Just another community blog, about meeting and community

Ironically, the passion that can neutralize the repulsion for difficulties depends on the effort to overcome these difficulties. The irony resides in the circularity of this principle – which applies to all areas of activity, including poetry: One must make the effort to overcome difficulties to achieve success and feel capable, and one needs this achievement and feeling to have a passion for making this effort.

How can one enter this circle without this passion? In other words, how does one resolve the quasi-contradiction according to which one cannot passionately start the effort to overcome difficulties before it has ended successfully?

If difficulties are deemed insurmountable, mistakenly or not, the repulsion for them is absolute. In that case, nothing will motivate the effort to succeed, except an outside authority that can dictate this effort, or an outside influence that can generate faith and stimulate courage. In every other case where the seriousness of the difficulties is open to doubt, one may try one’s luck with mixed feelings.

Assuming one tries, the result of this effort will constitute additional self-knowledge that will inform one’s future choices. A positive outcome will act as a positive reinforcement that emboldens one to try again, with increased confidence and reduced hesitation; a negative outcome will do the opposite.

Should one refuse to try one’s luck, this would slow one’s progress, but not necessarily stop it. Confidence can be increased and hesitation reduced by degrees, through a series of baby steps that can eventually lead to triumph. All in all, people have more than one trick up their sleeve to succeed in life, though they cannot escape the necessity of achieving success to develop a passion for the difficult task of living.

As regards poetry, success may be achieved in a roundabout and gradual way. Take a young educated man who has a sense of imagery and a desire to express himself. While his education has prepared him for the written expression of his feelings and thoughts, this sense and this desire together drive him to write poetically, though he has no pretensions to composing a poem.

This first step is a manner of kickoff that gets the ball rolling. He becomes aware of his poetic ability within the limits of his poetic writing. What is more, he catches a glimpse of the poetry that is a blur in this writing and could emerge from the prose like a landscape from the fog. His potential as a future poet is thus faintly discernible. It assumes the form of an inkling whose haziness will progressively dissipate as further poetic efforts are made successfully. In the end the young man sees himself as a young poet. He is eager to grapple with the difficulties of writing poetry because he is confident that he will overcome them and delight in this achievement.

One of the biggest questions many people who are considering getting a tongue piercing have is how to eat with one. Eating will be especially difficult for a few days after you first get your piercing. At first you will need to eat soft foods such as soup, jello, pudding and mashed potatoes. If you are hoping to get the swelling down, ice cream might help. Be sure to chew your food slowly to avoid damaging your teeth. Once things have healed up, you should consider switching to plastic tongue rings to minimize any damage to your teeth. If you avoid getting any infections, you should be able to look forward to eating normally once things are healed up in a few weeks.

Professionals also recommend that you avoid smoking while your piercing is healing. Try to avoid playing with you tongue rings as this can prevent the area from healing properly. Of course, you’ll want to monitor for any signs of infection the first few weeks. If the pain is not subsiding, it could be time to get things checked out by a doctor. If your body rejects the piercing, be prepared to take it out for your health and safety. You should not risk your health for the sake of a piercing.

It will take you a few weeks to fully adjust to having a piercing. You might experience drooling or slurring speech until the swelling goes down. Sometimes tongue rings will alter your speech. You should practice talking in a mirror to become comfortable with speaking again. In many circles, a piercing isn’t a sign of professionalism, so you will want to do what you can to hide it in certain situations. Once the healing is over and you are used to the new addition in your mouth, have fun with it!

The progress of an artist is a continual self- sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. – by Eliot, T. S..

Know what you do well.

Know what inspires you.

Know that small changes in your habits make small changes in your art.

Know that big changes make bigger changes.

Know that you are an artist.

Know how you feel about your subject.

Know what your art means to you.

Know that the more time you put into it, the more it grows.

And, know that you are not alone.

We’ve all heard about the artists’ world having so many ups and downs. It’s not just in the world of shows, acceptances and rejections or selling a painting or not, it’s also in the emotions of making of our art. We have good days and bad days in creating. Some days go so smoothly, we approach the easel with confidence and turn out a wonderful painting with ease that we are proud of. The next day, we feel like we step up to the easel with a lack of confidence and have to wipe that canvas off a couple of times. On those days it seems as though we’ll never get where we want to go with our art.

