My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from The Stormy Search for the Self: A guide to personal growth through transformational crisis by Christina and Stanislav Grof.

As a result of this bias, many people who are involved in the natural healing process of spiritual emergence are automatically put in the same category as those with true mental illness – especially if their experiences are causing a crisis in their lives or are creating difficulties for their families. (Is the difference, then, between functional/non-functional or adaptive/non-adaptive psychosis? JH) p. 3

Yesterday one of my students handed me a winter-break quiz from one of her teachers with questions like: What is 26 L in the A? (26 letters in the alphabet.) She was impressed when I hit the genius level of the test. But that was nothing compared to what these students face. I’m going to give it my best shot.

The 102nd King William’s College Quiz

…which emasculated beverage received 1,3,7 trimethylxanthine as an alternative stimulant?

And there are a whole bunch more!

Naveed Haq, the man who murdered Pam Waetcher and shot six other people in an attack on the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle on 28 July will face life in prison, not the death penalty, according to the Associated Press. King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said he based his decision on Naveed Haq’s mental health records.

[snip]

If convicted, Haq would face life in prison without parole. He also faces charges of kidnapping and malicious harassment, the state’s hate-crime law.

“We’re certainly glad the prosecutor recognized there are significant mental health issues in this case and that the death penalty was just not appropriate under these circumstances,” Richards said.

The prosecutor’s decision fits well with the concept of Capital Punishment in Jewish law. In the tradition it is said that a Jewish High Court or Sanhedrin that sentenced one murderer to death in 70 years would be known as a hanging court.

Sometimes evolution can be a bad thing. Like when particularly efficient bacteria develop in your gut and perform the task of converting the food you eat into energy really, really well. I can just see this replacing the big-bones excuse. “It’s not my fault, I have super bacteria!” From the Los Angeles Times:

Obese people have higher levels of unusually efficient bacteria in their guts than lean people do, offering a possible explanation for why they get fat, researchers reported today.

The same disparity was found in mice, and giving lean mice the bacteria from fat animals caused them to gain weight, the researchers said.

I guarantee you that there are scam artists marketing Super Bacteria Cleansers even as we speak.

From SGT Brandon White: The boredom is irreversibly maddening in this place, where keeping your mind occupied is the name of the game. And I am losing, miserably. It’s like getting to level three in Super Mario and never quite making the leap over that gigantic pit of nothingness. I can see King Koopa off in the distance there, irking me on with his fiery nostrils…,

Our history has several examples of conflicts between sitting presidents and their generals. The two instances that leap famously to mind are those of Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. In both cases presidents Lincoln and Truman rightly slapped down generals who thought they knew best how to conduct the military affairs of the nation.

That’s the way our Constitution says it should be and I agree. All free people should have a healthy distrust of any military officer who thinks they know what’s best for the country. Our founders invested the ultimate power in the executive and gave our president the additional title of Commander and Chief.

While it may seem that since we have a president whose military service was questionable at best and who probably wouldn’t know which end of a rifled to point with (ever wonder why he and Cheney never go hunting together?) that we should be listening to the people who know about such matters. But I think we just have to accept we voted in an inept dolt to lead the troops and just suck it up.

Our best hope for the next two years is to push Congress at every opportunity to exercise what powers it has to limit further damage.

To continue to elevate the generals above their proper Constitutional station as followers is dangerous.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Only four days until Christmas…

Q: Did you hear that one of Santa’s reindeer now works for Proctor and Gambel?
A: Its true . . . Comet cleans sinks!

Q: What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus?
A: Claustrophobic.

…music is, literally, a recipe for sculpted air.” Frank Zappa.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from The Stormy Search for the Self: A guide to personal growth through transformational crisis by Christina and Stanislav Grof.

For some individuals, however, the transformational journey of spiritual development becomes a “spiritual emergency,” a crisis in which the changes within are so rapid and the inner states so demanding that, temporarily, these people may find it difficult to operate fully in everyday reality.

In our time, these individuals are rarely treated as if they are on the edge of inner growth. Rather, they are almost always viewed through the lens of disease and treated with technologies that obscure the potential benefits the experiences can offer. p. 1

Part of being a good citizen of the blogosphere is visiting, reading and, most importantly, taking the time to leave a comment on other’s blogs. It’s all about the conversation. In the interest of setting an example I’ve decided to link to those blog posts that have compelled me to leave a comment.

