February 2006 Archives

"You can't change other people. You can, however, make it increasingly difficult for them to resist changing themselves."

there you have it.

the video of the rattlesnake from my hike yesterday.

someone threw out a wok today, a nice, big, two-handled, round-bottom wok with a lid and a ring. i was thinking of getting one just like it for five bucks down at the chinese store, but i took this one up to the apartment, scrubbed it with soap, steel wool, and Barkeep's Friend and now it's nealrly shiney. better than new. i thought it was cast-iron but that was just blackened grease (no, not "seasoning"). yay me!

(it also had a fry-spider but i left that down there. i don't tend to deep-fry.)

(there were also two walkers and a pair of crutches if anyone wants them)

i've been reading some crowley lately, since i re-sparked my interest this week while trapped inside wikipedia.

i find that now, with a little maturity under my belt (along with the developing beer gut), i am much better equipped to comprehend the affable trickster. i've done by 10 years of living what i intended to do with 2 years of study. c'est la vie.

"book 4" is my current project, containing such gems as this from the introduction:

Before printing, the whole work was read by several persons of rather
less than average intelligence, and any point not quite clear even to
them has been elucidated.

In other words, Frater P. is telling you "if there's anything in this book that you can't grok, it's because you're a retard, you retard".

Later on, he has this to say regarding yoga meditation:

Fourthly, we get a very high class of break, which is a sort of 
aberration of the control itself. You think, "How well I am doing 
it!" or perhaps that it would be rather a good idea if you were on a 
desert island, or if you were in a sound-proof house, or if you were 
sitting by a waterfall. But these are only trifling variations from 
the vigilance itself.

This was a big one for me, since i've abandoned meditation several times for exactly this reason: i lacked the will to concentrate during barkingdogstorms. Crowley had the solution to that as well:

But this constant worry, this fear of killing anything by mischance 
is, on the whole, worse than a hand-to-hand conflict with a griesly 
bear. If the barking of a dog disturbs your meditation, it is 
simplest to shoot the dog, and think no more about it.

While i do not accept this as a viable solution to my problem, his points in both cases are clear, now. In the context of the first quotation, the Great Beast is referring to the distractions inherent to maintaining an asana, and saying, in essense: "suck it up, whiner". The second quote comes from a context describing dogmatic religious proscription and prescriptions as means to an end and not ends in themselves. This i also accept.

It came, therefore, with a bit of surprise this morning that while reading the following, i was disappointed:

We have, as much as possible, diminished the Yahwistic and Christian
influences that marked the old Aeon manifestation of the Order. 
Yahweh no longer has primacy as in the Hebraic Qabala, as we 
acknowledge the Caananite and broader context of which the Hebrew 
Qabala is product and a remnant. We exalt the Egyptian and Hellenic 
Pagan archetypes as applied to interpreting the Qabalistic Tree of 
Life, which figures so prominently in the Golden Dawn system. Our use
 of the Qabalah and the Hebrew alphabet is as a system of symbolic 
glyphs and magickal names particularly well suited to the learning 
process.

i had considered further investigating this group, but the above made me reconsider. and the reconsidering made me consider my own motives, both for the original consideration and the re-consideration.

was i uncomfortable because :
1 - the osogd guys are pagans and i think pagans are, on the whole, silly?
2 - i'm afraid of moving out of my primarily judaic symbol system and find the idea of a non-jewish kaballah somewhat repulsive?
3 - i wanted to use the system to at least learn hebrew, so that, at the end, if i find the hogd to be rubbish, i can say, "well, at least i learned hebrew and some neat biblical trivia"?
4 - i think pagans are silly?

none of these reasons is consistent with my view (as a chaos magician, evidently) that any religious symbol system is as good as the next, since it's just a means to an end.

so what's the problem? as an agnostic, i stand officially undecided on the whole YHWH issue. what is decided, though, is that if YHWH is real and exists as described in the OT, he sure as shit wouldn't be pleased with the goings-on at any branch of the hogd (or most branches of judaism, for whatever that's worth). but i reckon i don't believe in that kind of YHWH.

