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Happy Halloween, to all the sweet pumpkins who read my blog. Here’s my costume this year:
(Yes, I’m joking…)
Get your boots out, this shit is gonna get deep. A friend of mine was recently telling me about a book called The Four Agreements, and explaining the complex nature of the human mind. According to this way of thinking, our life is one continuous story. We are the narrator. Everyone else around us is a character in the sub-plot. Everything that we learn is something that is absorbed. Right and wrong, good and bad. We all start out with a clean slate, and then the influences around us shape our way of thinking. They teach us to judge everything by their standards, and then we become clones of them, generation after generation. Nothing is literal. My perception of reality is different than yours, and so we’re all floating in our own dream-like existence. If we’re fortunate, our stories will cross paths and you will become a sub-plot of my world, and I will become a part of yours. The Four Agreements are a basic set of rules to achieving inner peace with the world around us. They mostly deal with the negative things, which bring us down in life. The agreements are as follows: 1. Be Impeccable With Your Word 2. Don’t Take Anything Personally 3. Don’t Make Assumptions 4. Always Do Your Best These are all good points, but #2 and 3 are the ones that hit home with me. I take a lot of things personally. I’m a very sensitive person, and over time, I’ve learned to embrace my sensitivity rather than trying to deny it. The world needs more sensitive people in it, not less. Emotion is a natural thing. Only a robot wouldn’t take things personally. But still, I do see the wisdom in trying to drown out other people’s actions and only focusing on my own. I will never be responsible for what other people say or do, but I am responsible for how I respond to it. The point about assumptions is also valid. So many silly wars have started, all because of mis-communication. Sometimes it’s really hard to ask questions and talk about things. But I do think that conversation is the path to peace. As long as we can talk, we can find common ground. It’s when we stop talking that we lose our power. I logged onto eBay last night and picked up a copy of this book. The overview of it alone is inspiring to me, I can’t wait to read the full book. Apparently it’s been a bestseller for years. I don’t read many books, so that would explain why I didn’t know about it. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I first discovered the obsession my readers have with jockstraps last summer, when I wrote a post about a jockstrap photo contest going on. Readers discussed, voted, and talked about who they thought looked the hottest and who the winner should be. I even swear I saw a fellow blogger’s photo in one of the submissions, but I’ll probably never call him out on it.
The more I talked about it, the more I realized how versatile and popular jockstraps are. In fact, they’re practically required uniforms in porn. Apparently gay guys love their jockstraps! For sex, receptive guys love them because they can get pounded in the ass while keeping their dick from flopping everywhere. The straps also provide a good handle. For fashion, they are something that looks very sexy, while also being lightweight and giving support without underwear lines. I’ve seen photos of guys wearing jockstraps that range from really masculine to really fem. I guess it’s one kind of underwear that works for all types of people. That lead one of my readers to ask me what jockstraps are popular for. That’s a good question. I had no idea, only assumptions since I didn’t even own a pair. I guess they mean different things to different people, but seem to be a growing trend. Well, no matter why you love them, let’s celebrate the jockstrap for all its hotness! (All photos are from Jockstrap Central. Thanks guys!)