As artists we always strive for perfection, but know that we will probably never achieve it. But, you mustn’t admit that, then you surely will never achieve that ultimate goal. Once you admit that you will never create the perfect painting, you will have stopped or at least limited yourself as an artist. So, how do you come to grips with the idea of knowing that you will probably never achieve what you aspire to and be happy with the work that you do? I have always had a tough time with this. It seems as though I am happy with my completed painting for about three days, then I look at it thinking I can do better or I would do it differently now. I find it really difficult on the paintings that I set aside for a show to ship off later. I always seem to find myself thinking, “If I did such and such to the painting, it would be a better painting. I now box them up so that I am not tempted to touch them.

I keep wondering when the time will come that I will be completely satisfied with my paintings or does that time never come? I know that I have to accept my paintings for what they are or I would never be able to move on and paint the next one. And that is what keeps me on the road to improving as an artist and striving for that perfection that I know I will never achieve. I have come to the conclusion that I have to look at each painting and know that it was the very best that I could do at that moment in time and that is a good thing.

When Andy Rooney makes his final regular appearance on “60 Minutes” this weekend, it will mark not only the end of a remarkably long television gig, but the end of one of the last links to a time when broadcasters were under government orders to be fair.

The Federal Communications Commission promulgated its Fairness Doctrine in 1949. The commission reasoned that broadcasters hold rights to the public airwaves as a public trust, and that they therefore owe society more than melodrama and comedy. FCC rules obliged radio and television stations to present various viewpoints on “controversial issues of public importance.” CBS and other television networks were not directly subject to these rules, but the network-owned local stations and independently owned affiliates were required to report on their efforts every time their licenses came up for renewal.

News programming, including shows like “60 Minutes,” earned Fairness Doctrine brownie points. They certainly covered matters of public importance, and they purported to be fair and free of editorializing, which the FCC never much cared for. Before the Fairness Doctrine, the commission’s “Mayflower doctrine” actually prohibited on-air editorials. That position probably could not have survived a First Amendment challenge. The Fairness Doctrine replaced it with a mandate that if a station broadcast its own views, it had an obligation to broadcast contrary views as well.

The producers of “60 Minutes” wanted to create the television equivalent of a news magazine. News magazines contain opinion columns, and CBS wanted to have them too, without running afoul of the Fairness Doctrine. The answer was “Point/Counterpoint,” a weekly feature in which a conservative one-time segregationist, James J. Kilpatrick, debated with a liberal counterpart, first Nicholas von Hoffman and later Shana Alexander.

I don’t recall the Kilpatrick-von Hoffman segments, which aired from 1971 to 1974. I do remember the ones with Alexander, as does almost everyone who saw the parodies that Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin performed on “Saturday Night Live.” Kilpatrick was the Southern rube who only grudgingly accepted that the Confederacy would not rise again; Alexander was the feminist liberal who would gladly have consigned Kilpatrick to a locked closet in the Smithsonian. As I recall, they yelled at one another a lot, but I never had the impression that either of them was truly angry. Their job was to see that the Fairness Doctrine was satisfied. They took care of business without ever changing one another’s minds or, I believe, anybody else’s. Then and now, the trouble with talking heads on television is that nobody ever seems to be listening.

A summer replacement for Point/Counterpoint, Rooney’s first opinion piece was on traffic safety. I do not remember whether he was for it or against it. Rooney never needed a counterpart because, as the show’s resident curmudgeon, he encouraged viewers to disagree with him. Sometimes he may have disagreed with himself. Curmudgeons are allowed to do that.

After one season in which Rooney alternated with Point/Counterpoint, “60 Minutes” dropped the dueling editorials and yielded the last minutes of each week’s 60 to Rooney. Somebody must have been watching, because Rooney generated a lot of mail – he often told us about it – and because the CBS suits would not have left Rooney there if he killed the lead-in for their Sunday prime-time lineup. Personally, I seldom paid a lot of attention to Rooney, even though our screen is usually tuned to “60 Minutes.” He was just there, getting older and crankier every week, a lot like me.