1433 IBOB: From My Dad…

From Tadpole: Afghanistan is well known for its poppy. I once read somewhere that it was responsible for something like 75% of the world’s opium supply. I don’t know how accurate that figure is, but assuming it is even remotely accurate, it’s an impressive figure. What Afghanistan is not so well known for is its marijuana. It’s my understanding that Afghanistan was…

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

REAL WAL MART BOMBS… Forget bomb threats at Wal Mart, kids are planting the real thing. In several Wallyplex videos I”ve shown teenagers running around the inside of Wal Marts at 3 a.m. Now they”re blowing stuff up with acid bombs. From The Village Soup Times: Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring kwolf1040. Keep reading…

TURNING PEOPLE OFF… Go watch…

IT WAS METHANE… I suppose that somebody thought Harry in toys shouldn”t have eaten the third burrito, but eventually they got the message and bailed out of the Wal Mart in Garfield Heights, Ohio. From Cleveland”s Plain Dealer: Keep reading…

HITCHING YOUR STAR TO WALLY”S WAGON… The fall from grace of DraftFCB is an economic cautionary tale about the danger of monospony worthy of Aesop. If Wal Mart is the hare then small, local business is the tortoise. Did it take a bitch slapping for Chicago to learn this lesson? Keep reading…

BEING AT LITTLE EXPENSE… My real work is that of being a novelist; an unpublished one, but a novelist nonetheless. And one of things writers do is research. I read A Charlestonian”s Recollections 1846-1913 by Daniel Elliot Huger Smith and came across this observation: Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring EMOisTHEnewPUNK. Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring Maverickeast. Keep reading…

THE LONG MARCH CONTINUES… The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that the melding of the Chinese Party”s culture with that of the Bentonvile Behemoth continues a pace with the latest announcement that a party cell was setting up at the Wal Mart headquarters in Shenzhen. Keep reading…

LEANN LEE IS HAPPY… BUT… A while back I made note of a quote from a Wal Mart spokesperson about the too many skinny jeans in stock. Well, sizes aren”t the only fashion problem plaguing Wally World according to Investors Business Daily: Keep reading…

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Only five days until Christmas…

Q: Why does Santa Claus go down the chimney on Christmas Eve?
A: Because it ” soots ” him!

Q: What do you do if Santa gets stuck in your chimney?
A: Pour Santa flush on him.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from The Stormy Search for the Self: A guide to personal growth through transformational crisis by Christina and Stanislav Grof.

(Personal thought: Spiritual development is the psychological creation of a personal, metaphor for reality, JH.)

One-hundred-sixty-three years ago Charles Dickens ushered in the age of holiday commercialization with the publication of his A Christmas Carol on this date in 1843. Not that I want to be an Ebenezer Scrooge (I don’t) but I don’t think Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim got it right either. I’m more of a fan of Cindy Lou Who. From The Writer’s Almanac:

At the time, Christmas was on the decline and not celebrated much. England was in the midst of an Industrial Revolution and most people were incredibly poor, having to work as much as 16-hour days six days a week. Most people couldn’t afford to celebrate Christmas, and Puritans believed it was a sin to do so. They felt that celebrating Christmas too extravagantly would be an insult to Christ. The famous American preacher Henry Ward Beecher said that Christmas was a “foreign day” and he wouldn’t even recognize it.

When Dickens’s novel became a huge best-seller in both the United States and England, A Christmas Carol reminded many people of the old Christmas traditions that had been dying out since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution – of cooking a feast, spending time with family, and spreading warmth and cheer. Dickens helped people return to the old ways of Christmas. He went on to write a Christmas story every year, but none endured as well as A Christmas Carol.

It was the Grinch, not Scrooge, who got the message. Thank you Dr. Seuss.

The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.
Angels began shining when they achieved discipline.
The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes near.
The moment that foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.

From Praising Manners by Robert Bly.

When I was a Forestry student at Colordao State University back in the ’70s I had a friend who couldn’t play the piano, but who had learned the opening bars of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as a way of impressing girls. I suppose that this is pretty much the same thing, but I can’t believe that Classical Gas isn’t on the list. What do you think?

From Tadpole: I have been having quite a bit of trouble sleeping lately. This has worked wonders for my ability to get a lot of reading and writing done, but it has not helped my physical condition. I have been exhausted due to a lack of sleep. I am seriously considering going to see a doc, but I don’t want to be a whiner. I’ll go if it gets too rough. When I do sleep, I have been…

Oh this is good. A reporter for the Santa Barbara News Press didn’t like the way the publisher was running the newspaper and talked out of school in this month’s issue of the American Journalism Review. The publisher, in typical peddler fashion, screamed for the lawyers and filed papers. Anyone want to bet that all this doesn’t turn out badly?

From the Associated Press.

Ampersand Publishing LLC’s lawsuit accuses Susan Paterno of libel and product disparagement and seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

“It’s to let any reporter know that if you exercise your constitutional rights, it will cost you money, time and put them through turmoil,” he said.

This is what happens when you confuse Journalism with Peddling.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

Only six days until Christmas…

Q: Why did Santa spell Christmas N-O-E?
A: Because the angel had said, “No L!”

Q: What goes Ho, Ho, Swoosh, Ho, Ho, Swoosh?
A: Santa caught in a revolving door!