Despite the bad publicity Ellen received for the adopted puppy (which the media blew way out of proportion), this season of The Ellen Degeneres Show has been her best ever. After her career took a nosedive when she came out in 1997, she was more cautious about speaking her mind and in her talk show, she always seemed to tip toe around things. This season, however, she’s been much more candid and blunt. I love it because it’s Ellen as her true self! In particular, she’s been more outspoken about politics and equal rights for the GLBT community. Today’s guest was Barack Obama, and her opening monologue was about politics. To date, she has had three Democratic candidates on the show: Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. She said that to be fair, she had invited the Republican candidates too, but none of them responded. She then went on to poke fun, saying she would give a free bucket of Halloween candy to the first Republican that calls her. She started naming all the candy that was in the bucket, and then stopped to say “But we took out the Mike n’ Ikes’s because we know Republicans don’t like that stuff.” HAHAHA! I loved it! Her timing and delivery was perfect! I enjoy it that she can joke about politics without getting into mudslinging. The clip isn’t on YouTube yet, but if it is, I’ll post it, because the real thing is much funnier. On the first weekend of August, Rodney and I had a yard sale at our house. Our friend across the street also sold her stuff with us, so we had a wide variety of items. She handled the money, and she’s really good at it. Rodney helped her. I was mostly on smile patrol. I’m really good at flashing my teeth and saying “Good morning! How are you?” It was a huge success. We live on a very busy street and apparently the first weekend of the month is the best time for a sale due to people getting their paychecks. Anyway, we had some more stuff to sell and decided to schedule one for this fall. Due to schedules, this past weekend was the only time we could squeeze it in. A little breathing room, please… It started off rough. I was still in the shower when Rodney went down to open the garage door and bring the tables out to the driveway. People literally started swarming inside our garage before we could even bring the stuff out. To add to the problem, it was very cold and windy that morning. All three of us were shaking in our chairs. But wait, it gets better. During the summer sale, we had awesome customers. No problems, and very few hagglers. But this time, the freaks came out to play! 80’s Lady Let’s start with the lady in her 80’s tracksuit. No kidding! We’re talking teal, purple, and some other crazy colors. She walked up with her daughter and spotted a set of bubbles for kids, never opened, and priced at $1. She studied the set for a good 5 minutes, and finally said “How much for these bubbles?” They were our friend’s bubbles, so she responded, “I can go down to 50 cents. They’re not opened.” 80’s lady scratched her chin and thought about it. “Hmmm… I’ll give you 30 cents.” “Sorry,” our friend responded, “They’re a whole set. 50 cents is as low as I’ll go.” 80’s lady stormed off! She was seriously upset about not getting them for 30 cents. Holy fuck, lady! You could have went to the grocery store and found that much money in the parking lot! Jew You! Next up was the “Jew You” lady. She seemed like a nice lady at first as she brought up some clothes and opened up her purse. Rodney told her the total and she handed over the money. We made eye contact and I smiled. For no apparent reason, she said “These are so nice, I won’t even Jew you about them.” A stunned look crossed my face as she paid and walked away. “Ummmm, did that lady just make a stereotypical insinuation about Jews?” I asked. Rodney and our friend nodded. The Smokers It’s common courtesy to not smoke at a yard sale. Not only do you risk dropping ash on items you haven’t paid for, but you also get your smell on the clothes. Plus, cigarette smoking is just annoying and invasive in public. This really trashy, dirty looking man and woman strolled up our driveway, puffing away and blowing smoke on everything. They were too lazy to even flick the ashes, so they had foot long sticks of ash just hanging off the ends. Yuck. I was going to just let it go, but then our friend covered her mouth and ran inside. Oops, I neglected to mention that our friend is pregnant and they were blowing smoke right towards her. “I’m sorry, but you can’t smoke her. My friend is pregnant,” I said to them in a very friendly tone, thinking they would apologize and put the cigarettes out. Instead, they walked off, cigarettes still lit, and got back in their truck to leave. The Check One woman was 50 cents short, so she asked if she could write a personal check for it. Ummm, no. So that’s it, in a nutshell. It was amazing how different this sale was compared to the one in August. We made very little profit, which we already expected since it was cold and the end of October. But what was with all the weird people?
Sometimes a good hug is all we need. Find out more about the Free Hugs Campaign on their website. Here’s a video of the campaign in action, offering free hugs to strangers:
This meme has been making the rounds and my friend T.J. recently posted it. You simply take a picture of your computer’s desktop and post it. I specifically held out because I knew the newest version of Apple’s operating system, Leopard, was coming out today. At 8:30 this morning, the FedEx guy dropped mine off and I installed it immediately. It’s kind of fun because it doesn’t officially come out until tonight at 6PM, so I felt like one of the early birds. So this is my desktop. Yeah, I know the dock is a mess. This is my personal account. I have a work one that I keep separate, but it has personal info on it so I thought I’d share this instead.
Leopard is a pretty solid release, as I’d expect from Apple. I did have a panic attack when I first upgraded, because my whole system slowed down to a snail’s pace. I put it to sleep and went out for lunch, then came back and it’s just fine. Perhaps it needed a rest after the big changes it had endured. It has a ton of gloss and drop shadows, which can be a bit rough on your average computer. They looked faster on Apple’s demo, which probably had a truckload of RAM installed. But all in all, it’s fast and even more useful than Tiger was. It’s another homerun from Apple. And back to the point of this post, here’s my desktop.
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