Just got back from my 2nd viewing of the dark knight. Badass. Go see it, please.
I realize that I will be camping outside of leavenworth on seafair weekend. I am SO OK with this but now realize we have to take highway 2 back because the bridges will be closed and packed.
It seems I am leaving everything I hate behind, such as my trip to Canada on the 4th of July because I hate people and fireworks and crowds. Except I will miss the blue angels from my rooftop, but they skim my office 5 or 6 times a day during the week, so I will see them then and I'll be floating down a river in an innertube with booze so ha!.
I realized I am changing everything all at once. Without intentionally planning it.
New hair. New apartment. New car. Next: new, loyal lifelong friends and new city. I am stuck here for the next year now, since I signed that lease. But I will make the most of my killer salary, yet to get my 401K up and then split and start it all over again at 31 somewhere else. Maybe I can finagle something in Europe. My mom knows tons of people there. Actually I know a few too. HALLO LIVEJOURNAL!
I am thankful for the boy who keeps my wits together. He means a lot to me and I will cherish "the moment" I spend with this person.
"Everyone thinks entertaining is hard work, but it doesn't have to be," says Renée. "That's why I love these simple recipes. When you're throwing a party, you should be able to have a good time too."
Maui is a party.
mike meyers is into raw! Austin Powers is quite feminist for hollywood, subtley so. as is tomb raders.
Get Smart (fun film, few references to old series, still kinda regretting spending on it)
WALL-E (LOVED)
Journey to The Center of the Earth 3D (MUST SEE due to it's great 3D effects. story's kinda nice, but visually stunning)
aaand that's kinda all...
There's many great films out now, and it looks to be like a good summer for movies...
though, I'm not sure what to hop onto next...
Still haven't seen Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk, people have been mentioning how Hancock is great, Hellboy is out, but I barely recall seeing the first one, Wanted was suggested to me, Step Brothers looks funny, being the musical person I am: Mama Mia! looks interesting, and hell, despite how stupid it sounds, Kung Fu Panda has been well received by some who I know and may very well be Dreamwork's best (obvioulsy better than bee movie)...
and then, There's Dark Knight... hell, I haven't even seen Batman Begins!
I'm so behind, and I don't know what to jump on next...
it is perfectly possible to do raw cheffing in very particualr gormet ways, such as in some links above.
Irony as there was a time i was on Kauai in Novemebr 2001 when i met someone who crashed on the beach at Anahola with me (i was in a tent, he in a bush) and in the morning we spoke of the vegan co-operative he was living at on the south side while he munched an avocado and collected his daughter... I revealed to him my secret mission on earth to refine until the time the breath is enough and he was the first to support the mission as "a calling." he is now manager of Blossoming Lotus. can we not feel the energy of that green land... natural healing...
ABSURDLY Decadent raw pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24485383@N04/
renee Loux, the first raw chef i ever met (along with Jeremy Safron, Maui, 1996) at Raw Experience Cafe in Paia the same place many others first experienced the raw! feeling... http://youtube.com/results?search_query=%22Renee+Loux%22&search_type=
"With all the breathless coverage from abroad, and with Senator Obama now addressing his speeches to (quote) 'the people of the world,' (unquote) I'm starting to feel a little left out. Maybe you are, too..."
Now, if only the American people voted based on who sounds more like a pouting, jilted brat, ol' Crusty would have a lock on the White House.
Massive RAW action taken this afternoon. FILLER-UP on dark green chard, soaked fat red beans, virgin olive oil, cumin, italien and chili spices, broccoli and califlower, sea salt, apple and wild buckwheat honey blended and combined; and drinking a orange flavored naturally carbonated water; then for desert a smoothie of blueberries, watermellon rind, strawberries, bee pollen, honey smoothie followed by fullness and still working on the cold soaked green yerba mate blended to a living froth with the honey. stupid feeling frozen and dizzy full. This breatharian is eating way too much to crowd out the cravings for cooked and processed american fare which seeks to own and manipulate this body mind aggregate of changing kalapas.
this is a typical raw foodist romp. We are unconventional "chefs." Having done cooking in vegetarian kitchens for a few up to 150 people I see how much more important "the recipe" is to most cookers, though there are those who intuitively wing it, usually older Indian women who toss it all in without a thought and let the magic do the rest. With a raw foodist, almost all of them eventually get that way to some degree or another. it is all about being creative with what is on hand. Over the time i have been doing raw creations i usually don't photograph the food because of 2 reasons: not in the habit of taking pictures and usually to eager to consume before the though occurs... this kind of thing. have not been raw since the before and especially afetr the crossroads became so glaringly apparent that Indian day, day seven of my last ten day course in California. back to the typical raw... for example:
Yum yum The young coconut as noodles really rocks this... I can't believe the colours available despite it being winter here! Raw Thai food obsession lately...using up so much coriander from the garden :) Meanwhile, I think I need to figure out or being stricter with combining...getting some terrible *excuse me*....
