Last week my wife got a call from her high school best friends fiance. He told us that Tempest passed away from complications from a hernia that night. It was a shaking call, since she was only 27 years old. She's left behind 2 kids, 5 and 2. And they need any help they can get.

If you have any extra cash, I know they and my wife would really appreciate your help. Any amount will go a long way. Tempest meant the world to my wife. Neither would have been the person they are without eachother

Just for kicks and giggles I decided to check out Knottyboy.cm today. I was annoyed with their home page, but I pushed through it. At the bottom of the page there is a link for "what do you think?". So I clicked it. It sends you to a page full of links to surveys about their site: What do you want more of? How do you like buying their products? How do you like their new site? etc... All of them allow you to take the survey right on the spot. Then there is a link about How you like using their products? Unlike all of the other surveys, this one is not available. In fact, it sends you to a page that tells you that you need permission to take this survey. I requested permission just for the sake of it. But I'm not expecting to hear back.

Sure the reason for this is most likely them wanting to check your email address and making sure it matches up with one in their database. That would make sense. But I'm sure they are also making sure you aren't on a forum like this one, spreading the truth about their products. In every other survey, they claim that they want you to be honest about your opinion. But they aren't going to listen to you if you disagree with them.

I know this isn't an important, or even a particularly useful blog. But I though some people may find it entertaining to see how KB is screening yet another form of criticism

So I went to school this morning. And like all mornings, I took the train. I sat down in front of a male TSA agent. No big deal. The next stop, a woman TSA agent gets on, and says to the guy behind me that hey should sit together since they are going to the same place.

I didn't think anything of it. I just like to people-watch andeavesdrop.

Well, I rested my head against the back of the seat like you always do. Well, all of sudden the lady stats banging on the back of my seat. I turn around and she said that my hair was hanging into her space. Iapologizedand pulled it to hang over my shoulders (In the meantime, no it wasn't in her space. It was braced between my back and the backrest). I did notice that the woman was black. That will be more important later.

So here I go, minding my own business, when she taps my seat again. I lifted my head up a bit, but didn't turn around this time. A few seconds later she did it again. At the next stop, while people were getting off the train, she switched seats. The male TSA guy looked and me, an I at him. He waved his hand at me on the down low to tell me that I wasn't doing anything wrong. He must have seen the annoyance in my eyes.

So what happened here? I wasn't about to get into an argument about my locks on a crowded train with a cop. On the street, maybe. But not here. People were trying to sleep, study, work, etc...

Do you think she really had that much of an issue with my locks? Could it have been because I was a white guy with locks? I really don't know

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child's?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
and thus understand all things?


Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

As dirty a place as the city is, I love it. There are all kinds of different people around you. People from all over the world.

My neighbor across the street, for example, is off the boat from China. He is the oddest character I've ever seen. he paints his concrete steps all different colours multiple times a year. He pees into a bucket outside and uses it to water his plants. (He grows the best vegetable garden I've even see, so he must know what he's doing). He'll paint sections of his house, but never the whole thing, so it always looks patchy.

And he doesn't speak a word of english. Well, not enough to put together half a sentence.

I was playing my ukulele outside today, and He come rolling up to his house, like normal, with a shopping cart and random stuff in it. Today it was an old TV. I've talked to him before, which usually consists of him speaking Chinese (not sure what dialect), and broken english. I think the only thing he knows how to say is "#1", "ok", and a few state names.

So he walked up to me and "asked" to play my uke. He proceeded to strum it and randomly sing his do-re-me's. This wasn't the first time we've done this. But something odd happened today...

We got talking about politics. Nothing in depth. But he started telling my all of the places he has been in the US, including LA, Jersey, New York, Virginia, and somewhere in the middle, I think Arkansas. He then started to talk to me about Mao Zedong. It really only consisted of him saying "bad man". But none the less, I managed to get into a conversation with someone about politics when neither of us knew what the other was saying. It was uncanny.

