Facebook Changes Everything

Yep! I have a Facebook profile and I put a link to my blog on it. No more messing around. I need precision posts. No more peanut butter as 'deus ex machina' for my life's troubles. No more levitating rice cakes. No, no, too much pressure. I'm taking it down. No, no, better yet, I'm going to pretend to have taken it down, but I'm leaving it up, but I will lie to myself. Phew! Finally, I'm using denial as a positive force in my life.

What Is The Most Imortant Thing?

I just returned from a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat up in Northfork near Yosemite. It really worried my conservative Catholic parents that I went on such a retreat. I think partly because I've been unemployed for so long, and partly because it probably seems like a cultish things to do. I can't blame them. It was kinda cultish despite its claims to nonsectarianism. There's just no 'God' so you don't have to have any metaphysical beliefs. Oh, wait, there's that reincarnation thing, and there's the thing about subatomic particles that your meditation transforms. Crap! Then there is the ritual of saying "Saaaaaaaaaaaaa-do" 3 times at the end of the teacher speaking on the DVD, which of course just means "well said.". But then again "Amen." just means "...and so be it." and "Catholic" means "universal". One hour of meditation each morning and one hour each night. I don't know that I have it in me. I'm not sure that enlightenment is worth it. That guy, Goenke, he sounds like a vampire too!

Still you cannot go unchanged after doing 10 hours of meditation a day for 10 days, not sleeping at night, and not talking to your peers. You are sore, tired, ecstatic, and hungry for company. I would say though, that it was more gruelling and had less of an immediate impact than I had hoped.

All that sitting still, it really made me want to take up yoga.

I went on the retreat as a last ditch effort to fix my head because I've been unemployed for four months and I'm starting to go crazy. It didn't keep me from going crazy. Unfortunately. So as my sanity slowly fades, the embers of my intelligence lighting up the night a little bit longer, I ask myself what I've got to hold onto.

Family?
Friends?
Peanut Butter?
TV?

Really, despite myself, I'm really enjoying my new refurbished laptop. It's an IBM X40 with Ubuntu 8.04 and XP dualboot. It rocks like hell, but doesn't make me happy, just satisfied. I hate to admit this, but I took off all the card games and put on the one true holy grail of videogames on it: Galaga!