And a fun(ny) way to spend a Saturday night! (me as Wilma - pre-makeup aack!)

What a lovely way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday...

Ha ha

I am the walking embodiment of the first and second noble truths of Buddhism.

I am about to make a statement that has been totally unresearched and may be completely unsupported/not in line with Buddhism. I am not a Buddhist, nor do I currently feel up to the due diligence requirement, so I'm just going to stick my next thought up here like I wanted to, to begin with. I may or may not come back to do more research to get the full/better understanding of Buddhism at a later time. Meantime, of course, you may feel free to contribute to my education in this regard as applicable. For now, here's just the next thought:

Does blind acceptance = enlightenment?

The master of introspection continues... please stand by, our regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

I worry what will happen if/when I decide to stop looking. Searching for meaning is the only thing that keeps me alive, but not finding it is slowly killing me. But what does it even matter?

I think I may be here only for others. At times in their lives I know people have turned to me, I have been here, I am always here, I am a rock. But also, times in their lives others have turned to me, I turned and walked away for self preservation.

I have a talent at being the most cold heartless and unforgiving being, I can drop you like a stone, turn my back on you and never look back if you give me a reason to. Once, without reason, only selfish quest for evolution of self, and need to avoid suffocation. Never again. I would sooner suffocate. I carry the black mark on my soul.

I think I could be a killer, I would only need to know I was serving the greater good, put the guy that tortures dogs in front of me and a rifle and capacity for my anonymity in my hands and there would be one less walking embodiment of evil in the universe. I have a talent for drawing clear lines and boundaries in my soul, and I can put people into mental boxes (coffins?) that never get opened again. I see you, you pass in front of my eyes, but you are never in my mind, never again. Burn me once, I scream and curl up in betrayal, hold that flame out again and you will never even throw light on my vulnerability.

But if you are there for me, if you are my friend, I am the most loyal, supportive, consistent, there for you when the shit hits the fan and everyone else is running, person you will ever know. Maybe that is all I am to be. I have saved some, I have damned some, perhaps they are to become the enlightened and it is my purpose only to guide them, not actually to find enlightenment myself.

Lost

Sun: "Did you see me?"

Locke: "Rip apart your garden? No."

"Sometimes I wish I had a garden to tear apart."

Sun: "I don't think I have ever seen you angry."

Locke: "Ha. Oh! I used to get angry all the time. Frustrated, too."

Sun: "You're not... frustrated... any more?"

Locke: "I'm not lost any more."

Sun: "How did you do that?"

Locke: "Same way anything lost gets found.

I stopped looking."

We're not worthy, we're not worthy

When I was a young girl I always thought of myself as creative. I wrote, and was convinced that my writing was the manifestation of some deep inner creativity. For the past several years, though, I have sort of had this sinking feeling (realization? or harsh self judgement? who can tell) that my creativity isn't really real, it is just the shadowy reflection and emulation of other people's true creativity. I take someone else's idea and do something with it, tweak it. But there is never a true original idea underneath. Beading - a friend started making necklaces, I started making necklaces. No matter how pretty they end up, I know they are just the same thing every other damn jewelry maker on the planet is doing. Sewing? Only with a pattern. Cooking - only with a recipe, maybe I'll add some cayenne. Never good enough.

Knowing these things, that I am totally lacking creativity, I feel empty. I've lost my compass and my direction. I have been waiting all these years (and I'm getting pretty long in the tooth over here, let me tell you) for the light to shine down from the heavens and for me to suddenly realize my purpose, have my creative insight revealed and to know, in my heart, my true direction. Instead what is happening is I am fragmenting and drifting aimlessly. Or as I said some time ago, I am

An oversight by the gods
in between, never
quite reaching ground or
enlightenment
lost forever worthless soul

Which leads me to the subject of this post. Worthiness. I have this supposed high standard that I've been trying to maintain on this blog, trying to keep it to the meaningful shit and leave out the boring "music o the day" crap that somehow still gets out there, that I consider filler. I want what goes on on this page to be riveting. Ok, maybe I'll never get to riveting. I want the shit to be at least interesting. Thought provoking, maybe? All right, all right, I at least want you to be involved enough to finish reading whatever I wrote to begin with. I don't want this to be a forum of information that you're like "thanks, babe, but I could have found that myself somewhere else, don't need you to post it." I want it to be... Well, I guess I want it to be interesting. I want to be interesting.

