Banksy activist/guerilla artist

Banksy activist/guerilla artist, originally uploaded by surfer x.

Sprucing up a wall in Palestine

BANKSY

Neal Young "The Old Laughing Lady"

1976 - On the street at Glasgow, Scotland.

This Repetition is not an Oasis

Advertisers and tv controllers studied the brain, finding mechanisms to exploit and then refining their techniques. Targeting the developing human brain, they found ways to hinder the development of the neo-cortex – reducing creative thought and increasing vexation. As the waves of information crashed on to the heads of the blind, their anxiety became chronic; unable to see the ocean for the waves, the typical human’s focus became narrower and narrower. Familiarity and repetition calm the mind, thus many folks clung to the convenient flotsam-like sources of news and entertainment like the lost survivors of a sunken 1950’s cruise ship and relied on the antiquarian as a poor man’s cure for their myopia. Fast and processed food became their medication and WarHog Day began.

Thus, the media hegemony, one of the many hidden faces of $INC², had found ways to imprint the human brain, tilling the collective mental acreage, planting the seeds of despair, watering it with disinformation and using tv like Chemo Therapy to subdue the immune system, destroying any chance of insurrection.

The Internet has eaten the world

A major development occurred as a direct consequence of $INC²’s sociopathic tactics. The Internet began to assert its dominance/relevance over obsolete/irrelevant oligarchies. The ‘neurons’ began to take their places. A major shift began when the Internet absorbed tv. The audience became part of the act. Advertising became niche oriented and specialized targeting software took over - just as Philip K Dick mapped out in many of his novels.

Even Richard Cheney has got soul

ψon

The science fiction story that the world became
{Intro}

Not many had the hindsight to see one of the growing side effects of science fiction. Starting out as loose ideas, then plans, blueprints, spinoffs, until the fictional story began dictating reality to such a degree that the world became the story. There is an ocean of waves of information that most folks cannot conceive themselves swimming in. The capacity to be turned on by information does not seem to exist for most. The consequence, naturally, became a type of multi media blindness. The growing tsunami of technology was obvious to the infornographers. The ones who learned how to surf the macro quantum-like waves came to be known as Bardo Surfers.

$INC² stayed obsessed with their game of Risk®. Using the media like a mischievous child dominating the remote control. Oh it was so very clever to bombard the tv addicted nation with cars, war, death (sure to trigger the fight flight response in unsuspecting humans oh yeah when you really want something, start just mention the word 'nuclear'). Nice knowing ya neo-cortex, see you later alligator… and of course some comedy to laugh it all off. {The heart is a brain, the heart is a brain…’ - the words of a song heard in the background} $INC² had no clue that other games with infintely less damaging after-effects were on the playground and that these new games made theirs obsolete.

And like a psychopath, $INC² waged wars over archaic belief systems, out-moded transportation devices and passe drugs. Artificially propped up 0il had continued its monopoily over the alternative energy world quite effectively while religion was a red blanket waved at the public bull's eye and then at the flames of war {hypnotise, mesmerize, disguise, super size, pulverize, regurgitize, fertilize, galvanize, do not analyze} It was good for ratings and even worked for a while. In the end, oil maintained its dominance the way any good reptile would, with a gun to the head.

For a while there, the public animal fed on death coated with synthetic sugar smiles and snacked on candy coated lies. The obsolete were the last to know that it was their funeral, they'd been eating the same garbage that the masses had; downgrading their hardware on a daily basis had become an anti-artform. Their wake gave birth with life springing from the ruins - like wild flowers. And all of us who wrote about it were just stray dogs barking at a funeral. The caskets were filled with yellow withered documents containing the semblance of a plan, but upon further scrutiny: evasion on top of deceit. All the guns were loaded and no one pointing the guns could see.

Shelter

I have always been a bit on the strange side. This can and will be attributed to many variables. Of course, I am rather biased but at the same time I am quite possibly and most likely the authority on this.

Being raised a Roman Catholic has its pros and cons. Both sides of this roof present magical possibilities. This particular religion felt quite stifling to me as a young man. When I was five, I could not help but ponder concepts like free will and how Roman Catholicism, in my young opinion, failed to resolve the paradox of a supreme personal triad of a God, who’d bestow miracles and punishment on whims yet we still all had free will. Free unless you disobey.