The recipe (Please excuse this folks, and alter it to your liking, I just kind of get excited and use all I can find that is somwhat relevent to what I'm making)
Firstly, open a young coconut, drain the water (keep aside) and scoop out the meat as much as u can whole, then cut it into strips kinda like pad thai noodles.
Then make a sauce by blending/pureeing/squishing together: a date, a chopped tomato,a clove of garlic and grated ginger etc, juice of a lemon (or half depending on size, or lime if you have it) teaspoon dulse or any other seaweed product (for salty and fishy taste)and about half a cup of the coconut water (and optional braggs if u feel the urge for soy and dont mind).
Then chop up any or all or variations of: carrots corn off the cob shallots coriander purple cabbage baby corn red capsicum yellow caspicum peas
Toss together with coconut meat, pour juice over the top and toss more, leave to marinade if you can wait, and serve in a pile of any mushrooms with sprouts and extra coriander on top!
...I know your time is valuable so I will send you only the most powerful content that you can use immediately...
..................On August 1st, there will be unique Solar Eclipse.................
green yerba mate is so alive with minerals when it is cold soaked and blended then strained and blended again with honey it becomes a rich, vital, foaming, bubbling mineral rich living food/beverage. ...it's a little like beer... the dark roast is a little bit like coffee and is not as vital due to it's mixed in with roasted grains. due to the affinity with decadent cooked food favorites these can be effective transitioners but will eventually have to be given up for one to become less addicted to cooked food lifestyle.
To Inspire and be inspired to STAY RAW ! I first sampled Raw! in 1997 on Maui with the Raw Experience restaurant and a roommate who became "obsessively" raw! and started stuffing me full of their food... needless to say even though I was a skeptic and not interested at first, eventually I was sitting around reading Nature's First Law and craving dried bananas and almond butter (raw "crack")... not to mention the Raw Experience's pizza and ethnic dishes that where totally high integrity raw and amazing... soon, due to eating raw, reading raw books and discussing raw! I was convinced and decided to go raw! that fall. Since then it has been on and off over the years more on than off in recent years... For some reason I still struggle with cooked food cravings, obsessions, desires and never lost my taste for even the most depraved cooked food. . . I really want to get over it and cruise into RAW! once and for all until the end. When I am raw! my appetite shrinks and I realize my eating is actually about 10% hunger and 90% emotional mental non physical desires combined with the wish to experience the sensations of eating.It is possible to live on very little and have a very different human experience that is supramundane. It is also most obvious that the raw food feeds the entire body while cooked food only feeds the middle. After falling off the wagon when returning to raw after a long enough absence I can feel the difference as if the whole body can breath. The longest raw! I have been is four months so 100 days is realistic. 400 days would be a real challenge! I have been a private raw chef and this was when it was easiest to stay raw. it really takes an almost obsessive attention and dedication to achieve the raw! at the near 100% mark which I always strive for but have only come close by being in the 90-99% range due to standard questionable items... That seems good enough but my personal 100 day challenge will be modified to fit whatever goals I plan to achieve and succeed with obviously inevitable TRIUMPH that this lifestyle so promotes.
I've been officially retired for a couple of weeks now. However, in facing the need to maintain an income at the level I've become accustomed to, I've taken to contracting as an information technology consultant. I've managed to secure an engagement for the next three weeks working in a field called Business Intelligence. It pays well and I'm very confident of my skills since I've used these tools off and on and done some rather creative things with them.
The bad part is I fly out from home on Sunday and will return Friday night. I'm going to miss my home and family a lot.
We'll see how it goes now that I'm merely a cog in the economic production and consumption machine.
This is me of the now. Obviously altered at instyle.com but this is what my hair looks like and this is what color it is. Do I keep it this color? or do I change it. I've selected a few colors. Help.
This election year I find myself as nearly disinclined to vote as I've ever been. This is very strange because unlike many Americans, I've paid in blood and body parts for my right to vote and have held that right as precious as my other rights as acknowledged in our Constitution.
I guess that there are several issues that will be key to my voting for or against anyone. Those issues in the order that I hold them are;
Position on 2nd Amendment Rights: I've read many of the documents that laid the groundwork for our Constitution and to the best of my knowledge and understanding our founding fathers were more afraid of a government that found itself no longer answerable to the people and in possession of the means of enforcing its will over the people with impunity. It was with this in mind and the idea that every citizen should be able to "defend life, liberty and property" with any means possible including deadly force.