And right now I am feeling so empty and uninteresting, un-thought provoking. Absolutely not riveting.

I am fragmented
what I am should be could be
desiring oneness

punishing myself
lifetimes come and go and still
I am unworthy

Can you tell I was working in the haiku 5/7/5 for a while? It's all just crap anyway. But damn it, its my crap. So maybe writing about my lack of worthiness is worthy.

Even my damn angst can't be original. All this crap probably represents 99% of my Generation (X). I am X. Fill in the blank. Fill me in.

Blah. Double blah. Somebody out there (you may know that I am totally not sure which god I subscribe to, other than I know he is out there laughing his ass off at my boring lack of drama, drama) gimme something to work with, here!

My new Zen bathroom. What a difference a coat of paint can make.

Easy peasy, nice n greasy

I've been driving the greasecar for 3 weeks or so now (I think that's right...) and I LOVE IT! View pics of the transformation from normal POS little econocar to the fly by night superfly greasemobile here.

More info about veggie fuel options: BioDiesel, Greasecar, or Greasel.

Groovy

I am loving Ringside's song "Struggle."

Sis' article

My sis wrote about me (or, more specifically, my car!) for her local paper, read the article here.

The insult is in the eye of the beholder. Isn't it?

Now, if you know me you know I take myself just too damn seriously. I can't help it. I try not to. I'm just not a super lighthearted chick about digs, its because I am introspective and self-judgemental to the point of peeling back my own layers even though I'm screaming in internal pain and shame. I just can't take the shit from other people because it feeds me more nails to hammer up under my own fingernails later, again and again. I relive my incompetence and general ineffectiveness and life impotence. again. and again. and again.

But, with that said, a note: I'm going to venture down this way overly serious path about a little bullshit topic. NOTE: This topic REALLY doesn't bother me as much as it might seem like it does, but I'm writing on it, just because, well, I haven't had shit else to write about and this one had the gears turning for a minute, so I thought, what the hell? Why not slap it up on this pointless blog of mine that exists in a damn cyberspace vaccum and serves only my own myopic apathetic view of the world? Sounds great! At least it will be a placeholder.

So, I have this friend that has said I look like this particular (2nd rate wanna be) actress. It really bothers me because I personally think this person is pretty damn hideous looking. My friend, however, thinks that making (and continuing to by inference) this comparison is no big deal, because they think that she is not bad looking.

Here's the conversation (or at least the way it happened in my mind:
All friends: What you eating? Oh, here's what I'm eating, here's what's in it, blah blah blah boring shit... blah blah blah funny shit... blah blah blah

(out of the blue)
Friend 1: Hey, you know today is (large-nostrilled thin lipped big toothed weird head shaped wack job) actress' birthday?
Me: How is that relevant?
Friend 1: Well, you know, I'm just saying.
Friend 2: What are you guys talking about?
Friend 1: C-rella here doesn't like Actress.
Me: I'm just saying, out of all the people I've been told I look like, I think she's the LEAST attractive.
Friend 2: Well, you do sort of have that crazy thing going (like Actress).
Me: Grrrrrrrrreaaat... Gets better and better.

So, the question is, the insult is in the eye of the beholder, right? I mean, if I thought you look like some really butt ugly person but someone I like because they have this great, redeeming, funny personality, should I tell you that shit? Hey, you know you look like Butt Ugly? What? You're insulted? No, get over that shit! Really, they're nice, I like them, I mean they're cute in a "I'm so hideous I'm really kind of cute" sort of way.

Deep thoughts.! Ha! Just the track my brain was following, and I decided that instead of deciding it was too damn boring and not entertaining enough to be worthy to post, here ya go. Nothin but top quality fodder from the mind of yours truly.

Have I mentioned...

how much I love horseback riding? Went again Sunday and had a BLAST, yet again. Got to go (pretty slowly, but still) around some barrels, in a controlled trot. I feel like I am learning so much! I don't have any real ambition to compete (although the trainer was telling me about a 12 year old whose parents took her out of public school and were home-schooling so they could travel and she could compete... well, yeah, she made $170K last year at it !!!). My goals right now are just to become an excellent rider, which could take a while.