And now I live in a country that uses this ‘free’ word quite a bit although it seems to not to mean anything. It is a ra ra cheer for chair leaders and couch potatoes who have sacrificed much of their neural potential at the clever beckoning of fast and processed food commercials.

For me, if Roman Catholicism was a car, it did not run. When I looked under the hood, instead of seeing an engine, I saw a picture of an engine and when I tried to point this out to my father, he refused to look under the hood and instead said: “How can 750,000,000 million people be wrong. I knew enough to not say anything but in my mind, a seed had been planted: Me, a 5 year old child, was more aware than all of those people. How sad, I thought, how very very sad.

The various cultural institutions that make up the bedrock of this society have not been able to impact my life direction, which to many – if not all – makes me appear as if I have no life direction. This is fine with me.

Lets start with shelter. When I moved to California. I began my exploration of minimalist structural living. My first 8 months were spent living in a tent at a retreat center. Somehow, I’d become the apprentice of a notorious local legend who’d carved out a career by carving out sculptural domiciles and kivas out of the side of hills. We’d spend the day digging, building up the walls, hitting it with rubber mallets and painting the dirt with donated old half filled cans of acrylic paint that folks would give to Skip instead of throwing it out.

One day, Skip took off for another project somewhere. By default, I became the kiva artist in residence.

This particular organization was and still is addicted to meetings - its called council. This is the main form of governance on every level. The first month, I never missed a meeting. This changed abruptly when I began to remember my roots, which felt at home within independent thinking. Thus I began to once again avoid group dinners, meetings or any kind of consensus-rooted consciousness that felt archaic to me.

Five months after playing ‘the artist in residence’ role, I moved off the land.

The waves were deceptive

The waves were deceptively playful. Five of us sat on our boards, fishing for waves. 2 short boards and 3 long boards. The wind was still and the surface of the water took on a glassy sheen. Sets rolled in, offering free rides and good vibes. My good fortune continued from yesterday and the day before and wave after wave came my way. After one of several long rides, the ocean became rough as I tried to return to the lineup. One particularly nasty wave smashed me on the reef and I knew without looking that my arm was bleeding in multiple areas. This is the price of low tide and a shallow reef. Undaunted, I persevered; making my way back outside, I began to wait for waves again. I checked my arm and sure enough, blood was seeping out in various places. The reef likes to give us temporary tattoos and I admired its work. Blood has a tendency to attract sharks. Instead of being concerned, I was hopeful. I had not eaten any breakfast and was hungry.

40 minutes later, I found my last wave of this sesh. It took me right to the shore while a man filmed me on an expensive looking HD video camera. I asked him what he's filming for and he responded: "The Golf Channel."

This is an ψ ORANGE ALERT ψ

You know, INC² would not be killing all of these massive amounts of humans if INC² were not just scurrying around in their thinking - like a 100 thousand billion microscopic insects with no center no true consciousness. ℑ hate to be the one to tell you this but somehow, there are people capable of making the decisions that lead to so much death, destruction and suffering and it is because INC² doesn't know what to do. If INC² would only realize that INC² has become 'frozen' with fear of the approaching tidal wave of technology.

Imagine; to be in a postion of this power and magnitude and at your very core, you know that you are obsolete. Not only are you obsolete, but your incapacities are creating and sustaining a raging fire of human suffering that haunts us all in our deepest dreams - and this is just an echo of what many of our fellow humans are actually experiencing right now.

So, what do you say? Step aside and do something that you are actually qualified to do.

ℑ am happy to tell you all that inner peace can still be yours. ℑ know you have memories of this in your childhood. Go there in your mind and remember how to feel again. ℑ am beaming that to you all right now: Free Bardo Surf Boards® for everybody. Remember how we are all connected - all humans are in this together. ℑ can see you now, learning to swim thru your emotions with grace. Paddling and navigaiting thru the dark turbulent waters that you forgot were there.

