For Steve Finnell

He's a Christian Blogger who invited me to follow his blog a Christian View in the comments of the linked post... That's like asking someone to come out of a multiflavoured icecream parlor to taste the shit on the sidewalk.

 LOL, too funny not to post, sorry folks.

Thanks to Relaxed Focus

311 Soundsystem 04 Flowing

Along the way to close my eyes

I lost where I was going

the more it will spin

the more that I try

to stop my mind flowing away, away

to all that I despise

along the way to close my eyes

You can't be let down if you don't expect the world

expect to lay awake and by your sleeping girl

if somebody cares then there is no way you can tell

cursed consciousness is your private hell

Along the way to close my eyes

I lost where I was going

the more it will spin

the more that I try

to stop my mind flowing away, away

to all that I despise

along the way to close my eyes

Tick, tick, tick the clock bludgeons your mind

endlessly replaying times that were unkind

go away sun I'm not prepared for you today

it seems you are, it seems you are, huh!

Carl Sagan's vivid recollection

311 Soundsystem 03 Large in the Margin

Check it check it check it out

got clout and you know that

Large in the margin

my drama unfolds behind closed doors

told on the down-low

i believe that I'm so but really, i don't know

maybe it's better, but I can't think so

maybe its better to fight, one never ever knows

believe the rumors that grow like tumors

more fun than the truth that we know

Trying too hard to reach higher plane

We'll fuck you up

when you least expect it

you think you're moving closer

when suddenly you wrecked it

but all the same, the pain gains wisdom

as if you ain't had enough then you're in some

prison of your own creation

mental dilation

look at what your facin' placin'

blame in every direction (what?)

but in the end it's your own infection, (di?)

There's no way to avoid listening

you'll always end up listening

here's hoping the voices aren't too unkind

here's hoping the voices are benign

it's easier when you hear it

there's no reason to fear it

it's you

it's you

You think they'll probably find you

well then you're probably right

cause they'll come back to remind you, for eternity

of when you gave up the fight, yeah

somehow they always will find you

the voices in the night, and every night

keep comin' back to remind you, for eternity

of when you gave up the fight

Richard Bach's Illusions

"What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? ... What if a Siddhartha came to our time, with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he was flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?"

This book inspired me when I most needed it while in Thailand, it sent me soaring, it also sent me crashing back down... hard. But that's the fault of my own limitations which I'm still working on. 

“This is a test to see if your mission in this life is complete, if you are alive, it isn't.” 

“You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it however.”

“I do not exist to impress the world. I exist to live my life in a way that will make me happy. ”

“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.”

“Remember where you came from, where you're going, and why you created this mess you got yourself into in the first place.”

“We teach best what we most need to learn.”

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”

“Believe you know all the answers, and you know all the answers. Believe you're a master, and you are.”

“The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, 'I've got responsibilities.”

“The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.”

“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.” 

“There is no such thing as a problem with out a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts.”

“How easy it is to be compassionate when it's yourself you see in trouble.” 

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them. You're always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.” 

“The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.”
“No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?” 

“Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.” 

“Nothing good is a miracle, nothing lovely is a dream.”

“If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you have a problem.”

Too old? Did he see the last guy? That guy was dead for a few decades and still did the job :p

311 Soundsystem 02 Come Original

You got to come original you got to come original

all entertainers come original

you got to come original you got to come original

all entertainers

hear why

To come original it ain't nothin' strange

you got to represent you got come full range an'

full range of emotion full range of styles

when you come to town you'll have them comin' for miles and...

Black Eyed Peas they comin' full range and (haha, this is old :p)

NOFX they comin' full range and

Roni Size he comin' full range

the one Mr. Vegas you know it ain't easy

A warning to the crews out there who think they're hot

if you're not original rockers you will get shot

down by the kids neglectin' your art, the stuff you did

eventually it get so bad puts you to bed

cause when the lightning flashes sweet electricity

all the world then stands revealed with the clarity

of raw voltage, briefly we see and the hope is

you'll be able to tell just what dope is

Funk slap bass mixed with the dancehall and

hip-hop beats and punk guitar and

deadly on the mic is the one SA

the name is 311 and you know it ain't easy, ha

(Come on, come on)

This is not a test there's no time to mope

how you gonna cope with radioactive isotope

and boss DJ illness upon you now quickly

infecting you fast upon the airwaves

this message brought to you by the so large system

activate and attune yourself with meditation
and green plants they've got mad life they're sentient
they're beautiful as you and they like to dance

(1, 2, 3, 4)

Everything we do we gotta come original

put your hands up in the air and prepare for battle

sit upon the rhythm like a tire upon a rim

we do it non-stop and then we do it again

some a them whine and some a them bitch

they can not do it never switch

comin' up from the heart and

delivered with a wild pitch

sit up on top the rhythm like a wild stallion

this is the ruling system

Bruce Damer & Dennis McKenna – “A Deep Dive Into the Mind of McKenna”