The FCC stopped enforcing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987. It never achieved its goal of turning commercial broadcasting into a serious forum for public debate. In fact, it discouraged a lot of public debate, since it forced broadcasters to air opinions they did not deem airworthy, and since it magnified the amount of time each station needed to devote to any issue it chose to tackle. Stations found that it was much better business to avoid controversial topics altogether, or to pretend to address them with commentaries, like Rooney’s, that did not really require opposing viewpoints.

The country would have been better served to let each station air whatever opinions it chose and to count on a diversity of stations to bring forth a diversity of views. Ultimately, that is what has happened, especially with the advent of cable television, and later the internet. Nobody can say we lack access to different viewpoints today.

Congress liked the Fairness Doctrine. Politicians believe any criticism they receive is unfair and that they have a God-given right to rebut it. But Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush vetoed efforts to put the doctrine back into federal law. The FCC finally got around to repealing its regulatory language last month.

Yet broadcasters seldom use their current freedom to aggressively push a particular point of view. That kind of advocacy, sometimes passing itself off as fair and balanced news coverage (and not only by outfits that use “fair and balanced” as a slogan), is more common on cable, in print, and on the web. Maybe because it is better for business or maybe because it is just habit, most broadcasters still air commentaries that hardly require opposing viewpoints when they air commentaries at all.

Andy Rooney was like an irascible uncle who always seemed to be around. Sometimes he demanded attention when you really had better things to do. He could be annoying while he was there, yet you missed him after he’d gone home. He also paved the way for folks like me to foist their unsolicited opinions onto a public that was not dying to hear us, so I owe him a personal thank-you.

Andy, you inspired old coots across America. Enjoy some well-earned time off, and drop in whenever you like.

While technology has caused today’s world to seem smaller, it hasn’t technically shrunk in size! But it has added some new dynamics to the “long-distance” relationship. Now there are several methods for making those long distances seem like shorter ones. Here are some tips to help you maintain long distance relationships more effectively:

1. Use instant messaging.

This is a fantastic (free) way of keeping in touch with your sweetheart or spouse. With audio and video components available, it can virtually be like taking to the person-in person! If you have a computer and modem, then you’re almost ready to rock. After downloading the IM software, you’ll be ready to start chatting away. Instant Messaging is more spontaneous than e-mail, and cheaper than landline calls.

2. Find a long-distance telephone plan.

With these plans, you can enjoy various benefits. There are often lower rates when you call at nighttime or on weekends. Also, you can sometimes get discounts on calls to one or two particular foreign countries. Telephone companies realize that long-distance calls can be pricey so they’re willing to provide discounts in order to get and keep your business. In fact, price wars between long distance carriers are as common as spam in your e-mail box.

3. Keep track of the person’s time zone.

One way is to do the math each time you call that someone special. But that can be a hassle. As an alternative, keep a clock in your home, which you’ve already set to the current time where your sweetheart or spouse is living. That provides you with a visual reminder about the current time where he or she is. The person will be less thrilled to hear from you if you call in the middle of the morning, right?

4. Schedule a time for talking.

This is especially helpful if the two of you are separated by several time zones. Whether you’re communicating by phones or IM, creating a particular schedule for chatting will help to guarantee that you’ll successfully contact your special someone. Is this method 100% reliable? No, but it’s better than the hit-or-miss method of hoping that the person will be at home or online, when you try to contact him or her.

5. Consider the drawbacks of a long-distance relationship.

In particular, it’s harder to work out problems, and it’s easier to end the relationship. One way to keep the relationship going, is to meet in person whenever possible. This will help to strengthen the relationship, through the connection that can only be achieved through in-person interaction. There’s still an impersonal component when talking over a phone or through the Internet.

6. Consider having virtual dates.

Yes, that’s right! When the two of you can’t be together, a virtual date is a fantastic alternative to a traditional date. Some of the activities you can enjoy include watching an online movie simultaneously, taking a virtual tour of a building or place, and so on.

Today’s technology has made long-distance relationship more easily sustainable. These tips will help you to maintain a long-distance relationship for a long time!