I helped him drag the TV into his house, and he gave me some unsweetened green tea. It was a bit rancid, but green tea without sugar is pretty bitter. And some strange dried fruits that were pretty good. I have no idea what they are or how to ask. They weren't sweet like most dry fruit, but good nonetheless.

Anyway... I was wondering if anyone else out there has ever just sat and talk to someone who doesn't speak your language for a while? It's worth doing. Never be discouraged or impatient with someone because they don't understand you, or you them. I'm sure this guy could instantly tell I had no idea what he was saying, but it didn't stop him from rambling on and on like we'd been friends for years.

Checking out at the store, the young cashier
suggested to the older woman that she should
bring her own shopping bags because plastic
bags weren't good for the environment. The
woman apologized and explained,"We didn't
have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The cashier responded, "That's our problem
today. Your generation did not care enough to
save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the
green thing in its day. Back then, we returned
milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the
store. The store sent them back to the plant to
be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could
use the same bottles over and over. So they really
were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink
instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the
razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away
the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an
escalator in every shop and office building. We
walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into
a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to
go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have
the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because
we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried
clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine
burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really
did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got
hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or
sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that
young lady is right.We didn't have the green thing
back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house
-- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small
screen the size of a handkerchief (remember
them?), not a screen the size of the county of
Yorkshire . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred
by hand because we didn't have electric machines
to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile
item to send in the post, we used wadded up old
newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic
bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine
and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push
mower that ran on human power. We exercised by
working so we didn't need to go to a health club to
run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But
she's right.We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we
were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle
flown in from another country. We accepted that
a lot of food was seasonal and didnt expect that
to be bucked by flying it thousands of air miles
around the world. We actually cooked food that
didnt come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap
and we could even wash our own vegetables and
chop our own salad.But we didn't have the green
thing back then.

Back then, people took the tram or a bus, and kids
rode their bikes to school or walked instead of
turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an
entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.
And we didn't need a computerized gadget to
receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000
miles out in space in order to find the nearest
pizza joint.

But isn't it sad that the current generation
laments how wasteful we old folks were just
because we didn't have the green thing back then?

So I posted a series of pics of my library a few days ago and since then I have been getting tons of recommendations of others to read. I don't remember them all so I decided to start a blog of authors and books I should look into. If you think of any let me know. I love anything sciencey, and I love sci-fi.fantasy. Iespeciallylike Dystopias. But I think my collection of them is pretty good.

Here's what I remember people recommending so far:

Mervyn Peake

Tom Robbins

Since I was a teenager I was always doing things that my parents and familydisapprovedof. I wore all black with chains and straps. I dyed my hair all sorts of funky colours. I gauged my ears out, and pierced anywhere I wanted to. Mohawks were not an uncommon hair style for me either, and I never once gave a second thought to how or why my whole family didn't like it.

I did. So that's all that mattered.

Maybe that is why I never cared about people's reactions to me when I started to grow my locks. I knew they looked goofy and haphazard when they were forming, but I loved them and knew that in the end they would look great and not like a mangy cat anymore.

I hear so many people talking about cutting their locks or combing them out because they got tired of hearing all of the negative remarks family members and even strangers make about their hair.

I don't know what it was that I went through that made me not give a rats ass about other peoples negative and bigoted comments. I grew up in a conservative Jewish home, where anything out of the normal was frowned upon. Maybe that did it. I was so sheltered that I had to find some way to express myself, and could not let anyone, even family, tell me that I was wrong.

So when I read posts about others going through those doubts, I just can't imagine it. It might sound like rebellion is a bad thing, but everyone needs to go through a phase of it to become their own person. It might have been easier for me, given my upbringing, but it's the natural order of growing up.

If you stop caring about what others think about you, you expand your chances of becoming an individual instead of part of the machine.

Sure that stage goes away in time. I still don't care what others think about me, but I am not doing anything, anymore, just to get a rise out of people.

When you get past the shock value of the rebellious stage, you just become you. People expect it of you, and they don't openly judge you for it. Their might be some deep seeded feelings, but it no longer is something that is talked about openly.

Give in to yourself.