Dear Terence McKenna fans, this podcast at the Psychedelic Salon Podcast 316 will probably break your heart as it broke mine. However it also affirmed for me that not becoming a fulltime entheogenic explorer - something I have sort of regretted a long time - was the right thing to do after all, I only found this out about Terence from this podcast (to know exactly what, you'll have to listen). A bad trip doesn't mean you should stop travelling alltogether, but these travels take you to unexpected destinations and it's not to be taken lightly at all. And mine sure got me frightened enough to not wanna do it alone ever again, and who knows how the heaven one can find a sitter for an entheogen trip these days if you don't have any likeminded friends nearby. Anyway this is a must listen (I typed "lesson" first, haha) for Terence McKenna fans. Prepare to have some illusions destroyed if you're not fully aware about his history yet as I was, but don't worry, he's still one of my main heroes and should probably remain a hero to all who know him regardless of his faults, which I find were maybe sort of overstated a bit too in the podcast. Bless you Terence, wherever you are!

The Turtle Moves! - Terry Pratchett's Small Gods

Some quotes and a longer excerpt from my new favorite Terry Pratchett DiscWorld Novel Small Gods. So funny, I think I had at least a laugh a page and often multiple ones at that. I was laughing out loud on the plane and on the beach!

The Turtle Moves!

"Oh, a very useful philosophical animal, your average tortoise. Outrunning metaphorical arrows, beating hares in races... very handy."

"It's a god-eat-god world."

And it came to pass that in time the Great God Om spake unto Brutha, the Chosen One: "Psst!"

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, "You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink."

-- Dydactylos the philosopher

"He's muffed it," said Simony. "he could have done anything with them. And he just told them the facts. You can't inspire people with facts. They need a cause. They need a symbol."

"There's very good eating on one of these, you know." on Tortoises

"Not a man to mince words. People, yes. But not words." About the Inquisitor

"There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do." About the Inquisition

"When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror."

"Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be."

"Go on, do Deformed Rabbit... it's my favourite." When musing about Plato's Allegory of the Cave

"The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to."

"The people who really run organizations are usually found several levels down, where it is still possible to get things done."

""What's a philosopher ?" said Brutha. "Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting," said a voice in his head."

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

"He says gods like to see an atheist around. Gives them something to aim at."

One of my favorite excerpts: Brutha has to find a philosopher

"What do philosophers look like?" said Brutha, "When they're not having a bath, I mean." 
"They do a lot of thinking," said Om. "Look for someone with a strained expression."
"That might just mean constipation." 
"Well, so long as they're philosophical about it . . ." 
The city of Ephebe surrounded them. Dogs barked. Somewhere a cat yowled. There was that general susurration of small comfortable sounds that shows that, out there, a lot of people are living their lives.
And then a door burst open down the street and there was the cracking noise of a quite large wine amphora being broken over someone's head. A skinny old man in a toga picked himself up from the cobbles where he had landed, and glared at the doorway.  

