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Moved to new serverOk, so we have moved to the new server and I still need to make a few minor fixes. I must thank the people of eukhost.com they helped me a lot to move all the data from the old server to the new one.The actual move was fairly uneventful but the new nameserver took much longer than usual, (and we had some small databases glitches as well). Some of you will also noticed that I have also removed all the adverts on the front page, this is because the revenue from those ads was really negligible, (if not laughable). Those of you that still use advert on their page will not be removed. You are still welcome to put adverts on your site. I will spend some time designing a new page, not that I think there is anything wrong with this page but the problem is that there are many HTML errors in it and in the long run they are causing us a lot of problems. Finally I will spend some time trying to upgrade the blog software but that is not for the near future Please let me know if you notice anything that is broken, the old server is still up and running in case we need to get something off it. but I will close it in the next 10 days or so. 4:02 AM - 7/10/2008 - comments {2} - post commentThree Candles BrightThis is the ideal spell if you are in a relationship in which an outside party is causuing uneeded trouble. Perhaps an overprotective frined, an overpossive child from a past relationship, overbearing in-laws etc..You will need: 3 candles, colors chosen from the rainbow sepctrum to represent the 3 different parties. Notch the candles in six equal places (to burn the candles down over six nights) and when they are alright say aloud the name of your "adversary" adding: Let go your immaturity and fear let (insert name of loved on) find love's security right here Touch your heart as you say this and wish the other person well. Repeat this over the next five days, and you will find his/her possiveness gradually lessons 9:41 AM - 7/8/2008 - comments {0} - post commentTo Erato With Love: Kelli X and SPIt's hard for me to admit, but I'm a little star struck today. Back in June I found Keli X on MySpace (she's the angelic voice you hear on the legendary--and so, so underrated--Sneaker Pimp's debut Becoming X) and immediatly requested an add. Of course, I had to email her right away, especially since she noted on her page that she was an avid student of gong-fu. Well, I knew that if I sent a gushing note describing to her how her voice motivated me when the chips were down, and blah, blah, blah, that it'd rightfully be thrown into the rubbish bin. So I disciplined myself and wrote a small three paragraph note about how we (my dark paramour and I) love her work, how I also worshiped gong-fu, and indicated our interest in the new solo album. Well, it did the trick. ZOMG! I GOT EMAIL FROM KELI X! THE MUSE WROTE ME.....Ok, that was a little spastic, must calm down, go out into the back yard and do Gung Gee Fook Fu about ten times to catch my breath. Thanks Keli! I think I can just manage to go edit my novel now! For those who never heard the debut material from Becoming X, hope you enjoy! If I made you a fan "The Voice" today, let me know. 6:04 AM - 7/8/2008 - comments {0} - post commentOld Wives TaleIf you are in the company of two pregnant women and you want to aviod getting pregnant, slap your backside three times.8:28 AM - 7/7/2008 - comments {0} - post commentMartial Arts Secrets: Form is not Form (The Five Elements of Chinese Gung-fu) Martial arts secrets. I’m sure most of us (those who have studied a traditional martial art) have heard of these things. It’s the wet dream of every black belt I’ve ever known. “My teacher is showing me secret techniques, I can’t talk about them,” the black belt says. In gung-fu styles, it’s always the “secret” style within a style that is only revealed through hard training and dedication. They are the same, or as Zen would have it: “All things return to the One.” Coming of age in a long fist gung fu school has had its advantages. I see our “Basic 8" hand signatures (techniques) all over the place. Flip through a Karate magazine, there they are masquerading as “Secret Karate Fists.” Go to a martial arts tournament, you see them in other gung fu forms, masquerading yet again. After one becomes adept at spotting the “8,” one becomes aware that at times the “8" often live secret