in thinking about the problem i suspect i have vanquished it. if not, i am inconsistent, though i have never claimed otherwise (or believed otherwise to be a preferable state).

boo!

i can pinpoint the moment of my lifting enlightenment.

it was the moment when i decided that as long as i was going to be failing to lose weight or increase my lifts, i might as well fail to lose weight or increase my lifts while drinking lots of beer and whisky.

and the student thus ready, the master appeared.

i met a rattlesnake today. he was crossing the ohlone camp trail as i was heading home for the day. by the time i noticed him, right smack in the middle of the trail, i was no more than 10 feet away. plenty of safety buffer, but i felt a little worried that i hadn't noticed him sooner (especially considering all the bushwhacking i'd done today, assuming there were no rattlers).

i actually looked at his head before his tail, and made the pit-viper identification from the shape of his angry face. yay me.

he wasn't too big, maybe a foot and a half. big enough.

the rattlesnake is a bad-ass and he knows it. i've seen plenty of snakes before on hikes. this is the first venomous snake that i recall ever seeing. all the other snakes high-tailed it (har har) into the bushes as soon as they heard me coming, usually from 10 yards or more.

the rattler just took his merry time. he was in no hurry. i wasn't going to rush him, and he knew it. he was king of the road with no contenders. he didn't even bother to rattle his tail. he wasn't worried by li'l ol' me.

i whipped out my camera phone and waited ages upon ages for it to power on. "searching for network..." crap! forget all that, i just want the video camera! by the time it finished giving up trying to find the network, the snake had made it across the trail and was burrowing into the brush.

crap. well, i just checked the video, and let me tell you, i've seen better vids of bigfoot. in fact, i think i see bigfoot in my rattler video here. bigfoot wearing an elvis suit being abducted by aliens and taken to the nazi moonbase. yeah. the video is bad.

i startled some folks with dogs and a kid when i told them there was a rattlesnake by the trail ahead.

i also saw a pretty big fox a couple hours earlier, and some tadpoles, and a vulture really close-up, and some bones, and a girl running up a hill, and an off-the-beaten-path stone-wall, and quite a few cows, but the snake was the high point of the day.

     it is only when i am most alone
                    that i no longer 
                      feel so lonely

where'd all this ennui come from?

"chapterhouse: dune" was holding all that at bay?

wow, thanks to the wonders of wikipedia, i found out just now that i'm a chaote, aka a chaos magician.

who knew?

(well, i suppose i did)

i picked up my guitar last night, and after dinking around a bit and figuring out how to pick out a jewish folk song, i went through a couple lessons in one of my guitar lesson books. i'm sort of semi-resolved to learn to play it. this is, i think, the third time i've made such a resolution, counting the time when i bought the thing.

do i mean it this time? tough to say. i reckon i've got the necessary discipline, and the necessary interest, and if i ever get technically good enough to reveal it, it may surprise you, dear reader, that i actually have some amount of talent. what i'm not sure that i have is the time or the patience.

we'll see.

my throat is a little scratchy today. i let out a "deadlift yell" on my final rep and now it hurts.

heh.

i did not mean to suggest that my new straps made a 285 deadlift easy or even easier. they did nothing of the sort. they simply eliminated the distraction of a failing grip, which arguably made them much, much safer and possibly much more effective. but i'm not at the point now where a 285 DL would be easy without the assistance of a forklift.

i am to change that ;)

i don't often obtain lifting toys. i like to think that my lifting is not about the shiney toys but about the dull, rusty iron. that's why i've never strayed from the path of squat, deadlift and press and tred on the trendy ground of the bowflex and elliptical trainer. i'm old school, for some reason.

but still, sometimes i wants me some toys.

i got lots of good new toys this week. over the weekend, rather than shell out 200 bucks for an appolon's axle (TM), i took the more satisfying route of building my own. in fact, "building my own" is closer to what i planned than what I did. my plans involved lots of drilling and metal cutting, but the actual way of things involved little more than screwing olympic collars onto a seven foot galvanized metal pipe.

so far i've used it for grip-building deadlifts and reverse curls. it's fantastic and i'll be integrating it deeper into my routine.