Please do not worry, you will not drown, ℑ will not let you. Somehow, you are breathing more slowly, more deeply, this is how we root how we connect to our core, by deeply experiencing our body in a warm pool of self love and gratitude. It is a transfusion from the infinite depths of dark matter. Sorry, you are not going to get this from McDonalds® or Reality TV or Chewing Gum. They are road signs that all say the same thing DEAD END. Think about it, in the mean time, see you around.
--
om mani padme hum

Perfect Missing Soul

Need a holiday from my lost obsessive brain
The law of attraction is driving me insane
Put me in a rubber room within a rubber zoo
Tape my eyelids open & close my mouth with crazy glue
Leave the televisions on commercials and the news
Take away my right to fight this will make me sane

Forget about the death and torture erase it from your mind
Ignorance and amnesia are the haven of the blind
But they just may be the only way the humans will survive

What happened to gratitude? You’d rather be crass and rude
What happened to intelligence? Can’t argue with a human fence
What happened to imagination? Buried under consternation

Where do I go when all my thoughts are wrong?
The devil laughs behind my back but he’s the first to hear this song

How do I find my perfect missing soul?
When I’m disheveled disenchanted dis-eased and alone?

Need a holiday from my lost regressing brain
The law of concentration is driving me insane
Put me in a prison of my own device
Marry me to parasites maggots and white lice
Leave the gilded cage unlocked to give me bogus hope
And if I make a run for it lasso my head with rope

How will I ever find my perfect missing soul?
It's more elusive than a rainbow’s pot of shining gold

Gorillaz "Feel Good Inc."

Bardo Surfer's vid of the day

Me more me

Before I begin I want to clarify
That by no means do my words justify
The way I have been and the way I will be
When I dwell on my shit it makes me cry

Scrolling down my memories
I don’t always like what I see
Its just me more me more me more me
I guess I’m tired of the responsibility

I need some remote control of the world
Push the right button and out pops a girl
And if she’s not right push it again
Just a matter of time when I find a true friend

Wake on up just open my eyes
Not just the two that seem to be wise
I know I’ve got two in the back of my head
One sees the living and the other sees the dead

One foot’s in heaven the other’s in hell
I’ve been living like a frog in a wishing well
Half in the water half on the land
Living out delusions is not very grand

You tuned me out a long time ago
I do not blame you for missing the show
It must seem just like I’m speaking Japanese
For those who do not speak the language of the trees

Keep your head up
Don’t forget the ground
The world will eat you
Just when you’re found

Go with the flow

Once again the golf course is busy, each golfer chasing their little white ball around - some in golf carts and some walking. I make my way thru the rough alongside the fairway with my slide-didj slung over my shoulder, within its plastic case. I don’t stop till the point comes to view. There’s only 2 surfers out and it look like a mess out there. The completely disorganized surf manages to cough up one wave which a surfer is able to catch and connect it to a bunch of other waves which lead him to 10 m or so of the shore. As he walks by I say: “Nice wave.”

He smiles and says: “It was the only wave.”

This confirms my conclusion that this is a good day to let my body recover from yesterday’s stresses. I can still feel the lactic acid in my shins, feet and hamstrings. Two days of tennis exposed several unused muscles. My 5-mile run, 3 days ago, must’ve also played a role. This kind of pain, I enjoy, it means that I have been pushing my body to the limit and tomorrow I will wake up stronger.

My slide-didj and I continue on our journey. I recognize that this is the perfect moment to check out the acoustics of the tunnel, which runs under Turtle Bay’s driveway. It is narrow, just wide enough to allow golf carts to make their way to the Arnold Palmer golf course. I position myself towards the middle and began some chanting, barking and other various sonic forays. I squeeze up to the side and continue to play as various golfers motor passed me. The tunnel concentrates the sound of their electric motors and after a while, I tire of the noisy competition.

The didj playing provides a nice warm up for my next activity – tai chi. In the past, the tennis court has made for one of the better environments for this slow motion supremely ultimate exercise. It has a high degree of privacy, is flat and outside. This time around, there were folks playing tennis. Oh well, gotta be flex. My back up is the pool area. It is enclosed by a 4 foot lava stone wall with 2 locked gates but does not have much privacy. It is in view of 10-15 condos. Go with the flow. Before even beginning, I prepare myself for interruptions or even the possibility of having to find another spot.

Soon after beginning, I notice three shaved headed dudes making there way down a staircase from a second floor condo. One of the guys make a point of staring, I don’t mind, people tend to react that way when they see things out of the ordinary. As they make there way across my field of vision, one of them waves his fingers at me. I respond nonchalantly: “How ya doin guys?”

For some reason they are sort of freaked out and hurry on and the one with a half full bottle of beer says: “Ohh fine… thanks… uh... have a good one.”

