Rules for living

Although I don't identify as belonging to any sort of religion (I take what I like from multiple spiritual directions and disregard the rest) a major part of me is buddhist. Buddhism as a spiritual path primarily means the exploration and development of ourselves. Its spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is a man of incredible wisdom, yet he always has remained humble, friendly and down to earth. Whenever my life gets rough and I loose my focus, I always find guidance in the 19 simple rules he once wrote down as a guideline to live by. So here they are. For now I'm just posting them, but I will probably comment on them in further posts. Comments from others of course highly appreciated as well.

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson
3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, Respect for others, and Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go some place you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
--- Rules for living - The Dalai Lama

A new blog

No, I'm not changing blogspots again, I am way too happy simply being me without the hassle of hiding behind a fake identity. But I will be writing for another blog as well. As those of you who know me a little bit may already have gathered, I like the works of Robert Heinlein. And primarily his ideas and thoughts on society, politics, love, jealousy, polyarmory and many other things. So when a friend mentioned he wanted to start a group blog dedicated to discussing Heinlein's ideas I of course wanted to be a part of that. It's just the two of us for now, but maybe over time more people will join in. Anyhow.. here's the link: The Heinlein Blog.

Conversation with my Guardian Angel

I go downstairs to smoke in the room we use for this purpose and I'm not even all that surprised to find her sitting in the best chair in the room, leaning back, and grinning. I can't help but stare at her legs, shaped to perfection, dangling over the edge of the chair. "Don't ever cross them" she told me a hundred times. "It's bad for your chi and besides, there is nothing there to be ashamed of." I sit down in the other chair.

She grins. "So, how's life?". I mumble a "fine" and she gives me that "cut the crap" look. "Okay well it's not fine. I'm about to terminate another online relationship because it's just not working, I have had the kids home sick for a whole week and the house is a mess and I'm so not looking forward to having to clean that up, it makes me feel like Tantalus carrying water up the hill in a leaking basket and never ever getting to the top because way before he reaches it, the water has all leaked out."
She laughs out loud, this perfect laugh of hers, enhanced by the acoustics of this room that was built for music by the previous owner, a professional violin player.

"Feeling sorry for ourselves, are we". I pout and state I have every reason to. In a split second her face goes from laughter to anger. "No, you don't." I know better than to argue with her, so instead I try to relax in my chair and take the beating that I know is coming. She just looks at me and lights a cigarette, slowly blowing out the smoke in perfect circles. Clearly enjoying it she grins at me. "You should stop smoking, you know that. It's bad for your health and you're a long way from reaching the level where it can't harm you. Too bad really.. these are good." I tell her she's a mean sadist bitch and she smiles. "I know. It's why you love me so much."

She inhales deeply, then looks me straight into the eye. "You are here, because you chose to be here. If this isn't where you want to be, then I suggest you pack your bags, catch a train and go to wherever it is you do want to be. But you won't, because this is who you are, and it's all good. You may think you have a right to feel sorry for yourself but really, that is a totally useless emotion. Learn the lessons, and move on." I sigh and nod. "That is a very easy thing to say, from your point of view. But tell me this. Why is it that more often than not, I end up being neglected by people I care about. Taken for granted, kept waiting, put at the bottom of the priority list? Am I so unsignificant, so not interesting to spend time with?" She laughs. I hate it when she laughs at moments like this. "You are the common denominator in all your failed relationships, dear. And to answer your question as to why? Simply, because you let them."

I shake my head. "No, no, no, NO! You're oversimplifying things again. That isn't how it works. All I need, is a little commitment. Communications. I can take "I won't be here for the next couple of days, because I'm busy elsewhere." I can't take being kept waiting for days in a row without having a clue about why the other person is not around. At least, not when the same person tells me over and over again how much they love me and how important I am to them. I also deal badly with false promises. Doing a no show after telling me they would surely spend time with me that day. Just how friggin' hard is it to at least leave me a "sorry can't make it" message?" I'm fuming. Pure anger, combined with sadness, and it brings tears to my eyes.

For once she doesn't laugh. "Remember the first rule of magic? People are stupid. And what was the first thing you learned when you set out on your path as a warrior? Plug energy leaks. Why do you wait? I'm sure there's tons of useful things you could be doing instead of waiting around for people who, for whatever reason, aren't there when they said they would. Life is a solo challenge. Live it. Enjoy it to the max, and if people want to walk with you that's great, but if not, that should not slow you down. The big mistake you're making over and over again is you depend on other people for your personal happiness. Partly because you feel the need to make them happy too, and partly because even though you have this mighty pair of wings.. you're still afraid to fly. You only do it when you're at the edge of the rock and have no other option left, and by then you have already wasted tons of time and energy on the wrong things."