while browsing ironmind, i ended up getting some lifting straps. for a long time i resisted straps because i wanted to work my grip in the deadlift and -- more precisely -- because i'd forgotten about them. i used them this morning and found that they worked amazingly well. they had far more effect than i had expected given how they work. what they allowed me to do was ignore my grip and focus more on the lift. while it saddens me that the deadlifts will no longer intensely work my grip, i am excited about the effect they had on the overall lift. i was able to lift my target weight today (5x285) without a combo-grip. normally i'd have to use a combo-grip, which, at 285, you'd expect i'd have mastered. i haven't. i always feel off balance and distracted by the combo grip. with the straps, the focus was all on the legs and back, where it should be. my arms were just part of the bar. as they should be. these were possibly some of the best deadlifts i've ever performed. score for the lifting straps.

i was at ironmind for something in particular, though, i wasn't just browsing. i was looking for a dipping belt, and i got it. like the straps, i like it. before this, i was using a piece of monster cable and a $1 carabiner clip as a dipping belt. try loading 40lbs onto a speaker wire and then hanging it from your hips. bites a little, doesn't it? now do some dips. oooh, feel the bite. wait, we're supposed to feel the burn, not the bite, right?

that's why i wanted a real dipping belt. well, that's what I got. the thing is positively cushy. feels great. as with the straps, it takes the focus away from distractions and focuses me on the purpose of the lift. the ironmind belt moves my center of gravity during the dip, and i'll have to adjust, but it's quite worth it.

all in all, i'd say i've done well by my new toys. score.

something troubling you? nossir! nothing at all!

meatballs, lasagna, and the world, and the people in it, that's all.

will there be school in 100 years?

school's out, now. enjoy your summer.

i had thought i was turning a new page, but i guess not. another valentine's day alone and cold (hah, the "cold" is purely a coincidence, since i opened my PGE bill this morning and decided i was done with the heater until next january) and hungry and did i mention alone?

well, at least i was on the receiving end of some remotely-initiated v-day love and joy, right?

oh. right.

old school.

okay, so the unidentified japanese tea is very likely not roasted rice, but roasted senna seed, instead.

there is a little english label on the bag, and it says "ingredients: cassia occidental", which is japanese for "cassia occidentalis", which is latin for "senna seeds", which is herbalist for LAXATIVE.

senna is apparently the active ingredient in exlax.

i discovered this BEFORE drinking the stuff.

but i drank some anyways. just a sip. it was bland with a bitter aftertaste. we'll see if it has the promised laxative effects: i wouldn't expect so from the dose i took.

a bland to bitter laxative. no point in drinking it as long as i keep my date intake steady.

sunday night, W and I went to a korean restaurant in san bruno. it's tough to find korean food in the midpeninsula; i really don't like it enough to go to sans jose or francisco. the food was good but overpriced. the service was not so great but we were the only customers and i was wearing a kilt. what did i expect?

the waitress wouldn't let me order goat because i wasn't korean. okay. whatever.

as i said, the food was good, but the best part of the meal was the tea. it was delicious. i'd never had tea like it, but it reminded me of something.

we asked the waitress what type of tea it was, and apparently one doesn't have to be korean to get an answer: it was barley tea.

i didnt know people made tea from barley. what i did know was that 3 out of 3 times when i've made beer, i've wanted to take the pot off the stove and drink it as tea. it smells yummy.

the nice thing about barley tea, of course, is that it's barley, and barley has no caffeine. back in the days when i was Really Trying (as opposed to now, when i'm only Sorta Trying) to lose weight, i used to drink a lot of tea in the evenings, because it was warm and filled my stomach and fooled my brain into thinking i'd eaten a big meal. i'd drink only decaf so i could sleep.

so yesterday after work i stopped by draegar's to see if i could score some barley tea. no dice. i was stunned. draegar's had let me down! this i would not forget!

by this afternoon i had forgotten the letdown at draegar's and after work i stopped by a japanese supermarket. score! i found a bag of roasted barley in the tea section. i also found what looks like roasted brown rice, but the packaging is 100% japanese so I can't be sure. I bought them both.