Many times in the passed, my self-importance has gotten the best of me. This has led me to take offense when there was none intended. But this time I reacted from confidence, control and rooted power. Thus, as this exchange took place, I felt a subtle surge of power roll up my spine like a gravity defying wave and out thru the top of my skull. A slight feeling of euphoria and an overall sense of well-being pervaded my being.

My goal was to practice the form for 60 minutes straight. I ended up going passed it a bit, finishing up at 63 minutes and 23 seconds.

Epic surf day!

Staring thru the open sliding glass doors, I could see that there was no wind. Golf carts buzzed along the black strip of asphalt and I realized that there must be some waves. Within seconds, I was staring at the cam and what I saw confirmed my suspicion. The bay, which had been rough and disorganized, had become almost glassy and I could see a left peel off the ragged reefy point and continue diagonally across the 3-inch digital window. Grab my phone, call Bri on his cell – no answer, call Bri on his landline – no answer, and call Bri again on his landline – no answer. 5 minutes later, my cell rings, its Bri “I’ll meet you out in the water in front of the hotel at 3 PM."

While waxing my 9-foot long board, the sound of golf balls being ‘thwacked’ can be heard cleanly. All the doors are locked; I squeeze my board under my right arm and begin the 10 minute or so walk that will take me to the water’s edge. Before I get very far, I have to stop. Golfers are teeing off at the first hole and one does not want to distract a person swinging a club. Plus, there’s no need to risk getting bonked in the skull although the odds must be extremely slim. To my surprise, there seems to be 10 golfers up waiting to hit. After two hit, I make a run for it and don’t stop till I get safely out of the way.

I arrive at the edge and carefully make my way over the lava rock. It is high tide and I am quickly on my stomach paddling out over waves with the help of the current. There must be about 15 surfers out and even more folks watching the action from the hotel. The surfers are all spread out with most on the inside on long boards. I make my way to the outside, catch a wave rather quickly and then another after 20 minutes or so, as Bri paddle out. He beams with a big smile and I try to look cool, carve a little bit and then fall off the wave.

This is a special day. Even though there are 2 different swells, the still air is letting some nice waves form. This is a surf day with many highlights. At one point Bri and I catch the same wave, It walls up nice and takes us both on a fast ride, Bri speeds ahead and gets ahead of a close out, just before it takes me down my excitement boils over and I start yelling to Bri: “Go dog! Go dog! Go dog!” And then the wave crashes on me, knocking me off the board and into the warm blue ocean.

There were a few wipe outs too, but none as brutal as when I caught an overhead, flew down the face and nosed my rockerless stick which catapulted me backwards head first into the ocean – which at that speed felt like asphalt.

After being in the ocean for only an hour but just after a very long ride, my legs began to cramp in several different places. Since I was so close to shore, I thought about heading in. The ocean is no place to be with cramping legs. I floated around on my stomach, feeling it our and seeing if I could relax and squeeze some more surf time out. The 2 hours or so of tennis in the morning had taken their toll. I found away to get the cramps in my shins to subside a bit and pointed my board back out to sea.

Then the magic began. I ended up having one of the best surfing days in my surfing career. It was a love affair between the goddess of the point and I. Wave after wave came for me, I did not catch them all but I got most of them. Sharing this experience with brother Bri is just beyond words - dream come true. I’d looked forward to this trip for six months. Every day, I’d picture my brother and I out here, catching beautiful waves. And now, after being here in Hawaii for 6 and one half weeks; the day I’d dreamed about had happened. Tremendous gratitude to the oceanic aloha of Oahu, tremendous gratitude to my brother, tremendous gratitude to my parents and tremendous gratitude to my sister and brother-in-law whose trust in my house sitting for them, provided the necessary impetus to get me out of So Cal. Peace!

