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| My human revolution | ||
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Many people will ask, what the smeg is he on about. Well, the thing is: For far too long I've been a floater of sorts, despite being a raving loonie and rather inventive when it comes to verbal monkeying around. It's just that I've reacted to situations and people, instead of being proactive in any given situation. But all of that is about to change drastically. I'm fed up being a passenger in life and I want to seize the day, so to speak. So with that in mind I'm going to start from tonight by practicing my Buddhist chants with more energy and more enthusiasm than ever before. I'm going to learn the entire Gongyo, even if it kills me. I'm going to read as much as I possibly can from the writings of Nichiren Daishonin and do my utmost to understand his philosophy better as well as deepening my faith in the Mystic Law. In tandem with all of this, I'm going to do my best to get through reading more of the writings of current SGI president Daisaku Ikeda and see if I can find some of the writings and musings of previous presidents, Makiguchi and Toda. This philosophy, along with the religious acumen, from what I've been able to tell, is the only religion that relies solely on common sense and a mixture of wisdom and intelligence. The original energy blast, from when we had our universal creation (i.e. the Big Bang), has never become diluted, lessened or vanished. It's simply changed form, creating all those astrophysical phenomena we see in the sky, along with the ones we can't see; all sources of energy that we can put to use here on earth and hopefully elsewhere, as time passes. That original source of energy is, as far as I can understand, the Mystic Law. It never goes away, no matter what we do, it simply changes form and keeps existing, whether we want it to or not. It may elude us at times, but that's only natural, with our senses being so dimmed and diminished by our comfortable lives and technological advances we've taken into our service. But when we least expect it, it will hit us in some way. Volcanic eruptions, Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Flash flooding rivers, forest fires and many other disasters are only some of the destructive forces of this original energy. What we fail to realise is that a lot of the positive forces are just as strong. They just hide better, so we don't notice them until we start checking history. The humanitarian movements, the abolishing of slavery in the western hemisphere (at least by law), the rise of freedom of speech in most countries in the world, even though some governments try their best to suppress it to the best of their abilities. All kinds of positive technological advancements are also worth a mention. So you can see that energy, The Force, God or the Mystic Law, or whatever else you worship, is more or less the mental manifestation of that original energy. Fortunately most of the human population on earth is just a normal being, hoping to earn a living and provide for their families. It's the fundamentalists that give religion a bad name, especially those that promote death and destruction. Those can be found in just about every religious sect in the world. I'm happy to have found a religious path that promotes the value of life, assisting those in need and all of the other beautiful ideas; it's just that we pursue that path by empowering ourselves first, so we are capable of helping others. Kolla has been helping out a friend of hers for the past few weeks. He's been suffering from really hard and heavy bouts of depression and mental pain, pain so severe that sometimes premature death becomes a plausible way to escape the pain. I've been doing my best to support her, but even if I'm a rock at the moment, it's entirely possible that a rock will start to disintegrate, even if the process is slow. So to strengthen me as a rock, I decided to look for guidance from one of our Danish guests, at the seminar we attended on Saturday. The guidance he gave me was not only what I needed to hear, but also what I wanted to hear, which is extremely rare. So by following the guidance and also by pursuing my musical aspirations further, I'm going to try to become the rock that Kolla requires. Even if chips start peeling out of the rock, I'll just add more to the other side of the rock, to keep the strength and firmness that she wants and needs. So far she's been doing a great job, but she's started to show the signs of wear and fatigue, so I really have to be ready so she can lean on me as needed. The practice of the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin will help me be that rock and the wisdom of Daishonin, along with all three presidents of the SGI will complement it nicely. |
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| Happy New Year | ||
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And I plan to make it the best ever. I have no clue as to how to do it, in the current financial climate and my current state of brokeness, but I'll still do it. I still have a job, I still have my family and love them to the moon and back. That love is still growing, so you can expect it to reach Mars and back on Monday and then keep expanding outwards after that. I'm about to take on the role as co-admin on the phpBB based forum at Geđheilsa.is, since one of the admins there doesn't have a strong enough grasp of English to work all of the nuances of the board. So far he's done well, considering his handicap with English, but he needs more assistance and that's where I come in. I'm not going to be anal about rules and regulations there, as that's not what I'm needed for; it's more to do with the technical side of things. To my delight, Liverpool are still sitting at the top of the English Premiership, where they really belong after all those years. I'll be waiting in anticipation for every result of theirs through to the end of season, when they'll hopefully celebrate their 19th Championship. You bet I'll celebrate too  Now for something far more serious. Something so heinous it's almost impossible to contemplate in this day and age, or is it?? The Israeli military, acting on orders from their government, is bombing the Gaza strip to smithereens, ignoring completely that most of the people there are innocent civilians like you and me. And what is the world doing about it?? Fuck all, that's what they're doing. No resolution can be passed against them in the UN Security Council, due to the US vetoing it immediately. No government in the western hemisphere is willing to break all political and/or economical ties with Israel, because they don't want to get on Big Brother's bad side. And my own government, the Icelandic one, is keener on forming yet another committee, than actually doing anything about this. I call all nation leaders to shoulder the responsibility of resolving this and fucking break off all ties with Israel. While the latter behave like the proverbial bull in the china shop, they should be ostracised from the community of nations and told to go and fuck off when they want respect or business from somewhere. The general public in Israel surely can't deserve this kind of idiotic governing. Too bad that common sense never seems to have any place in politics. Currently fuming at those war mongering idiots.  |