This weekend - veggie in my VW

Well, this weekend John & I are going to Blacksburg for the VA Tech game. While we're gone we're leaving the Jetta TDI with an associate of John's, and it will be magically converted to run on VEGETABLE OIL! Yay! Veggie oil is a great sustainable resource and any diesel car can run directly on it if you have a dual tank system (you can't leave the pure veggie oil in the system or it will congeal in cold weather, so you have to start and stop the systems on diesel), or you can mix it with diesel and pump it directly into your tank. See this site for more info on the dual tank system and this one for more info on the mixed fuels system.

I'm so excited! I'm just a bit disappointed that I won't be in town to witness and take pics of the steps of the transformation. I promise I'll take and post some of the completed install.

We're going to get the veggie oil from the guy doing the conversion, he has a great filtering system already in place to be sure its cleaned sufficiently, and he sells it at 25% of the going rate for regular diesel.

He's got the system installed on his car and he says he only fills up the regular diesel tank about once every six weeks. John (geek that he is - got to love him) has calculated the timeframe for full ROI at about a year.

Riders on the storm

I had my first horseback riding lesson since I was, like, 8, today. It was awesome!!! The original plan was to take a couple of lessons, just to get up to speed and comfortable again so that I could do a trail ride with my friend Erica without killing myself, but now that I have been one time (and LOVED it) I'm just planning to keep on going. The stables I rode at do a lot of competition work with the folks they train. Who knows, maybe even this old dog could learn some new tricks.

Katrina

My heart is heavy over the Katrina tragedy. My first instinct is to open our home and take in at least some of the displaced people. Of course cynic John's point of view is, "yeah, but if you do that you don't really know who you're going to get." This is true, and while I admit that it is (more clearly than ever, now) obvious that you might take in someone that would rob you or do something else that was bad, I think the likelyhood of them doing that to you after you open your heart and home would hopefully be very small.

Here are the local Red Cross shelters, I am thinking of seeing if I can talk John into going to one of them with me and picking a family or some people to offer temporary housing to. We don't have enough money to support a bunch more people, but I am also a believer that you have to do the right thing first and somehow needs will be met.

Henderson Gym
701 Willard Street
Albany
GA

Adamsville Recreation Center
3201 MLK Jr. Drive
Atlanta
GA

Central Avenue Church of Christ
304E Central Avenue
Valdosta
GA

Hilton Terrace Baptist Church
2236 Warm Springs Road
Columbus
GA

Georgia FFA SCCA Center
720 FFA Road
Covington
GA

Warren Baptist Church
3203 Washington Road
Augusta
GA

First Baptist Church on the Square
100 Broad Street
LaGrange
GA


Note that the "official" stance on this from Rick Schofield, Response Mgr., American Red Cross is:

(caller with question:) "With so many people left homeless in the affected areas are there any plans or programs for people in other parts of the country to open their homes and take to take in people while the local officials secure and prepare these areas for the return of the local residents?"

Rick Schofield: Although a generous offer, the logistics and challenges with such a donation make it something Red Cross cannot accept. Our role is to provide emergency shelter and assistance and then assist in recovery, working with other terrific local and national agencies.

Original link is here.

I'm a hypocrite

OK, I admit it. Passed a dead opossum on the way home, just stared at the bits and pieces in morbid fascination. Where were the tears for this victim? Yeah, I'm a hypocrite, what can I say?

I'm trying to grow here, people.

Compost Bin Exterior

Compost Bin Interior

A few key facts from America's Environmental Report Card

- The United States, with less than 5% of the world's population, consumes 25% of the earth's energy resources, mostly fossil fuels.

- The amount of solid waste each American generated each day increased by 70% between 1960 and 2000, from 2.7 pounds per person to 4.5 pounds per person.

- Americans generate about twice the amount (of solid waste) per capita generated by other industrialized countries such as Germany, France, or Japan.

Recommended reading

America's Environmental Report Card (Are we making the grade?) by Harvey Blatt. Available within the Gwinnett Library system (not sure about the rest of ya'll).