Bono is a Bodhisattva

Bono is a Bodhisattva
John Lennon is a saint
Mandela is my hero
and Bowie is the alien

W is a fall guy scape goat
just a body double
INC² is the invisible beast
on which we all feed and feast

and Osho said: Love yourself & Love yourself & Love yourself
till it over flows and then just give it away give it away

and on the otherside: when you hate yourself & hate yourself & hate yourself
that will over flow as well turning heaven into hell

Bono is a Bodhisattva
John Lennon is a saint
Mandela is my hero
and Bowie is the alien

and Osho said: Love yourself & Love yourself & Love yourself
till it over flows and then just give it away give it away

Favorite 150

I have understanding and compassion for those who have to lable everything in dualistic terms to foster their experiece of reality. Because beneath it lies chaos and this chaos must be wrapped up in an onion of opinions that you claim as your own. When one begins to peel back the layers of words, concepts and prayers, eyes wide open, peering and peeking into the unconscious with the night eyes of an owl, the end result will always be tears - of joy or fear or sadness. These emotions are to be embraced as a small victory but instead they are avoided - with out conscious thought. This vital source of energy becomes strangled into poison and then released at random intervals at familiar targets with familiar triggers. Yes, we are all walking thru the mindfields of our brethren with our own mindfield tucked into a secret inside pocket of a suit made of skin of our own creation and those of us who examine and map the everchanging wretched sides of ourselves and our pluralized oligarchies will profit only if our timing and intentions are impeccable. The threat of being ostracized from the peloton will keep most from finding their true will. And then there are the IEDs; in this context, they are a product of the imagination but still have a material reality within the confines of our blood streams and cerebral spinal fluids. Hormones and neurotransmitters and the adrenal glands are hard to withstand when we do not seem or want to have dominion over our dominion. Instead, we walk around a soldier made up of a 1000 billion soldiers working for soldiers who do not see humans beyond their favorite 150.

I forgive you for not seeing me as human, as one within your peloton and in fact there is nothing to forgive. No one has much control over the peloton as it is a function of entrainment which is a function of neurobiology and geomantics. We all must carefully choose our television shows our countries our videos our commentators but we cannot choose our children but I think they choose us. So there is nothing to forgive but do you forgive me for choosing you? At times I begin to grasp why I did. Everyone needs a bubble to survive - except me. This I learned in my early years to hide within a peloton that could never understand why I was there and never able to look at the unacceptance the constant need for censorship. The constant projection of pop psychiatric terms bordered on the border-line. I always knew they were a protective balm for your own sense of self that can only perceive my ideas as condensation and on a deeper unexamined level a threat to your way of being. I forgive and understand and give gratitude for teaching me the importance of forgiveness and gratitude. Can you forgive me for not seeing pelotons for what they were because I am like a camel in a world where so much of the water is heavy with sedation that I pretend to drink but do not swallow. To some, this water, that I give to you now, appears to be heavy. To one or two, it is raw, unfiltered and alive. I guess it all comes down to the enzymes and flora living within your gastro-intestinal pipeline.

Susan McDougal interview

Buzz Flash has one of the best interviews I have ever read concerning the Whitewater hoax perpetrated by Kenneth 'the anti' Starr on behalf of some right wing extemists. Susan McDougal is a true hero. She has a book out called: "The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk". This will make a good movie, attention: Oliver Stone.

Thank you Susan, you receive a "Bardo Surfer Award" for courage in the face of unchecked power.

Prediction: Kenneth Starr is going to jail.

Alien

To everyone else, it was just another day. Counting down the days till the big exit or counting down the hours until the clock told them they could be 'free' again to go back home where they could sit in front of the big TV and forget about their own life for 30 minutes or an hour. Some of us were counting down the days till the vacation comes to an end. Most folks were just walking around in a burger coma or a sugar coma. Then one day you read a book called Blindness. In this book everyone starts to lose their eyesight. Katrina looked just like this book, from the perspective of a newspaper or online news or from short blurbs on the TV. It was like the riots in South Central or the riots in Brasil or the riots in Bolivia except these particular disturbances are all in South America so we are not hearing about them. Or that it was the Roman Catholic church that kicked the US corporate nation out of there back in the 80’s. Nope, we don't hear too much about that one. The Pope was like, 'look, you can have the Middle East, Islam is too embedded for our missionaries to make any head way, but Latin America, that's ours.' And so, kind of like reversing the film on a video camera, the whole strip-their-resources-enterprise-ship pulled up its anchor and left, well, almost left. What do you expect, theirs still all kinds of money to be made down there. Money that cannot be traced or at least not easily traced. So, you wonder, why aren't those folks all complacent down in South America. Why aren't they all complacent like us up here. Aren't they in burger comas? or sugar comas? or TV comas? I just don't get it. Their leaders need to get their 'act' together.