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| A smallish change... | ||
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to the website layout. I decided it was time to make the working area wider, so now it's running at 1001 pixels, instead of the previous number, which I just can't remember anymore, but must have been around 950 or so. I've also removed one thing and changed another, but it's up to you to find out what it was, because I'm too lazy to recite all of it. We're now very close to having a working kitchen, now that most of the painting is finished and we finally have a couple of counters. One of them now only needs some cutting, since that's where the kitchen sink will sit. Very soon I'll have to fork out for a 11kg canister of propane gas, so we can cook on our brand spanking new stove, though the built in electrical oven has already been used quite often. All it takes is to find the hose that should be running from the gas canister to the stove intake and we're set to go. If it goes the worst possible way, then we'll have to purchase the right hose/connectors, but that's something we'll tackle later in the week. I got my lift back at work on Friday, but unfortunately it came back from repairs with an almost flat battery, so I could only empty 4 out of the intended 6 containers on our lot. During the time it took to empty those 4, I had to give the lift a couple of electrical charge shots, in order for it to get even that far. So instead of being able to stop working at 1 o'clock like I meant to, I wasn't finished until 6pm, which was highly annoying, though I will earn a little bit more money for those extra 5 hours overtime. Currently listening to: My son, slowly falling asleep after a day of great fun |
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| Xmas preps | ||
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We're working on getting the house ready for Xmas, or more like Yuletide, since it's been "proved" that the birth of Jesus was actually in June and not in the middle of winter. Xmas of old, is actually a celebration of the passing of the winter solstice, meaning the days have started to lengthen and soon it will be summer again. But that's not exactly what I meant to talk about here, though I had to get it off my chest. I don't expect the die hard Christians to agree with me, but before you start flooding the comment system with words like blasphemy and shit like that, I just want to you all to know that you can all collectively kiss my ass. I'm not here to make everybody happy with my words, they're here for my own enjoyment and hopefully my real friends will be amused too. I've got no time for the Bible brigade, especially since they tend to twist the words of that book for whatever means they're trying to support. But to recap a bit. When me and Kolla came home from the Canaries, we decided to take down the kitchen and the wall between kitchen and living room. The reason was because all cupboards were more or less fucked and the house wasn't really living up to it's potential. So now we're finally in a position to finalise the kitchen area and then we're ready for the holidays. This morning, Egill Úlfar received his first gift in his Xmas stocking. And he was very excited about the pastry he found inside. Needless to say, he gobbled it up so quickly, we had to give him a cookie to keep him occupied a little longer. He's going to live his first ever Xmas for real now, since his first official one was while he was only 6 months old and didn't really understand all the fuss. To my great delight, Liverpool seem to be doing quite alright this season, topping the table on several occasions, though we can't really tell how long they'll stay there. The crazy Xmas games will come thick and fast and if we're still top by then, we can start dreaming of winning the damn thing. Maybe even do the triple, to mock the Mancs. Plymouth are in a tough situation and it seems like Sturrock, good as he may be in the lower divisions, just doesn't seem to be able to cut it properly in the Championship. Hopefully he'll prove me wrong and help the team reach the play-offs, but it's impossible to tell until the end of season. Currently watching Men In Black, what a great pastime |
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| Another belated update | ||
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Since the collapse of the Icelandic banking system, following the idiotic terrorist law invocation by Gordon the smeghead Brown, things have been going downhill for Icelandic businesses in general. I'm lucky that the main business season for the company I work for is still only rising, so I look to have quite a lot to do at work in the near future, yet I must be prepared for anything, since things can get turned on their heads very rapidly around here. I won't dwell on it though, being the incorrigible optimist that I am. There's no recession in our household, according to Kolla, we're just on a diet and I happen to agree with her viewpoint there. We are dead certain that we'll get through all of this and be stronger for it, because we're so positive in our thinking. Egill has finally started to use a few words that can be understood and he sees that we respond positively to them. The first word he started to use, was his own Icelandic version of "diaper", followed by saying "yes" and "no" to questions and now he's started to babble the Icelandic word for "daddy" and I think he'll come on leaps and bounds from now on. Birta has decided to call it a day on her Taekwon Do training and has started learning the guitar. But she's a bit too lazy when it comes to practicing her playing, but she'll get there. She also gets rave reviews from most of her teachers at school, so we know she's a smart girl. All she needs to do is to apply her intelligence and then she'll be capable of whatever she wants to do. Our first gig was a total disaster, but we are of the mentality that a first time failure is only the necessary evil before we conquer the world with our music. The second gig, 4 days later, was much better and we'll be giving a third one on December 7th. We know we're good when we're well rehearsed and well prepared mentally, so that's what we have to ensure when we perform next time. We'll also get a friend of ours, Anna Lilja, to play the trumpet with us, along with something we can hopefully conjure up before the gig. Tomorrow we're planning to do some house cleaning, and then hopefully we can visit Anna Lilja and play a bit. She needs it, following the recent surgery and subsequent rehabilitation she's undergoing. I just hope we can help her to overcome her physical problems, since her mental state of mind is many levels above the physical one. Currently listening to: Dire Straits radio on LastFM, current song is Supertramp - Crime of the Century |
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