “Wow, I haven’t been trained for this.” We just do things and expect our mindheart to keep up and then get all pissed off at ourselves when we yell at someone in traffic or forget to file our federal income taxes. Yes. Forget...

It’s like asking an 8 year old to operate a forklift.

It’s not his fault when 47 people wind up horribly disfigured and an entire city block is turned to rubble – it’s the people who didn’t train him. See, I’m not saying 8 year olds shouldn’t operate forklifts – I’m saying 8 year olds shouldn’t operate forklifts without proper training. I think. I’m digressing.

OK - mindheart training. Mindheart is like a superhero. Like Bruce Willis in Invincible. Sorry if you haven’t seen it. It doesn’t know it’s a superhero. Which makes it get really caught up in the realities of the ashram reality: oh crap my train got delayed, oh no my wife is a weird ho, oh gross I have a kid – these sorts of mundanities.

However, once it finds out, “I’ve never been sick! I can lift 900 pounds like I was Thunder from American Gladiators!” the fact that it was previously worried about the train delayed stuff seems silly! Screw the train – my mindheart can fly to the gym! Or who even cares if my train is delayed, I’m friggin magical!

But in order to Wake Up to our superheroness, we need training (not everyone can just suddenly be aware of it like Bruce). So what is the training we need to realize our full mindheart superhero potential? Personally, meditation works for me (no, really!) because it’s about letting go of the struggle and constant neuroses that come with body and reality. It’s just sitting there with my superhero mindheart and being great.

It’s not spiraling into the past or future or trying to figure anything out, it’s just giving the poor teacher mind a chance to take a breather, and after you do that enough, I think you’ll see that there is relief in giving yourself some space. Like opening a window in a stuffy room. And while you sit there, there’s no judgment of the little distractions that the mind tries to come up to keep the conversation going, mindheart just has this huge capacity of kindness and patience to let that go. Then eventually, that state of being follows you after you get up from meditation and you feel like your superhero self all the time, despite continued interaction with yourself.

See, Mind by itself is like Hugh Grant. It’s just got to constantly be talking and saying awkward things – it means well; it means the best of things, but sometimes it just comes out wrong because it just keeps going on and on and finally your heart is like Shh please! I’m trying to feel.

And the heart is like a young film student who’s watched Breathless 100 times and cries when they see a flower wilting by the sidewalk or hear the distant rumble of thunder and it just needs to be loved and understood, but if doesn’t get loved in a healthy way it’s just like your sister when she’s on her period – one sensitive bizznite.

BUT if you join the two, the Hugh Grant part has a way to stay alert and show off his educated vocabulary and actually has some pretty insightful things to say once in a while – not the awkward blather that spews forth when he feels like someone isn’t into him. And since the heart has someone to be the object of their affections and reciprocate, it can also show some insight but also keep things grounded in the present and remain patient and understanding with its feeliness.

So I guess I’m saying in a most inept way, test it out for yourself. I have discovered that by giving my superhero a little more credit, I’ve found greater peace and happiness in the hectic silly ashram by listening to my mindheart superhero.

Hopefully, no one was offended by my ridiculous metaphors. I think in pictures, and sometimes they get a little out of control. Mainly the hippies. You know how they are.

FIRST and a HALF

One more quick note...
The 2010 FIFA World Cup! It’s started! After four long years!

Once again, time to bask in the rage-filled, sweat-drenched locks of multitudinous international athletes of mythic proportions. Seriously, these guys are like Titans. It’s miraculous to watch. The athletic prowess. The drama. The whiney babyfalldown wail N cries.

I just got back from the England-USA game. The first round is usually pretty caaazh, just given that, come on, who wants to get injured in the first game of the Cup? Eh, lads? So I recommend if this is your first year watching, brush up on the rules (trust me, even Brazilian people get confused as to what they are year to year) and then check out a 3rd round game on like, June 17th, otherwise you will just be sitting there going, "Where are all the talented ones? Where's Pele?" Actually you wouldn't say that last bit, but yeah. First round of games tend to be fairly tame.