To get a real picture of the world, forget about all the little day to day incidentals, no one's telling the "truth', enriched uranium, heavy water, missile silos, surge, escalation, cool, wow, how exciting. Eventually, warhogday will get boring, right? I mean, come on, 90% of humanity was burnt out on this shit back in the days of Bush #1 (G. Herbert). There's just so much stuff written about it all, It is a circle, not a spiral. The horses will run around the track and it does not matter who wins just as long as the burger comas et al remain entertained. Rubber bullets and tear gas for the ones who think they have a conscience, to some it is a booby prize to others it is a badge of honor to be displayed on video and text and converted digitally so all can exclaim and assuage their guilt. No matter how you try to slice it, you can not because oil does not cut very well as is the nature of most liquids unless they are frozen of course.

No, what we have here is a failure to communicate, within our own minds, within our own towns, within our own countries. It is amazing, or at least it seems that way to me, that their appears to be so much order. But, there really isn't any order if you don't want it. No, you can actually do what ever you want. Devo, i suspect is short for devolution, which makes as much sense as evolution which makes as much sense as entropy which makes as much sense as disentropy. And all of this makes sense in my own mind so I am probably the only person that will read all this and that is only because I wrote it.

The closest explanation you can come to is that memory is a function of addiction and the proximity of our sex organs and our waste organs are both horribly funny, highly entertaining and tortuous. But, due to the widespread biological symmetry regarding this sex/waste proximity conundrum among all of the sexual life forms on this planet, its ubiquity makes its influence invisible excepting the alien perspective. And this brings us to our alien song. So without further ado, I am going to present, a song written by an alien to you or me because I am the only one that has read this far, any way, here it goes:

An alien heart belongs to me
but I was raised by humans carefully
so please don't worry
when i start to say
that you are all
much closer to insects
then you are to me

Observe the world
& classify
divide
& conquer
everything you see
& transform it all into weaponry

Pesticide & herbicide
& genocide and this truth is
an army of boogey men
from which you hide
& every word is just a lie
& there's no one listening
no one to confide

Happy Birthday Dad!

So, I just began to do some yoga; that's when it hit me like a wave, the realization: "I don't think my dad knows how much I love him." My father turned 66 today, the year I was born, by the way and oh my God am I so thankful that I can say that I have so much love for you Dad - every single day.

Love, Michael

Claiming the prize

This is the most brilliant analysis I have come accross regarding the invasion of Iraq. Outstanding. Chris Floyd get's Bardo Surfer's "greatest journalist on the planet award for the 2000-2010 decade". Congratulations and thank you Mister Floyd.

Just click the title to see it.

Yes, there is apartheid in israel

A glimpse behind the nylon curtain

Great article. It should be obvious now, the US military is not going to leave Iraq and will be invading Iran, the only question is when. My hunch is we will be in there before June. It will be much more brutal than Iraq. Next will be Korea... Seems like this game of Risk is for real.

Bardo Surfer's "greatest athlete on the planet for 2006" awarded to Kelly Slater

Here are the runnerups: Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Chris Sharma, Steve Nash, Allen Iverson

Congratulations to the 5 of you! Y'all get a free Bardo Surfer t-shirt!

Robert Anton Wilson 1923-2007

A profound influence on the way I think, I think, passed away today at 4:52 AM on this day 01/11/2007. Please watch this video and catch a glimpse of one of the champions of human spirit, inspiration and guidance for those who are 'ready'. I express my deepest gratitude for this human's utter didication towards increasing intelligence.

Bush speech (decoded version)

How waste can become a resource or one of the many ways to leave oil in the sand

Srep 1: Identify the problem
Step 2: Implement solutions here's one example
and here's the best solution

I am optimistic that this kind of thinking will infect those that currently pretend to represent our interests.

ATTENTION: New York!