Position on Immigration: I will only elect those who understand that there are ways to immigrate into this country and sneaking across the borders is not one of them. Any candidate who understands that illegal immigration is intolerable because of the disruption to the lives of people on our borders, the impact to our economy from education and health care to the amount of crime on the streets outweighs the benefit of being able to have a "cheap" workforce is one I'll vote for.
Position on the War on Terror: Ok the term "War on Terror" is a misnomer. But we are fighting for our survival as a culture and a civilisation against a group of people who use religion and asymetric warfare to impose their will upon anyone who holds a different view of how people should live. This war is currently being fought on many fronts, most are not even known by the average citizen because they are not informed of these fronts. We are all familiar with the two major fronts where combat is waged openly and by fairly large forces. These fronts are Iraq and Afghanistan. What should be understood is that these are not separate wars but separate battlespaces in the same war. At this time, it matters not how we came to be on those two fronts, it matters only that we are there and since we are there, whether we wish as a nation to prevail. For better or worse, a decision was made to concentrate our efforts in Iraq. These efforts after a bit of "flailing about" are succeeding after a much debated and often derided "surge" in our forces committed to that battlespace. We are beginning to see a reduction in the violence in the region, a rejection of the kinds of violence and tactics along with groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq. We have seen the government of Iraq gain strength as a central government and to become less sectarian and more pluralistic. But, for all of this progress, and it is major progress, the area is still unstable and in need of a major committment of our forces. Iran and the Shi'ia militias such as those of Moqtada al Sadr (yes, he claims to no longer control or condone them but I believe that like I believe that the universe is centered on a flat Earth) threaten the stability there. Despite the posturings of the Al Maliki government, a great deal of the leaders and people of the country depend on US forces to assure fairness and justice from the government and the society as a whole. On the Afghan front we made the mistake of depending heavily on multi-national forces under NATO command to take up the slack left by our concentration of forces in Iraq. NATO to put it bluntly, made a shambles of the situation by not being aggressive enough and losing the initiative to Taliban and Al Qaeda. Moreover, the Karzai government has not been able to provide stability or to maintain control over much of the country in large part because it has been unable to rapidly build an economy that is not based on opium poppies. This situation means that US forces will need to re-take much of Afghanistan from Taliban and Al Qaeda control while assisting the Karzai government in controlling the resurgent warlordism that is also taking place. How we do this is the challenge to our next President. We need more forces as these two major fronts require them. We are, "fighting a 12 division war with 10 divisions" as Gen. Eric Shinseki expressed it, some years ago as he stepped down as Chief of Staff of the Army. To put it another way, we fought WWII with over 16 million men and women in uniform and the Cold War with about 2.5 million men and women. The US military today, has a total in all services of 1.4 million of which the Army and Marines (major ground combatants) make up less than half that number. This doesn't leave us much of any force in reserve save those who are either coming out of or going back into one of these two major and some 123 minor deployments for this war and other obligations of the US armed forces. Our next President will have to recognize this and find a way to increase the ground forces to meet our current challenges in this war.
The economy: This is fairly complex, first we need to have less government interference in the marketplace. This includes knowing when and when not to interfere in the economic workings both national and international. We should not be bailing private or even government sponsored companies for bad investment decisions. We need to formulate a true energy policy that includes both long and short term solutions. This should include the development of rational and sound policies for developing US oil resources both offshore and in the ANWAR, it should address the development of nuclear powerplants and in the longer term should provide incentives for the development of better solar, wind and hydro-electric power throughout the country. I don't for a minute buy into Al Gore's 10 year agenda but I do believe that we need a cohesive, visionary and rational energy policy. Otherwise, our next war will be over energy resources. We also have to encourage people to develop new technologies and new products to market to the world. We have to find ways to re-claim our position as "bread basket to the world" while finding new ways to bring in foreign currency. We have to encourage savings and investment and discourage consumerism and wasteful spending on foreign products.
Education: We need less administration and more education. Teachers need to be among our best and brightest. They need to be able to teach in an environment that while encouraging independent thought also understands that thoughts should be focussed and disciplined at least while basic tools for life are learned (e.g., elementary and middle school). This will require teachers who not only know their subject matter fully but who can think on their feet and think "out of the box". We also need to find a way to teach the things that used to be taught at home in this day and age of day care and working parents. We will need to teach an appreciation of the arts, of why and how civilisation works. We need to provide our children with a 360 degree education so that they can become contributing members of our society.