the barley tea, it turns out, is bigtime in japan. it's called mugicha, and it's popular both as a hot and a cold tea. in fact, it seems more popular as a cold tea. i brewed up four cups of the stuff and am still finishing it off. delicious.

then a thought occurred to me (inspired by a website) : i have access to large quantities of affordable roasted barley, right? i'm a homebrewer, yes? i don't need to purchase imported, stale, old roasted barley for my tea. i can buy fresh, cheap, and varied roasted barley from my local homebrew supply shop!

score again!

so next time i'm in the area, i'll pick up a couple pounds of roasted barley for mugicha. while i'm at it, i see no particular reason not to make tea from malted barley (mugicha is unmalted), though once i try it, i may discover the reason.

until then, the packaged japanese stuff is still quite delicious.

yum!

from my december visit.

all photos taken less than 8 miles from the doorstep of the house where i grew up.

click on the pictures for the full sized versions.

now that i have a steady relationship, i've taken to interior decorating.

here's my new booze tower. you may need to scroll down.

taken last weekend in the hills behind my parents home. click for larger version.

that on the freeway or elsewhere, not once have i thought "oh, if only my car had enough engine power, i could pass this guy".

i've had to relearn how to overtake. the tactics are quite different from those required by the saturn.

sometimes i get at something without getting to it. so it was with part two. hopefully i'll get to it in part three.

i mentioned stuff about joining a new class of people. back when i bought the saturn, there was much hullabaloo about "the saturn family", though it turned out never to amount to anything. i never got invited to picnics or "events" or anything. with the g35 it seems a little different. i self identify with a family. whenever i see another one on the road i feel like driving up and waving to the driver. "hey! i got one too! i get it now! you must get it also, eh?"

sometimes i feel like it enough that i actually do it.

usually they just think i'm kinda nuts but i'm used to that.

the point is that by purchasing this thingus i now feel that i identify with a larger portion of the general population. this is interesting (to me) because the brand (as i mentioned in part 2) is specifically marketed to snobs, elitists, and rich assholes. but instead of feeling better than everyone, while i drive it, i feel connected to people.

of course, to be honest, when i drive it, i do feel better than some people, but those are generally the same people to whom i felt superior when driving the h2 recovery vehicle. you know, the guys in m3s in the left lane going 20mph. without even talking on their cell phones. the sort of snobbery that i feel while driving is an anti-snobbery: it's "see? i got an expensive car too but i'm not a total asshole like you!"

on the other hand, maybe i am a total asshole: i didn't tip the valet last weekend.

when i got back home i tried to leave the car but it emitted a steady beep. i had no idea what it was and it wouldn't go away. after consulting the owner's manual, i discovered that the valet had switched the headlights from "auto" to "on" and my g35 was warning me not to drain the battery. how nice of her :)

but back to the class thing which i'm still trying to understand.

i think that in my own mind, i'm destroying elitism and classism by creeping unwelcomed into the upper classes. true, my car is at the bottom rung of the luxury line, but it's still no kia. when i drive by a big old lexus, i feel like i'm sending a message: "see, you rich elitist asshole, anyone can drive one of these, it doesn't take blue blood, just a bit of cash".

they're probably thinking the same thing when they see me. i don't mind.

due to a math error, apparently i'm a much better investor than i previously thought, to the tune of 10%.

that's got to be irony, or something.

i racked my beer tonight.

at least, i think i did. i transferred it to a secondary fermentation carboy. that's racking, right?

it went very well up until the cleanup. i was washing the old yeast and crap out of the primary fermentor, the same place i always do: the bathtub. well, while i was swishing and swirling i guess i lost my grip. the carboy came crashing down into the tub.

i'd heard stories of people's carboys shattering in their hands from little more than holding them wrong while filled. mine was not filled. mine did not shatter.

mine took a chunk out of the tub.

the carboy remains unscathed.

the impact point on the tub is kind of gross looking. i've never seen the inside of a cheap-ass tub before tonight. i think i need to get some caulk.

that's right, i'm going to go get some caulk and squirt it in my tub.

soon's i stop laughing.