Numbers play an unimaginably big role in our life. But when we talk about love – a magic of numbers becomes apparent with might and main. Do you want to know how to orient in arithmetic of tender feelings and control your passion with the help of numbers?

One

A man, who wants to meet a girl, visits all events – starting from disco in a night club and finishing with a reception in Great guild – alone. He does not need a friend-rival near. Only very young and extremely diffident guys go hunting in a group, chuckling nervously and looking around quickly, searching for appropriate girlfriends. However, any man, even the shiest one and surrounded by a crowd of friends, will find an opportunity to stay alone quickly, as soon as some girl attracts his attention. And he will be expecting the same from you. In every female magazine you are insistently advised not to take your friends with you everywhere and give him, your desired one, an opportunity to come and start a conversation. He also looks through these magazines. So don’t betray his expectations. One plus one equals a couple.

Two

2 months passed since your meeting – this is an occasion to begin considering you a real stable couple, especially if you always go to cinema, friends’ place, party or restaurant together! And no other names and variants occur both to you and him. You see each other no less than twice a week and spend weekends together. If for these two months you have not established such relationships, your affair is chance. And presence of intimate closeness plays no role here: there is a lot of truth in an old joke that “sex is not an occasion for acquaintance yet”.

Three

Third is always not wanted here. Never attach somebody else to your couple. Third one in a couple can be only a common baby, playing a role of a connecting-link. A couple consists of two extremes and is an unstable number. Any third party – friend, your loved one’s friend, mother or mother-in-law – can damage balance between you and drag somebody across her side. Even married couples with long-term experience of family life feel some tension in relations and begin quarrelling after long communication with one guest. To avoid fatal influence of number “three” on your love, you do not need to banish a friend, father-in-law or your own mother, who came to your place. You just should put a fourth empty cup on the edge of the table by chance, seat your boyfriend or husband near you, take his hand in your more often and keep close physical contact with him.

Four

Don’t put a number of flowers divisible by 4 (4, 8, 16) in your vase: according to some tokens, it is considered that such bouquet offers your dear one to go wherever he chooses. But if you want to part with your lover quietly, this receipt will be useful for you.

Five

Family psychologists think that only after 5 years of family life it is possible to say whether your marriage is happy or not. Partners adjust themselves to each other during 5 years. For 5 years a particular atmosphere, peculiar only to this family, is created and then it will be difficult for you to correct something. For 5 years characters of married people open completely. By the way, 5 years together is also a good occasion to think about whether you like the man you are living with?

Six

A happy and lucky number, as it consists of a sum of its divisors – 1+2+3=6. In numerology six is a symbol of Venus and protects loving couples. If you want to make your love stronger, arrange a romantic date on a sixth day of week, common journeys start on sixth number or in the sixth month of year. When you invite guests to your place, let it be 6 persons – 3 couples, and then all of you will become closer with your partners.

Seven

If age difference between you and your partner is seven or less years, this means you belong to the same generation – you are attracted by the same fashion, watch same movies, listen same singers. You have a lot to talk about.

Psychologists think that the luckiest marriages are entered between partners, belonging to the same generation. Their relations are not only love ones, but also friendly. In case when your partner is 14 years senior you (two times 7), then, most likely, he will treat you like a little girl for the whole life. Surely, this does not mean your life will be bad, but it will be much more difficult for you to come to an understanding.

Eight

If it is 8th day after your meeting, and your new friend has not called you yet, a chance of his interest to you equals zero. Even if he was sent to an urgent business-trip to Madagascar, he can call your cellular on his way to airport – is he wants. Should you call him yourself? Yes, now you can: you lose nothing, even if he considers you cheeky and importunate, – all the same he did not like you too much. And may be your insistence will touch his heart, you know, you like when somebody likes you, and he will feel sympathy for you, one step away from love?

Nine

Nine is a number of wisdom. Did your boyfriend offer you living together or marrying him, but you hesitate and do not know what to do? Take time-out for 9 days, think of nothing special, and a true decision will occur to you by itself in 9 days, like a fetus ripens in 9 months in a mother’s belly.