lives, disguised via metaphor in the heart of a form. A palm majestically touching an elbow, forming a beautiful “Q” shape, instantly identifies itself as a variation of the old horizontal hook punch; and the famous straight line punch shooting from the rib cage of a Hung (or even that of a Goju Ryu) stylist is recognizable as the short fist variation of the long hand straight punch (or vice versa). When it comes to martial secrets, fighting schools are traditionally closed mouthed about them, no one wants to have the genius of one’s predecessors openly displayed in a book or a video (can anyone say “social taboo?). But sometimes this dooms the technique to becoming an eternal secret, a veritable mystery. This is true especially if the teacher dies without passing on the knowledge to a worthy follower. In most of the schools I trained in during my career as a seeker of martial knowledge, these “mystery techniques” cropped up by the truck load. Get bright enough to ask about them, and more often than not, the answer is often reverse of what the form’s author probably intended. Take for example Figure 1A. This “technique” is a block commonly taught in Tae Kwon Do and Karate-do forms. Oddly, it was once explained to me as an “outside block with a supporting hand, in case you’re blocking something hard.” But much later in my study of southern Chinese gung fu, I found the block again. Only this time, the block was taught in five different flavors (1B demonstrates an open palm mode from the Lau Gar kuen). The non blocking hand, at least in Chinese martial arts, acts as a ground against the incoming force of the opponent’s strike. The chi of the attack (its raw force) shoots up the blocking arm, around the shoulder, and down the opposite arm to the supporting hand, creating a complete circuit. That’s a long way away from just saying: do this “in case you are blocking something hard.” But in gung fu, the technique doesn’t remain static. As the surge of your opponent’s chi completes the circuit, the hand shape of 1B changes from a defensive hand, to an offensive claw grab (1C); and as the “block” completes itself, the passive hand that once acted as the ground now becomes an aggressive partner in the completed claw grab (Figure 1D).  (Fig. A1 from Tae Kwon Do form)  (Fig. 1B from Lau Gar kuen)  (Fig. 1C from Lau Gar kuen)  (Fig 1D Completed Claw Grab) The “technique” in Figure 1A lived on as a misunderstood idea in my black belt head until, much later downstream, I found it again in Chinese martial arts. The hand sequence in 1B-D was spread among the kuens I learned in both the long fist kuen and the Lau Gar kuen. Figures 1B-C were taught to me in a sequence of isometric horse stance drills, and its completion in 1D was found in both the Lau Gar and Cotton Needle kuen. Through reflective practice, experience, and exposure, the resilent student puts these things together. Like a honey-combed labyrinth, the martial experience (at least for a traditionalist) is a meditative one. 9:04 AM - 7/5/2008 - comments {0} - post commentWounded owlSomething I never realized until earlier this week. When you find a wounded owl in your Dutch backyard, you can't take it to the vet straight away. It's a protected animal. You have to take it to the police first, so they can check whether or not you're guilty of its wounds. Only after that you are free to get it the veterinary attention it needs. The owl could have died during this bureaucratic diversion...4:38 AM - 7/4/2008 - comments {3} - post commentCan't work? Go fold an eggroll!An interesting piece in one of the four free daily fishwraps we have in this country. Up until a few years ago, and this used to affect the income of at least three people I know, when you were disabled and couldn't work, the authorities simply said, hey, but you can still fold eggrolls. If the victims didn't apply for that job they would lose substantial parts of their benefits.The fact of the matter was, however, that in this country, only a handful of people were actually needed for the job, and on top of that, it was a job that required tremendous skill. You would not only have to be able to neatly fold eggrolls, but you'd have to be able to kep an eye on 21 pans that were cooking at the same time. If a disabled person actually were to apply for the job, they wouldn't stand a chance. Fortunately all this is over now. The biggest producer of eggrolls in this country, Beckers, have fully automated the job, and all the living souls it takes now is a maintenance crew. With the machines they produce 700,000 eggrolls a day. The eggrolls I am talking about, are slightly different from the ones I have eaten in the States. Those ones (that I ate in the US) are referred to as "Vietnamese eggrolls" over here, and are cyilindrically shaped. The most popular eggrolls over here -we do love both kinds- are rectangular, and I believe them to be of Chinese or Indonesian origin. 