I growl at her and she blows me a kiss. "More people than you realize care about you a great deal. They will stay with you in one way or another, no matter what you do and where you go. Those are the people that matter. Just be you, and do your things, and everything else will fall into place. Now go clean that house, and your life."

I turn to her. She is gone. I shake my head and laugh, my laughter enhanced by the acoustics of this room that was once built for music. I hear her in there, or do I hear me? There is no difference.

The end?

Linden Labs has been talking about in in their blog for a while now, but today they officially announced that identity verification is coming to Secondlife.

The purpose of all this would be the fact that minors need to be protected from accessing adult content, like strip clubs, free sex places etc. And of course, lots of people are majorly upset about this new development. I could list the pro's and cons here but frankly, that's been done already on the multiple SecondLife forums by countless people.

What I don't understand are basically two things. Why is it, that these days people are extremely sensitive to anything involving minors watching sex? And what the heck happened to the parents' responsibility here?

Let me elaborate. Sex is a normal, healthy activity amongst adults. Healthy kids will start being interested in it during their puberty. Before that, they'll generally not even want to see it. I still remember how my friend and me would lend books from the library showing pictures of genitals and explaining everything there was to know about sex. We would secretly watch her big brother's porn tapes if no one was home. We were around 14, at the time. We wanted to know, it was a hot topic amongst us teenagers. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Especially if you take into account the fact that graphic violence apparently is okay for kids to watch. Numerous news sites show images and movies of war, destruction, disasters, accidents.. but no one is screaming about how viewing that type of content is bad for kids.

And the parents? Isn't it their responsibility to make sure kids don't play games that aren't meant for them? And shouldn't they be the ones educating kids about sex so the kids don't feel the need to seek that on SecondLife?

Whatever happened to common sense, and taking responsibility instead of throwing law suits?

Oh well. The sad thing is it doesn't surprise me. So< I made another cartoon style picture. Enjoy.

Thank you

Oma

"Oma" is Dutch. It means grandmother, but in a very loving, affectionate way. My oma was a very special person. I was 2 years old when my mother left my dad and me. My dad moved back in with his parents, and so it was oma who raised me until I was 5 and my dad remarried. My stepmom and me never got along. I can't count the times oma phoned me to check on me, heard in my voice things at home had turned sour again, and she would get in her ancient red DAF, drive the hour from her house to ours, and as soon as we let her in she would tell me; "You, go get your stuff. I'll talk to your mom." And she would take me with her for a weekend, or longer if I had vacation, and I would get a chance to be away from the stress of living with a stepmother who wasn't ready to have kids and who had no idea how to deal with a highly intelligent (and spoilt rotten) kid outsmarting her in every possible way.. this resulting in her becoming violent.

Oma was an iron lady with a heart. She became a widow at a fairly young age when my grandfather died of cancer. She ruled the family, not always in a pleasant way because she could be very demanding, but she was the one that kept us at least somewhat together when we all became older and each went their own way. Oma's birthday was the one day per year all of us got together. All my uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews.. even my brothers and sisters and my father and his wife.. I usually only saw them on oma's birthday. At one point in life I lived only 10 minutes away from oma, and especially during that period I saw her a lot. It was great to be with her, sitting in her huge garden drinking tea, discussing all sorts of things. Her usual comment to my life and my lifestyle was; "well I don't understand much of all those wild things, child.. but I can see you are happy and that is all that matters." When I told her I was divorcing my kids' dad, her response was "Finally! I was wondering how long it would take you to discover he's no good".

Oma was extremely healthy up to a very high age. I still remember phoning her one afternoon, and it took a while before she answered. She must have been in her early eighties, then. When she did answer the phone I apologized and said I didn't mean to wake her from her nap. She almost exploded. "Nap? NAP?? Naps are for old people. I had to climb down the ladder because I was fixing the roof!".

Her biggest fear was to become old, and helpless. She signed several papers stating that if she would become "a vegetable", or totally demented, or too sick to ever recover, she wanted her life to end. She showed me, and probably everybody else as well, those papers. Urged me to help actively end her life, if it ever got to that point. I told her then I wasn't sure I could do that, and she gave me her usual "pfft, of course you can".