"I'm telling you, listen, a finite intellect, right, cannot by means of comparison reach the absolute truth of things, because being by nature indivisible, truth excludes the concepts of "more" or "less" so that nothing but truth itself can be the exact measure of truth. You bastards," he said. 
Someone from inside the building said, "Oh yeah? Sez you."
The old man ignored Brutha but, with great difficulty, pulled a cobblestone loose and hefted it in his hand. Then he dived back through the doorway. There was a distant scream of rage.
"Ah. Philosophy," said Om.
Brutha peered cautiously round the door. Inside the room two groups of very nearly identical men in togas were trying to hold back two of their colleagues. It is a scene repeated a million times a day in bars around the multiverse-both would-be fighters growled and grimaced at one another and fought to escape the restraint of their friends, only of course they did not fight too hard, because there is nothing worse than actually succeeding in breaking free and suddenly finding yourself all alone in
the middle of the ring with a madman who is about to hit you between the eyes with a rock. 
"Yep," said Om, "that's philosophy, right enough."
"But they're fighting!" 
"A full and free exchange of opinions, yes." 
Now that Brutha could get a clearer view, he could see that there were one or two differences between the men. One had a shorter beard, and was very red in the face, and was waggling a finger accusingly.
"He bloody well accused me of slander!" he was shouting.
"I didn't!" shouted the other man.
"You did! You did! Tell 'em what you said!" 
"Look, I merely suggested, to indicate the nature of paradox, right, that if Xeno the Ephebian said, `All Ephebians are liars-' "
"See? See? He did it again!"
"-no, no, listen, listen . . . then, since Xeno is himself an Ephebian, this would mean that he himself is a liar and therefore-”  Xeno made a determined effort to break free, dragging four desperate fellow philosophers across the floor.
"I'm going to lay one right on you, pal!"
Brutha said, "Excuse me, please?" 
The philosophers froze. Then they turned to look at Brutha. They relaxed by degrees. There was a chorus of embarrassed coughs.
"Are you all philosophers?" said Brutha.
The one called Xeno stepped forward, adjusting the hang of his toga.
"That's right," he said. "We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am."
"Are," said the luckless paradox manufacturer automatically.
Xeno spun around. "I've just about had it up to here with you, Ibid!" he roared. He turned back to Brutha. "We are, therefore we am," he said confidently. "That's it." 
Several of the philosophers looked at one another with interest.
"That's actually quite interesting," one said. "The evidence of our existence is the fact of our existence, is that what you're saying?"
"Shut up," said Xeno, without looking around. 
"Have you been fighting?" said Brutha. 
The assembled philosophers assumed various expressions of shock and horror.
"Fighting? Us? We're philosophers," said Ibid, shocked.
"My word, yes," said Xeno.
"But you were-” Brutha began.
Xeno waved a hand.
"The cut and thrust of debate," he said. 
"Thesis plus antithesis equals hysteresis," said Ibid. "The stringent testing of the universe. The hammer of the intellect upon the anvil of fundamental truth-” 
"Shut up," said Xeno. "And what can we do for you, young man?" 
"Ask them about gods," Om prompted. 
"Uh, I want to find out about gods," said Brutha.
The philosophers looked at one another.
"Gods?" said Xeno. "We don't bother with gods. Huh. Relics of an outmoded belief system, gods."
There was a rumble of thunder from the clear evening sky.
"Except for Blind Io the Thunder God," Xeno went on, his tone hardly changing.
Lightning flashed across the sky.
"And Cubal the Fire God," said Xeno.
A gust of wind rattled the windows.
"Flatulus the God of the Winds, he's all right too," said Xeno. 
An arrow materialized out of the air and hit the table by Xeno's hand.
"Fedecks the Messenger of the Gods, one of the alltime greats," said Xeno. 
A bird appeared in the doorway. At least, it looked vaguely like a bird. It was about a foot high, black and white, with a bent beak and an expression that suggested that whatever it was it really dreaded ever happening to it had already happened.
"What's that?" said Brutha. 
"A penguin," said the voice of Om inside his head.
"Patina the Goddess of Wisdom? One of the best," said Xeno. 
The penguin croaked at him and waddled off into the darkness.
The philosophers looked very embarrassed. Then Ibid said, "Foorgol the God of Avalanches? Where's the snowline?" 
"Two hundred miles away," said someone.
They waited. Nothing happened.
"Relic of an outmoded belief system," said Xeno. 
A wall of freezing white death did not appear anywhere in Ephebe. 
"Mere unthinking personification of a natural force," said one of the philosophers, in a louder voice. They all seemed to feel a lot better about this. 
"Primitive nature worship." 
"Wouldn't give you tuppence for him." 
"Simple rationalization of the unknown."  

"Hah! A clever fiction, a bogey to frighten the weak and stupid!" 
The words rose up in Brutha. He couldn't stop himself. 
"Is it always this cold?" he said. "It seemed very chilly on my way here."
The philosophers all moved away from Xeno.
"Although if there's one thing you can say about Foorgol," said Xeno, "it's that he's a very understanding god. Likes a joke as much as the next . . . man."

"You're not one of us." "I don't think I'm one of them, either," said Brutha. "I'm one of mine."

"All holy piety in public, and all peeled grapes and self-indulgence in private."

"Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it's all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place."

"You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing."

Om began to feel the acute depression that steals over every realist in the presence of an optimist.

"All the other prophets came back with commandments!" 

"Where they get them?" 

"I ... suppose they made them up."

"You get them from the same place."

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

Give anyone a lever long enough and they can change the world. It's unreliable levers that are the problem.

"Now we've got a truth to die for!" "No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for."

YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? 

"Yes. Yes, of course." 

Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

"I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers."

"I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts," said Brutha. "That way, everyone's happy."

"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."

-- The many and varied advantages of philosophy

311 Soundsystem 01 Freeze Time

Guess who's back y'all! As an injection of positive vibes I'm going to be posting every song of this album, one a day!

I'd like to stay here just like this

it's just a momentary bliss

that's all we can hope for

that's reason to cope for

this life, this life and no more

You will be immortal man

one in the hand

you will know exactly then

what you have

you found the cure

and Morse codes for rapture

get with your rhythm

get with your nature

The moment's running down the mountain

it can be captured from a fountain

sometime all that it can be

absence of agony

pleasure from the lack of pain

Serendipitous my travels throughout time

I grab a moment like a thief and then I make it mine

nothing will compare to your realization

when you come to find out your new object of fixation

I try to freeze time

try to freeze time for your mind

perfect snapshot to always rewind

golden buttered jam

golden buttered jam for your slam

remember it in your synapse diagram

Sweetness is your bein', Zen human walkin'

steppin' out from shadows, flowin' like a breeze soft and

when dawn unveils the mornin' star risen

fell the light, feel the love, you're christened

with this life, not ours, not for long

but for the taking, take it

the birth light breaking break it

between the light and dark is a seem

that is caving in

mutating rearranging your soul

changing form again