Why numbers are of importance for us

In mystic numerology five is considered to be a lucky number for weddings, as it represents a sum of a female number 2 and male one 3. To help five to work, you may unite in matrimony in the fifth month of a year, good dates are – 5th, 15th or 25th, and also all others, which numbers form five in a sum: 14th, 24th and so on.

We often think with images, i.e. imagine some pictures in our mind. And each number has such graphic, symbolic meaning for us.

One – loneliness, lonely tree, pride, all-sufficiency.

Two – two in love, married couple, scales, two halves of an apple, plus and minus, something unstable, discrepant, vacillating and gravitating to each other.

Three – not only a family of 3 persons, but also a love triangle.

Four – four sides of the world, will ,freedom, but at the same time 4 legs of chair and table – steadiness and reliability.

Five – 5 fingers of a hand or foot, a human figure – head, 2 hands and 2 legs, something rational and right, all-sufficient and well-arranged.

Six – a six-sided ice crystal, snowflake, harmony, satiety and prosperity. In a company of 6 persons you still can keep common conversation and nobody will feel lonely.

Seven – right this quantity of words, numbers, concepts and names we can remember with ease, with only one mentioning, not memorizing, that is why seven is considered to be a number of wisdom – we do not need the eighth miracle of the world, eighth day of a week, eighth color of rainbow, if we hardly can keep them in our memory?

Eight – consists of seven plus one and means something unnecessary, and we should still investigate whether it’s good or bad, may be this is prosperity, or may be this is some trouble.

Nine – a number of wisdom, as a woman’s pregnancy lasts for 9 months and as a result a baby is born, whom you can compare with a long-awaited idea. A group of 9 persons can discuss an idea and find one wise decision, and bigger quantity of people turns every discussion into row and needs a guide, directing a meeting.

Numbers, exceeding nine, we treat like “many”, and they lose their bright notional meaning for us.

No matter how much you take good care of your vehicle, there still are those times when you just have to bring your machine to a service station, to the dealership where you bought it, to a garage shop, or a specialty shop for some repairs or maintenance. Of course, you would like your vehicle to receive the best kind of care and also receive the right kind of treatment that it needs.

Automotive experts have come up with tips and tricks of the whole communicating trade when it comes to letting those technicians and mechanics know just what you want your car to have. It is important that you express yourself clearly on the specific things that you want done. Make sure though that when you bring your vehicle in, you are already armed with information about your vehicle. Inform the person you are dealing with just what your car feels, and sounds like when you are driving it. That way, they can work from what your car has been telling you all along.

Also, inspect your vehicle frequently, even if you are not nearing a scheduled maintenance for your vehicle. You should be able to check for unusual sounds, odors, drips, leaks, smoke, warning lights, and other readings. Also be on the lookout for changes in your vehicle’s acceleration, engine performance, gas mileage, fluid levels, as well as worn out tires, belts, and hoses. If you encounter any problems, take note of them. Always have a little notepad in handy so you could track any problems or unusual things.

Now, at the repair shop or garage, communicate these signs and symptoms to the personnel. Make sure that you go into the details. And make sure that you are ready to describe those symptoms. And once you have told them about your car troubles, stay involved. Ask questions so much so that you would know what actually is happening and what will be happening to your vehicle.

Before you leave your vehicle at the shop and before any kind of work is done, make sure that you understand everything that will be happening. Ask about the prices, the rates, the charges, and the fees. Also ask about any guarantees. Do not be embarrassed to ask. Leave a phone number so that the personnel could call you in case they need something from you.

Losing someone with whom you have lived for a few months, a year, ten years or longer can be a devastating experience for some men. Sometimes we come to realize a break-up is the wisest decision and is really a good thing. The assumption is a break-up is always bad, and in need of fixing. However, when we look realistically at some reasons behind the breakup, we discover the relationship was not a healthy relationship from the beginning.

So the question becomes not how do I get my ex-wife back but why do I want my ex-wife back? One of the first questions to ask is what led you into this relationship. The first time you saw the person you knew there was something you liked. What did you like? Her overall appearance, the way she smiled, the manner in which she looked into your eyes, the way she shook your hand. Was it the color of her hair you noticed or the curves in her body? What was the presence, which caused you to feel connected? What were you hoping to find, a person of quality or an object to satisfy your needs? What was she wearing the first time you saw her?