4:28 AM - 7/4/2008 - comments {0} - post commentServer move is back on trackThe server move is now back on track and we should be moving to a new server, (in the UK), in the next few days. In the past few days we had some problems with the current provider and/or some sustained IP attack. I have reverted about 50 spam accounts a day so it is not impossible that they somehow found a way in or that they felt the urge to 'teach us a lesson'. 5:14 AM - 7/3/2008 - comments {0} - post commentSmoking banYes, we have it too, in the Netherlands: a smoking ban in bars, restaurants, and clubs. The ban commenced yesterday. It's nothing new of course. Many other countries have such bans in place. Still, knowing the country I live in, the coming months could be interesting. Will the ban be upheld at all? I mean, we don't fight the use of certain drugs, slavery in the world of prostitution goes largely unnoticed, if you report the theft of items like laptops and bicycle the police laugh at you instead of taking you seriously... Why would they go from bar to bar to uphold a smoking ban? If the restaurant, bar, or club owner allows it, what can the police do?On the other hand, there is such a thing as the militant non-smoker, who will try and stop anyone from even trying to light a cigarette. If enough of those call the police, they will have to show up at that particular venue to stop the smoker. I wonder who will win out, eventually. Of course, small businesses are already busy taking legal steps, because this smoking ban will kill them. The slightly bigger establishments, however, expect to thrive under the new law. Their income is usually hampered by people who occupy tables all night drinking only one beer. The ones who smoke will lose the table as soon they go out for a fag, hopefully to customers who drink more than one beer. Anyways, those are the cliche expectations that were seen the world over, wherever the ban popped up. As for me, I don't smoke, and I never did, but I'm not at all hostile to smokers. I don't mind if people want to smoke around me. I used to feel slightly different about smiking when I was younger, but then I saw a woman asking a militant non-smoker for a light, and he gave her a lecture that made my head spin. I felt my sympathy towards smokers grow right away. 5:22 AM - 7/2/2008 - comments {0} - post commentSham elections in Africa[warning: a little political rant] I have been in Africa for a little over 2 years now and I am amazed at the so called democratic process that is going on here. I know that what we do in Europe is not always pretty, but at least people don't die for voting one way or another. First there was a sham election in Kenya, where the result was nowhere near free nor fair, but rather than re-doing the election, (and/or sending someone to jail for it), they chose to have a government of 'national unity'. In other word, 'we don't care who you voted for, we will choose your leaders for you'. Now the elections in Zimbabwe are also a sham, the whole world knows that it is a sham, yet African leaders at the AU summit in Egypt are still patting Robert Mugabe on the back and telling him well done and even applauding him for his abuses. The South African president Thabo Mbeki would rather be seen dancing, (yes, dancing!), with the Zimbabwean dictator rather than actually doing what 90% of the people that voted him in office are telling him to do. Mbeki is happy to close his eyes to the very oppression he claimed he was against. It also makes you think really, what was the ANC really fighting for all this time? To defend the rights of the African people'? because if it is then they are failing the African people miserably over and over again, (how many people must die in Sudan before someone calls Omar Hassan al Bashir and politely asks him to stop doing what he is doing?). And when the Zimbabwean dictatorship falls, (because all dictatorships eventually collapse), he will probably be welcomed with open arms by many African leaders. As I said, European governments are not always much better, but at least we can vote them out of office fairly quickly and we have no one to blame than ourselves. 