Core Values: Our leaders should embody certain core values. These should be those of service to others ahead of personal gain, integrity, ethics and a true understanding and desire to "uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America". I don't like George W. Bush but I have great respect for him as a man and as my Commander-in-Chief because whether I agree with him or not, whether his position is popular or not. You know where the man stands and he doesn't change his stance for polls and popularity but usually because of changes in the situation that are generally consistent with his stated criteria for his stance. I don't like it more often than not, but I've grown to respect him for it. That's one of the things I'd look for in a leader.
My dilemma is in the choices that I have particularly in regard to the Presidential race.
It's been a long primary season. Almost two years long. But are the candidates that we will choose from really our best and brightest?
We have running under the Libertarian ticket, Bob Barr his stands on the issues are enumerated here. I'm ok with the less government, less entitlements aspects and the ideas of being a bit more "laissez-faire" capitalist in our governments approach to most things. I very much object to his position on the war in Iraq. I'm not sure that I'm all on-board with many of his other foreign policy positions either.
We have a freshman Democratic Senator who's had less than 200 days in that office and is a product of the corrupt machine politics of Chicago whose motto is "Change we can believe in." I'm not against change. But, change for the sake of change is not a good idea. Change that is well thought out and that considers all of the diverse and complex factors that are associated with the process or policy that is to be changed can be good. But change for change alone is dangerous. Senator Obamas positions on the issues can be found here. He unfortunately, by his speeches and voting record stands pretty well diametrically opposed to all six of my personal stands on the six key issues I've outlined. Moreover, I suspect the leadership of anyone who during his tenure as an Illinois State Senator voted present rather than take a stand on over 130 different bills. I'm also very uncomfortable because it seems he's more driven by his polls than not. That, and I suspect anyone who is so glib and erudite in his speeches. He seems more like a very successful stockbroker willing to say anything or do anything for his commission or to climb the ladder than anything else.
We have a very veteran Senator in John McCain. Sen. McCains position on the issues can be found here. I don't like him. I never will. He stands opposed to my positions on the 2nd Amendment (less so, than Sen. Obama though) and my position on immigration. I'm not sure where he stands on the economy because he doesn't seem to be very consistent or seems have any true policy there or with education.
Light of Buddha http://pariyatti.org/ResourcesProjects/Treasures/TheLightofBuddhaTheLightoftheDhamma/PendingIssues/tabid/72/Default.aspx The 2 best 2002 Podcasts: Vancouver http://host.pariyatti.org/podcasts/Meditation_Now/2002-06-24_SNG_at_Plaza_of_Nations_Vancouver_BC.m3u and Columbia http://pariyatti.org/ResourcesProjects/Podcasts/tabid/58/EntryID/42/Default.aspx
It has come to our attention that, due to hard times, your consumption of Spam has greatly increased. While we sympathise with your plight, we ask you to leave some for us, who have been loyal Hormel customers through thick and thin.
While you're watching this vid, keep in mind that the entire premise of McCain’s campaign is that he has an unrivaled expertise in foreign policy:
Watching Ol' Straight Talk repeatedly humiliate himself like this is just short of painful. For one thing, Iraq and Pakistan don’t share a border. In fact, they're separated by 1,500 miles.
For another, Obama did not “announce” that he’s going to “attack” Pakistan. Obama said he would authorize pursuit against high-value terrorist targets if targets slipped into areas of Pakistan where Musharraf has limited control. If McCain seriously wants to tell voters that he would not pursue terrorists in this area, perhaps he should stop lying and start acknowledging the weakness of his counter-terrorism policy.
Regardless, the comments reflect a larger problem for McCain and his surprisingly incoherent perspective on the basics of foreign policy. Sure, it’s easy to make a mistake on live television. But Diane Sawyer had just specifically asked about Afghanistan when McCain started talking about the Iraq-Pakistan border. Indeed, in context, it seemed as if McCain was so anxious to falsely attack Obama on U.S. policy towards Pakistan that he changed subjects in mid-sentence, leading to yet another "gaffe" that didn’t make any sense at all.
Now, if McCain were generally coherent on matters of foreign policy, it’d be easier to overlook minor errors like talking about borders that don’t exist. But the real problem here is that McCain’s constant "confusion" seems to be part of an ongoing (and particularly troubling) pattern:
And this only covers some of McCain’s obvious incoherence on his signature issue. There's plenty more where that came from on a whole host of other domestic and international issues.
I honestly don’t know what happened to this guy. Ol' Straight Talk used to be a reasonably decent politician. And then he decided he desperately wanted to be the Republican presidential nominee — and he threw it all away.
Maybe it’ll work out. Maybe just enough zombies voters will be fooled by his bizarre con job. But it’s hard to imagine how.
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Amused
nervous
Mischievous
amused
contemplative
Determined