So... maybe this was a crap time to start posting, and I think it's fair to say upfront that I’m going to be, well, watching the HELL out of this until it’s over. Whenever or wherever I can. Which means if my posts start to wreak of smoke and barfloor you’ll know why. Be warned; the local bars I am going to have to frequent in order to meet my needs, they’re kind of …I think seedy would be a fair word. It’s the kind of place that there will be like a suped up 1973 pimp mobile parked outside with the keys in the ignition, unlocked and parked out front. That kind of place. Don't steal that car, you guys! You will get kneecapped at the very least.

Go to Fifa's website to learn more about the World Cup, and if you want to know about the cool team I’m rooting for, click this link to read of their Magical Kicking! ¡Viva la Revolución! I mean, go sports.

Get well soon, Drogba!

First

By my command, Greetings and welcome!

From the above, you probably think I am a big Battlestar Galactica-ekkie or whatever those are called.

Not that I have anything against those things. I mean, they’re not things they’re people and they deserve respect, but I just happen to not be one of them. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with watching the Sci-fi channel like it is real network TV.

I think we’re getting off on the wrong foot.

Let me start over.

Hi, this is my blog!

It’s not much. Just an avenue or launch pad for discussions on things that interest me - and really the world at large, I think. My intention is actually for this to be more of a forum or discussionable (it’s a thing) (it is now) for stuff that…well that I like. Don’t come all up in here expecting to talk about, say Lady Gaga or…well, Battlestar Gallactica. Or other television related things.

I don’t have a TV.

That’s sort of a lie.

I have a large HD TV that weighs about 14 tensor bundles – seriously, it’s so heavy it takes rocket propulsion to escape the carpet’s atmosphere - that my animal spirit guide found on the curb in a rich section of town. It has amazing picture quality and hooks up nicely to my Wii, PS3 (suck it, Microsoft!) and other electronic products. I absolutely did not steal my TV. Someone was throwing it away.

I guess what I don’t have is cable. Or the internet. Or a phone.

I’m cheap.

Not like I’m promiscuous, like frugal. Measured with regard to spending. Not sluttish. Although if we still operated on a barter system, I would never be offended if someone propositioned me that way, since I think barter systems are excellent means of economy and so, to be fair to everyone, no method of barter could be deemed unacceptable. Sort of an ACLU bartering system where, well maybe you’re doing something totally evil and crappy but as long as it’s within the terms of the law hey, barter to town. Barter down! I would of course have to turn said propositioners of ess ee exing down, because ew, no and also you slut! But bartering, all for it.

Also, why don’t farmer’s markets accept bartering? They take checks but not a pair of old Sketchers? They are in perfectly good shape. I give you the Sketchers; you give me the kale. These Sketchers are a fashionable pink-and-black color scheme with a skull-like emblem (with bow to denote femininity) and have a sturdy polystyrene base – they will last you for centuries. Put them on your pigs in winter to keep them from getting icy mud all up in their toes.

Actually don’t do that – no self-respecting adult should ever dress up cats/dogs/pigs/babies like they’re actually people and talk to them like they’re conscious beings. EW. Get an i-pod. Take-up ikebana. Talk to your actual friends and/or loved ones. Having a dachsund with a name like “Chester M. Worthington III” who wears ascots and has his own cell phone is like kryptonite for self-respecting adults and therefore any potential mate you may come across.

I don’t think I’m much of a self-respecting adult (see: barter system) but I know that much.

This is getting out of control. I just wanted to say hi, welcome, come here and talk about cool things or post your thoughts about the cool things I am going to bring up, like constantly because I know what I like and it is cool! CUPCAKES! MAGNADOODLES! TALKING WITH RICK JAMES-LIKE INFLECTION! It’s all here.