At around the age of 90, she did become that old, that demented, and that sick. She was hospitalized and grew weaker and weaker. She didn't recognize anyone anymore. But the doctors would not help her die. Because she wasn't capable of actively stating that was what she wanted, at that point. The papers she signed when she was still very much there, mentally, weren't enough. She slid further and further down, her body weakening, her once so strong mind gone. I haven't seen her during that period. I couldn't bring myself to visiting her. I wanted to remember her the way I knew her: strong, healthy, independent, opinionated. And I knew that, in spite of what she had told me to do if it got to this point, I wouldn't be able to end her life. I could say I couldn't do it because it would surely mean I would end up in jail, since under our laws it would have been murder, and that I didn't want my family to go through that. But I very much doubt I would have been able to do it, even if I had been single. I suppose that makes me a coward.

Why am I sharing all this? Because she died yesterday, at the age of 92. And even though I am tremendously sad, I am also majorly relieved her battle has finally ended.

Oma.. I haven't visited you alot in the past years, and I'm sorry for that. I also know you understand the reasons, and that it had nothing to do with not loving you. You were the closest thing to a mother I have ever had. I will miss you, an awful lot. I know one day we will be together again. Thank you, for everything you did for me, everything you taught me, and for every time you accepted me for who I am without judging, no matter what stupid things I was doing. Rest in peace, you have earned it.

Clicky bits

As I have mentioned before, I play SecondLife, an online virtual world. One of the things you can do there is.. to have sex. Or rather, watch your avatar and that of your partner have sex. In order to make this experience more realistic, it is possible to buy genitals for your avatar which, when clicked, will pop up a menu letting the clicker choose an action, after which the genitals will respond accordingly by saying something in open chat, in green, to distinguish from the normal chat which is shown in white. So, it will look something like "Frank's Penis whispers: "Ooooh yes baby, I so love it when you do that".

Fun? Well frankly.. whispering genitals freak me out. There is something utterly non erotic about them announcing their being "ready for action" then describing every next step in detail in open chat. Preferably in a public place, so all present get their share of the ultimate joy the wearer is experiencing.

Up to a certain level I can understand scripted bits. I mean, male parts in real life have different states of being, so scripting them in SL for a realistic look according to the mood does make sense to me. But the constant, annoying whispering.. *shudders*.

Granted, they are a fine piece of scripting and fairly well sculpted as far as they are visible but thats all. The built in cyber annoys me to no end. It's bad, and even if you go through the trouble of altering the script and writing the lines for your own genitals, it's still dull and soporific. Sex online already lacks the presence of a warm body to hold and the smell, sound and taste of actual sex. Is it really necessary to also remove the only thing that does remain: creativity and stimulating the mind? Do we really like making out with a preprogrammed virtual version of a rubber doll?

And then of course there is the fact you have to click them to get to the next line in the script. Try that in a laggy environment. Or even in a non laggy environment, but using animation balls. Many positions make it almost impossible to click the correct bits. Try clicking his manhood while having sex with him and find the huge invisible ball that is your own clit majorly gets in the way. This probably is the reason why Xcite, the main vendor of genitals in Secondlife, sells all kinds of scripted body parts. Can't get to his tender bits? Oh well, grab a nipple or pinch an ass. Oh and if you click the ass, don't forget to use the "inserts something warm and hard" option. That one at least leaves room for imagination, although with my twisted mind all the "warm and hard" things that come to mind make me giggle.

And then of course, there is the crescendo of it all. Orgasm! Sending female avatars into facial spasms that in real life would make me run to the phone and call an ambulance, and causing male avatars to create a fountain of sperm the average horse would be jealous of. Ladies, don't forget to try this while being on top of your male partner. There is something extremely hilarious about watching that fountain spring from your own spine. Ohyessss baby, shoot straight through me.

People have tried to convince me the good part about using the clicky bits is the fact you don't have to do as much typing so you have your hands free to do.. well.. other things. This may be true, but if that is the goal.. wouldn't it make much more sense to watch a porn video? Much more realistic and no interruptions from having to click things. Nooooo, say the clicky bits fans, that's no good, because it lacks the interaction. Well excuse me but.. what interaction? The one with the script in the other persons bits? The having to pick an action from the blue pop up menu and the excitement of never knowing which of the very few options the other person will pick next from that same menu? Oh wow *yawn*.

I prefer good, creative cyber over clicky bits any day of the week. Excite my mind and my body will follow. If you can't do that.. don't bother.