Surfing and autism

Surf sesh in the rain

The paddle out was easy this time. I'd watched the waves at three different times in an attempt to grasp the situation out there. I was not out very long before catching a wave. As I dropped down the face, the wave jacked up and the whole thing closed. While on the wave, I watched this happen and was able to get to the top and slip thru the heavy curtain of water. Grab the leash and pull. Get on the board. Paddle like crazy to make it over the tops of the rest of the waves in the set. There is always a danger of getting caught inside when one takes the first wave of a set. Each successive wave tends to be bigger and break a little further out than the next. This time I make it back out. I paddle on the outside around 4 other surfers and over to their right. I check the shore to get my bearings. The reef tends to influence where the wave is going to break and where it closes. Suddenly, thunder breaks the relative silence, big raindrops begin to shower down and a surfer catches a beautiful wave and a couple of us "Woooo!" The glassy conditions have become dimpled and I watch for incoming waves. It looks different and I am not as sure what size the waves are. The lines are still there but different. I spot a mutant: double overhead plus and paddle like crazy to get over it. I keep on paddling and then just sit outside, glad that that one did not get me. I go for another wave, overhead plus, closes on my head and then I am totally washing machined like a stuffed animal on the spin cycle, It is crazy but instead of panicing, I call on my decade plus of tai-chi and relax, grab the leash and pull myself to the surface. Now I am on the inside and more waves are coming so I face the board to shore and situate myself so that I am half on the board and my legs hanging off the back. Do not want to nose and flip with the reef only a few feet below. I ride the wave out of the danger zone, sit on the board and wait for the set to end. The paddle back out takes me 25 minutes but finally I do get back out there. I catch some more close outs, caught on the inside again but this time I decide to paddle down to Sunset. It takes 10 - 15 minutes but I make it ouside again. The waves are more consistent here. Easier to catch but it is more crowded. The take off points are more obvious and the surfers cluster around. I watch a cutie in bikini catch a couple and then I finally am in the right spot, I make an adjustment, paddle towards the wave, spin around and there's the bikini blocking my way. I stop. She goes for it and misses it. Too bad, would have been my first Sunset wave during the winter but it is OK. Every one is safe. Soon after, I find myself caught in the inside once again (recurring theme?) and end up just pointing my board to the shore and letting the white froth take me home.

I've been 'tagged' by Tyler!

So, I've been tagged by Tyler and it is my second time. The first tag was from Alicia. I guess I have to respond because... 3 tags and you're out, right?

(1) I can wiggle both my ears, touch my tongue to my nose and move my abdominal muscles in a wave - sideways!

(2) Nelson Mandela is a major inspiration for me because (and not only) he spent 27 years in prison UNJUSTLY and came out with no bitterness. I can cry just from thinking about it.

(3) While in the third grade (8 years old), I began studying Greek and Roman mythology in school during class. This behavior (reading whatever books I wanted to) continued throughout my entire institutional education) which ended when I received a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Scranton.

(4) I love to act and performed in 5 different plays in college and have acted in 2 different films in Ojai.

(5) This past summer, I played World Team Tennis here in Ojai. The team I was on, The New Orleans Storm, took first place.

War

The following piece, was a repsonse I made to a question posed to me on a thread from the Ojai Post. I am comment number 23.

Michael,
i'm confused enough to be intrigued, but also enough to be perplexed. i would like to explore whether we can apply what you're saying to some of the original topics: analysis of the purpose and effectiveness of a vigil, the nature of humans at war, suggestions for more direct action, etc.
if you are already doing that, i missed it. i hesitate to ask you to "dumb it down" for me, but i do suspect that you've shot way over the heads of many.
Posted by: evan | January 6, 2007 07:56 PM

Before beginning, I want to be clear on the source of the essay and its context that appears above your question. Robert Anton Wilson wrote it as an introduction for a book written by Dr. Christopher Hyatt titled: “The Tree of Lies”. This book has since been renamed: “To Lie is Human, Not Getting Caught Divine”.

I chose this excerpt as a primer for Dennis and doubt that many folks want to delve any further down this particular rabbit hole but I shall try to answer your questions anyway. I hope you do not mind.

First off, it is my belief that we are all in this together. In particular, I am hoping that most of us are reading each other’s comments because we’re revolving around a single point of attraction: “Stop Wars” - sums it up nicely. In order to do this effectively, I believe that we need to understand where our language loses integrity because this wastes energy and the original objective can easily become lost. There are several threads on the Ojai Post, which demonstrate this point nicely. So then, specifically how might the English language be inaccurate and how can this influence our perception of reality? Towards Understanding E-Prime might help to shed some light.