2:14 AM - 7/1/2008 - comments {4} - post commentTo Erato With Love: "Epiphany (Todd)"Dear Self, It didn't help today that your heart was frozen, that you were quaking under the Tyrant who came from Without. Where was your might then? Oh yes, I remember, your Lau Gar had the day off, and you thought that editing Chapter One of your little novel project would be a good thing. But the sands...they shift don't they? Rewriting sucks, so I gift you, Self, with some of your favorite words from one of your favorite musicals (hell, you only have two favorite musicals, LOL). Allow Sweeney Todd to be your family, for writing is a lonely profession, and it ought to be. There's only room for ONE ego in a novel. Go thee now, take up Excalibur, and weed out the weak sentences. "Wipe out Vice Chancellor Gunray..." 5:23 PM - 6/30/2008 - comments {0} - post commentEarth Day SurpriseI'm the guest blogger. I know I might have told you this and I know school's out and that Earth Day was a while back but here it goes:
I asked the science teacher a question and went to my desk. (We were doing a project about Earth Day.) On the way , that boy my friend likes followed me back to my desk. Usually when people do that to me, they insult me. So I said " He's harassing me!" Later I realized he might not have been doing that... or was he? Well,I never figured out why he followed me. So I read a book. And he came back and said "Stop harassing me!" Okay first of all, I said "He's harassing me" not "Stop harassing me". Second, he was trying to get back at me and I just happened to be reading. But from the teacher point of view, he was bothering me while I was reading. So he got in trouble. I just love happy endings... but not with soy sauce, it tastes terrible with soy sauce. 5:09 PM - 6/30/2008 - comments {0} - post commentTo Erato With Love: Grand HotelDear Self, What with the strain of writing your novel, I think you need to absorb some archetypal representations of Erato. Drink it in, deconstruct, and let it flow on over to Mildred. Also, drink an extra martini, that's the stuff they'd drink in that forlorn lake mansion you dreamed up!  7:23 PM - 6/29/2008 - comments {0} - post commentAbsent Cause Sample  Absent Cause will be available in print and pdf formats. Both formats include artwork IN COLOR. Preorder for $4 donation (includes shipping) via PayPal from gregb@wwpublish. com or by mail to G. Butterfield, 754 Washington Ave. 4R, Brooklyn, NY 11238. Or send me your zine in trade! Please specify which format you prefer and your mailing address / email address. All proceeds go back into producing the next issue. Coming in October: Red Army Comix #1 Original comix by redguard featuring The Upyr, Mighty Girl, Necro and Frankenstein Coming in January 2009: Absent Cause #2 If you are interested in submitting work, please contact redguard@gmail. com 7:18 PM - 6/29/2008 - comments {0} - post commentMore On FinancesSo, here we are in the present. A few weeks before the blowup, my father mentioned that my neice was going to college in Colorado. I was really surprised. I hadn't heard anything. Her brother is studying 'sports journalism' in a neighboring state school that is really recognized at being great for this field. I mentioned in an e-mail to my sister that I heard her daughter was going to Colorado. She didn't comment on that. As a side light, my sister has the most amazing e-mail. It mysteriously stops working when it's convenient for her, and --how did you know? It starts working equally mysteriously when she wants it. Sign me up! We tried to speculate what someone would go halfway across the country to an out-of-state school in Co., that they couldn't study here. Snow boarding instructor was all I could come up with. Finally, I asked my sister and to my utter astonishment she tells me that she hasn't decided yet---she's going to study liberal arts. Enough said. We hope she stays away from Gary Barnett and his womanizing football players.
7:20 PM - 6/27/2008 - comments {1} - post commentA Tale of Two SistersIn which I discuss finances and how things got to be the way they are. I can't explain why, but I can tell how, so I will.
