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    by Published on 02-19-2010 10:40 PM  Number of Views: 279 



    moving in -
    spider lilies by the graves
    at their best


    I've always been fascinated by spider lilies for some reason. My mother likes them, as well, but admits that they creep her out a bit. Perhaps it's due to their appearance with their elongated, upwardly, curling anthers that resemble spider legs or perhaps it has to do with the legends involving death?

    The spider lily is native to China and found it's way to Japan, where it is known as higan-bana or flower of the dead. These are the same beautiful, red flowers that seem to burst forth violently from the ground in cemeteries throughout Japan. The reason they are so ubiquitous in cemeteries is due to the fact that the bulb is poisonous and before the days of embalming, these were planted over the dead to keep wild animals from digging up the dead.

    There are other reasons for this flower's association with the dead. The flower typically rises on the autumn equinox, a time when the nights grow longer and trees are losing their leaves before they return to "life" in the Spring.

    Due to the unique habit of these flowers in which flowers and leaves never exist on the plant at the same time, many legends have arisen. In one legend, two elves, one named Manju guarded the flower and one named Saka guarded the leaves, separately. Well, out of curiosity, the two elves decided to meet and when they did, they instantly fell deeply in love with each other. As punishment, God said that the flowers shall never meet the leaves of the spider lily again. In another legend, it is said that when two people meet who may never meet again, these flowers will sprout up along the path (it seems to me that if that were the case, one would merely have to follow the path to be reunited with that person, but anyway).

    Other symbolic associations relate to the afterlife, reincarnation and even elopement.



    by Published on 02-11-2010 01:28 PM  Number of Views: 292 

    It seems like such a simple question to ask, but there seems to be a lot of unhappy people in the world. Overall, I generally consider myself to be a positive, happy person despite some of the trials and tribulations I've experienced.

    Not everyone can be happy all of the time, however, and studies have shown that happiness has little to do with the collection of material goods or successful achievements and has more to do with your individual outlook on life and the people who you surround yourself with that make your life fulfilled. If you surround yourself with loving, caring and giving people, can appreciate yourself as well as those around you, can communicate, help others who also are willing to help you without question, and have fun, surely you will be a generally happy person.

    I try to remain forever optimistic (sure things get me down on occasion, but I don't stay down for very long, forgive and forget those who have hurt or disappointed me and I treat others as I expect to be treated), learn to relax and take lifes challenges with grace and do my best to overcome them and grow from them, follow my heart and instincts, take risks (if we don't take risks and leaps of faith we don't grow and experience the level of happiness that is only possible by doing so), make enough money to cover basic needs, stay close with friends and family... even if you don't live next to them it's as easy as ever to remain in close contact today with our level of communication technology. Most importantly... I try to smile everyday and laugh.

    Are you happy? Do you want to be happy? What steps are you taking to seek and maintain happiness?
    by Published on 02-24-2010 10:32 AM

    The other night I got an update that informed me that one of my friends on Facebook had blocked me. I've never seen one of these updates and clicked on the link, because I was curious what happened and to be honest, I thought it was some silly new Facebook app... you know like Mafia Wars, FarmVille, those fish and zoo ones that have now resorted to playing upon our heart strings, just as orphaned puppies do at the pet stores. So I clicked on it, but I got a message that the link no longer existed. WTF? I'd just received the update a few minutes ago? So naturally, I thought something was wrong and investigated it. Turns out, it was a simple mistake that was made by one of my friends and she later revealed this on her wall. Yeah, YOU know who you are! LOL!

    Another friend may or may not have done something similar to me, I hope that's not the case, because I really like this person and think the world of them. I also know that when I add a friend, I'm very selective and don't add regular acquaintances or anybody I don't have previous knowledge, as so many friend collectors do. If one of my Facebook friends delete me, I am deeply hurt or wonder whatever horrible thing must I have done to offend them. I try my best to make a conscious effort to not offend or hurt anyone, but sometimes it happens, however, it's almost always a misunderstanding that can be cleared up via simple process of communication. Mind you, there are a number of reasons why this person, actually two connected individuals, may have taken such an action. It may in fact be all very innocent and harmless or unintentional, they may even have deactivated their account once again for very good reason or even deactivated it temporarily—it may even have nothing to do with me, in fact, and I'm certain that's how it is in my case, but I don't know 100%. If it turns out that I somehow offended this individual I will apologize and not allow it to happen again, given the opportunity. Anyway, I'm not going to worry about that too much and that's not something for discussion here. I'm just speaking of my personal experiences, which I have very few of. Besides, there's always the possibility it was just another accident and what can you do, but apologize and reach an understanding based upon mutual respect. It's not like we have much control over another... we certainly can't make people like us, if that ends up being the case, can we?