Now, taking this a step further and applying it to your three questions may not be so easy, but once again, I will step to the plate and take a couple swings. What is the purpose of a vigil and effectiveness of a vigil? Well, according to Wikipedia, Vigils is a term for night prayer in ancient Christianity. A Vigil is a night spent in prayer, and a Vigil Mass is a Roman Catholic Mass that is liturgically for a Sunday or Holy Day but which takes place the previous evening. As far as the effectiveness of your vigil, it seems to me, the number 3000 is misleading and plays into the hands of the war machine’s transnational benefactors. This article is a bit dated but will give you the gist of what I am talking about. And this does not even approach the amount of the actual number of beautiful human beings that have been murdered by ‘our country’. Personally, I have a distinct aversion to religious services, in particular, Roman Catholic ones. I have a B.S. from a Jesuit University paradoxically.

I am glad you brought up the ‘nature of humans at war’. For some reason or other, there does not appear to be much information on this subject or at least not in the way that I think about it. Humans are not the only species that wages war. Other primates wage battles but not war. The equivalent that I am aware of are ants. Ants use tools, agriculture and even have slaves. As many of us know, they wage war as well. Not to digress too much, our cities tend to remind me of termites and our suburbs are like bee hives. The stratification and specialization of insects within their societies also can resemble human social behavior as well. The point of all this is to demonstrate that a lot of the ‘evidence’ out there points to war being ‘natural’. What purpose does it serve then? Well, I remember reading an article in Details magazine (in its early stages 20 years ago maybe),that produced statistics claiming that war has almost always occurred in human societies when males between the ages of 18-30 represent 30% of the population. This supports the notion that war is a function of biology.

Another relevant article, which I am again going to have to cite from memory (sorry), demonstrates that the size of the primate brain is a predictor of the size of that primate’s tribe. The idea here is that the human brain’s size determines that we can only have around 200 or so members in our tribe. Anyone outside the tribe, by default, is not ‘human’. This may explain why some (maybe more than some) of us are capable of murder (war is mass murder). I suspect that the leaders in our country are unable to transcend their biology. And may be the reason why Ojai’s vigil had no mention of the 655,000 innocent humans that have been mercilessly slaughtered and ‘butchered’. One of the things that the 1960’s demonstrated to me, was that leaders who could transcend their ‘brain size’, developing charisma as a natural consequence, would be assassinated.

And so that brings us to: ‘direct action’. I’d look to countries like South Africa as a model. Nelson Mandela sat in prison for 27 years, unjustly, and he came out with no bitterness. South Africa went from Apartheid to having democratic elections within 4 years of his release - nonviolently.

In our country, for many reasons, we seem to have a mostly apathetic populace (function of brain size?). This seems to be a consequence of being in ‘survival mode’ according to Noam Chomsky, who suspects it’s one of the many ways that we have been divided and conquered.

George Carlin, in my opinion, is a brilliant example of some one who is and has been taking ‘direct action’ thru his ‘comedy routines’.

At this point, for me, ‘direct action’ is a personal decision. I have found that transcending my own bio/neural/behavioral tendencies to be almost overwhelming at times. I can only pray that my struggles will bear the fruit of reducing my own suffering simultaneously with others. I express my gratitude for your careful consideration: Thank You.

To: the last psychiatrist (if this were only true)

What is the healthy alternative to narcissism? The problem, as I see it, with the DSM, is that it does not have anything but pathologies/personality flaws and that there has never been a human that can avoid being classified within this obviously slanted classification system. It seems to assume its own objectivity, denying the subjective reality we all live within. Is the DSM narcissistic, psychopathic or just pessimistic?

Meant to live

Stars

I got a dream

Bardo Surfer's funny vid of the day!!

Did he say: "Tear your Wrist?"

John Lennon

In case you did not know, John Lennon is in the Bardo Surfer Hall of Fame. Here's an article posted on Christianity Today's website which offers insight into John's experience in the bardo. His songs and music were the pearls of his suffering. Kudos to Christianity Today for putting it out there.

A true hero

A true hero

Who's afraid of sharks?

Who's afraid of sharks?

Warhogday - my title for the decade

This is a comment I posted on yesterday's Huffington Post:

Cognitive secrets for the masses: When we use the same words over and over it signals that we are falling asleep. Labels are a lazy way of thinking. The imagination needs to be exercised or else it atrophies. The cerebral cortex is the most under used part of the brain in the skull.

Hints: Do something you have not done before. Take a different route home from work, write a poem, forgive your worst enemy, get a full night's sleep and exercise on a daily basis. These simple tasks will change 'your' world more in a week than a year of these circular arguements. Look at it as an experiment. Thanks.

What are you optimistic about?

What are you optimistic about?