The answers to these and similar questions should take you back to the first encounter. If, in fact the answers lead you to conclude the reasons you felt attracted led toward the bedroom then you sowed the first seeds of a relationship into rocky ground. Secondly, you were not looking for a woman you were looking for an object and relationships with objects do not last. Like your first little red truck, it breaks down; you get tired of it or find something you believe is better and more exciting. Human relationships planted in rocky or bad ground are prone to breaking up.

Why did you pursue this relationship? Is, it because of the manner, in which her presence caused you to feel more like a man? Did you pursue the relationship through conversation and shared hobbies and interests? Were private physical encounters the main attraction or was this put on hold for the future? Did she treat you like someone very special? When other men were attentive to her or flirted with her, did this lead you to anger or did this cause you to love her more? Did you pursue this relationship because you had a deep desire to care for her, to provide for her and to be with her because you wanted to grow in your love for her?

The bottom line question is: did you pursue this woman because you wanted to be loved or because you loved her and wanted your love for her to grow? Answering this will make all your efforts make sense when trying to get her back.

While major U.S. automakers are focusing on hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, Volvo took a different route, unveiling a sports car powered entirely with lithium-ion batteries. Volvo’s 3CC concept car, won “Best Design” and five Gold Standards at the recent Michelin Challenge Bibendum environmental competition in Shanghai, China.

“Not only does the 3CC combine classic Volvo styling cues with exotic gull-wing doors and a tapered, 2+1 seating configuration, but it does so with a highly advanced lithium-ion battery electric drive train. That’s a step apart from the crowd, which these days is largely focused on hybrid and fuel cell concepts,” says Ron Cogan, editor and publisher of the Green Car Journal.

“Just as the earlier ECC forwarded new thought in hybrid propulsion with its high-speed turbine-generator design,” adds Cogan, “today’s lithium-ion 3CC innovates with its thousands of smallish laptop computer-style batteries, which power this zero emission vehicle to impressive levels of efficiency and performance.”

Advanced research into sustainable mobility and Volvo engineers have placed particular focus on the conditions regulating safety in small cars and their ability to handle incoming forces in a frontal collision.

The unique aerodynamic styling of Volvo’s 3CC concept car allows room for a third seat in back. The unique ducktail design creates room for a third seat in the back, while the batteries are sandwiched into the floor panels.

The 3CC concept car features an 80-kilowatt motor that delivers up to 107 horsepower, it has a potential driving range of 300 km (approx 180 miles) the 3CC has a top speed of over 135 km per hour.

The carbon-fiber body is mounted on a steel space frame and composite floor panels, giving the lightweight vehicle the ability to leap to 60 miles per hour in less than 10 seconds. Volvo says the 3CC can travel 180 miles on one charge under ideal driving conditions

The Volvo 3 CC’s safety features include Volvo Safety Ride Down Concept, a unique solution with a seat system that moves forward, a bit like a sled, at the same time as the front is deformed. This movement is slowed with the help of adaptive shock absorbers that tailor the damping effect to suit the collision force and the occupants’ number and weight. The interior can be moved between 0 and 200 mm forward, which has the same overall effect as extending the crumple zone by a corresponding length. It has seats that slide forward at the moment of deformation, the intention being to compensate for the small car’s traditional lack of space in the crumple zone.

Virtual tests showed that the most important part of a ride-down system is the energy absorber and that it needs to be adaptive in order to be a viable concept, by responding to differences in occupant load and crash severity”.

An environmentally efficient car that also has to be comfortable, enjoyable to drive, attractive to look at and safe to ride is an entirely new approach. The result is the Volvo 3CC, a sporty and appealing, extremely aerodynamic and compact car equipped with an energy-efficient electric motor.

