Values of Moving and Shaking

I had a thought today. Namely, personal values and what that means to people in general. How do we organize and clarify the things that are most important to us? Seriously why in god's name are these sorts of things not more explicit.

Brian Tracy wrote on this topic. He referenced that only 3% of the population does this and that they are the movers and the shakers. Interesting. Do you shake and move?

Gamer

Well just got back from the cinematic still birth that is Gamer.

WHY in god's name would I see this?

Oh yeah that's right MNL convinced me. I have to say there was a interesting disturbing quality to the movie. You know ala RunningMan, or maybe Logan's Run, picturesque future utopia that has an underbelly of corpses and greed...it was well familiar. They really played up the class differences between the actual game controllers and the human game pieces. What I thought was almost more interesting than the combat game in the film Slayers, was the Sims like game Society. This aspect of the film was stretched and twisted until what you see is a Otaku limbo. A place where people intentionally injure their game pieces and make them engage in perverse sex acts and then laugh hysterically while getting getting off to suffering and depravity.

Very twisted, very telling, as a piece of simplistic over done satire it almost works. but, then mere seconds later there is a gratuitous head explosion or deviant act in the background that pulls you out of any cerebral analysis. This film is interesting, for about 8 minutes out of 95 minutes, but essentially it is dumb entertainment made for the dumb masses. How dumb are we people? How many more shit movies is Hollywood going to put out? Why do we keep paying to see these horrible films?

Oh yeah that's right all we like in our entertainment is sex and violence anymore. Thankfully this is not totally true. But I am terrified of the day when all we have left is this disconnected, violent, primitive eye gouging dribble. Thank god for the occasional diamond in the rough. Without that I would have to write of movies altogether.

People and the mosuitoes who love them.

For years I have plagued by death squads of voracious mosquitoes. My particular genetic lineage hails from the south, a land rampant with all manner of blood sucking insects. Suffice to say we took a great number of vacations to Florida when I was younger. And it was not always a picnic.

It was great, surf fishing, eating seafood, going to MGM and Disneyworld, seeing my grandparents and enjoying the slower pace of life down there. But, whether it was that time when I stepped in a fire ant hill when I was two, the situation where a crab clasped both thumbs, or the time I was stabbed in the middle finger by a catfish (which resulted in a hilariously swollen FU finger), the creatures down there love to pester and maim me. Most of all, the mosquitoes would flock to me like I was an all you can eat buffet. This resulted in many vacations where I was covered head to toe in calamine lotion. In one instance I had 118 separate mosquito bites. Apparently I am delicious or could there be another reason...

...Well, researchers from the United Kingdom think they have found the specific characteristic which seems to determine whether those pesky skeeters attack you in droves. Stress.

Yes, stress, the more stressed out you are, the more of a specific set of odors your body begins to emit. These stress odors act as a natural mosquito repellant. So I suppose I can thank my parents for my low stress childhood and all those lovely itchy insect bites. Thanks mom & dad! Maybe this will be the year I catch west nile.

Link to original article.

Ethics and Too Much Water

Over-hydration and the difficulties of multiple pee breaks came to me today suddenly. I was in the process of drinking a 2 gallon jug of water. Little did I know, I would be stuck in a professional ethics class for four hours with one bathroom break. Suffice to say I soon found myself drowning in water and trying desperately to hold it in while going over the ethical pitfalls of psychotherapy supervision.

Well it did not end well, final tally - 1/2 gallon jug of water consumed, 4 bathroom jaunts, 1 allocated class break.

Why would I hink drinking this much water would be a good idea during sedentary activities? What am I 5? Do I have to do the pee pee dance before I realise this? To exceed the body's ability to excrete water, a young adult with normal kidney function would have to drink more than 6 gallons of water a day on a regular basis. So I should just shut up and pee when I need to. Down with social convention, up with paying attention to your body and being prepared for the consequences of drinking too much water.

New Digital Painting - The Purple Rhino

Well, here is what I have been working on recently. This is a digital painting I have recently completed based on a Sumatran Rhino. I know the grass is a strange blue color, but this is my little universe and here the grass just happens to be blue. I have been practicing my hand at digital painting for some time and I am continually trying to learn new techniques and struggling to refine my abilities. I hope to do one of these paintings every few weeks and I will be posting them here rather than on my main site for the time being.

Antichrist the Film

I have read that some think this might be the most mysoginistic film in recent memory. I have to agree, but wow was it out there. And by out there I mean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out there. Not only do you get to see the nihilism of the modern world echoed in nature, but you also get to see... well a lot of unspeakable nastiness with just a hint of dark erotic flare. Word to the wise, do not watch this movie with anyone who is squeamish about the pairing of violence and sexuality. It is truly horrific. When I say sexual violence I don't mean rape, that I think is too much for even me in a film like this. What I mean is well, crushed testicles, bloody ejaculate and a clitoral self-decapitation with rusty scissors. Ouch!

On the bright side you do get to see a slew of foreboding animal elements. For instance a self disemboweling fox eating itself. Okay maybe there is not a bright side. The last time I felt this disturbed by a move was when I watched Man Bites Dog. And that of course does have the aforementioned rape scene which was terribly difficult to stomach even for someone who has seen a wide variety of macabre cinema.