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Went to Eugene Mirmam Comedy Festival at the Bell House last night which is literally a ten to fifteen minute walk from my flat. I prefer the word flat to apartment. It works better.
Not the nicest area of town - it's in the Gowanus, or the industrial area which has now become artist studios, tech companies, bars, nightclubs, and yuppie apartments. In short, it's the new Chelsea (or rather the old pre-21st Century Chelsea), even has a body of smelly water close by.

See? I knew if I just stayed in Brooklyn long enough it would eventually become the best of Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chelsea combined. All it requires is a bit of patience.
We had drinks at the Halyards, prior, where I discovered that I could have been watching True Blood and Breaking Bad each week while downing expensive cocktails.

The comedy festival was fairly good - I did laugh, hard. But for some reason and perhaps you can explain this to me? The humor sort of devolved into stupid sex and bodily function jokes. Mirmam kept trying to raise the bar, as did his compatriots, but it was hard going.( Read more... )

In other news? I bought another book today, I'd flirted with it at two bookstores last week, and decided to take the plunge this week. It's called Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul by Giulio Tononi, who is a leading researcher on consciousness and sleep at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It has artwork, hence the book purchase not the Kindle purchase.

Here's the description: ( Read more... )

And I'm currently reading The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiuu - on the Kindle - it doesn't have pictures. This is the book about the three Israeli Teen Women who Serve in the Israelie Special Forces by someone who actually served in that unit, was born Israelie, and lives in Israel.

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1) A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

2) In Islam...it is sacrilegious to worship Mohammed. This is why they don't want any images or pictures or anything made of him. So the actions the followers took - the violence they did in Mohammed's name were against the dictates of their own religion of Islam. It's hard for Christians to understand, because Christian's worship Jesus as God.
Muslim's do not worship Mohammed as God.

3.) I read online...can't say where and if you know, please do us both the courtesy of not revealing it - because the source is NOT important. What the person said was they did not like a series of books because the writer punished and tortured the bad characters. They could handle the nice characters getting tortured, because that's random, it's not planned, it's not as if they deserved it. But to torture and kill the nasty or bad characters regardless of how bad their actions as if they deserved it or it was some sort of "justice" bothered the reader on a deep level.

This blew me away. It made me rethink my own morality and values. And ask myself what is Justice? What is karma?

Then I saw this week's Doctor Who, which only emphasized these questions. Then I spoke to the Momster on the phone about it. And she told me an interesting tale about her father and grandfather (my great-grandfather).

Momster: My grandfather was not a good man. He beat my grandmother. But my father took us up to visit him for an hour or two. Took us to family reunions and did things for his father. This is a man who at the age of 16 thrust his father against the wall, and said if you beat my mother again, I WILL KILL YOU! And hid in a silo at the age of 10 when his father came after him with a bullwhip. Yet somehow he found a way to forgive him.
Me: Maybe he grew to understand him?
Momster: I don't know...I know my father did not want to have sons for he feared he'd become his father or they would and I often wondered why my grandfather lived so very long, he was not a good man..I don't want to say evil..
Me: To give him multiple chances to do better?
Momster: I think so.
Me: Maybe..People aren't all one thing? And your father saw over time the complexity in his own father and grew to understand him?
Momster: I don't know.

I'm wondering now if there's a bit of a vindictiveness and vengeance in me that I need to work on. A inner rage that I need to let go of. On another series...a character stated quite wisely, let go of the anger, it will not let go of you on its own - it will hold on, you have to let go of it.

Too often we confuse justice with vengeance. Killing someone who hurts us does not change anything, it just continues the violence.

The ambassador who died in Libya is a true tragedy, because he stayed during the insurrection and worked to help and aid the Libyan people. The Libyan People are horrified by these acts of violence. We must remember that and not blame them for the misguided acts and small-mindedness of a few misguided and angry souls. After all it's not like don't have our own misguided souls, Rick Warren comes to mind as does Paul Ryan, and various others. Patience. It's something I lose by Friday, and regain each Sunday. Calling myself to the thing I truly worship which is how I can be of service - to help others and try not to give in to my inner demons. It's hard. I've been sick this week. Not feeling up snuff.
So I've fallen down on the job a bit.

Doctor Who...the latest episode, I don't know what it was called - Cowboys and Aliens?

So, first of all, it's worth noting that this was written by Toby Whitehouse, who is the creator of Being Human and likes to moralize a bit. He's the British version of Aaron Sorkin, Dave E. Kelley, and now, unfortunately Joss Whedon (although Marvel may wean him off of it, who knows.)

This story reminded me a bit of Mitchell's arc in Being Human, ending with ( spoilers for both Being Human and Doctor Who )