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Everyone deserves the RIGHT to sleep 24/7! I used to feel that I had to share with everyone my formula for peaceful, rejuvenating sleep: A great mattress, real cotton (instead of “percale”, percale is synthetic nylon/plastic mixed in with cotton, ouch!) sheets and pillowcases, and a down pillow, (hold the quills please!) Now I know that recommending a good mattress, cotton sheets, etc., is being insensitive, because until we all have our basic needs met, only elitists have the arrogance to assume that everyone CAN sleep in the first place! Some people have to work 3 or more jobs, and are lucky if they ever get any shut-eye, at all, and, it is naive to assume that everyone has the luxury of a bed, or even clothes for themselves, let alone bed clothes, etc! In Mongolian villages, in China, people sleep on stone slabs, talk about mattress firmness! Even that, however is a step, or quite a few steps, up from homelessness!

Sleep has been a real issue with me ever since I was a toddler, because instead of ever getting enough sleep, I tossed and turned due to having tremendous stresses. My Mom was always threatening to trade me in for an adopted child! She also was so controlling that she insisted that we ( my two siblings, an older and a younger brother and I) slept in a certain way: we HAD to sleep with our arms up, and out from under the covers! I only learned the why of that later: it was so that we might avoid self stimulation! lol I am still trying to make up for all the lost sleep of my youth, so if I could be sure an induced coma would be possible to do without any physical or mental damage, I might agree to it. I want to sleep so much that I would even want to sleep walk to eat, drink, etc. In this way I could have continuous pleasant REM dream sleep!

What would the world be like, though if everyone slept 24/7? Well zero wars, for one! But realistically, until we do have a utopia where we all have leisure, we will have to settle for what, hopefully, high quality REM sleep we can get! If I had to settle for fewer hours of sleep than I get now, I would want to avoid tiresome people, because I would be tired enough myself! If I could, I would choose to associate only with people who made me laugh, or even better, people who would make me laugh and cry simultaneously, because then I would be multi-tasking in addition to laughing AND crying!

We might all get more, and a better quality of sleep if we sent all those individuals who have an overabundance of ego and/or drama back to Kindergarten, regardless of their age, because they may need to learn how to play! I would make sure that the Kindergarten teachers were all like Arthur and his butler (in the original “Arthur” movie, with Dudley Moore and Liza Minelli, instead of the recent remake), so that everyone played to their hearts content, instead of being disciplined, at all, because most disciplining involves the breaking of one’s spirit, IMHO. I would have everyone stay in kindergarten until they played the “heck” out of play. If anyone took play seriously in these “post kindergartens”, they would be held back, made to repeat “post kindergarten”, until they could MASTERFULLY PLAY without seriousness, and without ego and or drama, and maybe even without any awareness or thought that they are playing at all! Being playful as adults is so necessary, because we all need to learn how to take our selves less seriously.

We might all be able to get more sleep and a better quality of sleep, too, if being serious could be considered a crime. Then, maybe, there would be some practical function to criminal law! Instead, what criminal law is today, is mostly bullying, especially of the poor and those who know too much, i.e., whistleblowers and those who could provide evidence, about who the real crooks and lawbreakers are! I wish there would be fines assessed on people who have extreme egos and/or are extremely dramatic. Also, taxation might be more legitimate, and people might see paying taxes as more valid if, in addition to getting services for our taxes, taxpayers would be taxed for demanding attention from other taxpayers.These people who demand too much attention are “taxing” people, they make me exhausted just thinking of how needy they are! Think about how much more focused and productive we all might be if people stopped distracting us with their “hellos” all the time!

Also, consider how much more tax revenue would be collected if we taxed people for, say, asking questions! Who are we to ask questions, anyway? Even the commonly asked question “How are you”, puts the person being asked the question on the defensive! I, for one, withhold my agreement to BE in “the social contract”, in the first place, until it IS social, instead of the politically correct straitjacket that it is. As far as I am concerned, there is yet to be any SOCIAL contract made with me, so I really feel free to say to any questioner, regardless of the question, (unless they are trying to save my life of course, and then why are they wasting time asking me, questions anyway?), “I hate Questions! The world, IMHO, would be a much better place, a happier, or at least a less defensive place, if we all just made statements about ourselves, instead of making judgments. Also I have never heard a humorous question, have you?