I've been waiting for her to throw this back at me. I got to go to nursing school, but she did not get to go to college. Nursing school is very practical;one can always find a job and everybody knows that. My sister wanted to study acting and my parents said, "no way". She was going to go to a secretarial school, but she took a test at my mother's old employer, the old Amoco Oil. She was one of the very few who passed the test right out of high school, so she skipped secretarial school (Robert Morris). You know that back then, secretaries could advance to some pretty good positions and that she did. She was unhappy there, although she did have some really good friends. Boy oh boy could she sneak out of there like nobody's business. She waited until she was vested at ten years and then quit. It's probably a good thing because everybody knows that oil companies in the u.s. are practically bankrupt. HaHa. During her time working in downtown Chicago, she was very generous to me. She would often bring me a box of Godiva chocolate. The thing is, that Godiva chocolates are incredibly, incredibly expensive. Sometimes if I would no do or feel the way she wanted me to, she would hold it over my head that she gave me things. Later on, when she had kids, she got a job as a teaching assistant at their school. Then because she hung around a gym and is fitness obsessed, someone told her that she should study to become a personal trainer. She is still doing that. Awhile ago, my mother, who was coherent at the time, told me that she had quit because she got into a fight with her boss. Don't know if this is the same place or not. When she got married, the trips continued. Her husband is a type of cameraman who worked for a small firm before the owner pulled the plug. Now I think he works freelance. She was always going with him to a shoot somewhere. When she was pregnant, she asked to borrow some of my clothes for a trip to Florida because she was gaining so much weight. I was 5'2", 107 lbs for goodness sakes. Her kids were on planes before they could walk. I went to California when I was inbetween jobs in 1988. My company sent me to San Antonio and Denver, and St. Louis. We honeymooned in Arizona. The next year we went to Disney World because Joe had a convention there. We went to Galena, IL (same state) and stayed in a cabin for a week two years in a row. I've gone to a neighboring state with my son to attend a bell-ringing ceremony for the last two years. That is it for my whole adult life. She also traveled to Boston more than once to run the marathon, and Las Vegas because it's an easy qualifier for Boston.
*I'll call her Pacific Princess because she simply had to go on that thing all the time because she liked watching The Love Boat, don't you know. 4:24 PM - 6/26/2008 - comments {1} - post commentStrengthen Your RelationshipIf you feel the bond in your relatinship starting to weaken you can help protect the relationship and remind your love of your essence. But remeber this will only work if it truly was meant to be. You cannot hold onto something that is not there, but if the love between you still remains, but something has but a strain or distance between you, this can bring you back together again.Make your lover a strong cup of coffee or tea and add some of your nail filings to the drink to remind him of your essensce. It can be a very potent spell if it is done with proper motivation. 9:05 AM - 6/26/2008 - comments {0} - post commentPeony of Luck and HappinessPeonies can help counter bad luck and bring happiness. If you feel luck has turned against you, or you have been through a period of depression and unhappiness here is how you can release the negativity.Buy a bunch of peonies or pluck one from your yard, or if there are any growing wildly around you. Sleep with the flowers next to you one whole night. Before you get out of bed, imagine a great weight lifting from you and look at the peony. Take the flower to a bridge or if you can manage go out on a boat with the flower. The peony has great influence in placating unhappy emotions symbolized by water. Let the flower fall into the water and see your bad luck falling away with it. Always buy peonies when they are in season or grow them for luck. 8:57 AM - 6/26/2008 - comments {0} - post commentColorado Bound We are loading the jeep tonight and headed to the mountains. This blog will be unoccupied whilst I am occupied with wilderness wanderings. I'll leave the lights on though while I am gone. Look for me around here again after the July 4th holiday! 8:24 AM - 6/26/2008 - comments {1} - post commentStrengthening Disciples When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Acts 14:21-22 Discipleship involves counsel and care. That is what I see here in the pattern of Paul and Barnabus as they complete their first missionary endeavors. They spend time strengthening the souls of those who had come to faith in Christ. And it sounds like these people had their share of hardship. They needed reassuring strength. They needed encouragement in their faith. They meeded to know that hardship must be part of the Christian experience. I see this passage and am reminded that when I have days in which it seems an endless stream of such encouragement is necessary, I am following in the steps of the earliest Christians. I can take heart. This is part of what I am called to do in Christian discipleship. 7:48 AM - 6/26/2008 - comments {0} - post comment
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