    I'm a fairly nice guy and so many of my friends apparently agree with this, as they often remind me of this fact. Probably due to the fact that I follow the golden rule, you know... treat others as you would want to be treated. For me to actually delete or block someone, that ex friend would have to have done something pretty goddamn heinous! I've only ever blocked one Facebook friend in my life and that was an ex that repeatedly lied and deceived me and was a total coward when we broke up and I forever lost any inkling of respect that I'd ever had for her, for that last fact alone. She no longer exists to me in the present or past, so that was an easy decision to take and only mention it now as an example. Apparently, many of my Facebook friends knew all about her all along, as they all commended me for the action and rushed to comment. LOL! But that's another story, entirely. I digress.

    Anyway, how do the rest of you feel about this sort of behavior? Every action you take such as this, effects other individuals, the more sensitive they are the more they're likely to be effected. Obviously, the "dumped" individual that never even notices the loss, probably couldn't give a shit about you one way or another and is one of the exceptions. LOL! You'll likely get a lot of that if you're a friend collector, so get used to it.

    What does it say about us as a society... not just deleting or blocking friends for good reason, just any ol' reason or for whatever reason? How do you feel about your social networking friends? Do you collect friends or do you take your friends on Facebook as seriously as you would in real life? How would you feel if an intimate friend of yours deleted or blocked you? Have you ever deleted a friend who disagreed with your political views or joined a group that you opposed or something similarly as petty as that? Do you have any other relevant stories to tell regarding your experience with social networking sites such as Facebook? Discuss.



    Btw, I promise not to delete you if you disagree with my opinion.



    by Published on 02-11-2011 11:24 PM  Number of Views: 190 
    Categories:
    1. Miscellaneous

    This is for the ladies!! Where do you girls go buy your sexy naughties at? Shirley's of Hollywood, regular department store like Macy's, Kohls or what not, Victoria's Secret?
    by Published on 01-21-2011 11:54 AM

    No, I'm not going to tell you to just put your lips together and blow! We're talking about Twitter here and how to tweet (post on Twitter).


    First of all, it helps to have a Twitter account... actually, it's necessary to have a Twitter account as that would be pretty silly, otherwise, now wouldn't it?

    Set up your Twitter account if you haven't done so, already. I also advise you to provide a photo and a brief bio of 160 words or less. Otherwise, you will scare off followers who will think you are spam or a bot (that's not good). I also recommend that you have a focused agenda... otherwise you will simply come across as useless drivel. Way not good! There's a LOT of that on the internet and Twitter, already! Nobody wants more of that!

    So now you're ready to tweet! Find something worth tweeting about and remember brevity is key. People statistically won't read something that takes longer than 15 seconds to read... books, articles... are a few obvious exceptions... however, this isn't literature. So get your head out of your ass! You have a maximum of 140 characters... that's what that number means to the upper right of your text window. If that number goes negative, that's how many characters you need to truncate or eliminate. If you can't get what you have to say under that limit, then you need to either learn the art of brevity or write a novel, blog or summat... because Twitter is obviously not for you.

    WTF is re-tweeting? This is where you come across a tweet that is just so damned good that you've just gotta' spam... erm I mean share it with everyone you know and don't know! ie. spam!
    So all you do is find a tweet that you wish to annoy your followers with... I mean share with your followers and type RT (stands for re-tweet, duh!) and type in a space then the @ symbol immediately followed by the earth-shattering brilliant tweet's body of text that you wish to share. Just copy and paste it directly behind the @ symbol. Then hit the submit button. You may find that other tweeters aren't well versed in the art of brevity and may have to abbreviate or eliminate some of the text.

    Replying to tweets... you just use the reply arrow and an @ symbol pops up for that individual and you type your reply in the text box to that person.

    Tips and tricks (twicks?): Use the # symbol followed by a keyword from your tweet so that other tweeters can search for your tweet based on your keyword.

    Want to find a past tweet, quickly? Just adjust this number at the end of this link: http://twitter.com/home?page=23 Just change the bold number to 13 or whatever and go to that page. Got any questions or comments? Post them here.